"I can imagine it seeming less urgent to species that last longer."

<Well, that and the existence of Yeerks.>

"I don't think I follow."

<They were around being rather attention-grabbing and making death seem like far from the worst of possible outcomes.>

"I mean, that explains why you'd deal with them first, but then having done so why wouldn't you think of death next?"

<We actually had death cured before they'd been fully dealt with. Once they were offplanet we were mostly trying to cure all the cancer.>

"Oh, congratulations then."

<I will pass it on to the people responsible. Thank you.>

"You're welcome."

<Our existing question procedures aren't actually that great for learning about a magic system - people often think lots of things are magic which aren't, or there's magic they don't know about - we'd have missed summoning if we landed in Revelation in the 90s, for example - so it'd be useful to have your advice on better ones.>

"Well, songburning really works and everybody uses it on Beach all the time so I have no particular insight into either problem but off the top of my head 'assume Earths are magic unless proven otherwise and check that one house Golden and Cam both found things in'? Warp has psi, I'm not sure why that's not considered magic there..."

<Morph is not magical. But yes.>

"Did you check the house, though?"

<We haven't, actually. I will go check.>

She laughs.

<Want to go right now?>

"Why not."

Pop!

...the house is unremarkable and empty.

<I would expect someone to have noticed if Cube had magic.>

"Maybe the house only has magic in it in uncrowded worlds."

<That would be consistent with the data so far, at least, if Eclipse is crowded, has anyone checked?>

...she gets out her computer. Lo and behold she has a message from Sibyl. Eclipse has lots of life but no other sapients - anymore, anyway, checking for lost civilizations is on the to-do list but might be hazardous to do anything with the information so we're delaying, but we're pretty likely to have had extinction events considering.

<And does she happen to have checked the house ->

"...it's sort of weird how her messages show up so neatly timed when she's looking -"

Yeah, I checked it, mine burned down in a small eclipse mishap decades ago.

<Huh. Though magic was hardly a secret, on Eclipse.>

"Yeah. Worth keeping an eye on the pattern but I guess it's not telling us anything new today. Anyway that's all I was going to do here except to acquire Butterfly and vice-versa in case I ever need to pass for human in the neighborhood. I'm gonna go to Shadow, anything I might not have read that I should know before I do that?"