"The AI could still present a problem."

"Yeah, I'm hoping that cooperation with the Samarians would help. Isabella mentioned that they have a way to travel to the ship and possibly that will let us get inside and disable the AI, but I'm not sure."

"Do you anticipate having that cooperation?"

"I'm uncertain. I think if Isabella recommended coop-eration it would be likelier than not, but I can't get a good read on her."

"No? I didn't find her particularly opaque."

"My first impression was that she was level headed and straightforward but I've had trouble understanding her reaction to finding out her god was fake and her prick-lyness around genetics confuses me entirely. I can't tell whether to treat her gently to avoid offense or to be blunt and trust her to signal when she needs me to back off."

"Well, you're in many ways more experienced than I am but my first quibble about that model is that it's plausible your idea of gentleness is orthogonal to what she needs."

"What do you mean?"

"The way she talked about the genetic sample made it sound to me like she'd interpreted being gentle as being cagey? Were you not getting that?"

"Oh yeah, that. She didn't seem interested in having a more thorough conversation about it or asking questions now, which confused me."

"It doesn't seem so confusing to me, but it's possible I'm seeing transparency where there was none..."

"Why do you think she didn't seek out answers?"

"You asked her for something, did not explain what this would allow you to do to her satisfaction, and then kept bringing it up - that seems like a perfectly good reason to stall for time to think."

"Ah, it's the not asking questions between when I brought it up first and then now that confused me."

"It's possible you managed to come across as sufficiently suspicious that she didn't want to get her information from you."

"Hmm, not wanting to make this contingent on her trust in me is why I reccomended books in the first place."

"Which makes sense, but perhaps she's worried about the books being curated towards a goal."

"Ah, I don't really have a strategy of how I should act in that case. Introduce her to someone who's obviously adversarial towards me maybe."

"Had I but known. What are you hoping to get out of a sample?"

He looks shifty but can't think of a plausible lie.

"Insight into genetic engineering, possibly a way to make people more resistant to disease and whatnot."

"She's engineered then? I hadn't ruled out that there was a people that simply had wings."

"She mentioned that she's engineered, unclear what the details are though."

"But this was, I gather, generations ago, so you can't speak to the scientists involved?"

"Seems likely, the society is low tech except for what tech is left from when they settled on the planet.

"It's very impressive they got wings to breed true. Do the augmented live peaceably and equitably with the baseline?"