<That's my thought too but do you suppose I should disclaim blue centaur related knowledge or anything?>

<Maybe you could ask why they want blue centaur related information? But there's not much gained hiding it, they'll find it easily enough, talking to anyone else on the planet...>

<Said "outgoing messages more difficult" so I don't know if they'll clarify or what their other sources might be. Guess I can trot out the common knowledge. Thanks.>

She writes, in Chinese. The blue centaur aliens are called 谙哒来. They're allies and friends of Earth. I'm potentially interested in visiting but very busy and if it is possible to arrange might prefer to send a representative. If operating in this galaxy please beware Yeerks, brain parasites which control their hosts.

Cam conjures this when Belmarniss thinks she looks done. He reads it aloud.

"Brain parasites!"

"You sound way too happy about that."

"It's very bad! I'm very against it."

"Then why did he think you sounded happy?"

"Well, he might just be very dense. Sometimes people are."

...she looks at the potentially dense Maitimo.

"I think you should ask her what else might be going on."

She looks back at Anaander. "Figuring out people things is a lot of work," she remarks.

"It gets easier with practice. Uh, another explanation might be that I used a voice people usually use when they're happy."

"Why did you do that?"

"Because brain parasites are interesting and I like it when things are interesting, even if they are bad and we ought to stop them as soon as possible."

"Two minutes of a gate in her office is how magically expensive?" wonders Pelape.

"It's a ninth level spell. I can do it once today; the other things I can do with ninth level spell slots in general are true resurrections - which are what they sound like - and Miracle, which is where I ask Abadar for a favor of approximately the scope of Gate or True Resurrection, so in general that's what we're trading off against, but I did prepare Gate today so the only thing we're actually trading off against today is a different gate somewhere else, such as Cam's world."

"The Sending's a lot cheaper than that even if we actually want to get two minutes of conversation's worth of information through to her," Belmarniss tells Pelape.

"She didn't say exactly how the brain parasites get you except that you have to be in the same galaxy, so let's not go there."

"She stopped writing, and doesn't have Annie's 'expect uncontrollable transit' excuse, I think she has some reason to think we might be hostile. Or, I suppose, infested with brain parasites, since that's something she's encountered before."

"If they're at war it'd make sense for them to be cautious about weird communications from strangers."

"I don't think she's - stressed out in the right way to be actively at war right now."

"If the centaur aliens are friendly we could try the Maitimo and see if they have more to say."

So he tries to scry him.

Grassy field somewhere.