She sees, thank you.

Does xie know where Valanda went? Does xie know anything more than Sheridan does about behavior advice given the mood?

"Probably looking for work. I don't know."

Sheridan thanks her again. She works on tide calculations.

Valanda comes back with some honey for Iri and a list of unsolved problems that rich eccentric math enthusiasts have offered prizes for solving. They can make rent if Sheridan can square a circle or calculate two pi to the nearest sixty-one billion nine hundred seventeen million three hundred sixty four thousand two hundred twenty-fourth.

"If none of those seem easier than the tide chart just keep working on that."

Squaring a circle has actually been proven to be impossible, if that is of interest to the enthusiast. She has to do a calculation to figure out which place that corresponds to, but does know pi to more places than that and can convert the relevant truncation back.

"I'll take them the really precise number tomorrow if you'll write it down for me. If it's impossible to square a circle you probably need to prove that. How much paper will you need for the proof?"

She can write it down. If the enthusiast will pay more for more precision than that, she knows more, too.

She can look at how much space she needs to write with the charcoal and give him an estimate, but that would be in her system and this involves more concepts about which she's not sure how they get represented locally, or if they in fact have local analogues. She can more simply give the reason, and its logic, if that helps at all? (The 'if such-and-such is the case, then it would be impossible' was also a much later idea than the question itself, in her world.)

She can propose a few more ideas to sell (more specific than things like 'the idea of place value', though that is also available, if he knows a market.) The volume and/or surface area of a few other shapes, since that was mentioned? A few others that seems like possibilities, given the information she has?

Also if there is someone who would pay to have some numbers multiplied quickly, who doesn't need converted calculations, and this is not something they already have tools for, she can do that? (Adding quickly can be done just fine with an abacus, she knows).

"I'll look into all of that tomorrow while I'm out." He hesitates, about to say something else, but then he doesn't.

He rests. He doesn't seem very interested in talking right now.

She won't bother him.

She'll convert and double the relevant amount of pi and write it out on its own bit of paper and work on tide tables and Hari. (She hasn't brought up other things she could potentially sell yet, because risking overwhelment seems suboptimal, and he responded unpredictably and not very well to her introducing the math area. But she's keeping some chemical formulas and such in mind.)

The next day he leaves for a while. When he comes back mid-morning he has more coins than he left with but not as many as he's spent since her arrival.

"There's someone who's interested in an explanation of your system for writing numbers. I don't think the price is very good but I don't know enough about math to be sure or get you a better one. They're checking your work on the very precise number and they'll pay when they've decided you're right. They won't cheat us, they can't get away with it."

(Does he seem to have any food?)

That's fine - as she understands they need the money; a lot depends on place value, so people knowing it might help sell other things; and getting it from her might make people more interested in other contributions she might have.

(Can't get away with?)

He doesn't seem to have brought any food.

"We have a scryable verbal contract and witnesses. If you think your Hari's good enough to write an explanation of place value, do that and I'll take it over when I go check that they're satisfied with your other thing."

She thinks she can manage, examples do most of the work anyway.

She writes up an explanation with examples, base-10 in the system she knows and a sample base-12, one using letters for the lacking symbols and one using the magic signs since they have the number correspondence anyway. She'll check it with Valanda before she'll give it to him to bring over.

"I like that system. Have you ever used one more like ours?"

It is really incredibly useful.

Various parts of her world have in the past, yes - the place value system is an invention like anything else.

"Why did you change to using place value?"

Well, it is very useful. With a basic set of symbols you can easily and quickly represent numbers up to very large (and down to very small) ones. It makes operations much easier. (There's an additional system for even larger and smaller numbers). You can see how it makes addition and subtraction easier if you've used an abacus. With multiplication and division you gain even more.

Eventually he leaves again. When he comes back he brings a lot more money that he doesn't show any sign of meaning to give her and some raw meat chunks that he encourages her to share with him. He seems much happier now.

She is not particularly expecting to be given money. She will be irritated if she gets food poisoning or something but she is not a picky eater, nor possessed of much of a disgust reaction. Food is appreciated.

"If you get the tide table done in less than a month and we don't have any emergencies we'll be fine now, I have enough time to find another job but I might have to move back to Anavel Sani to do it. Do you think you can manage that?"

If whoever gave him the tables/people here generally think this amount can be done in less than a month at a reasonable pace, then she is fairly certain she can do it in less than a month. She also continues to have reserves of ideas to sell.

...having enough to eat is better for math doing, and if there's more she could do to make that more possible she would both want to and it would be advantageous to the larger goal.

"Oh. Yeah, I guess food is important. I'll get more tomorrow. Anything else you need?"

She'll need more paper as she works. She would work faster with a better writing utensil (and possibly surface) but she understands if that's not available. It would be useful if she could work on this parallely to learning how to start going out and such so that she can both improve and do that.

"I'll bring more paper tomorrow. Study more Hari and I can show you around the neighborhood... soon, maybe."

"Thank you."

And she will work on tables and on Hari.