Here is a pocket everything! Here is, oh, let's see, how about the latest updates on that arcball game they were watching - looks like the folks in stripes won by six points. That information wasn't on his pocket everything a moment ago.

Oh huh! Like their networks but more, somehow? He's surprised at the same machine doing both that and translating but it makes sense - and makes sense of the size - if it's talking to two different ones elsewhere. Is it hard to learn to use?

Amentan kids learn to use them, but they use them for a lot of different things, so there's a lot of pressure to get comfortable with them; it would probably take longer for someone picking it up recreationally. The translation is actually happening onboard the everything, it has to because otherwise it would be less secure and sometimes people need to have secure conversations.

Huh. Well, he's interested to try it and there's probably a book to be written about what crafters can use them for but he's not so sure he's the right one to write it; probably better to get a network person out here, for that among several reasons. Unfortunately they tend to be pretty immobile but maybe he can find a young one and collaborate on the book, or something.

Maybe! Hey, does he have a guess about how many crafters there are in the world?

Not off the top of his head but he bets he can figure it out, hold on -

He makes himself a large oval of crafting material and a pen to write on it with, and roughly sketches out the continents, then subdivides them into climate regions, noting on each one its size in walker-travel days and the rough population density there; a good bit of arithmetic later he has an estimate of maybe seven or eight million.

Wow. That is not very many.

Compared to a planetful of cities it's really not, no. Cities really wouldn't work at all for crafters, though.

It would definitely be hard, though they could live more densely if they wanted, they don't need so much farmland.

That's not the limiting factor; most crafters are kind of miserable without a territory claim and there's a minimum size that'll click properly, for those. And then unclaimed land is important too, they'd have other problems if they got rid of that. There could be more of them than there are - he'd guess maybe half again as many, comfortably, if they really tried? - but there doesn't seem to be a reason to try for that.

They don't like babies as much as Amentans do, maybe?

They are pretty slow-growing population-wise compared to other local species, yeah. Not worryingly so, they're comfortably at replacement, but crafters aren't having a dozen children or anything, usually.

Amentans are not at all comfortable at replacement. The anthropologist has mentioned this to lone sassafras already, actually, that they could stand to be more comfortable with it. Though it would be ironic if they found it only after cracking faster than light travel.

Huh. Do they know what their problem is?

Well, they love babies, but beyond that, they have a seasonal cycle where in spring they are fertile and really especially want babies - some people on this planet are finding the years too short, actually, and have gone home since they can't just have fifteen children about it. Better to be in spring only a quarter of the time than constantly, and a confused seasoning system will go into emergency perma-spring until it gets unconfused.

That's definitely something crafting can fix in theory; in practice he's not sure how long it'll take, it'll depend on how much they know about their biology and whether they can get volunteers to have their systems nudged in various ways and see what kind of usually-unpleasant week they have about it. If they do know exactly what needs to be changed and just don't have a way to make it they can probably have a fix inside a month or two; if not they probably want to see goosewing about it, they're the best research genecrafter on the planet - he's fairly confident goosewing will take the case but they don't travel, the aliens would have to go to them.

They can probably get some volunteers, there are a lot of Amentans and some of them spring so badly they'll try anything. Is there a map of goosewing's environs so they could know where to land?

He could draw one up - or point it out on theirs, he bets they have amazing maps, speaking of things he wants - but it'd be a better idea for him to go with them, he doesn't expect news of the aliens to have made it there yet.

They don't have labeled maps with everything you might want out of a map for this planet yet but they have satellite images! Here is one of those.

Delightful!

Goosewing lives here, up in the mountains on the southern paired-continent, he can point it out more exactly if they've got a closer view but it's just south of that one bulge in the mountain line.

Here's a closer view.

Yep, there - the bridge across that ravine is a good landmark, and this one clearing - how are they going to get there, helicopters? It'd make a bad first impression to take a helicopter as close as that clearing, they'd scare everyone.

They could land a water-landing helicopter over here and hike the rest of the way?

That's a reasonable distance, mmhmm. It's an odd approach, though, so it might well be trackless, he'd personally want to take a balloon from there.

If he can get a balloon into a helicopter that works for them!