Yiyirari had excellent manners and seemed very friendly. Nick didn't explain to her that he found her behavior a bit fake. Maybe it was the alien perspective, but her acting as if this wasn't one of the most important things ever to happen to her people was a little jarring. Presumably, she was much better at playing up to other Arrurrans.

She asked a lot of questions about Petra. Apparently she had done her homework, interviewing several of the fuakalas before contacting him. Nick explained that he hadn't appointed a successor, and how Petra would lock up if anything happened to him.

"Isn't that dangerous? I mean, for your friends here on the ship, to lose everything Petra can do?"

"Yes, it is. I will be very careful not to take risks. But, if I named a successor, I would probably get killed fairly quickly, so I'll just have to do my best to stay out of danger."

"Do you not trust your friends?"

"No," Nick told her bluntly. He hoped that the Arrurran's skills at detecting lies didn't work as well against humans. To cover for it, he added, "Frankly, even if everyone is nice, the stress would always be there. Better to keep things simple."

Fortunately, Yiyirari let the matter drop and asked lots of other questions about how Petra worked and what she could make. Up to a point, Nick was happy to oblige. He refused to tell her anything about weapons, and made it clear that he wouldn't change his mind about that.

She asked whether some of the bots could be made to work autonomously, and was very interested when the answer was yes. Nick warned her that Petra's technology was probably far too advanced for her people to gain anything at all by taking it apart. She agreed, but wanted to know what sorts of machines could be set up to run automatically, and proposed trading a few of the bots that dug and refined materials, in exchange for a small fusion reactor or two. He eagerly agreed to that, even after she gave him the same warning, that his people probably couldn't figure out anything about fusion reactors if they took it apart.

This is pretty much exactly the kind of deal I need to be making. Nick felt pretty good about it.

Yiyirari gave him a gift—a book of all the math Arrurrans had learned up to about fifty years ago. "This will be useful for your number people, even if they already know most of the numbers inside. The way we do numbers may be strange, and it is yes that there will be differences in what is known. We are guessing that much of it will be new to you, though. Your people will probably call you a hero just for getting this."

Nick grinned. "Thank you, this will be very helpful." Later, he planned to have Petra absorb the knowledge and put it into a gadget with a USB port. I'm probably going to be making a lot of those. He had a vague idea of dropping them off in a bunch of places on Earth so that no one would hog the knowledge.

Currently, Petra was printing more specialized food printers, since the immediate food crisis was starting to be alleviated. Nick's courtesy did not extend to showing Petra herself to Yiyirari or even Grrmyip. They don't need to know exactly where Petra is on board or precisely what she looks like. After all, a bunch of "primitives" took over the ship recently, so they have to be speculating on their ability to take it from us. For example, those soldiers hiding in the food crates back there.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Nick spent a while taking down the different desirable abilities Yiyirari wanted in a one-off gadget. He wasn't about to open Petra's build menu where the Arrurran could see it, so he'd have to hunt through them later. Before he did that, he excused himself and contacted Grrmyip again.

He explained what Yiyirari had been asking for, and asked him whether he wanted the same things, and if there was anything else he wanted to add before Nick looked to see what he could give them. He could tell Grrmyip was grateful for the heads up about Yiyirari's questions. They both knew Nick had just done him a favor.

Grrmyip called him back an hour later with a list of different devices he would like. Nick had already found a couple he could build for Yiyirari, and diverted the one printer set aside for his use to build them. He hunted through different menus for Grrmyip's gadgets. He had to pass on an otherwise good design because it needed element 23, which was in short supply still. He managed to find ones to make for the Arrurran, though.

Yiyirari got a device that absorbed rock containing silicon, and printed out perfect sheets of 100% pure silicon. Nick was pretty sure element 14 was silicon, anyway. She also got another one that did the same thing with element 52, whatever that was.

Grrmyip got a tool that you could basically give any design made up purely of carbon atoms, and it would print them out starting from coal or whatever carbon source was handy. The purity was a big selling point for both of the Arrurrans. The other thing Grrmyip got was a scanner much like the one in Rockhunter, that could locate any element within about a hundred feet. Massive time saving on mining, I'll bet.

They both had asked for Petra's math books, but she apparently didn't have any. Aside from her millions—if not billions—of designs, Petra initially barely knew anything, beyond enough Galactic to understand commands. Probably, a lot more information was supposed to be downloaded early on, but Petra was stolen before that could happen.

We're in the same boat, Petra. We suddenly got thrown together on an alien planet with no chance for either of us to prepare. I'd say we did all right, considering.

Nick considered what else to ask for. He checked, and Petra already had designs for fusion reactors, so he could make them himself, even if the cost in time and materials was pretty high. Nick finally realized, though, that what humanity really needed was some how-to books. Give a man a fish, or teach a man to fish?

How about both?

Nick took his time thinking it over, remembering stories about genies and wishes going wrong. He wanted to ask for some kind of medical healing thing, but he knew that people would fight over who got to use it, and it would end up being only billionaires, and politicians and their families. Yeah, they've got enough advantages already. I need stuff that everybody can use. That means books, I guess.

I also don't have to trade with the Arrurrans, since both me and them want to trade with the Goldaskians. They have better stuff. But Petra has the best stuff of all. I just don't know how to use most of it.

In the end, Nick drove the best bargain he could with both of them, ending up with a ton of books to download. A lot of it seemed useless, but Nick figured smarter people than him could figure stuff out from them: history of the Arrurrans (except nothing too recent), a bunch of their art, some stuff that Petra translated as "psychology," history of science, history of math, copies of all their languages, and half a dozen other things.

The politics and economics textbooks worried him the most. He had a feeling that those might stir things up a little too much back home. He planned to talk to Doctor Vickall about what might happen if he released them to everyone on Earth. I might keep those under my hat until I find someone I can trust.

He knew that what he was getting was probably just edited pieces of the Yirayah version of Wikipedia, and they probably grabbed it for him for free. For that matter, he might be able to have Petra hook into their version of the internet and grab it herself—but he didn't want to set off a diplomatic incident.

Everyone was happy enough with the trades, given that they were likely only the first of many exchanges. Anything vital, they'd figure out to ask for sooner or later. Once they had loaded about a hundred and fifty tons of food, and had checked in on the Ooafans working on setting up an embassy, it was time to head back to Ooafa.

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