we are an underrated tourist destination

[cross_and_bow]

Bella has just been to visit the Mikleeeeeeeee. It went well, after she flared aura and shouted abuse at the crown prince. (Demonstrating this form of "heedless confrontationalism", it was explained by a quarter-Mikleeeeeeeee girl James found for her to talk to, an essential part of the species' diplomatic process. This held up under lie-detection, but Bella found a few examples via pastwatching before actually doing it.) They have a treaty; they're going to get back to her with revisions they'd like made to their dimension and they're going to end the five hundred year "human season".

Now she's between tasks, hanging out in one of the Jarvises.

Comments

[grabsthebutt]

Val says, "What?"

[newtimov]

"You are the nearest ithue," Ike points out mildly.

[cross_and_bow]

"What am I missing?"

[newtimov]

"Ithuetse are - mediators. Diplomats," says Ike. "Which is hilarious to us, because Val is the least mediated person I know, but it's taken pretty seriously around Siathe in general. You're not going to get anywhere trying any kind of official diplomatic contact unless you can find an ithue and convince them to talk to everybody else for you."

[cross_and_bow]

"Oh. Val, d'you want to talk to my personnel officer sometime?" shrugs Bella. "Or does anyone present have a recommendation for somebody who would?"

[grabsthebutt]

"Sure," snorts Val. "I'll talk to your personnel officer. Who'll tell you I'm about as diplomatic as a punch in the face."

"Which might be a little less true if you punched people less often," observes Eiva.

[cross_and_bow]

"I'm only slightly more diplomatic than a punch in the face," Bella says. "I'll work with what I've got. I'll hire somebody else if somebody better for the job turns up. At least the failure mode here isn't 'people get eaten'."

[newtimov]

"No indeed! No people get eaten around Siathe," says Ike.

[cross_and_bow]

"That is very good. I disapprove of anthropophagy. That's why I quarantined vampires."

[newtimov]

"Oh, did you do that? Of course you did that," says Ike. "I can't imagine how I could ever have thought anyone else did that."

[cross_and_bow]

"Yeah, that was me, I covered Sunshine's relatives too, I bet the vampire community is super confused. How'd you hear about it?"

[newtimov]

"Word just kind of gets around," he says.

[cross_and_bow]

"Anyway, why is it that ithuetse are mediators?"

[grabsthebutt]

"Because we ershil," says Val, which is the first-person form of a verb meaning what ithuetse do when they touch their glowy white parts together. "How good's your language thing, anyway? Do I need to explain that?"

[cross_and_bow]

"My language thing's good, but it ends at the limits of my conceptual vocabulary; I can tell it's a verb and it means something that happens when two glowy white person-bits interact and that's all."

[grabsthebutt]

"You could say that," she snorts. "If I touch my iethat to another ithue's, we can kind of... pass thoughts back and forth, I guess you'd say. Remember when I said you couldn't," she drops into English, "shake tentacles," and back to Kiessa, "with anybody? That's what I was talking about. Around here it's the only way to get really serious talking done."

[cross_and_bow]

"Well, add another form of telepathy to the list of known kinds, then. It's - faster? More trustworthy? Just a cultural thing?"

[grabsthebutt]

"Faster, more trustworthy, almost impossible for there to be a misunderstanding unless one of the ithuetse misunderstands whoever they're speaking for... and it's a cultural thing, yeah. Big-time."

[cross_and_bow]

"I can see why it'd be an important attribute in a diplomat."

[grabsthebutt]

"I know, eh? Too bad I am otherwise the most terrible diplomat."

[cross_and_bow]

"Well, like," says Bella, "I get along with you, you are diplomatic enough for my end - do you think you would have trouble presenting stuff to Sessiakitsi on my behalf in a way that didn't make them want to burn me in effigy?"

[grabsthebutt]

"Okay, I could probably manage it," she concedes.

[cross_and_bow]

"So when you have a minute, brainphone James, she's my personnel officer, and you can talk to her about ambassadorship."

[grabsthebutt]

"Cool," says Val. "Do you still wanna look around and stuff?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Sure. It's pretty here, and I don't have any appointments till I go to the tunnels under Antarctica, ritually refuse to accept dinner from the hand of the King of the Nytree eight times, and then leave because I have to do that once a week for a month before they'll recognize me as an independent entity."