Swamped

You're just about to drink the tea when you notice that it's vibrating a little in the cup, even before you pick it up.

Since you seem to be in some kind of ship or wagon, your first thought is that perhaps it's started moving. But there's no other sign of movement.

That leads you to wonder if it's sound. At a high enough frequency, you wouldn't be able to hear it, but it could potentially cause subtle vibrations. Enough to make the tea move.

You wander around for a while with the cup, pretending to be restless - you're not sure just how much these mechanical servants can grasp of what you're doing, so might as well put on a good show. Every so often, you put the cup down and glance at it.

You can't work out much, except that the vibration seems to be stronger around the mechanical servants. A little more wandering suggests it's moving either towards or from the door leading out.

Perhaps they're sending some kind of sub-audible signal to the Host, or receiving one. You recall one of Theodore's failed experiments involved trying to do something along those lines to make a long-range communication device, but he never managed to get one working that could send a signal further than from one end of his tent to the other.

Then it occurs to you that you might be able to actually hear that signal, and perhaps more. The idea of your sound amplifier is that it takes in noises and makes them louder... so all you'd need is a means to take in noises from a wider area.

You promptly make a list of materials you need, along with a sketch of the amplifier. Not detailed enough for the Host to use it himself, but it should convince him that you're working on his project. Then you hand the list off to one of the mechanical servants.

A few minutes later, the servant returns with what you need. You start assembling, with a few superfluous parts to help you pick up more noise.

Once you've got it set up, you hold the receiver up and turn it on. You hear... something, but it doesn't sound like any recognizable noise. It's just crackling.

Crackling that sounds a little like Theodore's test signal. So that's one theory roughly confirmed.

You mess around a bit so you can pick up noise outside the room, tweaking it as best you can to filter out sounds that aren't voices.

When you get it working, you think you hear two voices. Unfortunately, one seems to be speaking a language you don't recognize. Probably the same one these strange books are in.

But the other voice is speaking a human language, one that you know reasonably well. Odd that they're talking this way; maybe they both know each other's languages and simply find their own more convenient to speak in.

You adjust the output a bit, and try to determine what the half of the conversation you can understand is about.