Akamas adjusted the radio to reduce the crackle, and we went on, slowly and haltingly with many pauses for translation and explanations. Autodocs seemed to be wonderful medical technology that could restore youth and health to humans for up to two hundred years, and which cured all disease. “I wonder if they would trade those to us,” Klymene said, looking down at her bony and age-spotted hand. The remaining Children were all eighty years old and fragile. The prospect of a technology that gave another hundred and twenty years of youthful life for them filled me with happiness.

After a long slow while, with many pauses for translation and discussion and incomprehension on both sides, when we had finished with the subject of quarantine and were starting to talk about how many people would come down in the initial contact, Neleus and Aroo arrived to join us.

“Wait up, Plato control, we have a shift change here,” the English voice said a few moments later, and I translated, and acknowledged to them that we would wait. I expected a pause, but they left the contact open so that we overheard them talking. “The humans only speak Latin and ancient Greek, but they’ve got a couple of old robots who can handle English translations.”

There was a laugh. “Ancient Greek, who could have believed it!”

The first voice spoke dismissively. “Their founders must have been nuts.”

The other voice answered. “Well, our founders weren’t known for their sanity either. It’s not going to get in the way of profit.”

Then the contact went dead, as they must have become aware that we could hear them.

I translated this exchange for the others as best I could.

“My interpretation is that they think our origin story is funny, but not implausible,” Neleus said.

“That’s all according to plan,” Klymene said, and yawned hugely, a slightly disgusting biological thing humans sometimes cannot avoid doing when they are tired.

“This word ‘could,’ is it a time modifier?” Aroo asked.

I tried to explain the word, with a great deal of difficulty. “Very soon you will speak English better than I do,” I said.

“We Saeli have a talent for languages,” Aroo acknowledged, her violet and brown eyelids flicking over her eyes for an instant as she spoke.

“I wish I could listen to it again,” I said. “I constantly feel I am missing nuance.”

“You should be able to,” Aroo said. “That is a Saeli console, it records and echoes.” She showed Akamas, and he pushed buttons on the console, so that the voices repeated themselves over again in the same exchange.

“Useful,” Neleus commented.

“Nuts must mean insane,” not illogical, I said. “And I think you’re right, they accept our story.”

“What does profit really mean? You said benefits?” Neleus asked.

“Yes, I think so, something like that. It’s filed under economics. Economic benefits? The weightings in my word lists say it’s a really important concept, but I learned long ago never to accept other people’s priorities except in emergencies. We should ask them about that word, when we get the chance.”