It would be nice to conclude they're just lying in order to cheat him out of a fair share of the gains.

But of course, if they were going to do that, they could just not pay him after signing the contract, instead of presenting him with an overtly weird contract he might refuse to sign.  Sure, he could ask them to swear an oath about it, but in most of that possible-world's probability-density, the story about oaths being Abaddon-enforced is fake anyways.

...Keltham doesn't know what to do here.

Well, no, he knows this situation, he is in a Trade With Aliens story after all.  The Aliens have a legible unit of account matching their medium of exchange which readily translates into unskilled-labor-hours, the Aliens can negotiate market prices on things to balance supply and demand, but the Aliens have no idea how large their economy is and can't measure its growth trend, let alone detect the growth going above-trend, so how do you capture a fair share of the gains from trading knowledge to them.

"It sounds," Keltham says aloud, "like the central problem of this contract is not dividing the gains but measuring them.  Out of dath ilan there would be appropriate proverbs about how, once you have identified the important part of the problem, you should make sure to stop, step back, and deliberately explicitly focus on solving that part of the problem."

"I suspect that what I have to do is sit down with Governance experts on the local economy and its measurement and hash out the part of this contract that is actually the critical part and actually important.  And I should think about whether there can be some kind of interim contract meant to be replaced, so that we could potentially get started on roads or metallurgy or automatic clothmaking."

It would be nice to conclude they're just lying in order to cheat him out of a fair share of the gains.

But of course, if they were going to do that, they could just not pay him after signing the contract, instead of presenting him with an overtly weird contract he might refuse to sign.  Sure, he could ask them to swear an oath about it, but in most of that possible-world's probability-density, the story about oaths being Abaddon-enforced is fake anyways.

...Keltham doesn't know what to do here.

Well, no, he knows this situation, he is in a Trade With Aliens story after all.  The Aliens have a legible unit of account matching their medium of exchange which readily translates into unskilled-labor-hours, the Aliens can negotiate market prices on things to balance supply and demand, but the Aliens have no idea how large their economy is and can't measure its growth trend, let alone detect the growth going above-trend, so how do you capture a fair share of the gains from trading knowledge to them.

"It sounds," Keltham says aloud, "like the central problem of this contract is not dividing the gains but measuring them.  Out of dath ilan there would be appropriate proverbs about how, once you have identified the important part of the problem, you should make sure to stop, step back, and deliberately explicitly focus on solving that part of the problem."

"I suspect that what I have to do is sit down with Governance experts on the local economy and its measurement and hash out the part of this contract that is actually the critical part and actually important.  And before then I should design an interim contract intended to be replaced by a future one, so that we could potentially get started on roads or metallurgy or automatic clothmaking."

It would be nice to conclude they're just lying in order to cheat him out of a fair share of the gains.

But of course, if they were going to do that, they could just not pay him after signing the contract, instead of presenting him with an overtly weird contract he might refuse to sign.  Sure, he could ask them to swear an oath about it, but in most of that possible-world's probability-density, the story about oaths being Abaddon-enforced is fake anyways.

...Keltham doesn't know what to do here.

Well, no, he knows this trope, it means he is in a Trade With Aliens story after all.  The Aliens have a legible unit of account matching their medium of exchange which readily translates into unskilled-labor-hours, the Aliens can negotiate market prices on things to balance supply and demand, but the Aliens have no idea how large their economy is and can't measure its growth trend, let alone detect the growth going above-trend, so how do you capture a fair share of the gains from trading knowledge to them.

"It sounds," Keltham says aloud, "like the central problem of this contract is not dividing the gains but measuring them.  Out of dath ilan there would be appropriate proverbs about how, once you have identified the important part of the problem, you should make sure to stop, step back, and deliberately explicitly focus on solving that part of the problem."

"I suspect that what I have to do is sit down with Governance experts on the local economy and its measurement and hash out the part of this contract that is actually the critical part and actually important.  And before then I should design an interim contract intended to be replaced by a future one, so that we could potentially get started on roads or metallurgy or automatic clothmaking."

It would be nice to conclude they're just lying in order to cheat him out of a fair share of the gains.

But of course, if they were going to do that, they could just not pay him after signing the contract, instead of presenting him with an overtly weird contract he might refuse to sign.  Sure, he could ask them to swear an oath about it, but in most of that possible-world's probability-density, the story about oaths being Abaddon-enforced is fake anyways.

...Keltham doesn't know what to do here.

Well, no, he knows this trope, it means he is in a Trade With Aliens story after all.  The Aliens have a legible unit of account matching their medium of exchange which readily translates into unskilled-labor-hours, the Aliens can negotiate market prices on things to balance supply and demand, but the Aliens have no idea how large their economy is and can't measure its growth trend, let alone detect the growth going above-trend, so how do you capture a fair share of the gains from trading knowledge to them.

"It sounds," Keltham says aloud, "like the central problem of this contract is not dividing the gains but measuring them.  Out of dath ilan there are proverbs about how, once you have identified the important part of the problem, you should make sure to stop, step back, and deliberately focus on solving that part of the problem."

"I suspect that what I have to do is sit down with Governance experts on the local economy and its measurement and hash out the part of this contract that is actually the critical part and actually important.  And before then I should design an interim contract intended to be replaced by a future one, so that we could potentially get started on roads or metallurgy or automatic clothmaking."