"Nope! Or maybe they were right and it didn't count for murder but did count for the destruction and that was bad enough. They died."

"Ah."

"It's a shame that most people who try to do interesting things are stupid."

"It's a trend?"

"Well, most people are stupid so it's conceivably just base rates? But - I think so. If you're clever you notice that there's almost nothing worth risking your life for and you can work your way out of your parentdebt eventually and then have your pick of courts, so you do that."

"And that's not interesting?"

"Well hopefully it's a very satisfying and meaningful life but no explosions feature and the results of whatever research they do does not get widely shared and very few songs get written about them."

"Fair enough."

"How does it work where you're from?"

"Differently."

"I can give you - one of the books, or a couple of the beetles, or I can explain the calculations that I did about the wings?"

"- when I deflect questions it's not because I want stuff for them."

Sigh. "Okay."

"I guess Lohte already knows some of it."

"He has probably surmised most of what's of interest to him and almost none of what's of interest to me."

"Yes, I'm just observing that the information isn't perfectly contained anyway - I'm not sure what in particular is of interest to you though."

"How everything works? My father explained how language works for you -"

"I don't think I'd call what I do a language. Languages are those silly codes."

"Languages are not silly codes. Everything other than just - directly having everyone access everyone else's thoughts, I guess - involves some amount of selecting which things you're going to communicate and what words you're going to use for that and language is how all that work gets done."

"I don't have direct access to anyone's thoughts so I suppose if that's how you define it perhaps plain speak is a language."

"I admit that it's a super weird one."

Giggle.

"But you still, like, pick which words to say, right, you can think of lots of different words and then select the one that feels right?"

"Yes, though I don't know how many of the nuances I'm using are clear to you."

"Is the system you're using symmetric? If I say things back to you, do you hear exactly what you said?"