"If they're in reasonable commuting distance at all I wouldn't tell them where I came from but they might guess that I was in reasonable commuting distance."

"If you are, we will need to plan for an invasion. Are you?"

"Checking." Are they in this bit of galaxy here.

There is one dark maker ship within a light year of their system.

"Some of the purple guys are - not necessarily impossible to correspond with if I aim radio at them but definitely not convenient and definitely not someplace I can just jaunt casually."

"It could be worse. Thank you for telling me all of this."

"Please do not decide to murder the ottsel just to be sure, or anything."

He laughs. "I am already sure. Have no fear on that count."

Cam ends the call. Conjures the Shadow's list.

He's organized it into four categories: war-related, scientific, urgent humanitarian, and long-term humanitarian.

For the war, he wants some forensic conjuring done on whatever it is Krew is making for the baron, whether there are any metal heads inside the city, and the amount of eco in several stockpiles (he's hoping Cam can make plastic models of it, or conjure specifically for barrels that are empty but should be full of it), and whether some missing people are dead or in prison or in trouble they could be rescued from. Besides that he'd like a set of fake Krimzon Guard armor and rifle. It will be less good but still potentially useful if the rifle can't fire, just as long as it looks right.

For science, he wants a few blank notebooks and pencils, the scientific writings of Gol Acheron if Cam has some sensible way of filtering love letters out, and similarly for a couple of other sages, and he'd like to know if Cam can conjure for something like sages who were contemporary with Gol. He wants a model of a Precursor and a sample of their writings and a diorama of the Lost Precursor City when it was inhabited by the Precursors, and confirmation of whether all life on their planet was created by the Precursors. Oh, and confirmation of whether Mar was one person.

For urgent humanitarian reasons, he'd like to fill a larger room than the hideout Cam is in with chipped yakow and tomato cherry jam and cherry tomato jam. He's working on clearing out a place for it and should have one in a day or two. He'd also like sterile bandages, needles, and for Cam to collaborate with Rit about what drugs would make the biggest difference to her practice.

For the longer term, he has a rough map of areas where the topsoil is either absent or thoroughly fucked up by the war, where he'd like Cam to try adding a couple of feet on top and planting this list of seeds, some of which are for plants that have gone extinct recently. And he'd like it if it were possible to make non-eco-powered versions of an eco condenser and an eco color sorter. And he'd like to be able to improve on the baron's urban development plans, maybe by finding someplace to add a nice tall hotel where people can stay while their condemned neighborhoods are destroyed and rebuilt, and maybe even by getting Cam involved in the rebuilding.

Cam will do... most of this. He doesn't know what the Guard gear is supposed to be for and will hold on that till he knows. He'd like to talk to the metal heads - and to the Shadow about the metal heads - before relaying intel on them. And he'll wait till Rit is awake before designing a medical care package. Gol Acheron's published works can get got. When Rit wakes up he's fiddling with eco condenser designs and has a model hotel by his elbow next to a city diorama.

Krew is making something a local engineer could, and Cam might, recognize as a bomb designed to mostly explode in one particular direction. Gol Acheron has no published works.

Rit comes in in the early morning at about the same time as an elderly man with a staff and very long sideburns.

"Morning," says Cam. "I'm supposed to talk to you about medical supplies?"

"Oh? Okay. I could use more of those, actually I have a list... somewhere... actually I bet you could make my list... some of them will be too big for the hideout but I can go over it and point those out."

The old man nods to Cam and waits for Torn to wake up.

Once she has titled the list, lo, it appears. "I don't know the pharmacology for your species, I trained on other folks, but things like splints or whatever I might have improvements on."

"That sounds worth taking a look at while I'm here. Are you an actual medical doctor, then?"

"I went to medical school, but our credentialing system is probably not identical to yours."

"I'm not even a doctor, they're just desperate. Or at least I wasn't one before I spent the last few years patching people up. Anyway, splints, make me one of ours and let me know how you'd improve on it?"

He makes one of theirs and pulls up splinting-related information on his computer to go through with her. And bandages, and disinfectants, and anything else not directly related to the specific biology of this species. Do they have a name, by the way?

Socially their name for themselves is broad enough to include similar species and would also apply to Earth humans, but they do have a system for giving species unique scientific names. It's just unwieldy. Theirs is nine syllables long.

That is pretty long! He will call them their umbrella term if that isn't insensitive or anything for convenience.

It's not insensitive, they call themselves humans all the time! Rit is so grateful for the supplies and the improved splints and bandages and so on.

Meanwhile Torn wakes up and talks to the old man, who's just come in from the wasteland with a report on the metal heads.

What is the report on the metal heads?

"They're up to something in the abandoned mine; I wasn't able to get close enough to see what they were doing in there. Something must have happened overnight because they're pulling back from the city; I was," yawn, "up for hours watching them. I hope you don't mind my taking a rest now."

"They were in the Baron's employ and I have convinced them to break their deal with him in expectation of sending them all to another planet soon."