I've mostly been reading about Tapa; what's Voa like?

They do child allocations two per. Instead of credits. Which is supposedly the reason they're happier.

That sounds like it would help, yes.

It's supposedly dysgenic but I don't know.

Even if it is, people getting what they need matters.

If there's enough planets they might stop doing population controls anymore at all.

I expect they'll have trouble if they don't, with as many planets as there are.

They might need something for caste balance but yep. We'll fill it right up.

Yep!

I should get back to my reading now, but send me a message if you need anything, okay?

Will do!

And Deskyl rests and recuperates. Near the end of the first week, she has DZ put in an order for a selection of basic electrical components and a table that will let her work in bed; in the middle of the third, they send off a list of experiments they'd like to have done to supplement what Deskyl remembers about how nuclear fusion based power generators work.

The Tapai are quick and solicitous about meeting these requests. Tools arrive promptly; they get status reports on the physics experiments as they progress.

The first results are promising; Deskyl writes up a basic outline of how to build a generator, with notes on how various experimental results will change the details, and which results mean they need to talk to her again to figure out what's gone wrong.

She starts spending time out of bed, slowly at first, but by the middle of the second month she's up and about enough that DZ asks for the second bed to be replaced with a worktable, and for details on how to arrange sparring sessions.

(DZ keeps in touch with Peka, too, checking in with her at least once a week.)

Peka keeps DZ supplied with happy baby pictures, occasionally with her little brother and/or sister in there too.

The furniture is replaced. They have a selection of people who know swordfighting and have enough military or police or government security history to have a clearance compatible with telling them about aliens; if Deskyl has a fighting style preference here are some videos of their specialties.

The furniture replacement itself goes fine, but Deskyl reacts badly to it, spending a week in bed and returning slowly to her previous level of activity; DZ talks her out of sparring for now.

Well, they haven't told any of the swords greys about aliens yet, so no rush.

And she continues to recover. The next set of notes she releases is about enhanced and specially treated metals; Amentans don't have durasteel, and she doesn't know how it's made, but some of what she knows should work on the regular sort.

She picks a sparring partner - someone who knows lots of styles, rather than a specialist in some particular one - and has DZ arrange a sparring session; DZ includes a note that for now they should be prepared for the sessions to be very short.

That's fine! The selected swords grey shows up. He's a little apprehensive about the high stakes of sparring with an alien but he's got his own share of the excitement about planets.

She's less creeped out by the enthusiasm by now. She keeps it low-stakes, this time, showing him a few two-person forms she wants to practice on rather than going right to actual sparring, with DZ there to translate.

Sure, he can pick those up and partner them even though they're not like what he's used to.

And when they've gone through the forms, she shows him the basics of the style she wants to practice - she's interested in learning about local styles; he doesn't need to pick it up himself - and leaves DZ to arrange a schedule while she goes back to bed.

Once a week should be more than sufficient for now, if that works well for him; Deskyl will want to work up to at least three times a week and possibly daily, though.

Once a week and scaling up works fine!

Good.

This arrangement seems to suit her; she takes a day or so to recover from sparring sessions, at first, but she spends an increasing portion of the rest of her time going through textbooks and research papers on the state of the art in various types of Amentan technology, releasing notes on them that range in detail from 'work on this' on hydroponics, to specific if somewhat vague hints on how to improve their metal refining practices, to a blueprint for an improved braking system for trains, to a fascinating if somewhat hard to follow paper on how spacetime knots can be harvested from black holes and used to make anti-gravity technology.

Eventually, she asks for another meeting with the blues.

They are available as soon as she wants them!