"Sorry. Mistaken identity, I guess. Milliways temporarily steals doors to random times and places. We're probably from two different universes. Time is probably paused in your home while you're away. I can make things of yours indestructible if you'd like."

"Forgive me if I have my doubts about all this. I do have to admit it would be difficult to arrange a trick this elaborate. The floor's not even moving, which means... Well, I'm probably somewhere else." He shuts the door. "Defence mage, huh? You have magic, what a lucky girl. I have to make do with tools and brains."

Not worth it, worth less than a ring for the day. Wait, no, there are currencies that come in smaller denominations than rings. Now that it's been brought to his attention he should start offering the deal to people who haven't bothered him first.

"I'll pay you a penny at the end of a day or your visit here or mine, whichever ends sooner, if you in every way act as though you believe I'm a man until then. A penny is a coin, about this big, made of copper." And then he finally notices the other part of that statement. "Why don't you do magic?"

"...Well, I'll take the money, sir. Before today I would have told you magic does not exist, so there's that."

But he acts just like a person. Maybe he's mistaken? Maybe magic has been hidden for a couple of decades? He acts like a person, it would be really weird for him to act like a person and not be one.

"I've never met anyone from a world with no magic before." Not knowingly, anyway. Now he's wondering about all those customers he only met briefly today. This is creepy. "Can you have abstract thoughts? Can you predict what other people will do?"

"Well, if I was a very convincing Old Earth robot and merely said I had abstract thoughts you'd have no way to tell, would you?"

What if no one else is conscious, what if Link isn't conscious, what if he's alone in the world? What if he can never tell?

Wait, no, that's stupid. "I would test if you could understand syllogisms and do algebra. I also don't know why a robot would lie, what's a robot?"

"Complicated old tech that uses computers to do elaborate tasks semi-autonomously. I'm not sure I have the inclination to do syllogisms and algebra for you, honestly. This is all very surreal. I'm half convinced I'm dreaming."

"How much would it take to change your mind about proving you're a... something exactly like a person except the lack of magic?" This is so creepy, this is so creepy, this is so creepy. He wants it to stop. He wants to discover the secret magic in Cloudbank and not have to wonder anymore, he wants to know if this almost-person can think, he wants to kill it, he wants to wake up and discover this is a nightmare, he wants to not have walked into Milliways today.

He has a good poker face. No need for anyone else to know how upset he is.

"I'm pretty sure I'm a person. I'm also pretty sure this question hasn't really come up before and I don't know what to tell you. But tell you what, you have casual access to metals? Gimmie two kilos per hour of any metal that's stable at room temperature and I'll do all the tests you want that don't involve revealing my personal secrets or doing anything to other people." He's not going to turn down a chance to be well paid and get an in on a possible trade, however strange this girl - guy - is. And no matter how much this might really be a dream.

"Sure! Just a moment." He gets up and walks over to Bar. "Hey, can I get a kilogram of titanium at the price you quoted me last time I was here?" He has so much money from all these people he's been blatantly price-gouging all day.

Of course. On your tab, or will you be paying immediately?

"Can I get a kilo of titanium at that price," asks Nick, eyebrows raised. 

I'm afraid not. For you the rate would be 533 Kannavan Crowns per kilogram.

"So you're forbidding arbitrage. Or at least direct arbitrage. What if I got him to buy a few hundred kilos and sell it to me for less than 533 Kannavan crowns each?"

I would decline to make that sale. Small amounts of arbitrage are acceptable, but heavy use of it by persons not in desperate need is discouraged.

"Not very mercantile of you. Then again your goal can't be to make money."

My goal is to serve my customers to the best of my ability within the rules the landlords have set for me.

Valanda pays for it. Easier to avoid spending more than he has if he only spends money he has in his hand.

"Bar's Bar. Here, I'll pay up front," he says, handing it over. "So tell me something. If Ariu and Seihra are in a room together and Ariu puts a ring in a box and then goes away somewhere and Seihra takes the ring out of the box while he's not looking and hides it in a bag she brought in with her, then when Ariu comes back and wants his ring where will he look for it?"

"In the box she put it in, of course. Unless she knows something about Seihra that makes her think he's a thief." What a stupid questions. Like something you'd ask a small child. But he's getting paid to satisfy Valanda's curiosity.

That's really weird. How can he do that when he can't do magic? "And if Ariu will fly an air train for twenty-four rings up front plus forty-eight for every hour in the air, but Seihra will fly an air train for twenty up front plus fifty per hour in the air, how long a flight will they both charge the same amount for?"

"Twenty four... Minus... Mm. Two hours. Convinced I'm not a robot yet?"

"Yes but I don't understand how you can be... like a person... without just being a person. Where I'm from, there are people, whose ancestors had magic and needed to be smart to learn how to use it. So every generation, the smartest had more children, because the less smart ones didn't survive because the mages stole from them or killed and ate them. But that just never happens to animals, you know, living things that are like people but don't have magic. None of them are smart. Why did your ancestors need to act like people?"

"Hell if I know. That sounds like old earth science of some sort. Domestication or something. Humans are smart. Squid are kind of smart. Nothing else really is. Does this mean you're done testing me? Oh well. I'd like at least one kilo since I expected it to last longer."

"Of course. It'd be annoying to figure out exactly what fraction of half an hour I spent on that anyway. What's your world like, with... almost people... and no magic? Do you have lots of technology we don't?"

"Seems like we used to and now we don't. On Cloudbank they say we're not on our original planet anymore - that's Earth. There was a civilization with scads and scads of technology, even things that can let you cross interstellar distances in an instant. The stargates. And then Cloudbank's gate broke and we were left to fend for ourselves and we don't have the materials or know-how to make most tech anymore. We do still find leftover tech, old computers and the like, in ruins now and again. But mostly it's farming and balloons and steam engines at best."

He almost offers to sell some relevant information, but he's pretending to have morals, he has to be nice and generous. "Bar can sell you books about technology. Or just sell you technology."

"I figured. We'll see if she'll let me actually afford any of it later. If I decide this is real enough to try and make a profit off it all. The real problem is materials, though. We can't hardly get any."

"What materials can't you get and why can't you get them? Bar might let me buy you a few more things if you make it worth it for me."

"Well. We can get water, air, hydrogen from the water, biological matter from the floatgrass that grows everywhere, and a sort of silicate mixture that the floating islands are made of fairly easily. Everything else is on the surface of the planet, where it's hot as an oven and the air is actively poisonous."

"Oh. I could also visit the surface of your world if you hold your door open and have however long a rope could reach that far, but I'm not sure that would be more efficient than just getting you more metals and... are you human? Do you think you'd like plants other than floatgrass? Or non-metallic elements, do you want any of those?"