Gosh.

That means there's definitely no need for a breeding program, like the sneaky coercive Lei were asking about.

Wait a minute, these plans for the diplomatic center include a lot of housing, especially in this part where the rooms are oddly large. Almost as if the accommodations were specified later, for residents of initially-unknown size.

The original design was for a theater center. Those were practice rooms.

With skylights?

We take the arts very seriously here. You should try it.

Learning a new language is fun. You drill the words. You line them up into sentences, where they fit neatly, like how the stone blocks locked together to make the tube before the ice, but not only in one possible way, in enough ways to build all sorts of things. Every new grammatical form you learn opens up even more possibilities. And if that wasn't enough, at the end you get to talk to people.

Languages make sense. Or when they don't, the generations before you have noticed the parts that don't make sense, thought about them, and figured out how to teach them best, with poems or stories. Or sometimes just repetition, but it isn't boring, because you're doing it together. Complaining about a new language is a great community activity. 

Learning English would be fun, if that's what they were doing. But no, they're mashing together English and Sotalese to make a new language with the grammar of neither, and words that are kind of inspired by both but not simply copied from either. The Sotalese word 'firelight' mostly means magic and 'sunlight' means any kind of light. All animals are 'rats'. There was a whole mix-up around the words for human and male and female; it's funny now but it was so embarrassing that Migel, with his weak nose, thought Mirana and Merta were male.

And at the end, the only new person she would be able to talk to is Migel. None of the other aliens speak this made-up language.

Somehow, polyglot Mirana ends up at the front of the tube again. It's okay, the off-duty emperor has it covered.

He's used to words having layers and layers of context-dependent meanings. The preservation of High Elvish isn't just a convenience for understanding old memories of speech, or an affectation, or a challenge to test the commitment of butler applicants. It's part of Lei - not Lei the country, Lei the system of shrines and elves. It organizes memories and connects each thought to the next. It's his native language, learned more from shrines than from his family.

(It also helps that he's keeping flashcards in temporary shrines along the walls of the ice tube.)

(The tube is still growing. The expedition might not use it, if travel via air is faster and meets all their needs. But it will be useful for mining the ice later. As long as they have hundreds and hundreds of catfolk here, they might as well go as far as they can.)

"In Exodus, who decides what trades to accept, on what terms?" asks the not-currently-emperor, in simple words that we will translate into normal English for the convenience of the reader. (And the writer.)

"It will be Captain Maria Espanoza. If she is dead, her first helper, Juniro Xiao. If he is dead, I'm not sure. Another of the deciding people. There are numbers for deciding people. Captain Espanoza, one. First helper Xiao, two. Until we are... Have built the shrines and farms and homes. Then Exodus will do a thing where everyone says who they think should decide things."

"My country also does that! It's called 'democracy'. In most of the other countries, the people in charge decide who will be in charge next, and leave them notes on what to do with magic."

"If that person says to trade with us, say you give us a plant light system and we build a bunch of houses for you, is there a risk that other people will try to prevent us from taking the plant lights? What happens if they do?"

"I don't know. I do not want to say things about Exodus that might be wrong. This - talking to your countries - is very important to get right. I am saying things that might happen. If people are very mad, maybe there is trouble and not doing what the person in charge says. That would be bad. Maybe they will say 'we will say who should be in charge instead now, not later'. There is a team of - making people not do things. 'Security'. Like - not taking things, or not touching someone if they don't want to be touched. I think Security will follow the person in charge and try to make things be calm. I need to talk to Security when we get to the crash site."

"Are you worried that something about us will make people angry?"

"Someone else from Exodus tried to hurt me. That is why I was lost. I need to tell Security so they can talk to us and look at things and see what happened- ''Investigate". And say he did a bad thing, he - has to be less free so he does not hurt people." He borrows an FD word for that.

"I'm sad that happened to you."

(He's not going start a political argument about making people less free. Political influence is only his second priority here, and he doesn't actually think it's impossible to ever have an ethical system that sometimes makes people less free. After all, killing people violates their Freedom to Live.)

"Do you think that Exodus will want us to build houses? It would be much easier to build houses in the stone parts of the drydark, not on the ice. Other things we could trade would also be easier if Exodus were closer to where we live. Do you think they would want to move closer?"

"Maybe? I don't want to say what they want. I could be saying wrong things. I don't know. I know you want hydroponics. Is that so you can have more food? We know how to make more of our things. We knew we were going to another planet and would need to make everything. But need a lot of kinds of metal and rock and 'plastic' to make them. I want to learn to talk, and write, and talk and write for everyone. We brought houses with us. And tools. A lot of things. How does the 'magic'* work? Where does it come from?"

*The word used is the Sotalese word for 'firelight', not 'magic'.

"Yes, we need food. We need other things too. Things that give us food, like water and light and cold and better plants, and things that aren't about food at all, like places to live and fun things to do and ways to make people live longer and ways to make one species in particular live longer and spaceships and sunlight image things and ways to learn more about magic and ways to learn more about everything.

Magic works in a different way for each species, but we know a few things: Two species never have the same magic, not even just a part of their magic, but they might use the same idea. Like, when is a thing moving and when is it not moving, or what is one thing and what is two things, or what is magic and what is not magic, or what is a creature or plant and what isn't. And in those cases, different species always use the same idea. They don't disagree about what a creature is, for example. Although some magic only works on creatures and some magic only works on plants and some works on both creatures and plants.

No person always hurts themself with their magic. Fire doesn't hurt catfolk, for example. But it is possible to carelessly get hurt, like a werewolf dropping a rock on themself. And magic can be tiring to use, and eventually hurt, like a irontooth using their mouth to bite a lot of things.

But maybe there are species that always hurt themselves with their magic and then die, so we don't know about them.

Human magic makes all the other kinds of magic. A human and an animal make a person, for some kinds of animals. A human and a human make a human. A human and a person who isn't a human make another person of the same species.

We don't know why some kinds of animals can be used to make species of people and some don't. Some animals can be used to make a baby that dies when it is small, so maybe the animals that we think don't make a person actually do make a person but the baby dies very quickly.

If you don't have any species with magic, maybe you're not a human. Hm, maybe there are many species that look like humans but have different magic. Maybe your magic is something you don't know about because you only have one species, but after we see you more we'll see what your magic is... only female humans have magic, so maybe only your female people have your magic."

He is pretty sure... That magic isn't a thing... Even with all this evidence... And didn't really follow all of that.

"Where is the - food - for the fire from though? Or the other magic? You cannot get a thing from no things."

"Catfire doesn't eat food. It's just hot. Hot isn't a thing."

"Hot is a thing. Hot is tiny things moving."

"Things moving is not itself a thing? I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But you can make a thing where there wasn't a thing. Kappas make water and air."

"That's impossible! Er, I think that's wrong! I - everything we do is - moving things around. Not magic!"

It must be some sort of sci-fi super tech. They've forgotten the power source. Is it solar wind? Something with quantum stuff? He's not smart enough for this...

Deep breath. It's not their fault this makes no sense. ...Probably.

"I'm sorry. This is very confusing."

"It is very interesting. How do you know that everything you do is just moving things around? ...In ways that don't make any new movement, just move the movement around? And you know that moving movement around is not a thing?"