"There might be a way to fix it, it just requires actually having a conversation with her at some point."

"More's the pity, I was hoping to hear more of the local songs."

"I'm sure we can arrange that later."

"Are we permitted to speak to your wives? I'm wondering if they have alternates in my world."

"You're not."

"Because he's a guy or because of who he is as a person?"

"Men can't speak to my wives. If that weren't true it'd still be tempting because of who he is as a person, though."

"I don't have anything to say to them at all! But in case I think of something, I don't know if I count as a man because I have several penises but did not bring them with me!"

"You do not count."

"Is it because I did not bring them with me or because I am a spaceship?"

"Bodies that have penises cannot talk with them and bodies that don't can regardless of what entity is puppetting them."

"Why?"

("We're weird if we're a spaceship.")

("I noticed.")

"No one wants there to be any question of paternity of the pharaoh's children, and therefore there are lots of rules about the pharaoh's wives talking to other people who could get them pregnant. In a body where you cannot do that, there isn't a problem."

"Can humans do that by talking?"

"No, it's accumulated room for more and more margin of error over a lot of revisions."

He nods at Cam. 

"Also this isn't really dinner table conversation."

"Why?"

"...I guess that's a good question."

"Does a good question mean one you aren't going to answer? Why is that good?"

"It means a question to which the answer isn't obvious; a question to which the answer is obvious would be less good, but easier to answer."

"They don't want to talk about sex at the dinner table because in most cultures it's a taboo topic, and also I think the pharaoh is worried we're all sizing him up for how badly he treats people, in light of how his entire society works and also how Magic is as a person, so he'd be happier if we talked about something other than his wives."

"Personally I'm finding this fascinating dinner conversation, especially since until recently I'd been expecting to have dinner in the winter palace trading increasingly wild speculation about whether we were all about to die," says Ismat.