Aleph looked at squidgie, then at Elsie, then finally at Pylo.

“Your mother built this place? For you individually?”

Pylo nodded a bit and fiddled with her digits.

“She commissioned the expedition to find this polity’s ancestors or something like them in this region of the reef, gather them together and supply them with the tools, knowledge, secrets and raw materials to prosper. So that I could benefit from trade with them and use this passage as a shortcut known only to me and Tunie.”

Aleph blinked. Then looked over at Omega who was sort of in dreamy looking trance she now took up sometimes. One hand gently but rapidly scribbling in a book, the other holding it and flipping pages as needed.

It was something that carried over from when she was healing.

Aleph was about to shove her friend but before she even started moving the words flowed from her mouth and the bright fierceness returned to her eyes.

“How big of a place is this how many people? Is this just a village or a country or a nation... what counts here? And this was done a very long time ago. But your mother made it happen? Ah, I’m sorry that must be insensitive of me. I’m sorry.”

Pylo seemed genuinely puzzled.

“I appreciate the condolences, but what are they for? I don’t think anyone’s died recently in my family but very distant cousins and the last cache I had from the family said they were good deaths, nothing to be concerned about.”

That caught Omega by surprise, or inspired her. Honestly Aleph was not sure that her friend and former mentor had healed back properly. Quarti gave her a clean bill of health spiritually.

But then again she was Quarti.

However she WAS Quarti and probably knew what she was talking about.

Maybe.

Aleph shook her head to turn her attention fully onto Pylo.

“We just mean it can’t be... nice to have lost your mother however long ago. I mean, without a soul she must surely be long passed.”

Pylo smiled brightly.

“Oh certainly not! I’m sure even Redweed would know if Mother died. No she is perfectly healthy. In fact, I am going to be picking up a care package from her during our visit to catch up on the rest of the family after we deal with the initial introductions.”

Aleph met Omega’s gaze, the fog lifting from her friend to show deeply furrowed brow of puzzled worry, then they turned back to Pylo.

“How long ago did your mother commission this place?”

Pylo made a face but Elsie spoke up.

“Records are difficult given the distances through uncultivated wilderness that the relevant parties traveled. But by Ship Mistress Pylo’s admission you would measure that this polity is approximately Forty-Seven-Thousand Two-Hundred and Seven Years old... With an uncertainty of around One-Thousand and Thirty-Two Years due to the imprecise dating of the founding parties transit and integration of the disparate nomads”

Aleph contemplates that age, that was four times the age of Quarti easily, but then again.

“Wait... Does your mother also travel on a starship like Tunie? I guess that would make sense since-”

Pylo shook her head.

“Oh no, She almost never travels herself. She moved to our current estates before I was born and that was so expensive and caused such a commotion I think it soured her to the whole idea. I think they still tell stories about it back home.”

Aleph looked at Omega and the two of them spent a moment trying to work out on their own the implications that Pylo’s mother was not only older than all of terran civilization several times over. But also capable of starting outposts that last that long in the middle of what the rest of the reef considered inhospitable wilderness.

“The family got a lot bigger with Mother than when Grandmother was in the middle of it all.”

Squidgie’s voice chimed in gentle and differential.

“I believe we have missed the point of the original query Ship Mistress. Allow me to summarize and you may correct if I misunderstand the translation provided.”

Aleph turned to her- To Squidgie her mouth making some kind of noises while she kept trying to fit the idea of a single person into what Pylo kept saying was her mom.

“Uh, Yeah please go on.”

“The precise numbers will vary depending on if it has suffered a severe attack, internal strife, or how many long ranging expeditions are out on hunter gathering expeditions in the surrounding forests. But across all of her visits Ship Mystress Pylo has recorded a population within the range of between Thirty-Billion to Two-Hundred-Billion Individuals.”

Aleph blinked.

“The extreme outliers of which occured when upon one visit nearly the entirety of all hunting expeditions normally traveling the forest returned simultaneously and had suffered minimal losses on the high end. And when the polity had suffered a staggeringly high mortality rate for several centuries from a series of animal attacks, plagues, reprisals from the local flora and internal strife.”

She had heard once that the estimated number of living human bodies that had ever existed on terra (barring whatever happened to Quarti’s breed of humans) was around the range of a hundred billion people.

She tried to fit the numbers of this one polity (that Pylo’s mother had apparently instigated if not outright created) into that context.

Squidgie continued cheerful as can be, then again what were the numbers for Redweed again? They had gone over it but she forgot it was so long ago.

“If pattern holds, we should expect that there will be somewhere around a population of Sixty-Billion in some form or another spread out in the surrounding ‘inhabited’ territories of the Polity with about half of them in the high density environs.”

Aleph fell silent, she knew she could run the numbers for that but the pressure of it was too much.

The only noise was the sound of scratching pen on paper.

Omega came out of staring through her notes, amending and crossing things out furiously stare at Pylo.

“And your mother made this? Tens of thousands of years ago? For you? Just to help you take a shortcut? Spun up a whole civilization?”

Elsie made a gesture, turning their screen to Pylo, whose lips thinned to a compressed line before she nodded.

The screen fluttering through several stocks and figures that Aleph knew she should be able to follow but honestly was still feeling a little bit numb with shock. She really should be used to this experience but they kept finding new ways to pull the rug out from under her.

“Well yes, but it’s hardly unusual. Ship Mistress Pylo and Tunie have been the primary instigators of uplifts- ”

Pylo’s voice cut in softly and somewhat quietly.

“Thirty-Two Times.”

Elsie nodded and continued.

“And at least six of those have grown to be substantially larger then this polity since her involvement. If you include the number of collaborative efforts she has joined after the initial work is put in place there are hundreds of polity significantly larger than anything you have yet seen.”

Squidgie nods along with Elsie.

“You yourselves as passengers to your first colony are part of one such action by Ship Mistress Pylo.”

Aleph looked over to meet Omega’s own considering expression.

“Really the only unusual thing here in this wilderness is that the remoteness and isolation required that the Mother Courtesan and by extension Siren House Courtesan provide all the economic support and uplift materials themselves.”

Quarti’s voice broke in a chortled laughter.

“Wait-wait-wait-WAIT! Pylo Hipsalicious lady who doth leak pure slicking appeala’s mum and maiden name both mean some kinda whoring sluttery?!”

And after that no constructive conversation could be had over the gasping laughter of Quarti and the incessant attempts of Omega to try and explain how it was not like that at all.

Which lead to Quarti acting offended that apparently Omega knew Pylo’s family name and never told her about it.

Aleph however shared a glance with Squidgie as the two of them noted that whether intentional or not Pylo seemed to be relaxing from some kind of deep tension at the distraction boiling over.