"I'll pass that on."

"And he mostly wants resources as an emergency fallback - if interworld transit collapses or you clash with something even more powerful."

"Maybe there's some way to encapsulate stuff so he can get at it if there is in fact an emergency."

"It would be much appreciated."

Nod.

"I observed to him that even though you're probably not going to execute him for behavior that stresses you out without hurting anyone, it might erode the benefit-of-the-doubt enough to allow for misunderstandings. He'd already factoring that in, and more or less considers himself to be running some risk of executed-for-a-misunderstanding in exchange for having a chance at fixing all the other kinds of problems which resources help with."

"I'm glad they could fix the hole in your head."

"Me too."

"I'm not really clear on why it's good to see me, I'm not being particularly scintillating, but I suppose it's just a new spin on an earlier confusion."

"I find everything about you interesting and enjoy your company. Less so when you're unhappy and much less so when you hate me but still quite a lot."

Nod.

"Does that also resolve the earlier confusion?"

"I guess. Not pleasantly or anything but that was probably impossible."

"If they had a way to make us - like them - I'd be glad of it but I don't think they do."

"Not really. No. I remarked to Findekáno a couple times that you - contain one, sort of, you knew what to hide and what to replace it with, but..."

"I knew what would make you happy. I wasn't - trying for 'a good person' I was trying for 'a person you would respect' - it was running off you, not independently."

"Oh. Maybe that's the same thing in practice, standard yous get along great with mes most of the time."

"Huh. Maybe."

"Mitros liked his Bell so much that he married her just to make her queen. I'm told this is very cute."

"There's other examples but I like that one because it's pretty clear he wasn't thinking with his dick."

...nod.

Sigh.

"What's the resettled planet going to be like?"

"We're extracting gates from the punctured planet while debates are ongoing about whether to allow new ones. There'll be a new Gatesnest."