Pending questions resolved into a state of quiescence, Keltham relaxes more into the massage.  It's nice.  Does he want to command some non-reciprocated sexual service from Carissa, at the end of this?

The idea of ordering her to do it - seems more comfortable now, possibly it has something to do with having heard that she has any coherently imaginable endgame, maybe it's just a shock having had time to sink in and for Keltham to adjust.

But then his libido might go offline for a while.  He shouldn't expend his newly refilled ero reservoir if he needs to have another conversation with Isidre today... it's not clear how urgent this whole thing is, exactly?

"Carissa," Keltham says out loud, his voice coming out sounding as relaxed as he is, "I'm too relaxed right now to really want to move, so can I ask you to have them return my reply to Isidre that I'm interested in further discussing her second suggested course of action, though I'm not yet on a definite yes.  And can I possibly get a yes-no in the next ten minutes about whether or not Isidre wants to meet me again today."

(It wouldn't occur to Keltham that Isidre might not imagine him to be capable of a quick reconsideration and answer.  One hour is a long time to think in dath ilan, and sure it may take longer to reconsider some major life questions, but there's no presumption that you can't do it in an hour.  It similarly wouldn't occur to Keltham that he ought not ask a Very Senior Person for an answer in ten minutes; somebody like Isidre is surely interrupted often enough, and good enough at task-switching, that she's checking her tiny-task queue every eight minutes, in Isidre's computer-based and network-connected task management system; which will continue to go on existing in Keltham's imagination and his preprogrammed social reflexes unless and until he thinks explicitly about that question for literally half of a second.)

Pending questions resolved into a state of quiescence, Keltham relaxes more into the massage.  It's nice.  Does he want to command some non-reciprocated sexual service from Carissa, at the end of this?

The idea of ordering her to do it - seems more comfortable now, possibly it has something to do with having heard that she has any coherently imaginable endgame, maybe it's just a shock having had time to sink in and for Keltham to adjust.

But then his libido might go offline for a while.  He shouldn't expend his newly refilled ero reservoir if he needs to have another conversation with Isidre today... it's not clear how urgent this whole thing is, exactly?

"Carissa," Keltham says out loud, his voice coming out sounding as relaxed as he is, "I'm too relaxed right now to really want to move, so can I ask you to have them return my reply to Isidre that I'm interested in further discussing her second suggested course of action, though I'm not yet on a definite yes.  And can I possibly get a yes-no in the next ten minutes about whether or not Isidre wants to meet me again today."

(It wouldn't occur to Keltham that Isidre might not imagine him to be capable of a quick reconsideration and answer.  One hour is a long time to think in dath ilan, and sure it may take longer to reconsider some major life questions, but there's no presumption that you can't do it in an hour.  It similarly wouldn't occur to Keltham that he ought not ask a Very Senior Person for an answer in ten minutes; somebody like Isidre is surely interrupted often enough, and good enough at task-switching, that she's checking her tiny-task queue every eight minutes, in Isidre's computer-based and network-connected task management system; which will continue to go on existing in Keltham's imagination and his preprogrammed social reflexes unless and until he thinks explicitly about that question for literally half of a second.)

Pending questions resolved into a state of quiescence, Keltham relaxes more into the massage.  It's nice.  Does he want to command some non-reciprocated sexual service from Carissa, at the end of this?

The idea of ordering her to do it - seems more comfortable now, possibly it has something to do with having heard that she has any coherently imaginable endgame, maybe it's just a shock having had time to sink in and for Keltham to adjust.

But then his libido might go offline for a while.  He shouldn't expend his newly refilled ero reservoir if he needs to have another conversation with Isidre today... it's not clear how urgent this whole thing is, exactly?

"Carissa," Keltham says out loud, his voice coming out sounding as relaxed as he is, "I'm too relaxed right now to really want to move, so can I ask you to have them return my reply to Isidre that I'm interested in further discussing her second suggested course of action, though I'm not yet on a definite yes.  And can I possibly get a yes-no in the next ten minutes about whether or not Isidre wants to meet me again today."

(It wouldn't occur to Keltham that Isidre might not imagine him to be capable of a quick reconsideration and answer.  One hour is a long time to think in dath ilan, and sure it may take longer to reconsider some major life questions, but there's no presumption that you can't do it in an hour.  It similarly wouldn't occur to Keltham that he ought not ask a Senior Governance Official for a yes-no answer in ten minutes; somebody like Isidre is surely interrupted often enough, and good enough at task-switching, that she's checking her tiny-task queue every eight minutes, in Isidre's computer-based and network-connected task management system; which will continue to go on existing in Keltham's imagination and his preprogrammed social reflexes unless and until he thinks explicitly about that question for literally half of a second.)