Perry slipped on the helmet. “Give me a reconstruction.”“Sir, as I’ve said, a physical reconstruction from audio alone is beyond me with the current restrictions on processing power,” said Marchand. “It is difficult even with multiple high-quality microphones pointed directly at the subject, but in this case we have a single microphone from a portable device manufactured on an unknown planet, which is pressed up against the glass of a window some distance from the actual conversation.”“Fine, fine,” said Perry. “Just … do the best you can.”The view of the hotel interior was replaced by Marchand’s reconstruction.Marchand chose to use sock puppets. Perry thought it was pretty petulant.Grayspear was a gray sock, flopping around with mop-like hair and big black buttons for eyes. Where Marchand had even learned about sock puppets was a mystery, though perhaps they predated the divergence of their Earths, or the concept had been converged upon when textiles became cheap enough.The man she was with was represented by a black sock with a white ‘face’, and there was something vampiric about him, a decision that Marchand must have made solely from his voice. This puppet’s eyes were fancier brass buttons, like those on a uniform, and for hair he had a toupee.The workshop office was more barebones than in real life, and it, at least, was rendered accurately, because Marchand had seen inside it when they were placing the listening devices. The one divergence was the holes in the ground for the hands inside the sock puppets to come up from. Perry briefly wondered whether there were actual hands in there, whether Marchand was accurately (...)