Poets can only send images when they're close to each other? How odd.

"Of course, we are careful and not wash. Is it safe if we stay in this house part only? Audron's plane can go, carry ILS, come back, carry liefling, carry what more?"

Will Audron in fact be able to find Nivis again without Siamek, and repeat the course that they now know is safe? Or if he still needs Chime, is he okay with making the trip to Orocide with only one catfolk?

.......No, there's still a fairly alarming level of risk of getting lost and having to turn brightward - as best as that can be guessed - and just keep going. If they go by dead reckoning and stay high enough to see the many lights of Nivis even if they go off course a little bit, maybe...? Some quick math says that at even a small mountain's height it should be visible for a good long way away. So, yes probably, without Siamek is fine. Without Chime is fine if the attitude indicator lives up to the hype and the image forming in his head; He can just stay very high up and not be worrying about slipping down to a lower altitude without noticing it nearly as much.

(Siamek is totally a spy. A spying spy with secret spy magic. He feels a bit conflicted about it. Isn't this supposed to be a big international show of cooperation? Meh.) 

...If anything getting back to Orocide will be trickier since it'll be less bright. Only one catfolk would be fine. It will slow them down a bit. 

"I think there was a misunderstanding. You said 'we are careful and not wash'. Washing would be good, not bad. I'm a little mad nobody thought of getting sick before we fed you. We are careful about sick spreading through food but we could have been more careful."

"The sick I am worried about is because of certain kinds of tiny life, 'microbes'. There are two important kinds, 'bacteria' and 'viruses'. They are much smaller than bugs the same way bugs are much smaller than people. They are mostly everywhere, and mostly harmless, but sometimes they can make people sick and spread by moving on things you touch or even in your breath. Washing with soap and hot water, and staying away from people who might spread microbes, and other things that are hard to explain, can help prevent microbes from spreading and making new people sick. Maybe mouselings can see microbes with a very small body. Does this sound familiar?"

"Yes, mouselings can see some microbes! I don't know that there are two kinds of a microbes. I want to ask, one kind is small and the other kind is small and also hard to see? I understand now, washing with soap and hot water, like Miguel likes. Soap we don't use lots, water we don't use lots, usually we wash like this" he almost licks his arm but doesn't touch it "but this can spread sick, when many people wash together."

Poets can't send images far away... Poets are, in general, limited. They can't just talk directly to their final recipient, they have to talk to other poets first. They can't tell when their interlocutor heard them, even if it's counting off the message it just heard and ungarbling it. For that matter, they can't hear when another poet has something to say; it has to rephrase it all into a different poem and sing it out for them to hear.

...sing it out, which is what he heard when he was far away. And he didn't notice the navigation machines - the 'ILS' and 'VOR' although he doesn't know which one is which - until he was close. Now that he knows what to listen for, he'll be able to hear them from anywhere, of course. But he couldn't do that before.

He always thought that radiobug magic was the magic sound they could hear and speak. But that can't be true. The aliens claim they don't have magic, and the machines don't really seem like mouseling cursors or elphin shrines, containers for magic; they seem like very complicated non-magical machines. So! The magic sound isn't magic at all? Radiobug magic is something else... like being able to focus on the navigation machines and the insides of the PDAs! Which the alien machines can't do since they're not magic!

"I can see how that would spread sick. We have lots of soap and hot water if you want it. Nobody has explained the plumbing to you yet, I think, but that can wait. We also have spray that smells bad but kills most microbes, and there are drugs - like the leaves - that kill microbes without hurting the person much. I won't say you must wash like that. But you can. Viruses are even smaller than most small bacteria. They are different kinds of thing, a bacteria is like a bug and can make more bacteria on its own if there are things to eat. A virus has to infect something and make it sick to make more viruses. It doesn't eat. Some people say it is not even really alive."

Really, nobody at all can blame him for spreading basic lifesaving epidemiology and it will endear him to the locals and possibly get him an introduction to a liefling.

"I can try to summarize the rules - for not being scary - if there is nothing else important to talk about right away. Most people of Nivis are sleeping soon, but aliens are very exciting so I can stay awake."

Lucy Carver made a decision, and she kind of hates it, but Lucy is the boss. For now, stall on meeting anyone else. And also: Prep for an immediate expedition to the probable (>90%) object that is Exodus's bridge. It's a two hour drive each way. Senior staff will be going, including herself.

After that, pending changes based on what they learn, open the gates to contact if any of the aliens are still here. No major information control is to be attempted except for a crude AI heuristic set to the basic SFW mode, with bonus 'restrict violent/weapons related content'. Plus an announcement to be nice to the aliens.

But that's later.

"Thank you for explain-ing about bacteria and virus! I think mouselings can't see virus. Lieflings can fix virus sick, know that there is virus, but don't know what is virus.

We want safe for everyone, we wash with soap and hot water and spray." Bleaah.

"Do you want to talk to liefling, werewolf, gnomunk, frogold? Aasimar can talk in house for talking but not in Nivis because of politics. 

Rules say don't hurt people, don't hurt machines? We have same rules."

"We decided I am going to be one of the people in the talking house. I would like to talk more about viruses and bacteria and things like that, a lot. I am the person of Nivis who knows the most about them. I know many other things also."

This is stated with absolute confidence as fact.

"I can wait until then. I want to learn your language."

Lucy doesn't trust him, which is kind of annoying, but he was really quite insistent. Some of the cargo is dedicated to SCIENCE.

"Okay, so Chime and Siamek stay here? I stay here? Audron's plane go, carry ILS, come back with... come back yes or no?

You sleep, we sleep, then you ask more questions?"

"We sleep except for two, who can teach English or bring things for you if you want. You all sleep if you want. Maybe more questions after sleep. Maybe you go after sleep. If you want to go you can go. If you want Chime and Siamek to stay, that is okay."

"If Audron's plane comes back, bring the radio for talking far away so we can talk while flying. For safety."

Siamek is making good progress, so it's fine to sleep now, even though everyone talking to the tengu will have ten hours for discussion without them.

Hestlierre doesn't like subterfuge, so hopefully the radiobug advantage won't matter. He can't stop it unless he genuinely thinks it's a risk to the relations with the aliens and thus all of Ansaf, but he has the freedom to judge priorities, and he thinks that making Audron fly back without sleeping would be too dangerous. FD is making a good impression so far, and the aliens like freedom and democracy.

So, they will sleep. Then Siamek and Chime will stay, but not a tengu body, for some reason which he doesn't understand but is not going to argue with. The aliens didn't request any particular species, and even made a point of turning down a liefling, so the two additional people who come next will have to be one Lei and one Allheart... and by that point, Hestlierre might go to the diplomatic center to be the FD representative, so maybe they'll have a new FD person too. The Lei representative will be the emperor, of course, leaving Mirana as the next Lei visitor to Nivis. He likes Mirana fine, but Mofil says she's a zealot... The Allheart representative will have to be Merta, so who will visit Nivis from Allheart?

The plane departs in a flurry of flapping tengu.

Chime teaches Sotalese, as is apparently now the common language of diplomacy. It's a fine language, widely spoken and all, and it's not even a big disadvantage for Lei, but the choice was petty. The common language of Ansaf is written High Elvish.

Sotalese has: serial verbs! No gender but four animacy classes and three levels of formality! Phonemic creaky voice! Three sets of vowels, which, in Chime's accent, are realized as front/center/back and none of them are rounded! (In Hestlierre's accent the back and 'center' vowels are rounded and the 'center' ones fronted.) Explicit topic and focus marking with particles, the most common of which sure looks like a copula in simple sentences but beware - it's not!

Siamek happily learns how to use a PDA. With his hands. He's not going to transmit anything until he's far away and understands the limitations of non-magical 'magic sound'.

(He doesn't realize how lucky he is that sci-fi future touchscreens designed for a space mission work perfectly fine with his claws.)

The magic leaves stimulate production of rhodopsin, which is made by the subject's body in a perfectly mundane way. It's just that, through no obvious mechanism, the genes are expressed more often.