"But they're just allowed to have all the kids they want?"

"...yes?"

"...on our planet letting people do that violates like all the international treaties."

"Oh. There aren't treaties about population size here, just about standards of living and things. If someone's population were growing so fast they were all starving and couldn't survive without ongoing external aid then there'd be an intervention for that population in particular but most places are doing just fine without rules so there's not much need to add them."

"Don't they run out of room?"

"Oh, not really - people emigrate, found new planets and things."

Grey family looks at each other.

"We've gotten forty new colony planets off the ground since we joined!" says someone else cheerily. "Every idiot with a grand idea about how to run society was like 'I will found a planet that is Run Perfectly' and then they petitioned and if their grand idea was actually a lawful, safe place, whether it was a good idea or not, the petition usually went through so now we've got a place where the workers own the means of production and a place that's all tiny islands with Dunbar's number of people and a planet for the anarcho-capitalists and a planet for the orthodox Aratothalians and a planet where the whole place is under that truth effect the courts use and a planet that's mostly people resurrected from the 2200s..."

"...anybody can start a planet and there are only forty?"

"Long waitlist, you need a lot of magic to make one and it's a kind of magic in short supply. You get bumped up the waitlist if there are more people signed up to live on your planet once it exists. I think Mîr has thousands, because Mîr can make them faster."

"How does anyone decide where to go?"

"You know, read about the laws and visit and decide where seems like a nice place to live. Or there's tons of reviews and debate on the internet, or you go where all your neighbors are going..."

"Don't essential services on the previous planets get disrupted by mass emigration?"

"If there were some place so bad that lots of its citizens would leave if they could I don't think it'd make it as far as being a member planet. Member planets are nice, it's the law, they've got to have good schools and good healthcare and reliable internet and transportation and just, consistently-enforced laws and freedom of speech and so on - and lots of people would rather fix their home than find a new one... I can't think of anywhere where tons of people left as soon as they were allowed -"

"I think there were a couple? But they were things like 'these ethnic groups hated each other, one of them left', usually without all that much economic integration to start with."

"It's legal to have a six-month emigration process so you can fill in gaps in services. Fayytr has a yearlong process, that one's getting challenged in court."

Huh.

Eventually the husband and kid go home.

Teleporting Elves make food deliveries in Yvalta.

One of them is accosted by an orange who runs his way, falls into a kneel, skids on his knees toward him, and clutches at his robe. "I will do anything you want if I can bring my wife away from here and have a baby," he says.

...Elf is startled. "...uh. Okay. Where's your wife -"

"She's at the clinic."

"...are you going to get in trouble for - please stand up, I promise it'll be okay - are you going to get in trouble for asking this -"

"Only if you don't take us."

"Right now?"

"Now would be good."

"...okay. Let's go get your wife, then - please stand up -"

He stands up and brushes himself off and sets off clinicward, looking over his shoulder sometimes to make sure the Elf is still there.