"I understand. I will bring you a dictionary now, then." 

She starts flipping through the dictionary when it arrives.

Leareth can't find a preexisting written-down conversion from the alphabet that Valdemar (and Rethwellan and the regional trade-tongue) all use, but he writes one out for her himself on a large sheet of paper. 

She glances at that, then goes back to the dictionary, humming tunefully.

Leareth hovers. Eventually has someone bring him some papers, which he starts reviewing, occasionally glancing over at Vanyel. 

Vanyel sleeps for another candlemark, at which point the Healer nudges him awake in order to sit him up and get some fluids into him. He wakes up a bit more this time, grumbles incoherently about being woken, manages to consume some herb-tea, and goes back to sleep the instant they tuck him in again. 

"I wish I could just give him some of my salve but it's individually typed," she grumbles.

"I am guessing this is a long way from being technically feasible to build here, and might only be after you build your superintelligence." 

"Yeah." Sigh.

"Well, let me know when you are ready to have a conversation in the language." 

"Page says it can probably muddle along and just a lot of words will start with the first few letters and be awkwardly chosen," she says, flipping a page.

Then Leareth will start a fairly inconsequential conversation with her, asking about what she likes and dislikes in Haven and what her travels here from the Plains were like. 

She reads off in a fairly labored accent with very weird circumlocutions that she likes the whole fantasy aesthetic and that the food is pretty samey after a while and that the other Herald who was with her and Vanyel was really curious about Mars.

Leareth is now also very curious about Mars! He assumes it'll be a trial for her to explain in a half-learned language, though, and also it's hardly the first priority. 

"I would like you to tell me about a field of study in your world that does not exist in ours or is far less advanced, but is nonetheless applicable enough that I can verify it quickly," he says. "I assume Page knows some examples." 

"You mean like the loom or like something else?"

"Something similar to the loom but ideally somewhat more advanced would be fine. The loom is from a point significantly in your world's past, I am guessing? We built it; I did not make this connection at the time, but - it looks to me like the very earliest beginnings of a precursor to technology that could build a thinking being." 

"Yes, that's it exactly." She explains the difference engine next.

Leareth takes notes to keep up, at one point asks her if she can just draw a diagram for him, he can regenerate it from just the verbal explanation but it's slower and more work for him. 

He looks very impressed when she finishes. "I see. I am thoroughly convinced, now, that you come from another world more advanced than this one. The way one teaches rocks to think is not exactly the same pathway as the one by which magic can be shaped into a god's power, but - I see where the resemblances would begin, I think, at a high enough level of abstraction." Pause. "Your world must have some field of study for ensuring that a superintelligence has the goals you wish it to have?" 

"Yeah. We're, uh, not allowed to build more of them, we were really lucky Sing won when there were a lot. But people study the theory."

"What."

Leareth looks deeply horrified - well, actually his expression doesn't change that much, but relative to his baseline this is definitely 'horrified'. 

She repeats the summary of the Quiet War.

This is so incredibly concerning and not reassuring at all! 

"Given this," Leareth says when she's done, "is there a way that I could look at and review Sing's design? It seems enough a - fortunate accident - that Sing won and was aligned with human values, that I wish to verify the robustness of this alignment and that it is not contingent on anything that could be different in our world." 

"I have the seed code and could write it out but it would take a long time and I'm not sure it'd make sense like that."

"There is no way for Page to translate it to a more abstract summary, or something similar?" 

"It can't. I'm not sure if that's to stop people from trying to build subtly different AIs that would actually be horribly wrong somehow or if it's just too hard for Page."