...Equally unfamiliar, and yet - somehow not quite as much in the odd liminal space between 'pure math' and 'picture of a natural phenomenon'; it doesn't specifically resemble anything he's studied drawings of from Healing Sight, but it's...more in the direction of that sort of thing...

Leareth puzzles over that for a while, before pushing back the concept of the first thing being inside/a part of/a brick in the building of the second one, and :?: and then :...bigger than what/part of what?: 

...Fascinating. 

He pushes back the concept of 'middle of the scale' / 'what is the next scale of component made of the previous components' ? 

The math it gets right instantly. This it thinks about for a long time. Several minutes, even. 

Eventually:

    ?

:!!!!: 

That he's seen! In drawings from old treatises written by the best Healing-scholars of the past millennium, and once, in this lifetime - and thus a memory he retains in visuals at all - through concert-Sight with one of his researchers. 

He thinks back: 

and 

? 

!

:- Yes. My brain -: 

And then he concentrates even harder, and shows it a memory of Nayoki's Sight, from the first and last time she Looked at his mind and showed it to him in concert-Sight - it's a very different abstraction of it, he's not sure if the Proto can follow that yet, but he tries to push across the concept that it's the same, just a different angle, or a different lens, a different sort of view... 

.̸̡̢̧̯͎̪̬͍͍͇̀͋̏̈́̆̉̈́̊̓;̵̧͕̙͉̣̪͖̲̖͎̺͂̽̐̉͗̃̓̈́̈̀̑͊͘͜:̷̡͍͈̗̦̆̍͗͛'̸̡̢̛̮̩̳̤̻̜̫͇̜̾̏̄͛̏̃̾͊͂̂̕̚~̷̢̢͈̱̠̪̖̳͙̣̙̪̖͖̐ͅï̷̡̛̦̳̬̳̞̯̩̍̉̈́̊͂͜|̶̨̀̈͐͛́̈́̍̀̔̀̕̚.̶̻͖͋,̶̩͙̲̳̠͍̲̘̲̫̹̬̗͛͛̏̀̐̏̓̄l̷̛̛̹͍̪̹̟͖͓̙̥͔̫͉̝͕̈́̾͗͗̔͑͜

Well, that's a lot of abstraction and conceptual sophistication, he's kind of not surprised it isn't clicking. 

...Yet. The Proto clearly knows a lot more than it did when he went to sleep, and it seems - easier to communicate with, too - not more human, not any less alien, but just - smarter. More flexible in its thinking. 

This is awe-inspiring and also TERRIFYING and he really ought to spend a year or two thinking through the ramifications...

He doesn't have a year or two. 

:Thank you: he tells the Proto, not that he particularly expects it to understand the concept of gratitude (yet), and then he rolls over, and stretches out his Thoughtsensing to see if Julie is awake. 

(One of his Healers, noticing that he's woken up, immediately starts haranguing him about drinking some fluids, but he can probably multitask that.) 

Julie is hazily half-dreaming about running around Ceres infecting everybody and she knows she shouldn't but somehow she can't stop.

She wakes up after a little while, gasping for air and shivering.

One of the Healers is keeping an eye on her while Shavri sleeps. 

:Are you all right?: he asks her. 

Well, I'm being eaten by an alien bioweapon, but other than that, great.

How eaten is she looking right now, and how many problems is the Proto causing? Leareth’s Healer isn’t as good at this as Shavri but he’s had quite a lot of practice by now.

She doesn't actually look much worse than when she went to sleep. The protomolecule has replaced the tissue in her arm thoroughly enough that there's now a blue glow visible on the surface of the skin, and it's back to hanging out in her lungs a little, and she's still undernourished, but nothing looks immediately likely to kill her.

She too will be handed some sweetened warm water to drink! 

Leareth tries to prop himself up on one elbow; he has just enough strength for this. 

:I wished to speak with you: he sends. :About - your world, and the geopolitical situation we will be walking into if I manage to return us there: 

-yeah.

She contemplates abusing the adrenaline tabs some more but she must be running low on them, and if they're going back she's going to need it then.

What'd you want to know?

Leareth, too, wishes he were alert enough to properly organize his questions, but he'll do his best.

:There is - one faction which intends to use the Proto as a weapon against another? Why? Is this with official approval of their government, or...something more complicated...?:

Complicated. Our solar system has - Earth, where we started, Mars, which we colonized a couple hundred years ago, and then lots of other moons and asteroids and rotating stations that have a lot less gravity - I don't know if you know the concept - it's kind of important - uh, gravity is the pull that lets you walk on the ground and make objects fall down and stuff -

:I am aware of what gravity is: Though he's suddenly VERY curious what their scholars - or the Proto - might understand about it that he doesn't. :And you have - people living under conditions with less of it, and this is relevant to the politics of the situation?: 

Yeah. Belters can't live on Earth or Mars, not without a long expensive course of drugs and physical therapy and often not even then, and Belters look different than Inners, and have higher rates of all kinds of genetic problems because there's also lots of radiation in space. 

Earth owns the Belt. Formally. And Mars polices the trade routes, they've got more ships out in deep space. And neither one gives a shit about the Belters, and people fight back, and then that makes the Inners hate them more because they're like, oh, you're the people who blew up our ships, you're the people who hijacked that station, you're the people who rioted - they should hand over power and let the Belt govern itself but it makes them very rich, right, we mine the asteroids for deposits that are rare on Earth or Mars, and Mars needs water from the Belt for their terraforming project, and - if only Earth backed off, Mars would fill the vacuum, and if only Mars did, Earth would, so they ought to coordinate but they don't trust each other -

:Ah. That...does fit. It sounds messy: 

A pause. 

:The protomolecule comes up...where? And how did the relevant people obtain it? I had assumed at first it was designed by scholars on your world, perhaps in secret, but it - seems very far beyond your technological level: 

Phoebe. It's a moon of Saturn. Irregular orbit, probably originally a captured object that had been travelling through deep space. There's a research station there. They - well, we were assuming they had developed the protomolecule but now that we've seen it, I'm pretty sure they found it. Something put the protomolecule on a rock and sent it through deep space to the system and then it ended up orbiting Saturn, frozen, for billions of years, until we dug it up.

We suspected they were planning to deploy it in the Belt but we didn't know what it was, or how, or why. Now - probably it told them to, right? Told them it needs to eat people. And they were like, well, okay, we have all those Belters running spare, because they're fucking sociopaths.

:- Do you think that they can communicate with it? Your world does not have mind-magic - I am not sure how else one could speak with it, it is quite remarkably alien: 

- I dunno. Maybe they had some other reason? But - they were taking it to Eros. And they'd moved private security to Eros, tens of thousands of people, bought out every gang on Ceres, armed them well. I think they meant to set it loose on Eros. I can't think what else would've - explained those arrangements -