The world of forks, with all its fascinating surprises and contradictions commanded all of Tico’s attention - or at least the attention of the part that was dedicated to monitoring the physical world around him. As the situation was he didn’t notice the other arrive, and so the words took him by surprise and he looked up, startled and frozen in mid-pinch.
Luckily it was only Jonah. Which, of course, was not at all the expression Tico was looking for, but as the idea of fork-tuning being an activity requiring explanation hadn’t yet occurred to him, it was the one that took shape the quickest. After only three months he was still painfully unaware of his own place on Huria, but he did know that Jonah tended to frown at him a lot less than most of the others. Certainly less than the Captain, which had to mean something.
There was a moment of silence as Tico contented himself with this chain of thought and felt safe enough to return his concentration back to his work. As he placed the latest latest fork to the right of the first one he realized, however, that there had been words said. Those usually required an answer and so, without lifting his eyes to look at Jonah, he assured the other man: “I’ll put them back.” Guessing that it might not be quite enough, he cocked his head to the side and added: “Good as new.”
Then he picked up another fork, pinched it, and only after the sound had died spoke again.