"Ceramic?" asks Stalas skeptically. "Your scanner thingy isn't very smart, is it?"

"Cut it some slack, it's never seen a real dwarf before," says Miles.

Stalas snorts.

"Anyway, dare I ask why you're radioactive?"

"I don't know," says Stalas. "I only just found out what radioactive meant. Maybe it's the lyrium. I have lyrium in my blood. It's a long story."

"Genuine dwarf bone," Stalas affirms. "Lyrium is... a substance. It's blue, it glows, it's magic, it runs in veins through certain kinds of rock. Direct contact with it usually kills anyone who's not a dwarf, and isn't too healthy for dwarves in large amounts, but I got lucky." He shrugs and amends, "Lucky-ish. I'm pretty sure the scrawniness and tendency to bruise are leftovers from that whole business."

...Miles gives Stalas an appraising look. "And what whole business would that be?"

"Do you actually want the long story?" asks Stalas, glancing between the three of them. "There's politics involved and it doesn't end all that happily."

"I'm getting that sense," says Stalas. "Fine, okay. So my mother was a noble hunter. If two dwarves have children, each successive child is born with the caste of its same-sex parent, and the first child with the higher of the two castes confers that caste on the lower parent, their immediate family, and any siblings. So a lot of women like to sleep with as many noblemen as they can get, in the hope of bearing a noble child. People in general have sort of mixed feelings about this, but nobody puts a stop to it because it's hard for dwarves to have children in the first place and anything that gets people trying can't be all bad even if it's transparent social climbing."

He takes a breath.

"The competition's pretty fierce, and the most successful noble hunters are the ones with rich patrons - the deal is, if she bears a noble child, the patron will claim to be her uncle or something and get in on the free ride to the noble caste. The Shaperate doesn't keep genealogical records of the lower castes, so there'll be nobody to say any different. Fortunately for my mother, she had a patron. Unfortunately, her patron had a rival, and as soon as she got pregnant the rival had her poisoned in an extremely nasty way."

"That is starting to sound familiar," murmurs Miles.

Stalas glances wryly at him. "Why am I not surprised? Anyway, she resorted to desperate measures to try to survive long enough to have me. Managed it in the end, but some of the treatments involved lyrium, and - well - there were side effects." He gestures at himself. "I guess it's not that noticeable to a human, but if you'd ever met another dwarf you'd notice I'm awfully scrawny as dwarves go. And, as you've noticed, I bruise. And if too much of my blood mixes with someone else's they get loopy. Or die, I guess, if they're not a dwarf."

"Try not to bleed on anyone, then," Miles advises.

"I do my best."

Linya is listening (and telling her medical scanner that lyrium is a poison in anyone who doesn't have dwarf bones, and a poison in large quantities even to people who do), but she's also investigating the window.

"As near as I can tell," she remarks, "this is not a holo screen, or if it is one, it's more advanced than the kinds available at home, I wouldn't even know how to custom-build this. But my medical scanner would have been much more excited if we were collecting radiation doses sufficient to worry about from actual supernovae. So this is more magic, or we're very shielded."

"Well, that's a weight off my mind," says Miles.

"Now I'm curious," says Stalas. "What's your story?"

"Well, my mother was only poisoned incidentally by somebody who was trying to get at my father," says Miles. "There was a civil war on at the time. And she's still alive. And the antidote to the poison nearly did away with my bones entirely, and she had to have me scooped out and gestated the rest of the way in an artificial womb so she could give my little fetal self enough calcium treatments to develop even the fragile twiglike bones I've got. But, all in all - unsettlingly similar, wouldn't you say?"

"No kidding," says Stalas. "Does it hurt?"

"What, when my bones break? What d'you fucking think?"

They exchange a look of wry understanding.

Linya drifts over to the bar.

And yelps when a napkin appears at her.

"It's... a napkin. A spontaneously appearing napkin, mind you," says Linya.

The napkin reads, Hello. Can I interest you in a beverage? First one's free.

Miles makes his way over to the bar, more on the tables than between them. Stalas follows in a more sedate and ground-bound fashion.

"...Uh," says Miles, when he reaches the bar and climbs up on a stool and reads the napkin.

"What is it?" says Stalas.

"A... magic talking bar, it looks like," says Miles.

"Well, that's sort of in keeping with how this day has been going," says Stalas.

"Are you," says Ivan to the bar dubiously, "a magic talking bar?"

Yes, appears another napkin.

"Grand," says Ivan, "because I'm not drunk enough for this, I'll have the... house... whatever. You're a magic bar, I expect magic bars to be good at drink recommendations, why I have expectations about magic bars I do not know."

Ivan gets a glass of something dark pink.

He picks it up and sniffs it and takes a sip and says, "Well, that's delicious."

"You don't know where that's been, Ivan," says Miles.

"Be polite to the magic talking bar, Miles," says Stalas.

I would never serve a patron something unsafe, napkins the bar indignantly.

Linya waves her scanner at Ivan and the beverage. "If it's unsafe, it's very subtly so," she says. "But this scanner has learned about two brand new substances today, so."

I am very good at what I do. But I suspect that lyrium would not improve most beverages along most axes.

"What sort of sensory modality does a magic talking bar have, anyway?"

I can in a relatively conventional sense see and hear. I have a lot of practice at identifying various species and can also tell where visitors are from, which helps.

"I don't suppose you know anything about why Stalas and I are suspiciously similar," says Miles. "Or how we got here."

"Mages totally drink lyrium potions all the time," says Stalas. "Not for the taste, admittedly."

If you want a lyrium potion in a safe dose, I will hardly second-guess you, but I would be more likely to recommend something more caloric and possibly caffeinated, writes the bar. You got here like everyone else; the door reaches into various places in various worlds depending on whims I am not privy to. It is not uncommon for multiple worlds to have instances of the same sort of person, who often but not always also look alike. Such as yourselves.

"I'm curious now, what would you recommend for me?" asks Linya.

Oh, how about raspberry lemonade?

"Huh."

Certainly. But only the first drink is free.

"And what do you charge?"

Reasonable currency-dependent prices. The spread I am inclined to offer Stalas if undirected would be thirty-one Barrayaran marks.

"I will buy him dinner, if you can take my credit," says Linya.

I certainly can.

"And how is that going to turn up on my statement from First Galactic?"

I couldn't begin to tell you.

Food appears. Considerable, rich, artfully plated, dwarf-friendly food, complete with beverage and a dessert.

There is a restroom to your right around my corner, and full baths associated with the rooms upstairs, which may be rented.

"For which you also charge reasonable currency-dependent prices?"

One hundred seventy-five marks per night.

"I will rent him a room at least long enough that he can take a bath."

"You are a kind and generous soul," says Stalas, and then he does not say any more things because he is busy eating.

"...How long has it been since your last meal?" asks Miles, staring.

Stalas holds up three fingers.

"Three days?"

Nod.

"Good God."