Mal laughed. “They already did it. Maybe it’s the health benefits, but I don’t think that’s why they’d say they do it. They…Four years, and we see eye to eye on a whole load of practical stuff—making, living, even how they settle arguments. But their internal life is still out of reach. I’ve listened to their stories about the world and their ancestors and…every time I think I understand how they think, along comes something that makes me realize I got it completely wrong. You don’t know how much you take for granted, how much of your world view is subjective.”

“But you’ve…taught them things,” Lee hazarded. “You know, nudged them along with technology—all that time traveller stuff?”

Mal obviously had a dignified answer to that, but instead she smirked. “Seriously, what do I know how to do, Lee? I was going to teach them, at the start. Weaving, metalsmithing, all those next-step-up things. Except they know some of that already, and anything else…I suddenly realized I don’t actually know weaving or smithing or even knitting. I know absolutely fuck all that’s of any use. I remember some of the guys we LARPed with were those living history freaks. They used to live in a re-enactment village making pots and stuff for months at a time. Goddamn, but they’d be useful around now.” The grin she turned on Lee was bittersweet, infinitely familiar. “There was a time, 1700, 1800, when, if you were a Serious Man Of Learning, you could know the sum total of human knowledge, they said. Philosophy, religion, natural history, classics, whatever they thought there was to know, you could know it. And then, they complained, we discovered too much and you couldn’t be an expert on everything. Except, you know what? It’s all BS. I am willing to bet my warm spot next to the fire that those Serious Men Of Learning did not know how to make a horseshoe or weave a basket or when to plant turnips. They just knew the useless stuff that their posh Enlightenment-bro peers reckoned Serious Men were supposed to know. Stick them here, now, and they’d crap out just like I did. While Farmer Bob would probably have the winter wheat ready for harvest in a month’s time.”

“But couldn’t you…?”