"I think it is an exaggeration to say that it will understand it in a way."

"You're the expert. If humans outside the Radch war on another sentient species, is the treaty I signed with the Presger violated?"

"Yes. They shouldn't do that. It would be bad."

"I know. Stopping them from doing that also involves doing lots of bad things but I have been doing it anyway."

"It is complicated and the Presger is sometimes stupid about things." Nod nod nod.

"Yes. It is." 

"I'm helping!!!"

"I know. I'm very glad because this is very important to me."

"The translators are trying but they are SO confused."

"I have been afraid for a very long time that there would be a mistake or a misunderstanding. I think maybe you can help."

"This piece of paper says I cannot go back to the rest of me and implies the Presger is not even a little bit here. I can help anyway! But I can't help me help. It is weird to be only this much! Is it weird for you to be only that much? Are you too human to answer questions? The human said she didn't answer questions."

"It is weird for me to only be this much. Humans can answer questions. Some humans have protector jobs. They protect other humans from coming to harm. Humans do not like to come to harm because every body has all of them and if it's lost all of them is lost. Humans with protector jobs do not like answering questions. Other humans might."

"Oh, okay! I had not talked to any humans before and overgeneralized."

"The guard was male."

"Barbarian humans care a lot whether you guess correctly about whether they have a penis. All the protector-humans in this place do, because they think it is necessary to protect people well."

"How does that help?"

"Part of the answer is that barbarian humans are wrong about lots of things but the other part is that barbarian humans kill each other with weapons that require physical strength to operate effectively, and the ones with penises also have things going on in their bodies that make them stronger. Much of the barbarianism starts to recede once they switch to weapons that do not require physical strength to operate."

Rubelite turns to Khemet. "Are you one of the barbarian humans? Do you think this thing? What does it sound like when you think it in your brain?"

"Maybe don't feed her vocabulary that'll make her sound ruder than she has to," Pelape mutters to Anaander.

He glares at Anaander. "Osirians have gender. In our world, the people who treat men and women differently think that the people who treat them the same are barbarians, because treating them the same results in unwanted children and then they abandon or kill those. We believe that men are suited to some things and women are suited to other things, though there are some things that both are suited for, and that people are most likely to earn good lives if the men and the women are given different responsibilities."

Rubelite looks at Cam.

"Yes, yes, like it says in the writeup, I'm working on it."

"Oh good!"

"The belief that men and women are different and suited for different things is common to societies with too many babies and approximately absent from societies with the right number of babies."

"I cannot have babies! This is okay. I do not know what people do with babies."