"I suppose if it happens again we can nudge the new Kib down different paths. But hopefully it will not happen again."

"New Kib would have a different name. ...Possibly a suspiciously similar one though, Alymbel, Akibel..."

"I didn't realize Aly was short for anything. That'll narrow our search for you, if true."

"If it's not a coincidence. Mahri, Mowar."

"Implausible coincidence."

"Yeah, but it's separately inexplicable, I don't see how the creche workers could have been influenced that way."

"Oh, right, you don't do prophetic names. What a bizarre situation. Though at least you got a language out of it."

"Aly learned it to impress the teacher she wanted. It worked."

"I would be impressed by a student who learned a language to work with me."

"I'd imagine."

"What's your next project when you finish the scribe golem?"

"Storks mark two."

"Excellent. And the support role for that is mostly 'acquire your world's currency', with potential interest in songs that make caring for babies easier, plus making copies of the golems once you have it sorted?"

"Yeah."

"Good skill."

"Thanks."

"Some of those projects intrigue me but immortality seems worth achieving as fast as possible."

"I agree. Might turn out to be unexpectedly complicated. After storks I can do a computation golem."

"There are golem-etching automata, for if you want a thousand of one make. There are no golems creative enough to program from scratch and no golems that can themselves be servantmakers."

He nods. "In our world even the Valar can't create thinking, living people."

"Servantmakers can't either, although some people speculate that it's just we've never made a sufficiently complex golem."

"The Valar can make things complicated enough to be people. They just - aren't."

"...aren't, how?"

"The Vala who created them can control them like puppets, and if they refrain from doing that they just stand there. Breathing, but not thinking."