"None of the aliens stories have aliens without the copying ability?"

"I mean, any of them do, probably.  I can't think of any off the top of my head.  And even if I could, I don't think that would point me to things that're actually true about where you're from."

"We have schools. And a lot of people have to be farmers to feed everyone."

"Elaborate on schools?"

"Schools are places a bunch of students - mostly children - gather to learn what they need to know in order to be productive members of society."

"I guess that makes sense, if you can't just copy what you need to know - how long does it take, when . . ."

"It depends what they need to learn. I don't know if it corresponds to how 'big' something looks to you, though."

"Hmm.  You could - list some things that people learn, and how long it takes, and I could see if they seem to match up?"

"It takes years to learn a langauge - longer if someone isn't talented at it. The amount of... geometry that I know took one year. - this isn't a year of studying that one thing constantly, geometry was one of several classes I took that year and of course the entire time I needed to sleep and so on."

"How long were the classes?"  They apparently tire of walking on their hands and right themself via a flip.

"At that level about one hour a day."

"And how much geometry do you know?"

"...I passed the exam, but I'm not sure how to quantify it for you. I was imagining if you were curious you could copy it off me to see and then copy from each other if you know more."

"Sure, if you don't mind.  . . . Huh, you have less, total, than I did, but some of it's in different places; do you mind if I keep it - or, probably I shouldn't, so you can have enough things that're just yours for when you settle down."

"I don't know what your customs are about that. Presumably anything we share will be shared from there, won't it?"

"Normally I wouldn't even feel the need to ask, no.  But - citrelians are basically always going to be okay, because even if we're in a tight spot, we can pretty much always make ourselves into people who can get out of it.  And you - can't - "

"Maybe the authorities will have an idea of how to handle the situation."

"Hopefully."

"I'm sure they will."

"Are there any laws that will apply wherever we go on the planet and might be less commonsense than 'no murder' which we might as well start learning now?"

"I - don't know; I've never been very far outside of Telerta."

"I have but still not out of Creta.  I think people I met from other countries mostly talked about having very different laws, when it came up."

"It seems like probably we should try to learn your language - or at least some language on this planet, if there are a lot - so we can read things, even if everyone we talk to learns Kularan right away with no trouble."

"Sure, um.  Have either of you ever taught someone a language; this citrelièse is really not optimized for detail work and I don't think I could pick out anything useful if you only learned it.  And obviously I don't already know how to go about teaching someone the slow way."

"I've tutored slower students in Kularan."

"I was a teacher's assistant when I first studied Sohaibekan."

"Okay.

"So uh, 'hello' is - oh you would only have one word for it, wouldn't you, if people can't look like each other - "