"I should probably ask Curufinwë, a means of making copies of books is on his to-do list somewhere anyway and I'm sure he's thought about the economic complications, or asked Moryo to think about it. Do you want to spend the next few years alone out there, or would you rather we ask for people interested in being ambassadors to Men?"

"I'd love to receive ambassadors," she says. "Actually, I may just want a palantir, they're not that big, I could keep it on my person."

He flinches. "If you lose it the Enemy can use all of them not just for information but to mind-control people who use it."

"You don't have to give me one, it just came to mind. ...I don't remember anything about how radio works or I'd just give a lecture on radio. It's a wavelength a ways past infrared, I don't know how to generate or receive it even in vague science lecture terms. Why is mind-control even a thing palantiri can do?"

"Palantiri make it like you're in the place where the other palantir is when you use it, mind-control is a thing the Enemy can do to people in his vicinity."

"Oh. Well, radio's safer. I will be extremely impressed if that comes together based on 'it's a wavelength past infrared'. I'll wait for ambassadors and if I need something in a hurry I'll fly out. Books now, books when I've turned around...?"

"You're going to be less impressed with our inventive productivity with Father working on that project of yours. When he said 'ten years', he meant 'if I am obliged to spend less than cumulatively ten days doing other things', that's how he does major projects. Books when convenient for you; for now I'll just have book-copying by mandate of the King and patch the problems that will inevitably cause."

"Now's convenient; where are the books?"

"Conference room. We have about a hundred. Melkor destroyed our library when he destroyed everything else."

"Few hours to turn all the pages, longer if you want illusion-text copies."

"Once we have good paper."

"...so in a few years." She heads to the library. She turns all the pages. Soon her notebook has lots of company.

The Elves are still singing their sad song; the conference room is empty.

The orcs are trudging south. Their guards are all present. She doesn't see Vár.

With you, he says.

No. No she is not. When did she go off with 'me'?

Last time you came by here, couple weeks ago.

That wasn't me. Did the person pretending to be me say why they wanted her? Or say anything else? Or take anyone else?

Yes, they said that they'd stopped a band of orcs north of here and healed them and wanted her to come and convert them, so we'd have more for the colony, and that the rest of us should proceed south, the new band might not catch up until we reached the shore but that was fine.

Didn't happen. Enemy impersonator. And now he's got Vár. Didn't you do anything to verify their identity -?

She turned from a bird into you. Most of the Maiar can't do that, even Balrogs I don't think can usually do that...

Thauron's very good at illusions. And he's been taking a personal interest.

I'm sorry. Though. Um. If that's what this was, and we'd argued, we'd all just be dead.