"What round are you from?"

"We're from London, in England, on the planet Earth."

"And who made you?"

"We were not made by that fascinating process that produced yourself just now; we were born, spent time as children, and grew into adults."

"Born?" asks Miriqua.

He is not giving this talk to a total stranger who came into existence less than two minutes ago. "I don't know how much of the world you're aware of yet, but it seems a fair amount. Are you familiar with animals, and how they bear young?"

"Yes. Are you saying you're animals?"

"Biologically speaking, yes, but we are also reasoning creatures. I take it your people are unable to propagate themselves in that manner and instead use the mechanism we just saw?"

"That's right. That's how it's been on every - planet we've encountered."

"You've mastered interplanetary travel, then? Back home it's still in the realm of fantastical literature."

She blinks at them. "...really? You must be astonishingly primitive if you can't build that tall - or is it the sails?"

"It's thousands of miles to our moon, and we can't build anywhere near that tall. What do you mean by sails? Between the Earth and other bodies is an airless void; do your sails catch the luminiferous ether?"

"You seem to be confused. Did a child make you?"

"No. We were born, as we said. It is only that things here are very different from where we come from. Now, how do people here get from one planet to another?"

"They climb up somewhere high and sail, or fan, themselves to the next round."

Watson looks at Holmes as if to say, Is she quite sane? Holmes smiles and says, "Fascinating. I would love to see a demonstration."

She blinks at them, then shrugs and turns to the other two and talks to them in their language, then turns back and says, "There isn't a sail in town at the moment, and even if there were, it's not something they want to do just to demonstrate to - you." Maybe they said something less polite than a pronoun that she's rendering that way.

"Oh, if it's not a routine matter we don't want to put you to the trouble. Anyway, it's more urgent to discuss either returning us to where we came from or, if that is as infeasible as it seems, we would appreciate advice on obtaining lodging and employment."

"If you really - came here from somewhere else the way you've described - I don't think anyone here will have the first idea how to undo that. What are you good at?"

"I am a consulting detective; people come to me with mysteries to solve or strange occurrences to explain and I investigate them. Watson here is a medical man and also helps in my investigations."

"This is a farming round and it already has a doctor. You might be better served catching a sail to a city round."

"Eminently reasonable. How does one go about doing that? Also, you are currently the only person with whom we share a language. Can we prevail upon you to teach us the lingua franca of the nearest city?"

"I was planning to accompany you until you knew the language," she says. "This village isn't the best place to catch a passenger sail, it mostly hauls cargo. We can walk to the larger village and catch one to New Riverround, that's the closest city."

"Capital! We are ready to set off whenever you are."

"Immediately works for me. It's a walk of seven miles."