It is very quiet, perhaps because everyone's hard at work.

Right then. How would he go about finding out if now is a good time to talk to Maitimo?

He could knock on the door of the repurposed library.

That seems intrusive, but he hasn't seen anyone around he could just ask, so, lacking any better ideas... tap tap?

Macalaurë opens the door. "Hello. We're keeping it quiet today at Maitimo's request. He heard the discussion across the lake this morning and was distressed by it."

"Is now a good time for me to try speaking to him, or should I go away and do something else?"

Macalaurë hesitates. "Not a particularly bad time, I don't think."

"In that case, may I come in?"

He nods. He opens the door.

Maitimo is still resting on the grav stretcher. He is very badly emaciated, barely conscious, horribly disfigured, and yet manages to sigh in something resembling exasperation.

"Hello," Miles says to him. "My name is Miles. I apologize for not introducing myself earlier; I've been very busy."

He stirs slightly. "Yes, you have been."

"When I first showed up and started mentioning events that have happened in my life and recounting stories where they seemed appropriate, everyone was very astonished that I've managed all this in just twenty-four years. I think the astonishment may be decreasing by now. Anyway. Should I assume you know exactly why I'm here, or do I need to explain?"

"Talk endlessly, one assumes."

"Ha. Yes. Having considered your position, it seems to me that there aren't a lot of things that might constitute genuine evidence that you're out here in the real world having been actually rescued, and the best I've got would be to tell you the history of my people and my own life story in as much colour and detail as I can manage. So I'm going to do that. Unless you object, in which case I can refrain."

He stirs uncomfortably again. "As you like."

...Miles regards him conflictedly.

"You usually do a better job of nursing me back to a state of some health before attempting games this complex. I don't particularly care, but it seems a shame to waste a story you must have spent a great deal of time crafting on an audience who can barely remain conscious."

Miles sighs.

"I can also wait, if you prefer. Though I suspect believing none of this is real isn't doing much to speed your recovery. I know if I was held prisoner by a malevolent force that liked to make me hallucinate escapes, I would feel strongly motivated to structure my every action to be as personally annoying to him as possible."

He almost smiles, at that. "You can talk. If I fall asleep you can repeat yourself later."

"Sure," he says. "So, in order for you to understand my life story, there's some necessary background information..."

He runs through the by-now-standard explanation of human history, including such details as what planets and wormholes are and how Barrayar was founded and lost. He is aware as he speaks that the whole camp and some of the other one is probably listening, but this is strictly a secondary concern; his actual audience is the Elf in front of him.

Still, he feels like he should warn them.

"It may get upsetting from here," he says. "I apologize, but there's really no way to give a complete and comprehensible account of my life without including some disturbing material."

Then he goes on into what he told Irissë about the rise of infanticide in early Barrayaran history.

"In the very beginning of the Time of Isolation, among all the other problems the original settlers and their close descendants were having, they started to notice a sharp rise in nasty heritable illnesses and birth defects. Children born with no eyes or no mouth or half a heart or a degenerative nerve condition that lurked silently for a while and then wrecked them out of nowhere. And, Men being unable to change our own bodies the way Elves can, they were stuck with whatever problems they started with. So they started killing their own children, anytime a baby was born with any detectable problem of that nature, because that was honestly the best solution they could think of. Because they were frightened and grieving and it seemed the least painful path to take."

It's heartbreaking and awful, and the lasting cultural effects have not been kind to him, but he understands why they went there. He is sympathetic to the early Barrayarans as well as their unlucky offspring.

He is not a very good audience; he barely even stirs. At that, though, he does mutter something.

"Hmm?"

"Unlucky?"

"I don't consider being born with no lungs an example of particularly good luck. Or - what do you mean?"

"Being murdered in infancy strikes me as...not at all the worst way a life destined to be painful could go."