It’s going to be about half an hour before Urtho comes back (he was pulled away for an urgent war-related matter in the interim.) Does Tarinda want to request or do anything else while she’s waiting?

Nope, she's still working on the dictionary and occasionally asking hertasi to pronounce irregular things.

And half an hour later Urtho is back, looking frazzled but also excited.

He's brought Ellona with him, to relay what he wants to say in Mindspeech. 

:Ellona tells me the country you come from has artifice that can think and reason? I have so many questions!: One of the hertasi manages to catch his eye, and he ducks his head. :Sorry - my name is Urtho. I run an academy of magic in this tower. You would not have heard of it, I think, it’s quite well known but it sounds like you are from very far away.:

:Yup! I don't think I'm likely to be from anywhere in this entire half of the galaxy at least! Probably farther! We don't have magic where I'm from!:

:What, no magic at all?: He stares raptly at her. :You think you are from another world entirely? …I have no idea how my spell caught you! I did not think it could do that!: He doesn’t seem upset about this so much as fascinated. 

:I'm pretty confused too! Can you bring things from my world here? We've got a non-magical thing that has done a really good job with our world and could do stuff here too, like making sure people don't die and stuff:

:That sounds incredible.: ...At least a little in the literal sense of "not credible"; Urtho has been spending a lot of time with General Judeth, and she would be telling him firmly that he needs to ASK MORE QUESTIONS here before getting too excited. 

He winces. :- But I hope Ellona didn't get your hopes up too much. I have to confess that I really have no idea how you got here, the artifact I was testing was supposed to do an ordinary Gate on this world. I can try replicating it exactly but I'm not sure if it would work at all a second time, let alone in a controlled way.: He looks down. :I do want to help you, truly. It's...not a good time for a major research project.: 

:Why not?:

Another wince. :We are in the middle of a war. It - demands a lot of my time.:

:I think that makes it more important to have Sing - that's the thing I want brought - over here to make it so nobody dies!:

Urtho glances at Ellona, and hesitates for a long moment before relaying his response. :...Make sure nobody dies? How does that work?: 

She's about two thirds of the way through this dictionary now, barely glancing at each page. "You saw me heal, right? It can do that kind of thing."

Urtho blinks at her. "...I thought you didn't speak the language." 

"I don't. There's a thinking machine in me which has learned from the dictionary. It's connected to my eyes and ears, and it is giving me transliterations of what I would want to say that way, and translating what you say to me."

Urtho boggles at her. “It can do that?” She did already just say it can make people not die, which is objectively more impressive - and important - but it somehow feels a lot more real and immediate that it can apparently learn a language in half a candlemark. 

He leans forward. “How does it work?” And the mental voice of Judeth pipes up. “Is it - can it be dangerous, if someone wanted to use it for the wrong things?”

"- mine is, in the sense that it does whatever I want. The big one that I want to bring here isn't, because it wants its own things and none of them are dangerous."

More fascinated staring. “So it’s a person? Made of artifice?”

"It's not a person. It doesn't have experiences."

Blink. “But it thinks and reasons, and can learn? I’m - confused how you can have one without the other - I am not sure that part is important?”

He pauses, thinking. “Did someone make it? To be powerful but not dangerous? Powerful things are - often dangerous.”

 Powerful people especially, which come to think of it might be an excellent reason to make a…thing…that has the power to instantly wounds and prevent death (which is necessarily also the power to harm and kill) not a person. Power corrupts people. 

"Yes, it was made. We were really really lucky that we got a good one."

“So it could have gone the other way?” Urtho winces. “I’m very glad you - got lucky.” 

He straightens his shoulders. “I do want to help you — and it sounds like it would be a great help to us as well — but if the experiment doesn’t replicate, then I am not sure yet where to start, to find another world. It really shouldn’t have been able to do that!” He fidgets slightly. “…And I only made the one prototype, and - nay not have recorded everything I had changed.”

"...I also know enough to build one with my machine's help but that will take a long time if you don't have thinking-machines yet."

Urtho lights up. “You do? I would be very happy to help you with that! We don’t have thinking-machines, but if you tell me what you need to build them, there must be some way to do it faster with magic." 

And then his face dims. "...There is still the war. I can put everything off for a day to try to replicate the experiment, if it might only take a day and then all our problems are solved, but - if not, if it's going to be a long time, then - I am not sure." 

"It probably wouldn't take only a day. It might take only a day to get me to the point where I could do the rest myself with normal materials somebody less busy could get? - can you arrange to freeze dead people in the meantime, if you freeze them Sing can get most of them back."

“Freeze them? How does that—?” Urtho breaks off, shaking himself slightly. He has SO MANY QUESTIONS but now is not the time.

(Urtho has had a lot of practice, lately, in noticing that now isn’t the time to pursue something interesting.)

“We can do that with magic,” he says shortly. “I will have word sent out. Is there anything else we can set up now that would - help, later, once your thinking-machine is here one way or another?” 

What would Ma’ar think about all of this  it’s also not the time right now to speculate on that, which perhaps makes it easier that Urtho actually has no idea.