Food! And it doesn't taste like giving up any chance of freedom!

Kar doesn't seem inclined to be particularly social today. Though Valanda could probably learn something by watching him, or maybe ask questions.

He's not going to pay Kar back by bothering him. Kar is out here to avoid people so Valanda makes himself avoidable.

That island over there has windows on it. And some kind of glass structure on the roof. And is heading for Kar's island.

In that case he'll bother Kar after all.

"Hey, I think I see someone coming! Over there!"

"Good! That was fast! Sometimes it takes a few days."

He jogs out to the edge of the island and looks at the ship. He waves, and points to the flag pole before walking over to it. The ship continues to approach. The ship looks very well made. Clean and sturdy. All the various things sticking out of it probably have some useful purpose. That one seems to control how it turns, for example. It turns - there are two large things with spinning blades on a rotating shaft sticking out of them, jutting out of the side of the ship. Now that it's closer he can tell they're making a lot of noise. There is a figure in the room with lots of windows sticking out slightly at the front of it, but it's not clearly visible.

The ship comes to nearly a stop over Kar's flag pole and drops ropes out the side with a thunk. Kar pulls the visiting ship down some, ties one rope to the flag pole and the other to a sturdy-looking tree a ways away. The engines go silent and the propellers stop spinning. A voice shouts down from up above, "I'll come down in a minute! Buying any kind of food!"

"Thank you for everything, I'm glad I got to meet you," Valanda tells Kar.

"Well, you're not gone yet. They might not want a passenger. But good luck out there, if they'll carry ya."

"Thank you." He watches the ship and the indistinct figure inside.

After a minute or two the dashingly-dressed man with a captain's hat slides down one of the ropes and lands adroitly, carrying a small book and a courier bag at his side.

"Good afternoon, hard-working farmers. Thank you for having me. I have a wide variety of goods, conveniences, and luxuries to exchange for your meat and fruit."

"Glass jars," Asks Kar. "Tea. Fancy fabrics. Cookwares. Paint. Rope."

"In a variety of shapes and sizes, two dozen varieties, everything from nylon to silk to gasbag skin, whole crates full, in red yellow blue black white and dark green. Five hundred foot rolls in two different girths."

"Nice. You in the market for metal as well as food? Had a lucky find. Titanium."

"Lucky find indeed! I'll trade titanium as if it's four times as valuable as copper, by weight."

"Fair enough." They start haggling.

He might be able to get passage and can probably stay here and wait for the next ship if he can't, but it doesn't hurt to have a backup plan. He looks for all the visible entrances and wonders how he'd stow away if he had to.

There's a closed door in the glass house on the top of the ship. There seem to be plants up there. There are two open doors on the left side, out of which are hanging the ropes that attach the ship to the island. The underside of the ship looks like it has a few cargo-doors-or-something, there are sections that are separated from the rest with thin lines. There are slatted vents here and there but there's no way he'd fit in one. It looks like the two bulges with the propellers sticking out can open to the outside, but it's not obvious how. There are lines of handholds and ladders and little bits sticking out that a rope can be tied to all over the surface of the ship.

(Kar is haggling hard with the visiting trader, who is being politely charming and happily giving ground on prices just enough to make Kar feel like he won. This guy merchants, if Valanda recognizes the skill at all.)

Those look... useful for someone in better shape than he is. If he has to find a way to stow away it probably can't be by climbing in while the captain's not looking.

(In another, luckier life, if he'd had better magic, more room to maneuver, he might have been good enough to really understand what the merchant's doing. But he has never had the chance to practice. He doesn't know enough to tell a good bargain from a bad one.)

He finishes talking with Kar for now. They shake hands. "I'll disembark your goods soon, sir." Kar turns away.

He turns to address Valanda.

He double-takes and looks very surprised! But only for a moment.

"...Is your name Valanda?"

"...I don't remember ever meeting you, why do you think you know my name?"

An alt, who stumbled though the door somehow? Or are there multiple interdimensional transfer mechanisms?

"That," he says, "Is somewhat of a long story. Somewhat shorter if you have heard of a place called Milliways?"

"No, never. But my name is Valanda."

"So. I can't verify any of this besides by knowing things I oughtn't to, and maybe showing you some things in my ship later, but. There are multiple worlds. There's at least one way of going between them. If you didn't grow up here and haven't heard of Milliways, there's at least two. Milliways is a magic interdimensional bar where I met someone named Valanda who looked a lot like you and sort of held themselves the same way too. The same person happening in multiple worlds is apparently pretty common - it's called 'alts'. I have at least two alts. You have at least one, who I met briefly. Following me so far? Want me to list things I oughtn't to know about you to prove I'm not talking out of my ear?"

"I understand that explanation but I'd like it if you listed the things you know."

"I think you're a - former - slave from a place called the Empire of Har. I think you're a sun mage, going by Kar's titanium. The other kinds of mage are death, force, structure, illusion, command, knowledge, inheritance, defense, heat, and two more I can't remember. Har has a bunch of nasty, backwards-seeming-to-us laws, such as not freeing a slave who doesn't know how to behave themselves and all children being slaves. You have humans and agerah and caralendri and essi I forget what else... I read a bunch of books on Har in Milliways. You desperately wanted your freedom. You're a he, not a she, by preference. The other you was a defense mage and was freed on his majority. I didn't talk too much with him, I was in a bad mood, but he worked with a friend on trying to make humans not die of old age."

"...Yes. All of that. Do you know how he was freed? Do you know why people here can't use their magic?"

"I don't know how he got free. And... As far as I know we don't have any magic. We're still people, still smart - we can do reasoning about other people's motives and internal state, we can do algebra and complex mathematics and planning and so on."

"That's ridiculous, you wouldn't be people if you didn't have magic, you'd be... disgusting fake people or something. You just aren't able to use it right now for some reason."

"We have science instead of magic. Experiments. With science, you figure out the rules and manipulate the universe to your desires with that knowledge. Takes the same sort of people-y skills as being good at magic. And I'm pretty sure we don't have magic at all, but won't argue the point any more than that. Anyway. So, I hang out in Milliways, read some books, bring some things I bought there home, and go back to the wandering trader life for about a year, and now I meet you. It's almost like something out of a story, isn't it?"

"Weird. Are we safe from an invasion by another country through Milliways?"