Mr. Special Circumstances takes a while to think about this, tapping his fingers on his desk in an I-am-clearly-thinking-and-deliberately-informing-you-of-that way.
Spoilers for what he's thinking, so the coauthor can reply without knowing. (I'd suggest readers also read this part only after having finished reading the entire following conversation without seeing his thoughts, first.)
When you ask people to tell you a story that doesn't have to be true, in a moment of high stakes, it's rare for their reply to mean nothing.
The flash of urgency just shown by 'Healthy-Orphan' (according to her entrance file, or accented-pronunciation-of-'Healthy' as she named herself) suggests that she was trying to tell him something important with that other-world nonsense, there. And that the message wasn't 'see how much I don't care how this conversation goes'.
First deduction, the one that seems most solid: 'Healthy' has some reason not to plainly say what she's trying to communicate to him. So she's worried about a difference between how he reacts, and the reaction of someone else who could read a report of this conversation.
Trāho wishes he could convince 'Healthy' this worry was not valid, which would simplify his life. Alas, she could be right, or wrong but unconvinceable. Trāho has to file a report on how this went, and the report that he files will be an accurate summary so far as the overt conversation goes. There's three other people listening to them, in face-concealing armor, and Trāho is not going to overtly falsify a report with respect to overt facts that other personnel know.
Unfortunately, it seems likely that 'Healthy' vastly overestimates the ability of other people to decode subtle hints thrown into fanciful stories. A young woman's mistake, if so, but he was already thinking that 'Healthy' doesn't have the bearing of centuries. Trāho will try to decode the hints anyway, if only for the intellectual exercise.
Suppose that her story about being from another universe and having suddenly appeared in Eldrida, indicates that 'Healthy' is from a hick region on the fringes of Eldrida--that tracks, he doesn't remember much about the planet that sent her, so it's an obscure one--and that 'Healthy' wasn't prepared for whatever nonsense started around her. So 'Healthy' is... a young child of nobility that somebody kidnapped and is trying to dispose of through the Farm, say? Doesn't explain why 'Healthy' wouldn't just say so. 'Healthy' came here on purpose, wants to hide out in the Farm to evade someone else's attention? And she thinks her enemies are powerful enough to have eyes on the Capital Farm bureaucracy, if she comes out and explains her situation, even without naming names? Doesn't sound incredibly plausible, but it could be her mistake, or he could've not decoded this right. He does get the sense that 'Healthy' is genuinely unfamiliar with how a Farm works, which could also track with very young nobility.
Obvious question #1: Whatever her deal is, does Trāho give a shit?
Answer: 'Healthy' can't have missed that Trāho would ask himself that question. 'Healthy' dropped hints about supposedly having very valuable knowledge, or being very valuable to whoever held her. First question out of her mouth when she sat down was something along the lines of 'What's the goal of this conversation and how can I make it go well?' which is the sort of thing you say when you're hinting at mutually profitable cooperation.
It's not a reason for Trāho to take risks, given credible-reward issues, but he can consider doing her a favor. 'Healthy' will be in the prison system where he can get at her for retribution, if this is all whimsical bullshit, which makes her less likely to be bullshitting.
'Healthy' had better manage to communicate what her desired favor is without too much nonsense. Trāho has limited patience for trying to decode dramatic amateur hinting-around.
Her most recent words... Trāho doesn't know what she means by calling him the 'special circumstances man', but her question seems to be about if she can go to a more-so version of whatever she just called him. She wants to go to his boss? Presumably not his manager inside the Farm's on-paper command structure. She wants to go to... whoever is greater than him in a special, circumstantial hierarchy? That tracks; if she's got any big deals to offer, he can't actually fill those himself. Sure, he can try to deniably indicate openness to something along those lines.
"...Realistically, if I file that paper, you go to a not-too-special special holding area, and get treated mostly like our other inmates. Which is to say, decent so long as you don't make trouble, and offduty-recovery privileges scaling with however much power you actually have. Nobody here wants an inmate getting angry enough to sacrifice their life in the name of spite."
"We send back a notice to your backwater hick region, saying that we aren't paying because we don't think you're a real criminal. If you actually were a Duke-level bandit, they'd be motivated to demand further investigation so they could get paid for a Duke-rank. I would not expect them to make that demand under the actual circumstances, but maybe you know something I don't. If they don't reply, someone with pull would have to pull on your appeal for it to move. By default it hangs around in the extraspatial-void-vacuum for a couple of decades, but it's not impossible you'd get released at the end."
"If there's actually something interesting about you, and word of that fact makes it to the right pair of ears, someone might make you one of the usual offers while you're in holding."
This post has the following content warnings:
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
