Good!

She relaxes for another few minutes before resuming the story where it left off. It doesn't get quite so immersive as it did in the middle of the first part again. Her bargaining and pleading with the animals to escape her cage comes through fine, though, and connects back to learning about them in the start of the story.

The magical guardians and the importance of the payment and tests are never actually explained, and the debate between Burning Eye and Stream before the Oldest Draak ends up being a little hard to follow - she makes references and uses turns-of-thought that (of course, in hindsight) the Amentans won't know.

But the journey across the ocean has lots of pretty sea life and connection back to the other aliens Stream met in the first part of her quest, and the last moment - of caution warring with curiosity and tentative hope on a foreign beach - is a crescendo of genuinely felt emotion from River, a sense of wonder.

And the music ends. That was a fiction, something that never happened. But there is some truth in it anyway, for the best stories are so! Thank you all for listening to me.

Applause! Whooping!

Hurray!

Mahkemiken, I'm so happy! Thank you for helping me do this! I want to answer questions for a little while and then maybe talk to people about what wasn't perfect about it! Once everyone calms down a bit. It seems like you might know how to figure out who has smart things to say about how the Song was good or bad? Or at least better than me!

I can call on people for you like I did in the street if you like?

Hmm, there's a lot of people here. Did any of them pay the most money? Maybe only let those ask? So it's not so many people that hardly anyone gets to ask questions?

The ones in the front row probably paid the most.

But will everyone else be mad that they don't even get a chance? ...Forget it, please call on whoever you want to when the cheering stops, I don't want to make myself frustrated overthinking this.

Don't worry about it, Mahkemiken says, stepping up next to her on the stage smiling and clapping herself. She slows down, after a minute, and everybody else slows down to mirror her, and finally the audience is quiet. Mahkemiken has a mic and says, "River's willing to take a few questions, raise your hands and I'll call on people!"

And she calls on a blue in the first row who asks in accented Tapap, "Is this a traditional story formula among your people?"

(She's relying more on seeing who is being called on and paying attention to their mind than her slowly-seeping-in knowledge of Tapap.)

Do you mean sensory-stuff-and-music-and-dance, or the things that happened in the story?

"The things that happened," says the blue.

Not really! Some things are well known story elements like the guardians and tests, and being challenged by most people you meet, and learning about plants and animals that way, but Stream's quest that combined them all and some other stuff is unusual!

River answers questions for a while, and then wants to see a mall since she has money now!

Back on the island where Seeker landed, he addresses the Voan representative. (Voa has a moonbase which has been called to his attention, and seems stable.)

Voa has significant space infrastructure, including on the moons, from what I can tell. Would it be correct to think of your country as a leader in space construction? I would like to discuss a possible project with you - though an actual deal would have to wait until the Moot, like everything else.

Our lunar presence is of similar size to Tapa's, but the two are the largest. What's your project?

Draak have limited experience in heavy industry and construction and do not generally think or work in ways that lend themselves to scaling up. However, I realized that it should be possible to fit a small vessel, little more than an FTL engine and a fuel tank, into a larger one in a way that a single star-bridge can transport both ships. A bit like freight engines pulling cargo cars cross-country.

It remains unlikely that my kin will permit me to share the FTL engine technology immediately, but something like this or carrying Amentans inside wholly Draak-built ships is quite likely possible, I predict. I imagine many Amentan countries would be eager to participate in making vessels suitable for this.

We'd certainly like to know what specifications we'd need to operate under and are able to scale up to suit availability of FTL engines.

I will have to do some development work on the engines. It is possible, it is not even particularly difficult, but it is not already done. I would be willing to talk to greens about a few things now despite the Moot being yet upcoming - for example, the common docking connector the other Draak and I agreed on, our transponder and basic signalling encoding. However, my reason for asking is that I want to understand Voa's orbital infrastructure and construction capabilities to focus my development effort correctly. Tapa's as well, but I can speak to them separately. What the largest spaceships you could build are, what they are generally made of, how durable they tend to be...

I can invite a specialist here? Or I could get one on the phone.

Yes, I would appreciate that. In person is much better for me. I can use phones if necessary but spoken language is uncomfortably confining.

I think it will be worthwhile to try this first with only Tapa and Voa, to keep from being overwhelmed by too many competing standards of work. I would consider Cene as well, but they failed to impress me as much, and smaller countries are probably less able to take advantage of this idea.

Some smaller countries do have space programs, but we and Tapa have worked on them the most. I'll have some spaceship specialist greens come here.

He gives the same spiel to Amseli to alert Tapa to this offer (and that Voa got it too).

Amseli can summon some Tapai spaceship greens too! Meanwhile she has this generalist on hand who can at least understand technical papers if he downloads them and answer some of the questions Seeker has about their ships.

My specific and detailed questions can wait until the specialists arrive then, he sends with amusement. He can give me an overview, that will be helpful.

...It occurs to me that I have not seen any representatives from Calado visiting this island. Do you suppose Tapa is keeping those away because they seem likely to annoy me and otherwise cause trouble, or for some other reason?

We've got a security perimeter and they may have turned away some rogue Caladors, because, yes, they're likely to cause trouble.

It would be good to speak to a few Caladors, even expecting some amount of trouble. I will at least say 'hello' to anyone who sends a representative here over the next month - should Calado not be included in that?

We'd consider an official delegation if they put one together, but it's remarkably hard for Calado to get anything accomplished officially. I can get you the Calador ambassador to Tapa without much risk if you like.

I would be deeply annoyed to take my ship to visit them and have them try to steal from me or something, and it's better for everyone if that does not come up.

Well, presumably the ambassador is a blue from Calado. That would be appreciated.