"Well, maybe I'm just a nice guy, for all that I'm kind of a jerk by the local standards. Also, you can't fly this thing by yourself, you'd die if you killed me."

"You keep letting me watch you! And how are you so sure I believe you about that?"

He shrugs. "Well, now I'm getting to know you. You don't seem the type."

"I guess I can't argue with getting the right answer. What would it take to get you to teach me to read people like that?"

"Mm. I want to say it's not teachable - well, maybe it's sorta teachable, but I wouldn't know where to start? Watch how they act, how they talk, how they hold themselves, try to understand why they're doing whatever it is they're doing. I'm not flawless at it, mind."

"I'll figure it out, I guess. In the mean time I guess you should be the one to talk to investors if we're going to have those."

"You can probably watch some meetings and not change much and I'll tell you my read on them after, that might be helpful."

"Sounds like a plan."

And they fly on. There's some cool fauna around. Nick flies close to this thing he calls a 'jellywings', a room-sized green jellyfish thing that jiggles in the wind.

"They're actually really docile and friendly. I think they're cute."

And by noon, Nick has spotted a town and is navigating them in. It's made of dozens of islands tied together with wood and rope structures, all built up quite a bit. The very bottom has elaborate, heavy-looking buildings on it, and the top islands are mostly bare.

Valanda's instinct is to watch the town but he'll be able to see the town when they're there. He watches Nick instead.

...Even if Nick was attracted to Valanda back, he would not be touching that with a ten foot pole. It'd be nerve-wracking, romance involving someone so nervous, and probably wouldn't be good for Valanda either. Hopefully ignoring it won't blow up in his face.

He calmly navigates them in. The flags here are a bit more complicated, and semaphore code is used too. The patterns of flashes mean letters, as he explains. Nick's ship is directed to a dock near the high end of the place and tied to the town rather securely.

"Time to go say hi to the locals."

Good. Not that he doesn't like Nick but being a guest is terrible. Now at least if he stops being welcome on Nick's ship he has somewhere to go besides down.

"Are we bringing anything out with us or just leaving stuff here till we need it?"

"Grab a little hunk of gold for unsucpicious emergency funds in case you get lost or something, otherwise let's poke around a bit before deciding anything."

He brings one of his failed attempts at wire.

He doesn't even try to avoid gawking at everything.

'Everything' is an open area with a few other ships, a bunch of cranes and the like, some kind of vehicle for carrying boxes, and paths that all lead to a sort of processing area, an archway with a few official-looking types hanging around. 

Nick goes over to talk to them, Valanda following. One approaches him and greets him.

"Good morning, officer. I'm Captain Vauners, and this is Valanda. I'd like to pay in advance for two days' docking, and inquire about transfer to a long-term slip. Got some overhauling to do. I'm not bringing any cargo off the ship yet, have to poke around the market first."

"Alright, sounds like a plan. Please follow me and we'll get your entry papers processed. We accept gold as fees, or an agreed equivalent barter in goods."

Nick makes a 'tch' sound. "I have gold."

The officer looks slightly disappointed. "Well, let's get you processed." He leads them into a room full of benches, desks, and a line of clerks at the back looking through papers and stamping things and so on. He brings them to his desk and presents paperwork for each of them, and two pencils.

There are blank spots for name, age, intended length of stay, gender, occupation, arriving ship's name, arriving ship's slip number, and a bunch of other minutiae.

Him being disappointed they have gold is probably a bad sign.

"...How angry will they get if I tell them I'm a man?"

As they walk towards the desk, Nik whispers to Valanda, "He wanted me to bribe him. I want to act by the book and don't think he can make too much trouble on his own."

At Valanda's question, he whispers, "Likely not very much but leave it blank for now, I'll try and figure that out."

Nik finishes his form quickly and moves on to the next bit - a copy of the most salient local laws, which they want him to read. He goes and pages through the reference copy of the full code of laws helpfully put on display at the side of the room. None of the laws sound suspiciously sexist or homophobic or transphobic. Their marriage law phrasing is gender neutral, and - aha - you can change the details on your ID card as long as you pay a processing fee, apparently.

He goes back and tells Valanda, "...Yeah, it'll be fine."

"Why do they want to know? I thought maybe they wanted to have the right numbers for... pairing people up..."

He hesitates on the question about his occupation, then writes that he makes metal wire.

"Some places might ask for that reason, but here I think it's just - a thing that you ask because they want to keep track of people? They don't pair people up, marriage is voluntary."

"Thanks. That's good." In that case they can stay squishy and not be used as raw material for computers.

"If they did something like that I'd be looking for an excuse to leave by now."

Nick finishes filling out his paperwork. They can pay the clerk over at the far wall, he has an elaborate set of scales.

Valanda reads the summary of the laws while Nick pays. He takes a look at the full copy and wonders how anyone manages to memorize all those laws, or even all the laws that are relevant to them. If he falls afoul of something not in their summary he hopes they'll forgive him, if not because this is a ridiculous amount of laws then since they're the ones who made the summary.

A lot of the laws are niche rules for specific kinds of businesses (4 pages of rules on selling sex! 9 pages of rules on distribution of 'narcotics, cannabis, alcohol, and other controlled substances see appendix 14'!), rules for how prisons are to be run and complicated procedures for arrests and trials and allowable evidence, and an elaborate tax code.

Not as bad as it could be.

He checks if Nick is done with the clerk yet.

He's walking back over. "These are good for thirty days, we're supposed to take a test on the local laws and pay a fee if we want to stay permanently. It's probably not going to be a problem. The test can't be that hard going by the sample questions she gave me. Want to walk around and explore? Together or separately? I'm planning on seeing about renting a workshop at some point, we need that before we get serious on making all the things."