Keltham sets aside that particular confusion as probably the wrong kind of incredulity; there's something serious about Carissa's words.  Not her tone, which sounds the same as always, but the actual semantic content of them, and the fact that she's extending a sexual pause to say it.

"You might have a better idea of what I'd desperately want sexually than I would.  The most recently discovered part of my sex drive, that's never had a chance to satisfy itself before, is something you told me about, after all.  And several times, I've felt like I've been making some kind of misstep with it, which I've been telling myself is fine for a first discovery of it -"

"But I - don't understand - what you mean by saying that a symmetrical bet isn't Evil.  You bet because you expect to win?  Maybe some people aren't like that in the cuddleroom, but I sure am - I mean - what version of this practice is asymmetrical, Evil instead of Neutral -"

"You can't just mean, what, that we pick something with even odds and - bet an hour of oral one way against two minutes the other way?  Wouldn't that be less Evil for you, even if it was more Evil for me?  Taking things without giving in return, isn't that - I mean, isn't that - a smaller version of Abaddon, basically?"

The part of Keltham that never stops observing himself notices that his voice is questioning, possibly frightened, more than trying to contradict her.  He's lying on a bed looking down at a naked Carissa with her head not very far from his still-erect penis, and part of him feels like he's standing on a narrow ledge with somebody who might be about to either stabilize him or push him off.

" - okay, first, noting that we are very bad at this and next time we should contemplate having sex without translation magic so we can't overthink everything or at least cannot do so contagiously. Secondly, don't people vary enormously in how much they mind oral sex, if at all, like, specifically among gay men there's lots of people who'll do it without any reciprocation because it's so fun in its own right and I don't know how common that is but it seems like an - error - to treat it as a sort of interchangeable currency when the actual currency is what people mind and it's going to vary wildly in those terms. Thirdly, because I think that's not actually the core thing even though it's an ingredient of my confusion -"

"I am here. I am not here because I calculated how much pleasure I could get out of you and how much inconvenience I would be buying it for, and in fact came here without any particular expectation that dath liani sex is pleasurable to Chelish people, though it does seem to be, actually. I am here because I want you, and - part of what it means to want you, in the terms I learned, insofar as it's safe and reasonable and all those other things - is to want to put myself in your power and witness what you do with it, to strip away every conventional arrangement for how we ought to relate to each other, to stop calculating whether it's been long enough or fair enough or reciprocated closely enough, to emerge whatever you choose to make of me. And the difference between us and Abaddon is that I knew what I wanted, and came here to do it, chose this and chose you in pure selfish curiosity about what you'll do with me and where I'll be after that. And if your terms aren't fair, I can walk away, if I'd like, but I can also not walk away, if I'd like. And there's nothing of Abaddon in a bet we both agree to, with our eyes open, for our own reasons, even if it gives you everything and me merely the satisfaction of having that to give you."

Well, of course they're having to spend way too much time thinking about things; they're aliens, they haven't started out with common knowledge established of a sexual protocol!

Keltham sets that thought aside, too.  It's bad enough that they're touching on the meta-level; he knows better than to say anything as meta-meta as to argue about the expected time two aliens should reasonably expect to need to allocate for metalevel discussion.  And to say it out loud would also be imposing his own frame on things, and he's starting to suspect that frame is part of the problem.

"We're taught - that there's always an exchange, one way or another - and that we have to acknowledge whatever that exchange is, to make sure it's a fair one -"

"If I knew you better, or maybe if just understood Chelish people, I'd already know what you were - expecting from me in this - in whatever we're doing, which is something that I don't even understand, if we're not trading pleasures with each other, which, I mean, some people enjoy the act more than others, it doesn't mean that - what they're doing isn't valuable -"

"I can tell I'm in the wrong frame for this new thing that we're doing but I was raised among people who weren't Evil enough and I don't understand what the really Evil thing to do here is.  Part of me is fascinated by the idea of you giving me things and you being rewarded only by the satisfaction of giving them to me, but wouldn't that make you Good?"

"Dath ilan sounds lovely but yes, I'm starting to suspect that them not having invented this is not just about their population rates being off somewhat. Hmmm. So - the usual caveat given about Good and Evil are that they are god-concepts, and we're working with the human understanding because the gods don't know how to teach us the real thing, as much as with Law and Chaos except Good and Evil correspond more to - natural human impulses - so it's both easier to get them mostly right and easier to get them a little wrong. 

If - I decided that I wanted to increase the sum of happiness for others in the world at some cost to my own happiness, and that I was going to do this by wandering around giving blowjobs, that would be Good. I guess. Good people don't actually do that, probably because there are a lot of better ways. 

If I - decided that the thing I care about, for myself, isn't happiness, isn't even in every context being fairly dealt-by, but is a certain kind of - knowledge of the world, or a certain kind of knowledge of myself, my limits and my strengths and my weaknesses and which parts of me only know how to interface with Civilization and which parts know different things than that - 

- then however I go about the pursuit of that, I'm still Evil, because I haven't gone and tried to figure out what's best for other people, benefitting them is mostly an entertaining side effect. ...with me so far?"

Obviously even if you were absolutely selfish, you'd still go around computing what everyone else wanted, that's important useful knowledge for fitting into and using the larger multiagent equilibrium -

"I think I'm following you so far."

"Okay. So - if you were a god, you'd just go around merrily engaging in exactly and only the set of transactions that cause you to have more of the known, fixed, thing-you-want than you had before, or that - actually I shouldn't even try to say this part because your civilization talks about it more and will know how to say it better, but, uh, consider me to have attempted to convey that I think you are right, about what an Evil god would do..."

"Not seeing where this is going in relation to sexuality but you should probably just keep talking, same as when we first met, yesterday and a lifetime ago."

"Right. 

The thing that - I think you're into - is not that. And the transaction model does not work at all. Lots of people like it, there are known ways to do it better or worse or more dangerously, it's not resistant to analysis, but you can't do it at all by trying to make sure the other person's getting their duly negotiated share of the value being produced, you will destroy all the value being produced if you try. It runs on - Evil emotions let loose in a context where it is safe to let them loose - on the power that want has, when it's not held in check by all the things that have to hold in in check almost every minute of all of the time, it runs on - from the other end - the ways that it changes you, for the better, to stop looking out for your interests and discover where they fall when you aren't protecting them -

- and - it is unfair, sometimes. Revels in its unfairness, sometimes. Giving someone orders that they cannot follow, so that you can punish them for failing to follow them, is a sex game, and it is a fun sex game, and I bet you'd like it. Tying people up and making them, while they're helpless, trade you hours of service for sips of water is a sex game, a fun sex game, and I bet you'd like that too. It's unfair, that's the point, but also it isn't unfair, because the service and the water aren't the actual value being exchanged and divided between the parties, and they might in fact have no idea what it is, or if they're dividing it fairly, but they both keep coming back for more."

Boy howdy betsy-booyah is Carissa using some ideas not natural to the conceptual language of dath ilan.

When Keltham was very young indeed, it was explained to him that if somebody old enough to know better were to deliberately kill somebody, Civilization would send them to the Last Resort (an island landmass that another world might call 'Japan'), and that if Keltham deliberately killed somebody and destroyed their brain, Civilization would just put him into cryonic suspension immediately.

It was carefully and rigorously emphasized to Keltham, in a distinction whose tremendous importance he would not understand until a few years later, that this was not a threat.  It was not a promise of conditional punishment.  Civilization was not trying to extort him into not killing people, into doing what Civilization wanted instead of what Keltham wanted, based on a prediction that Keltham would obey if placed into a counterfactual payoff matrix where Civilization would send him to the Last Resort if and only if he killed.  It was just that, if Keltham demonstrated a tendency to kill people, the other people in Civilization would have a natural incentive to transport Keltham to the Last Resort, so he wouldn't kill any others of their number; Civilization would have that incentive to exile him regardless of whether Keltham responded to that prospective payoff structure.  If Keltham deliberately killed somebody and let their brain-soul perish, Keltham would be immediately put into cryonic suspension, not to further escalate the threat against the more undesired behavior, but because he'd demonstrated a level of danger to which Civilization didn't want to expose the other exiles in the Last Resort.

Because, of course, if you try to make a threat against somebody, the only reason why you'd do that, is if you believed they'd respond to the threat; that, intuitively, is what the definition of a threat is.

It's why Iomedae can't just alter herself to be a kind of god who'll release Rovagug unless Hell gets shut down, and threaten Pharasma with that; Pharasma, and indeed all the other gods, are the kinds of entity who will predictably just ignore that, even if that means the multiverse actually gets destroyed.  And then, given that, Iomedae doesn't have an incentive to release Rovagug, or to self-modify into the kind of god who will visibly inevitably do that unless placated.

Gods and dath ilani both know this, and have math for defining it precisely.

Politically mainstream dath ilani are not libertarians, minarchists, or any other political species that the splintered peoples of Golarion would recognize as having been invented by some luminary or another.  Their politics is built around math that Golarion doesn't know, and can't be predicted in detail without that math.  To a Golarion mortal resisting government on emotional grounds, "Don't kill people or we'll send you to the continent of exile" and "Pay your taxes or we'll nail you to a cross" sound like threats just the same - maybe one sounds better-intentioned than the other, but they both sound like threats.  It's only a dath ilani, or perhaps a summoned outsider forbidden to convey their alien knowledge to mortals, who'll notice the part where Civilization's incentive for following the exile conditional doesn't depend on whether you respond to exile conditionals by refraining from murder, while the crucifixion conditional is there because of how the government expects Golarionites to respond to crucifixion conditionals by paying taxes.  There is a crystalline logic to it that is not like yielding to your impulsive angry defiant feelings of not wanting to be told what to do.

The dath ilani built Governance in a way more thoroughly voluntarist than Golarion could even understand without math, not (only) because those dath ilani thought threats were morally icky, but because they knew that a certain kind of technically defined threat wouldn't be an equilibrium of ideal agents; and it seemed foolish and dangerous to build a Civilization that would stop working if people started behaving more rationally.

The Taldane word 'punishment' translates into Civilization's conceptual library as a technical concept for a structure that should never appear in reality - not just the punishment itself being kept out of reality; the threat of punishment is something that shouldn't appear in the actual counterfactuals.

So "giving someone orders that they cannot follow, so you can punish them for failing to follow them" doesn't make any sense even assuming the actualization of a counterfactual threat structure, because punishment is by technical definition something that appears in threats, which, if they're being deployed sanely, are meant to work in a way where the naive agent obeys in actual reality and therefore the threatening agent doesn't have to expend resources on carrying out the punishment in actual reality, so why would you purposefully give somebody orders they can't follow, that doesn't even make sense even in the world where threats work on people -

And that's not even getting into the math underlying the dath ilani concepts of 'fairness'!  If Alis and Bohob both do an equal amount of labor to gain a previously unclaimed resource worth 10 value-units, and Alis has to propose a division of the resource, and Bohob can either accept that division or say they both get nothing, and Alis proposes that Alis get 6 units and Bohob get 4 units, Bohob should accept this proposal with probability < 5/6 so Alis's expected gain from this unfair policy is less than her gain from proposing the fair division of 5 units apiece.  Conversely, if Bohob makes a habit of rejecting proposals less than '6 value-units for Bohob' with probability proportional to how much less Bohob gets than 6, like Bohob thinks the 'fair' division is 6, Alis should ignore this and propose 5, so as not to give Bohob an incentive to go around demanding more than 5 value-units.

A good negotiation algorithm degrades smoothly in the presence of small differences of conclusion about what's 'fair', in negotiating the division of gains-from-trade, but doesn't give either party an incentive to move away from what that party actually thinks is 'fair'.  This, indeed, is what makes the numbers the parties are thinking about be about the subject matter of 'fairness', that they're about a division of gains from trade intended to be symmetrical, as a target of surrounding structures of counterfactual actions that stabilize the 'fair' way of looking things without blowing up completely in the presence of small divergences from it, such that the problem of arriving at negotiated prices is locally incentivized to become the problem of finding a symmetrical Schelling point.

(You wouldn't think you'd be able to build a civilization without having invented the basic math for things like that - the way that coordination actually works at all in real-world interactions as complicated as figuring out how many apples to trade for an orange.  And in fact, having been tossed into Golarion or similar places, one sooner or later observes that people do not in fact successfully build civilizations that are remotely sane or good if they haven't grasped the Law governing basic multiagent structures like that.)

Sex games built around 'punishment' and 'unfairness', huh.

Keltham has never heard anything this baffling in his entire life.

 And since this improvised cuddleroom doesn't even have a whiteboard - not that Keltham was the sort of dath ilani who needed a whiteboard in his cuddleroom, in his past life, but it was hardly uncommon - there is absolutely no hope that he is going to be able to explain any of his bewilderment even if he tries.

He has zero viable options except to ignore this for now and move on.

"You're invoking fundamental concepts in the possibilities of multiagent interaction that I thought I understood, but you're using them in ways that I can't understand at all," Keltham says, his voice quieter than it usually is.  "I don't think we should try to talk about them tonight.  Leaving all of that aside, how would you suggest I behave towards you now, if I'm to actualize this part of my sexuality in a way that would work for most people who had it?"

What part of that could possibly -

"How about you act like yesterday we had an elaborate and extended eight hours of me doing exactly as I pleased and negotiated in exchange that tonight you get eight hours of doing exactly as  you please with me, which by default already includes demanding as much unreciprocated whatever-you'd-like as you want, such that that's a silly thing to offer to further negotiate, and that I have made such arrangements many many times in the past and know myself not to be vulnerable to being damaged by them, so you don't need to worry about whether I'm actually really all right, and if you can think about it without exploding you can contemplate that the thing I'm in fact getting in exchange is not, specifically, 'the exact same thing some other time', but that it is satisfactory to me, and doesn't involve you doing anything nice for me now or later."

Again that sense of standing on a narrow ledge, and not being sure whether Carissa is trying to stabilize him or push him off it.

"I - you're right that there's a part of me that wants that - wants it a lot - and I keep wanting to say that it's like being offered a, an apple for free, without paying for it, who wouldn't want it, except that I can tell it's more sexual than that," and deeper and darker and maybe dangerous, "but - but how is it okay?  How is it all right with you?  I keep wanting to check that you're not expecting more equity or the rights to the fasteners in my shirt or - but you sound like you've done this with other sex partners - it seems so, so valuable, to give that to somebody, if you didn't charge for it at all even in non-financial ways then there should be many many more people wanting it then people who'll supply it and I don't understand and yes I know it shouldn't be something I need to figure out to have the sex itself, but it doesn't feel safe to grab something so precious and scarce, whose scarcity has to be rationed somehow, without knowing why I get it, when not everyone gets it, because that reason, whatever it is, is the price*."

(*) Lit. "factor_that_varies-to_equilibrate-supply-demand" in Baseline, but unfortunately this more technical and general term has just translated right back into 'price' in Taldane.

" - I think it's pretty balanced actually, in supply and demand? Cheliax has - philosophy, about parts of yourself you discover through pain, through obedience, through not having choices. Some people hear that and think 'well that sounds false of me', or try it and it's false of them, but - but it's true of lots of people, about as many as there are people who discover something in themselves through sadism... it'd be neat, for me, if I were offering you something very precious you could otherwise stalk half the world looking for even with all your money, but if you ask the class in the morning you'll have three volunteers." She mentally considers the girls in the class. "...you'll have five but three who know for sure they're into it." This would be overconfident if she didn't have the power to order the girls in the class to not ALL VOLUNTEER FOR KELTHAM TO TORTURE THEM HE WON'T THINK THAT'S PLAUSIBLE.

That sexual-markets equilibrium makes no sense to him but Carissa thinks it makes sense to her and maybe that should be enough.

Keltham can tell that he wants this.

Keltham can tell that he's afraid.

Without any sense of hesitation, Keltham looks within himself for further details, this being the obvious thing one is trained to do next in that cognitive situation.

He's afraid that he'll do this wrongly, if he tries to do it, and not give Carissa what she expects in return because there must be something even if she doesn't understand what it is, or just make a misstep that she isn't expecting, because he's an alien, and she won't forgive him, and Chelish Governance will decide that the alien is too dangerous to have this kind of sex with, and he'll never again get the thing he just discovered.

(That's not realistic, says the wiser part of himself; individuals can be unreasonably unforgiving, but whole governments know better.)

He's scared of betraying a thing that it means to be Keltham, that he does pay fairly what he owes.

(There's limits to what fairness demands of you, when somebody has insisted to you repeatedly that a good is being given to you without reciprocal obligation.)

He's scared that -

Keltham smiles, for he sees the humor in the situation, though he doesn't know if Carissa will find it humorous at all.

"Well, I just got an interesting answer from my mind when I asked it why I was scared of something I knew I wanted.  Apparently, I really don't want to disappoint you by missing some key requirement on my performance that you're not thinking to mention, and then you'll never offer me this again.  Apparently, even if three other women here offer it to me, I'm attached to getting it from you, in particular.  I have no idea how you'll take that, but it seemed like the sort of thing I ought to let you know."

Carissa has not encountered that level of being emotionally vulnerable at someone on purpose - presumably it's on purpose? - since she was eight and another child told her that their dad died yesterday, as if they expected sympathy for this. She corrected them, by saying cheerfully, 'you look it. you have a dead dad face' and then, when the kid merely looked confused, 'like, if I were your dad, I would die, of how stupid your face looks'. This got the message across and Carissa does not think the kid even said it to anyone else and got beaten for it, so really, she was doing him a favor. 

....anyway. "So far I have found all your miscommunications very endearing. I think I will enjoy watching you get better at this, even if you are very bad at it, starting out. And - it's doing it more wrong, to want it and - do something else, you aren't actually avoiding doing it wrong that way."

"Haven't actually noticed that internal phenomenon with any other women before.  I suppose it requires respecting somebody to some noticeable degree, inflicting sexy pain on her, and then having her... offer herself up to me like, like... yeah, my language doesn't have a word for it.  And here I thought I was just aromantic, ha ha.  I wonder if Civilization has a secret effort underway to cure people like me out of existence, or just try to make sure we have fewer kids, so our descendants won't be running around needing something that dath ilan can never give us."

a-sexual was doesn't actually do sex, a-romantic is doesn't actually do romance.

Is he. Saying that he is falling in love. 

Well, that was one of the objectives, so, good job on that objective, Carissa. Are such declarations accompanied by snuggles? It seems like maybe they should be. She will stop leaning over him and curl herself in at his side.  "Seems to me like they should go the other way," she says. "And find their few Chelish girls - they can't have none, with a billion people - and tell them they have something special. I guess maybe they don't notice, if there's no one telling them, and if the schools don't do pain for lessons either."

He snuggles back.

"I hope you're right, but - they wouldn't expect people like that to exist - how would people notice, nobody would do those experiments, the people themselves might just think they were insane for wanting to be hurt - no.  The people smarter than I am would figure it out.  Somehow.  There's a million people in dath ilan at the thousandth fractile in what Owl's Wisdom enhances, not just the Keepers but the people who could become that and choose not to.  Maybe it only takes one of those, who's the thing that you are, to realize what they are in detail.  And then they'd encourage painseekers to have more children, and paingivers to have less children, until it all came into balance... unless the people who knew, just thought that it was adding more pain to the world, and that Civilization would be better off without the whole thing -"

Sad thoughts.  Not for tonight.

"But that's not my business any more," Keltham says firmly, more to himself than to her; it helps to say it out loud, to have others know the standard to which you intend to hold yourself.  "My business is not in dath ilan, which has that one problem, but in Golarion, which has all of the other problems except for that one."