"I'll heal. How long do special ritual showers take?"

"Like five hours."

Cam makes himself a little ceramic plate to stand on and goes up in flames; a layer of cool air shields Kan. He appears red but not blistered, and even that heals; and then he has pants again. "Five hours," he says. "Do you know how many dead Elves I can restore to life in five hours? Ugh."

"I have no idea how many dead Elves you can restore to life in five hours - wait, why can you restore dead Elves to life at all -"

"They're cyborgs. I don't have to make minds, just bodies around chips."

"What a universe. Multiverse. Aitim has a bunch of questions for you -" he reads off his pocket everything - "will Bar comply with bringing reds here for test - if so, can have them walking around afterwards, have everyone get used to it before we go back. What's the status of: robots that can do red work. Non-Milliways interdimensional transit. Explanations for the dopplegangers thing."

"Bar forbids violence in the main bar area, so you will have to find cooperative reds. I am not aware of robots that can completely replace them in all their jobs but you could automate away a lot of it on tech from my world - maybe if you can get chip installations you could have people pilot articulated chassis without having to get near. Nonexistent except summoning. Your guess is as good as mine but it's probably worth asking Bar."

"Is there other tech from your world or our neighbors we should borrow as a quality of life thing?"

"Chip installations are pretty good but rely on demons unless you want the invasive kind of brain surgery and you can't scale that up forever. I haven't had a chance to do an exhaustive comparison..."

"If you give me something to work from that sounds like so much fun and I'd love to do it."

"I actually think Bar would be better for that but it might be good to not let on generally that she can do books."

" - ah huh. I will find some pretext to shoo our security. Or else get a list of books from her and have you make them."

"Get the list on a napkin accompanying a beverage," he suggests.

"Uh huh."

"She can accept requests delivered in napkin form too."

"I'll be careful. - don't tell that, about the bar, to anyone who isn't blue, even if they're trustworthy."

"...why is the line you're drawing 'blue'."

"You tell some yellow, and then later it comes out that they knew, and someone's annoyed with them over that or some other reason, well, they knowingly withheld critical intelligence from their government on behalf of a foreign party, that's a treason charge if the right people are in a sufficiently bad mood. Blue it wouldn't stick."

"Ah."

"Better not to put people in that position."

"Fortunately there is enough corruption to protect you and Aitim."

"I think half the reason he hasn't done anything about that is that he anticipated he might need it. But this wouldn't even require pulling any strings, we're expected to make judgment calls like 'trust with Cam is more valuable than access right now to books through other sources'."

"Gotcha."

"Wish we had a nicer place to show off." Sigh. "Can I have some napkins to write notes to Bar -"

Barstyle napkins. Sharpie.