When the krellepem came, they looked more like trilobites than anything else Jonathan had ever seen. They’d evolved even less than he’d expected. The servers brought special tools for eating them-tools that put him in mind of a hammer and chisel. Each segment of shell had its own chunk of meat inside.

“This is a savage way of feeding oneself,” Kassquit said as the pile of broken bits of krellep shell in front of her grew taller.

“Possibly,” Frank Coffey said. “But the results are worth it.”

“Truth,” Jonathan agreed. The krellepem tasted something like oysters, something like scallops. He discovered they had meat inside their skinny little legs, too, and sucked it out one leg at a time. The others started imitating him.

“How do you do that?” Trir asked, watching them. Jonathan demonstrated. Trir said, “We would have to use tools to get at that meat. Our mouthparts are not flexible enough to do what you are doing.”

She was right, though Jonathan hadn’t thought about it till that moment. Lizards didn’t have lips, not the way humans did. The edges of their mouths were hard. They couldn’t suck meat out of a tubular leg, they couldn’t kiss… They can’t make fart jokes, Jonathan thought, and realized he was even tireder than he’d suspected.

“What is funny?” Karen asked when he snorted. He told her.

“What is a fart joke ?” Trir asked; the relevant phrase had been in English.

“Something that proves my mate is seriously deranged,” Karen told her.

“I thank you. I thank you very much.” Jonathan used an emphatic cough.

“You Tosevites can be most confusing,” Trir said.

All the Americans chorused, “We thank you. We thank you very much.” They all used emphatic coughs. Trir was… most confused.