"Yes, I'm happy to do that."

"Yeah, that should work... Well, let's practice that a couple of times? And then we'll be ready to go."

Does Miguel want to come to Orocide now? No? Such a skeptic.

Oh well, he's not a diplomat anyway.

Lei proposes that the bounty of water be sent straight across the chartreuse, rather than turning along it tengward along hundreds of klicks of new aqueducts. The expanded habitable area can be divided three ways between Lei, FD, and the Allheart Alliance.

Then there will be parts of Lei touching countries that aren't FD.

So what? Or do you not want to admit that you need a steady supply of malcontents to sustain your population?

We do not! Because it's not true. We don't want you to get all expansionist.

If people prefer Lei to their other options, we need land for them, ideally at the expense of the country they fled. And they need a smaller area of land in Lei because we're so efficient, so it's in your benefit.

How about the Lei portion is entirely brightward of the FD portion.

No way. Then you'd control our water.

Let's take a step back and discuss what we actually want. Could there be a new country that's not part of the FD but is a democracy that values freedom? Could there be a new ally of Lei, like Nkezet? And we'll start a new country, too, which resolves our own internal dispute between Sota and Nitatlel.

That is biased against us. A country founded by Lei is Lei. A new free democracy will of course be a bastion of freedom and democracy but is not guaranteed to commit to the cause with the same certainty.

People of Ansaf: observe this bastion of freedom.

We're not violating anyone's freedom! We're just worried about coordination problems in international relations.

So tragic that you can't use elves for that.

By the way, we want to attend any ancient shrines found in the drybright, with all recovered memories published truthfully and completely, as verified by undine.

That sounds like a ploy to breed from an undine.

Not if you develop a reputation of safely hosting diplomatic visitors!

Also, you're just admitting that we were telling the truth the whole time?

About that, sure. We haven't planted new apples in decades.

People of Ansaf: observe the Lei's suspiciously narrow assertion. If they're even telling the truth this time, they just admitted to treating a vulnerable species in a way worse than anything in Ansaf's history. They're proud to still be doing it!

It's better than genocide.

Our long memory is full of regrets, but at least we don't make the same mistake twice.

Audron's turbowing is a vaguely sleek metal shape, twenty feet long and with a twenty-six foot wingspan. There are two sets of wings stacked atop each other and slightly offset, which were originally covered in thin canvas, but pounded-flat metal quickly proved less prone to tears and wouldn't you know it there's plenty of Molybdenum going around right now. They're connected by bars and wires holding them stiff. The original wing-warping scheme doesn't really work as you make it bigger, instead they have large flaps moved by a clever scheme of levers and wires. There's also a broad tail. The turbine is actually under the main body of the craft, near the front, with a small 'mouth' under the nose and a little hatch to light the fire-rod and more levers to control the air intake. This has the convenient side effect of spreading a lot of the heat along the bottom of the metal bucket. 

"Isn't she beautiful?" Audron sighs, and performs a thorough pre-flight inspection. Everything is in order.

The whole ensemble stack up into the bucket with a rope ladder. It only has one seat- For Audron to stay at the controls. The inside is full of exposed spars and structural wires, which have been hastily covered with blankets and little nubbins of rounded-off stone for the most worryingly protruding bits, while the outside is smooth and covered.

And then they light the turbine, and with some assistance by a brief swarm of Tengu bodies the craft trundles along to speed, the smooth skids sliding along the ice, and soon lifts slowly into the air. They're off.

It'll be a while. The turbine and wind isn't that loud (it's chilly though, or rather it's REALLY COLD and he needs a bit of catfire up near his face please) and even if there's nothing out there he doesn't want to take his eyes off the little wind gauge and pressure bulb. There's also a spirit level to try and give an indication of whether they're tilting that isn't relying on harpy gutfeel, but it is deeply unreliable, as they found out to their chagrin. Maybe they can sing! At least the chill wind on his face keeps him alert! Find the bright side!

Every few minutes Chime should double check that they're clear ahead, and Siamek should give him mysterious navigation instructions.

It takes a while.

The colony at Exodus has been putting down kind of a lot of radio sources, actually.

There are 'warblers', translating sound into radio and back again. There are 'poets', transmitting immense strands of information to each other according to arcane rules at a very fast pace. There are other things that are neither of those, simpler than poets but more mechanical than warblers, dozens of them barking out a string of information once every minute, like clockwork. One component is obviously the current time. The others are less clear but don't seem to very much, just slightly.

There's also a VHF Omni-directional Range system, an air-search navigational RADAR in a tower, and an Instrument Landing System set up at Exodus proper, all of which is indistinct noise at this range.

One of the warblers is distinctly off to the right and closer to the plane than the rest of the noise coming in over the horizon. If you look really closely, you might even see a bobbing light on the ice below.

Oh, Chime is checking every few seconds. She doesn't have anything better to do.

Siamek directs them towards the place with all the warblers, since that's where the aliens are. The other signals are make the trip more entertaining, though!

One in particular is two continuous tones, with tremolo like a warbler but not modulated to quote anything, and one a pitch tremolo and one a volume tremolo. Both at the same speed, 36 times per [Ansaf standard] second. As they get closer, he notices that the phase between them is shifting a little... like the 'directional aspiration' in his native language! He double checks as they go, comparing the audible angle with the apparent angles between it and Lacrimos and it and the Great Radiobug, and sure enough, it's telling them what heading it sees them at. If that's why the aliens created it, for navigation, they should use it to approach Exodus in the intended polite route... which he has no way of knowing, oh well.