"We're not spying on you - uh, I guess it's possible my father scrapes the planet's internet every week for linguistics projects - the rest was true as far as I know -"

"I was assuming 'cherrypicked' more than 'unverifiable if I chose to investigate'."

"That yes, a bit. We're concerned about tipping him off."

"You are certainly more informed about his proclivities and powers than I."

"What's your plan for next meeting?"

"It was 'present summary of the likely impact of sudden Elf withdrawal' and then it was 'consult the Elves first', if you have no advice I am at something of a loss."

"'arrest him' but I doubt Yavanna can do it alone so that's ten days wait, and you can hardly meet with him in the meantime."

"Do you expect he will be deterred if I find a reason to be out of the office, perhaps if I leave the report with my assistant for him?"

"I don't know how much it would cost him to track you down. Probably not very much."

"But would he be so inclined."

" - 'coax us off-planet after consulting locals on impact mitigation' is not the sort of thing I would have expected him to be doing? He could have done - that - without the consult, so he got something out of the consult in particular - his style the first war was 'kidnap and torture', it wasn't subtle -"

"I don't believe I thought anything especially sensitive, nor did he obviously seem to be trying to elicit same."

Might be able to meddle with memories - he can with the uploads but I don't know if he can do it to people without chips -

"- Maitimo reminds me that he can erase and tamper with our memories, and that we don't know if he could also do that to a species without chips -"

"I am not missing time of that morning -" Pause. "I was late to work the other day. Some papers were out of order."

"Definitely just the once -"

"The last time I was late to work was two seasons ago and there was tornado damage to the train tracks. But if he also waylaid me on my lunch break, those I don't time carefully."

"Well, that removes whatever doubt remained about whether he's operating in good faith. I still don't know what he wants, but if he bothered you several times that makes it likelier he'd track you down -"

...She sighs. "I can arrange to 'fall down the stairs' and have something replaced, which my daughters are after me to schedule anyway, and spend the intended period of time unconscious, but that buys hours, not days, assuming he'd have no qualms about finding me stuck in bed on pain medication."

Maitimo go to Yavanna right now, hours might matter - "It seems unlikely that would bother him. Maybe Yavanna can do something, we're asking now."

"Good, I have no real desire to contain artificial vertebrae a moment before it's necessary."

"I confess we're all really confused about why your species hasn't gone for the not-aging thing, aging really does not sound like it has anything to recommend it."

"I didn't want to create the appearance of debt. Also, it now seems like the agents you have dispensing it may not be trustworthy."

"He swore to a bunch of things before he got released, he is very constrained in how much he can misrepresent himself. I still can't think what his goal was - what would've happened if we left -"

"If the bug you left can actually pick up conversations in my office from its box next to the helipad I suppose this would be a good time to mention."