They get permission. Then it's rescinded. Then they are supposed to submit a statement of their intentions before they can have permission.

Uh, okay. They are here to introduce themselves to the Calador government, establish lines of communication, make material available about intergalactic consortiums and how to become a member of one, and offer emergency aid if required, particularly if required in relation to the food crisis.

They should come to this one location over here. They should come to the capital. They should go away.

...well there are three of them, would it work if one went away and one went to each of those locations?

No. Sure! Absolutely not. Wait come meet this senator in the Free State of Oahk instead.

The Free State of Oahk is getting their own emissaries. Is this, like, a bad time, should they come back later.

They should go away and not come back! They should stay. They can still meet a Calador senator in Oahk can't they?

...it would be kind of hard to explain to their superiors why they did that instead of meeting the Calador senate in Calado.

Because the senator asked them to?

How many senators are there?

Three hundred. This one is on vacation. He is definitely the one they should be talking to.

...if they sent three hundred people, one to talk to each senator, would that solve this, uh, complicated problem.

Nope they should definitely not do that.

Okay. They will try again in a week.

No!!!

They are hoping that in a week whatever disaster is currently impeding ordinary coordination will be resolved and they can receive clearer instructions.

Someone nips up and scoops their shuttle out of the sky and tows it down.

Three mildly annoyed Elves write home to notify their superiors that Calado seems to have principled concerns about centralized power. Or something.

They are escorted out of their shuttle by some greys!

"Uh, hello."

"I don't think you're really supposed to do that?"

"We could have gotten hurt."

"Orders," says one of the greys. They are patted down for weapons.

They're unarmed. "You mean that you're not the person we should take that up with? Who is the person we should take that up with?"

"Why are you touching us?"

"Checking to see if you've got anything on you before we take you to the senator."

"...okay."

"Does Calado usually have someone in charge who is currently indisposed or ill or something?"

"I said I think it's a principled objection to centralized power."

"...there's just senators," says a grey.

"I'm sure it's a lovely place to live."

"Eh."

"Weather's nice."

"This way."

Elves follow.

Senator! "I apologize for the abrupt escort," she smiles.

"That was not a very good idea, someone could have been hurt. It's nice to meet you all the same. I'm Mólie."

"Datna. Were the greys not careful with you?"

"I mean if you'd been mistaken about how our shuttle was constructed, or about how fragile our species is. Our escort was very friendly."

"I'm glad to hear it. So what is your interest in Calado?"

"The interstellar consortium we represent is making contact with every Amentan government to offer food aid, discuss the criteria for membership in our consortium, and set up lines of communication."

"What form of food aid?"

"Apparently there was recently a crisis. We'd be happy to provide food and assist with distribution if Calado's citizens are suffering as a result of that crisis."

      "If Calado's citizens are just going hungry more generally, for structural reasons rather than situational ones, we can help with that too but it requires more care to make sure we're not disrupting the local markets and so on."

"The food markets are functioning fine. We didn't import much from Voa but of course the price of everything's gone up. I can get you someone to talk to in the industry if that's what you need."

"I think the decision we had reached was to depart for a week and learn more to try to approach Calado in a manner more in keeping with its distaste for centralized authority."

"Not sure what you mean by that."

"We were getting contradictory explanations of where to go and who to talk to. We decided that we should leave and come back when we better understood how your government works. This assessment was not changed by our shuttle being dragged out of the sky."

"How were you planning to learn about it?"

"Perhaps some of our colleagues in other countries have met some locals who could provide insight and advice."

"That doesn't seem very charitable, hearing about us secondhand."

"We did try to come here first."

"And I invited you down and you said you weren't coming after all."

"We received a lot of contradictory communications, including some requests to leave."

"Well, now you're here."

"With all due respect, it seems uniquely unwise to have our point of communications with Calado be the person within Calado who was willing to attack our shuttle."

"They didn't hurt you."

"I don't think they even damaged the shuttle; it's still flyable. It has been nice meeting you."

"You said you'd be happy to help," says Datna lightly.

"We're very much looking forward to the opportunity, once we have a little more information."

"I can answer your questions."

"May we speak to the other two hundred and ninety nine senators?"

"You've already noticed what happens if you try to talk to them all at once."

"May we walk around in Calado and meet people?"

"With an escort."

"Whatever for?"

"Protection."

"Oh, we're not very concerned about that and we're very concerned an escort might impede seeing things we'd want to see or meeting people we'd consider it important to talk to."

"Nonetheless."

"Why don't we head back to our ship, consult with our superiors, and let you know tomorrow whether it seems appropriate to take you up on that."

"That doesn't sound like the best plan."

"Oh?"

"I think you should explain what you came here to explain about your consortium and so on. I can pass it on to the rest of the senators as appropriate."

The Elves look at each other. 

"I'm sorry, but I don't think we can do that."

"That means 'no'," says one of the others, helpfully. "Not 'talk us into it'. No thank you, we're going to head out now."

"I don't think so," she says.

...Elves look at each other.

Elves turn and walk towards the door.

There are greys there.

Elves attempt to walk past them.

Greys close ranks.

"We're leaving," Mólië says. "It was lovely meeting you. Please move."

"Nope," says a grey.

"- look, when this comes to the attention of our superiors they're going to be pretty upset, they might arrest involved parties for kidnapping, that would be a little ridiculous."

"Your superiors aren't authorized to make arrests in Calado."

An Elf pulls a notepad and pen out of her bag and starts writing something in pretty, loopy Quenya.

Datna raises an eyebrow and doesn't try to stop her.

After a few minutes she puts the notepad away. 

Elves start singing.

"..that's very nice but perhaps we could get to the point."

"We're not going to give you more information because you threatened us," one of the Elves says. 

"That'd be terrible incentives, wow."

"I have no intention of harming you."

"Oh, good."

Singing.

"But perhaps you would care to explain who sent you."

They apparently do not care to.

Datna persists in asking.

Datna is ignored. 

After about half an hour there is a pop and another Elf is standing there. Golden-haired. 

"Your grace," says Mólie.

"Can you not. And do you want a ride home?"

"That sounds lovely."

"- how did you -"

"I teleported. Was there some kind of misunderstanding you want to straighten out."

"They said they wanted to help with food and explain where they came from and I was trying to make that happen."

"Ah huh. You've been here longer," he says to the Elves, "but what I'm inclined to do is file a strongly worded complaint with their government, demanding extradition -"

      "This is their government. They haven't got a - more governing - government."

"Which is sort of admirable in a way but not if you use it to kidnap people. Demanding extradition of just these people in the room or was anyone else involved -"

     "We didn't see anyone else."

Datna grinds her teeth slightly.

He waits a little in case she wants to apologize or something.

Instead she wants to name another senator as a conspirator.

A grey says, "Um."

"Yes?"

"What's going on?"

He makes a face. "There are aliens. There are lots of aliens. Trillions and trillions of them, in fact. There's - you know I don't actually do this for a living, Mólië -"

               "There is an intergalactic consortium called Vanda Nossëo, of which our nation is a member, which does humanitarian work and mutual aid and defense pacts and things like that, among the species of the universe. We have more than four hundred member planets. We are here to explain all of this and more to Calado, but not to the first person in Calado to kidnap us, that seems like it makes sure the information ends up in the worst possible hands. When you kidnapped us my colleague requested extraction. I - guess his grace was free and wanted to stop by personally -"

"I said not to bother with titles -"

              "I can't just call you your name, my lord!"

"Sure you can."

             "Tyelcormo decided to stop by personally to take us home. And it's very bad form to kidnap people so we need to make it clear to everyone in Calado that even if you don't have laws or whatever, you can't kidnap the citizens and subjects of Vanda Nossëo nations. It won't work and you'll always get in trouble for it. ...Tyelcormo is waiting around in case anyone wants to apologize for kidnapping us - or mention co-conspirators, I guess - or give us information that we'd need about how to handle the situation. Like, I don't know, if sending that letter would spark a civil war or get innocent people killed somehow it'd be appropriate to inform us of that. ...uh, we have lie detection, it's playing right now quieter than your hearing."

"...playing?" says another grey.

"I think the details of how it works should probably be among the things we do not tell the kidnappers. Though if someone wants to test it by making a buncha claims, some true and some not, that'd be fine."

"- what kind of trouble are we in?" asks the first grey.

"Does Calado in fact not have laws." 

       "I think they might have, like, 'do what important people say' as a law, at least in practice?"

"That's terrible."

       "We shouldn't be judgmental of other cultures."

"No, that's just terrible. Uh, the courts take into account what sentencing is considered appropriate for the species - I assume there are some countries here where kidnapping is against the law -"

"...it wasn't obviously a kidnapping. To us," says a grey. "Somebody says go get a ship that seems plausibly something else."

"Yeah she's going to be in more trouble than you," he says, nodding at the senator. "By a lot. What else could it have been exactly."

"- invasion, spies, arrest -"

Sigh. "So then they'll probably just make you take the class on illegal orders and maybe encourage you to move somewhere that has laws and lawful procedures."

"...we can't move, nobody'll swap into Calado."

 "So, I seriously don't do diplomacy - I breed and fly giant winged firebreathing lizards, that is how much I don't do diplomacy - but there are like two hundred forty Vanda Nossëo member states that accept immigrants and if you'd want to leave you could just make friends in illegal orders class and then go home with them."

"...okay."

"What about our families -"

"They can come too? By 'no one will swap into Calado' am I to take it that the other countries on this planet suck less?"

"...haven't really traveled..."

"We've got a bad reputation but I assume everyone's got problems up close and we just don't have good - PR -"

Nod. "Okay. Well. Our courts don't want to ruin anyone's life. People need to know that you will regret trying to kidnap and coerce our citizens, but they will take into account that you could not, actually, have known that, and you didn't hurt anyone, so you're almost certainly not going to go to jail. Not talking to you," he adds to the senator, offhandedly. "If you need to reach us for some reason you can write things on any of the pieces of paper on this notepad and we'll see them, okay?" He takes the notepad from one of the other Elves. It has a line of pretty Quenya at the top. He hands it to a grey.

...grey takes it.

Elves disappear.

...well then.

Meanwhile a different group of three Elves request permission to land in Yvalta.

Where in Yvalta would they like to land?

Spaceport, but they plan to make an announcement to the media in a public location and would prefer somewhere where they won't be impeded in reaching one.

The spaceport is the province of House Ylanta, which would be pleased to welcome them.

And not impede them talking to everybody? They really do not want to be impeded in that.

They can go on public television if they like.

It'll do. They land.

They are welcomed by solicitous purples who want to know if they need anything and guarded by outward-facing greys and greeted by a blue.

They're just here to make the announcement and then answer questions! 

Well, there is a journalism team ready for them over there!

"Hello! We're citizens of Ambaróna, which is a member nation of a galactic consortium called Vanda Nossëo. The universe has trillions of aliens, and we make contact with alien species based on who is the highest humanitarian priority and who has the best prospects of becoming a new member state. Membership in Vanda Nossëo confers economic and trade benefits, comes with guaranteed security against invasion or violent overthrow, and comes with limited access to some resources that are expensive even by the standards of advanced societies, like terraformed planets, immortality, resurrections, and teleportation.

We're going to present to your government the specific criteria for membership in Vanda Nossëo. But your government can't decide to make you a member state without a free, fair vote of the whole population, one vote per person old enough to write a ballot. So if they decide to go ahead, we'll be publishing information online about what this will mean for you and answering any questions you need answered in order to cast your vote with confidence. 

We're also offering aid to help with short term food and health crises, and we will look into the most tenable prospects for longer-term aid.

We want you to have free and unfiltered communications with us while we learn about your world and open normal diplomatic relations. Towards that end, we are employing a special technology of ours that allows us to get copies of any written messages addressed to us. To write us a message, please write 'Yvalta open channel' at the top of a piece of paper, and then write your message. We'll have a team reviewing these messages and taking them into consideration in making our policy recommendations. Vanda Nossëo member states all have absolute freedom of speech - you can never get in trouble for something you say - and the messages will be fully confidential and not disclosed to anyone here on Amenta without your permission. 

We're making this announcement in every country and in every language, and we were assured that this will reach everyone in Yvalta. If you know of a better way for us to reach anyone in Yvalta who might not get the whole unfiltered message this way, please write 'Yvalta open channel' at the top of a piece of paper and then write your note to us.

Questions?"

Messages start coming in.

- They don't mean reds, do they?

- Does membership involve freedom of movement?

- What are people without paper supposed to do?

- Reds can't vote, they know that, right?

- Food would be appreciated here and there and that other place.

- What are the preconditions for resurrections?

- What are their population controls like?

Every person old enough to fill out a ballot gets a vote in votes related to consortium membership.

Membership comes with freedom of movement for purposes of travel and work. Many member states take unlimited immigrants from any other member state, and some of the rest take immigrants with an annual cap. Member states that take immigrants get more limited resources like terraforming and immortality and resurrections. 

You can type it, too. 

Every person old enough to fill out a ballot gets a vote in votes related to consortium membership. 

Food will be delivered to those locations. 

Resurrections are available only to Vanda Nossëo member states. Within those, they're distributed based on a variety of factors and a typical member the size of Yvalta would get a thousand per Amentan year. Persons who are killed unlawfully by a citizen or subject of a Vanda Nossëo member state get resurrected at that citizen's expense, so if any Elf killed a Yvaltan the Yvaltan would get resurrected. 

Most Vanda Nossëo member states do not practice population controls of any kind. In some it's illegal to have children without demonstrating possession of adequate means to care for the child and lots restrict forking. 

- What's forking?

- No, seriously, reds can't vote. They're not people, do the aliens understand that part? They look like it but they're not.

- Thanks for the food!

- Reds can't have freedom of movement either.

- What if the citizen can't afford it? How expensive is it?

- Why don't they practice population control? That's irresponsible.

- Do they ever take immigrants from non member states?

Forking is getting a copy of yourself made. This Elf did it, four times, because there were lots of things she wanted to do with her life and she lives somewhere where that's allowed. 

If the reds are unable to fill out their ballots because of not being intelligent enough then those ballots presumably won't get filled out. Only ballots that are filled out will be counted.

Everyone gets freedom of movement. They can offer reds a generous contract where the reds stay in their district in exchange for payments, that's legal. There's one place where the aliens don't want to touch people of a different gender than them and this was allowed after aliens of all relevant genders were bribed into voting in favor.

Resurrections run fairly outrageous prices right now because they're so rare. You can get a payment plan if you don't have that much, or purchase insurance in advance that'll cover accidents. The insurance doesn't cover murder but if you're worried about being bankrupted you should just not commit murder.

Some species don't need population control because their birth rates are right about replacement and Elves don't because their children take a hundred twenty local years to grow up so their growth rate is glacial even though birth rates are reasonably high and some species rarely prefer to have children at all once they invent birth control and some species just have tons of space on their planet or planets and centuries before they will need to worry about that, by which time terraforming will have gotten cheaper.

There are countries that take immigrants from non member states. They're rarer but there are still hundreds. The recommended method is to buy yourself fluency in the language - they have a means of making people fluent in all known languages, it's available for sale or as a membership perk - and then go there for tourism and get some people to vouch for you and convert your visa. Amentans might be a good culture fit with orcs, who also like babies a lot and who have dozens of planets, or Mïr and its protectorates, some of which take non-member immigrants and which have extremely powerful technology that makes everyone there immortal and resurrections there free of charge. Elves take non-member immigrants who are a good cultural fit for Elven societies. They're not sure yet if that describes Amentans.

- Reds are smart enough to mark ballots they're just not people.

- What if a red did not take the payments and went around befouling the entire universe, it doesn't bear thinking about, if they won't prevent that then they definitely won't be allowed to grant "everyone" in Yvalta freedom of movement and all the actual people will suffer for it.

- How will all this interact with service contracts to Houses?

- How expensive is the language thing?

- What's Mîr? Why don't they share their extremely powerful technology?

- What constitutes a good culture fit for Elves?

Anyone smart enough to mark a ballot gets a vote. 

They will consult Yvaltan reds about their willingness to sign such a contract and if there's not universal support talk with them about proposed alternative solutions that do not distress everyone.

The aliens are unfamiliar with service contracts to Houses except insofar as they were explained online, which was not fully informative. Among the criteria for Vanda Nossëo membership is good labor rights, it's possible that some contracts will need to be renegotiated to be in compliance should Yvalta seek membership, in particular if they were signed while a party was underage, if there was coercion, if they are not readable to all parties, if they involve punishing terms for breaking the contract, or if their dispute resolution mechanisms don't meet galactic standards.

The language thing is often traded for political reforms short of membership in countries not willing to seek membership. If an agreement like that isn't reached it's expensive but you could get it in exchange for ten percent of a year's future earnings in the place you immigrate to.

Mîr is an empire closely allied with Vanda Nossëo and there are constraints on the reach of their powerful technology but they add new protectorates every month.

Elven societies are extraordinarily high-trust and the people best suited for them have good impulse control, are law-abiding and good neighbors, and make decisions with a lot of consideration for long-term consequences. Elves have a monarchy they're very fond of, which rules mostly through the free cooperation of its citizens. People who think that would suit them can apply by writing their open channel.

- Reds aren't "anyone" though.

- What counts as coercion? What counts as punishing terms? What are their standards for dispute resolution?

- What would happen if a House seceded from Yvalta, either to pursue membership on its own or to avoid it?

- Political reforms like what? Do they just drop it on everyone in cooperating countries?

- Elves are one of the ones with no population control, right?

Everything that walks and talks will get a ballot and if the ballot is filled out it will be counted. 

Those sound like details to discuss in talks with Yvalta's government. There are lots of intergalactic corporations with detailed arbitration systems, some of which might be to the liking of Yvalta's workers and Houses.

A new Vanda Nossëo member state would be protected by Vanda Nossëo against retaliation for having seceded from the rest of the country, with as much force as necessary. ...Vanda Nossëo does not lose wars. Recently an enemy put out some stars with inhabited planets in a war and Vanda Nossëo destroyed the enemy, put those planets in orbit around a suitable new star, and resurrected everyone killed in the panic this caused. In the space of twenty minutes. Lots of people join for the defense agreement. Secession to avoid membership could be negotiated in upcoming talks.

Political reforms like improvements to House contracts, maybe, or to the criminal justice system, or to the child credits system. They'd then be able to give it to everyone, yes.

Elves have no population controls.

- But not reds. They have to have some way to make exceptions.

- How big does a would-be member state have to be?

- Did the people miss their old stars?

- Negotiated in upcoming talks against what background assumptions though.

- What are they thinking they'd approve about the contracts?

- Yvalta does permissions, not credits.

- What's wrong with their criminal justice system?

- The following several thousand people wonder if perhaps they would be good enough neighbors for Elves.

There is deliberately not a way to make exceptions because if there were, a planet this Elf recently visited would have wanted an exception so women couldn't vote and this one an exception so slaves couldn't vote and this one an exception so homosexuals couldn't vote and this one an exception so members of this hated religion couldn't vote and all of them would have been wrong so you can't have exceptions.

If there were less than a million people for a would-be member state they might encourage them to try becoming a protectorate of an existing one instead. 

Some of them did! Some of them were pleased to have thereby jumped the line on alien prioritization. Some of them are suing Vanda Nossëo for not having executed that enemy much sooner when they suspected he might be a problem. 

Background assumption is that a non-coerced contract is one made where both sides have a tolerable alternative available to them, are fully informed, and are of age and educated in how to read a contract. In addition it's usually not legal to make contracts that are enforceable by demanding specific performance for more than a year or two and it's typically not legal to make contracts with nonmonetary penalties. 

The aliens are concerned their criminal justice system might be biased. Maybe against the reds, who they keep getting told are not people. 

Uh, people who want to live with Elves should specify why specifically Elves and not one of the other societies that take immigrants, and Elf immigration authorities will read their petitions and get back to them shortly.

- But those exceptions are stupid, maybe except the religion one if it was a really dumb religion, and the red exception is not stupid.

- What is the meaning of "tolerable" here? House contracts mostly last much longer than that.

- Reds don't interact with the justice system.

- They've heard of them and have a way to apply now and not "shortly". Also pretty. And their society sounds soothing.

None of those people thought their exceptions were stupid. No one ever does. There are no exceptions. 

Uh, there should be another way to not starve and have kids. That is a concerning but not disqualifying fact about House contracts. 

...what happens if someone commits a crime against a red, or if a red commits a crime?

Elf immigration officials are reading their applications. Submitting a way for them to contact you with followup questions is a good idea.

- Does being able to pick a different House count?

- There aren't any crimes against reds and if reds commit crimes the cops take care of them without bothering a judge.

- Does email count?

...depends whether they collude or anything.

...so it's legal to torture and murder reds?

Email counts.

- People are unsure how much they do that.

- ...it's not illegal. You could get got for disruption of services or pollution violations if you were careless though.

- Here are some emails.

"...that's horrifying," says an Elf at the reds answer. 

        "What do you even have a society for if it's not illegal to murder innocent people?"

"I think maybe Amentans aren't suited to live with Elves if they don't think torture and murder should be illegal."

        "They probably don't all think that. We've said how we do the voting so probably the ones who want to live with us are ones who are all right with the fact Elves think that's horrifying."

"...maybe."

- Also there aren't even any reds on Elf planets, right?

No, but if they want to immigrate they will be allowed to and torturing and murdering them will not be allowed.

- the no torturing and murdering them is one thing but Elves can't just make the entire universe uninhabitable, that would be an atrocity.

Elves are very eager to find an arrangement that keeps everybody comfortable, but this will probably require some concessions on the part of non-red Amentans, like letting them vote and paying them adequate hazard pay for their contaminating work and treating them as people. They are after all asking red Amentans to make the extraordinary concession of not travelling freely or emigrating, ever, despite the existence of abundant societies that would treat them better. 

- Is that a threat.

- Are they trying to extort Amenta into doing stuff they want or else the universe gets made uninhabitable forever.

- That's evil, the aliens are evil, aaaaaaaah.

By Elven standards it is not a threat to say you won't prevent someone else from exercising their legal rights even if it will make other people sad if they do.

- But the reds don't have those legal rights because like hell is anybody going to vote to be a member state if they have to let them run amok.

Maybe all the reds can leave and go live some place that doesn't hate them, and then member state votes can happen with that out of the equation?

- Will the somewhere else let them CONTAMINATE THE WHOLE UNIVERSE.

They are sure something can be worked out that is better for everyone than having reds here where it is legal to torture and murder them. Maybe everyone except people who like to torture and murder them, those people are going to be shit out of luck because something is deeply wrong with this species.

They get a bunch of very impassioned essays against contaminating the universe.

...they can let every planet vote whether it wants to be a planet for reds or for clean Amentans, and then have thorough magic decontamination for interplanet shuttle services? That good enough?

...Amentans are not sure they are qualified to come up with magic decontamination, they don't seem to understand.

Okay, Amentan-approved decontamination shuttles?

Which Amentans. Since they seem to be under the delusion that reds are people.

Reds seem like they would not be credible authorities on the adequacy of shuttle decontamination. They would pick Amentans who all the Amentans would trust on the subject.

...fine.

Oh good. Also if Amentans join Vanda Nossëo they can get their very own colony planets made for them from scratch and those will be the least polluted planets imaginable because they'll have been made fresh. Amentans will not end up trapped on this one world.

Ooh.

Yeah! Colony planets are usually a bonus for twenty years of membership but these Elves think maybe with Amenta it will work better to give any new member a colony planet up front. Since it's going to require big changes to get membership and the bribe should be commensurate.

Oh, are they generally a bribe-based system? (Twenty of whose years, wow.)

...speaking really loosely? The benefits from signing up are outlandish because they want to incentivize everybody to sign up. You can't, like, bribe a regulatory committee to look the other way or bribe a judge or something, if you could do that then the laws wouldn't be nearly as effective.

A House writes in that this is private please it would like to guarantee itself entry but would appreciate some security if it looks like the rest of Yvalta is going the other way.

They email to ask where security can conveniently be accommodated.

Kind of depends on what form security takes?

Security will be a person with relevant abilities.

One person could come to the southwest entrance of this house at a time.

At that time there is a woman who could pass for Amentan. Purple hair and everything.

The blue who goes to the door is a little confused about that part.

"Hi! Should it be a different color, they said purple was the most commonly occurring and I know grey is the one for 'will fight a war' but this is sort of on the down-low, right? I'm Mereth, pleasure to meet you."

"I was all ready for you to look like an alien but purple is fine. Soyok."

"I'm human, we look mostly Amentan. This place is pretty."

"Thank you. Come in."

In she goes!

"I have a guest room for you made up over here."

"Thank you!" 

He shows her to it. It's nice.

She sits down happily. "Does anybody need reassurance that y'all are safe - or magic healing, for that matter, I also have magic healing and could do that -"

"I haven't told anybody we're seceding. We won't have to if the rest of the Houses join up. But if they don't they might be annoyed. I've got about a million and a half people, that cleared the threshold mentioned on TV. I'm not aware of any acute medical issues right now."

"Good for you. It's a good deal and, like, they'll remember who was on top of making it happen."

"Who will, Vanda Nossëo?"

"Yeah."

"What results does that have?"

"More cool stuff? Like, a lot of the cool stuff really goes out on a trust basis. The things for which there's consistent overwhelming demand, there are rules about how to distribute it. But, like, who gets to be the site of a trial of giving everyone some cool new magic, who gets to be the first portal hub once portals are stable and scalable, all of that is 'who is competent enough to use this well and cares about their people enough to use it for them?'."

"Oh."

"Is that not how things work in most places? My classes on alien governments mostly covered the other member states - and not even all of them, there are too many..."

"Things sometimes sort of go on a trust basis internally but I think our 'internally' is smaller."

Nod. "I'm from Luster, which is a Mîr protectorate - Mîr runs really hard on trust because of how their power source works."

"- so you're not even from Vanda Nossëo?"

"...Luster is also a Vanda Nossëo member state. Usually you aren't both but - uh, how much of a political overview do you actually want."

"Some?"

"There are lots of Elf planets. They all sign up for Vanda Nossëo the minute they hear about it, and this is convenient for everyone because Elves are a very trustworthy reliable species and they don't have to be bribed to do what Vanda Nossëo does because it's by design exactly the thing they most want to be doing - Elves are lower psychological variance, too, when I say it's exactly what they want to be doing I mean way more of them than you could get humans agreed on any particular goal. Luster's an Elf planet. It has humans, too, but the Elves rule us.

It's in range of Mîr, and everyone in range of Mîr is a protectorate with more or less independence because Mîr's powers are just really really thorough that way, and an Elf princess of ours is married to the Empress of Mîr, and that was working okay for everyone, and then Luster made contact with Vanda Nossëo and said 'do you mind' and Mîr said 'that looks right up your alley, go have fun' and we got expedited membership 'cuz Elves."

"...range?"

"It's complicated. You are way out of range."

"...okay."

"Some worlds are adjacent to one another in a way that doesn't have to do with physical distance, and some kinds of power are adjacency-constrained. This - region for adjacency purposes, some people use 'universe' for a region for adjacency purposes and 'multiverse' for the whole thing - is seven jumps from Luster and eight from Mîr. I'm not a, uh, I don't even know if physicists know more than that, but I definitely don't."

"That explains the Mîr thing I guess."

"Uh huh. I got my powers from Mîr but I work for Vanda Nossëo, doing internal security stuff."

"So what are you going to do exactly if a few neighboring Houses march their security in here?"

"Turn their weapons into modelling clay and put them back where they came from with little sticky notes saying 'please don't try that again'. One time I did 'please don't try that again, they take it out of my bonus if I have to actually hurt anyone' but I got scolded for being threatening."

"...uh-huh."

"I can demonstrate if that'd be reassuring. And anyone doesn't mind their weapons being modelling clay."

"Why modelling clay?"

"It happens to be particularly easy with the powers I've got, it communicates 'this totally does not need to get violent but if it does you lose' pretty clearly without being all that threatening..."

"What other powers do you have?"

"I've got the standard Mîr suite - healing, minor transmutation, illusions and stuff, I can conjure my weapon, I can change my outfit and appearance around at will - and then I've got the specific thing I wished on, which is that when I'm in a dangerous situation I can suddenly speed up like a thousandfold compared to the rest of the world and I can turn anything I can see into modelling clay and I can move it around. - I was in a car accident. I was trapped and it was horrible. Mîr magic runs on really strong emotions - after I got out I was having nightmares about it and I went through the application for a wish."

"...huh."

"If your House neighbors are likely to launch a missile at us and you haven't got missile-tracking of some kind then you need a precog but for anything short of that you're safe enough."

"A precog. Wow. - I was kind of expecting to have to prove somehow that I didn't set this up as some kind of plot."

"Do you want to prove that? Vanda Nossëo kind of runs on - well, they underplay their firepower a bit, right, and if people decide to try to betray them or take them hostage or manipulate them or whatever, the information is more than worth the inconvenience. We try to be not worth plotting against a lot harder than we try to catch plots."

"...they underplay their firepower?"

"Oh yeah."

"Damn. All right. I'm not plotting anything, this is just the sort of thing that would've looked like a plot to - the sort of person I'm used to."

"Scarcity," she says. "And mortality. People are way better to each other when they know that no matter what nothing really bad can actually happen. Like - you can't die now, you understand that? And your kids can't die, and your grandkids, and anyone else you care about - if something happens in the course of getting membership, when we have guaranteed you security, we will put them right back whether you can afford a resurrection or not. Everyone's gonna be safe. And once people get used to that, then they can go 'oh. okay, what else do I care about? And often enough they care about - passing it on, making more people safe. Or making their country prosperous and happy and thriving and a place that people are desperate to immigrate to, or learning things, or inventing them - all this thought and energy and effort that was getting spent on zero-sum games..."

"Population controls are - really bad for us."

"Oh?"

"They're better than constantly slaughtering each other to take each other's land. But they're bad."

"Because of the zero-sum games thing?"

"And they just mean - everybody's feeling horrible a lot of the time. Even if you have fifteen kids you can't arrange for them all to have fifteen kids, nobody can sustain that, so then you have sad kids."

"I think Amentans want kids more than pretty much anyone."

"We always expected aliens would be the same way. Evolution."

"Luster humans hadn't even invented birth control yet when Mîr came to say hi. With it people average, like, two. Orcs are like you but they're not evolved, this asshole designed them that way so he'd have more slaves. Some species don't have high investment in their offspring and don't actually care whether they have any - Yeerks literally disintegrate to make their kids and I think are happy enough to not do that -"

"...wow. Why do they ever, then -"

"...I think until recently they didn't really get a choice about it, if their superiors said 'I want a million more Yeerks' then, well, you're dead either way, right? But also I guess some are suicidal? Or really want kids of theirs to exist even if they won't get to see them."

"Huh."

"That's not the sense in which Amentans want kids?"

"I mean, once you have one, you'd die to save them, if you had to, but you wouldn't die to have them."

"Makes sense. Well, luckily for you all most places don't want kids as much as you and if you end up chewing through disproportionately many colony planets that'll be fine. It's too bad you're not near Mîr, by now they'd have wished on some sort of infinite-space solution for you all."

"...uh-huh."

She raises an eyebrow quizzically.

"It just sounds a little - fantastical -"

"I guess. I was born into it, I can't really imagine what it was like for the people who went from a normal life to a - safe and vast and magic one."

Nod.

"Am I keeping you from, like, running your House and stuff?"

"Oh, most of the day to day is delegated and aliens landing is a good excuse to put off anything else."

"Okay, cool. I'm not really the best person for explaining stuff but I'm totally happy to."

"What else even is there?"

Shrug. "People stuff? More magic? The screening for wishes? I'm kind of curious what kind of plot people would suspect this of being, it doesn't seem spectacularly conducive to any plots but I might not have the cultural upbringing to be properly imaginative."

"How did you decide to come here? How long have you known about us? - uh, you've told me a lot of stuff you didn't say on TV, I could be gathering information or could conceivably have been planning to take you hostage."

"Anyone who was sufficient as security against all the other Houses would probably be pretty hard to take hostage. Plus, like, it's Fëanorians running Vanda Nossëo - I guess you wouldn't have known that.

I think we'd added you to a list like ten years ago, you're not high-priority because you wouldn't substantially benefit from any cheap resources and you haven't invented various low-tech ways to destroy yourselves and there'd have been substantial justified resistance to external governance and the reds thing is horrible and hard to fix. You haven't moved up the list much but one of the Elf princes decided to do it anyway, I think because Tapa had a girl he had determined with magic was the girl he wanted to marry. - uh, he can make contact on a whim but that doesn't mean things would get yanked out from under you if he got bored, once it's in motion we always follow through."

"...uh, all right. What is your angle on reds exactly?"

"...on my planet until recently homosexuality was considered disgusting, some places would kill people for it and some just made you - pretend... I've done security on a planet where disabled people were considered disgusting and if you were injured in an accident or in a war then the decent thing to do was to kill yourself and if you didn't do that everyone would just quietly loathe you - I've been to one where they murdered people in all kinds of horrifying ways for being heretics, by which they meant believing a slightly different variant of the local religion - look, everybody hates somebody. It's practically universal that if we land on a planet there'll be people who, to the outside eye, look no better and no worse than all the rest, but who the locals will tell us just need to die. 

So when you say that about reds, we're just kind of like 'okay, listening to those other people would have been a terrible mistake, the correct thing to do was to tell them 'uh, no, you don't have to like them but the law will be enforced for them too' and wait two generations for minds and hearts to change'. 

And maybe that's not true here. But so far you haven't said anything that sounds different than what literally everyone says about the people they hate."

"If you let them go everywhere you'll be - it's - a few planets from scratch is better than what we have now even if everything else is covered in - I'm not sure what you're planning to do about their jobs but you probably have some idea -

- but everybody who looks up at the stars will have to remind themselves that at least the stars themselves are on fire and probably not filthy even if we can't ever go anywhere else because they've been there first or might have been."

"...it probably won't help to point out that the other species do, like, use sewage for manure and have people who have handled the dead for thousands of years and stuff and that we won't force the entire universe into conformity with this thing of yours even if we agree to quarantine the reds in particular -"

"If someone goes hiking and dies and isn't found they'll eventually disappear into nature and that's fine. Reds are - ambulatory, self-renewing - people who have handled the dead for thousands of years are also a problem -"

"So are we supposed to go to literally hundreds of millions of worlds where literally hundreds of billions of people who handle the dead for a living and have for thousands of years are living happy joyous lives married to a - banker or a politician or a personal trainer or a engineer - and say 'look, unless we herd you off into hellish little camps or kill you the Amentans, who you have never met, will feel uneasy when they look at the sky' - those planets would rise up as one against us, they'd react the way Amentans would react if we showed up here and started herding all the gay people off to execute because the Valar think they're gross -"

"The who?"

Handwave. "Different species. They really hate gay people. It's just an example, the Andalites would want us to get rid of everyone who walks with a limp and the Asgardians think there's something stomach-turning about everyone male who does combat or sports or governance and the Ferengi think it's appalling if you let women own property - we might as well sterilize the multiverse, if we're going to hurt everyone who someone else wants gone -"

"The reds we - already have contained. If you whisk them away..."

"It'd be more salient and more upsetting than the fact other planets don't have this concept at all."

"Yes. We didn't really expect everyone would be identical - closer than this, but -"

"There aren't that many reds. They're totally dwarfed by the number of families whose coroner business says 'In the Family Since 1870' in a wood sign out front. Allowing them to immigrate would barely actually change the background - amount the universe has been touched by things you don't like. But it'd make you think about it."

"It'd mean that introducing Amenta to the universe made the universe worse."

"If you were in Mîr we could just have an Amentan wish that everything was not polluted and not pollutable, or something."

"But we aren't."

"Uh huh. You really don't think people will just, like, get over it, if raised in a society that doesn't treat it like the worst thing in the world? That usually happens. On Earth when they tried letting black and white kids go to the same school all the white kids quit so they wouldn't have to be in a room with the black ones and they could have waxed very eloquent about how much they were suffering but, like, twenty Amentan years later they're horribly embarrassed about the whole thing and no one cares."

"There are hyposensitives - we consider it a disorder - but there's also hypersensitives and most people are neither."

"I don't mean thinking that sewage isn't gross, other species think that too. I mean the being miserable that some other planet has been walked on by someone who used to be a garbage worker and isn't even a garbage worker anymore. If you didn't raise kids that way, would they really pick it up?"

"We couldn't go there. No one's upset that we can't go to red districts but we were always hoping once we could colonize planets our population problem would be over."

"We could quarantine this universe? The other ones aren't spatially contiguous with this one, it'd mean all of the stars you look at are fine and all of the places colonies could reach are fine, maybe someone can wish up decontaminating shuttles for people who want to go back and forth..."

"...the stars thing isn't really the point just an example. But maybe that would work."

"We don't want you to be miserable. But we - take it really seriously, about everyone having rights and being safe, and if anybody could just veto other people getting rights and being safe then the whole thing crumbles. People'll be so grateful if Amentans can propose a solution that doesn't make you miserable and would generalize acceptably to the next place we go that really hates rape victims or something."

"We don't hate them at random."

"The place I'm thinking of that hates rape victims doesn't hate them at random either, they can't afford to have doubts about paternity of children and haven't invented paternity testing and handle it with ridiculous-strength taboos on extramarital sex or putting oneself in a position where someone could have extramarital sex with you. It's not random but it's not something that should keep existing in a good world."

"Reds shouldn't exist in a good world. We've wanted to replace them with robots since the concept was invented."

"Now you sound like the people from that planet saying 'yeah, we kill rape victims by burying them up to their neck in the ground and having the whole community gather around to throw rocks at them because they shouldn't exist in a good world'. They shouldn't. But the fix isn't to murder the ones who do."

"I'd suggest not giving them any more permissions but you're probably going to make them immortal."

"Also it sounds like Amentans experience childlessness as something akin to torture. Does it really not wear off? Will their great-grandchildren really be just as - whatever it is you think they are - if they've never been anywhere near anyone unclean?"

"They are, their families are, anything they touch is."

"...would it solve anything if I checked what percentage of the not-red Amentan population has red ancestry because people cheat or abandon their babies in a box on a neighbor's doorstep or whatever? Or would it just freak people out if I'm right and it's kind of a lot of them?"

"...that would be worse than Savo's disaster and that was terrible and theoretically containable."

"I will tell my bosses to declare the answer to that question Very Classified."

Soyok nods.

"Usually when people realize the definition they're using doesn't actually mesh with their intuitions they retreat to a more pragmatic one. But I guess the retreating can still really suck." Shrug. "I don't suppose it'd be sufficient if you just had personal decontaminating bubbles?"

"...I'm not sure how that would work but maybe it would?"

"Probably the way to do that would be to have someone wish for it - wishes give you what you want, if they go through at all, though how they do it varies a bit - and then we could check what exactly the wish was doing and maybe find a less expensive way to do it. - the Empress does all wishes personally, too risky to delegate it."

"...okay..."

"...so that's not itself a scalable way to do it but it'd be a good way to figure out what exactly we'd be doing, and then find a scalable way."

"Is it generally straightforward to find out what magic is doing and then do it another way?"

"It would be easier to start from, like, a specification of what exactly you'd need the bubbles to do, but it sounds like you don't exactly think about pollution in those terms so, given that, something that we know Amentans will consider adequate is probably the best starting point."

"Not all things even have procedures to decontaminate them."

"Without magic, sure. With magic - like the bubble could just replace anything that comes in its range with something identical but made of newly-generated atoms, if it did that would that be sufficient?"

"...yes."

"So it'd be something like that. I bet there's a way to do that with a more scalable kind of magic but I'm not an expert."

Nod.

"And then Amentans can just go everywhere and be clean and, uh, the being clean is an accommodation we can figure out how best to arrange for you instead of a constraint on other people which will make it wildly more politically palatable."

"...I mean, it's still horrifying if everywhere else is polluted but it's much more tolerable if it would stop being that way as soon as we got close enough."

"And you're not gonna convince tons of aliens to suddenly terrorize their perfectly happy coroners. ...do you think coroners on other planets are also secretly not people or is it just ones here?"

"I suppose if a hyposensitive decided to be a coroner this wouldn't stop them from being a person."

"We could actually check with magic if reds are people. There's a form of mental magic called subtle arts, gets used for therapy, it does mind-reading and affect-reading and memory-reading and it can notice things like how you experience emotions and how you encode memories and how your mental processes work. If there were anyone who looked and acted normal but there was no light on inside, they'd be able to tell. 

If I asked you to bet something that mattered to you on what they'd find if they looked at reds..."

"If I were going to bet on it I'd probably arrange to meet one or something but I'd sooner not."

"Fair enough."

Sigh. "Is there anything you need? Since you don't look like an alien I can send the servants here."

"I will not turn down food and a television or local equivalent."

"Oh, there's a guest computer, I think it's in the nightstand drawer..." It is. "I'll have a servant bring you something to eat, assuming you can eat local stuff."

"Yeah, you all seem like humans except brighter hair colors and less sexual dimorphism and the babies thing."

"...what good is sexual dimorphism in a sapient species?"

"Specialization? I guess? In humans men are taller and stronger and most places they didn't let women study things or be in power until pretty recently. Before I was born, but pretty recently in the grand scheme of things."

"...huh."

"Some places still don't. Women are legally the property of their father until they sell them to their husband. Places that wanna be a member state have to cut that out."

Soyok makes a face.

She grins at him. "It's a hard balance to find between - giving what we've got to everyone who wants it and - insisting that people grow up. It helps that there's just not enough to go around and we do have to prioritize somehow."

"It's not going to make people - most comfortable - if they - notice that if you had slightly fewer things you'd be insisting on the reds instead of helping us. It's good that you have enough things to do both, if you come up with another way to get their jobs done I don't care what you do with them, but if you didn't..."

"It would be nice if you were treating them - just the way that was necessary to satisfy your pollution thing. They can't go places, okay. It's legal to torture and murder them - that's not something you need. Where being decent to them actually involves putting this stress on you, okay, that's really hard. But - there's lots of decency to them just lying on the ground for free and no one thinks it's worth the effort to lean over to pick it up."

"...it's not literally free."

"You could let them have their own courts and jails for people who torture and murder them, if you didn't want to pay for it."

"They can do what they like if it's other reds. They just can't bother clean folks about it. I don't think that's a very popular way to blow off steam anyway, you do have to shower for five hours afterwards, it'd be more convenient to just pull the petals off flowers or something."

"...okay, it would at least be free to consider it horrifying that people torture and murder reds for no reason, even if it'd take some tiny amount of effort to allow the reds to arrest them for it."

"But then we'd be horrified all the time."

Sigh. "If we had less resources then I think we'd just take them to another planet, give you robots, and hope that after they'd been gone for a while you were - more palatable allies. If we didn't have resurrection then people might want to, you know, put the torturers and murderers on trial ourselves, so I guess it's a good thing we've got that."

"It seems - not like the behavior of new friends to try people for things that weren't illegal when they did them."

"I should probably not get into this. We do have the resources we have, we're not going to hold anyone accountable for atrocities you committed under scarcity, these aren't the kind of conditions that make people their best selves.

But if for some reason we'd had to choose whether to be allies and friends with the reds or the clean Amentans, uh, they're a lot more sympathetic and indescribably less of a diplomatic liability. So. Yeah. If it'd come to that, we wouldn't be friends."

Soyok sighs. "I will probably be able to warn you if anyone marches on the property before shots are fired."

"Great." She pokes the television.

Computer. But it has TV available, domestic and foreign. Soyok leaves her alone.

She hangs out in the guest room watching television on the computer. 

Vanda Nossëo sends Calado a complaint about the kidnapping of their emissaries.

They are sorry! They are not sorry at all. They didn't harm them. They volunteer to have the perpetrators shot.

They are actually requesting extradition for trial in Vanda Nossëo. They understand that kidnapping is not very illegal in Calado but they take misconduct towards their emissaries very seriously.

Are they sure they wouldn't rather have them shot? They can have the greys but not the senator. The senator but not the greys. They can't have them at all!

They are very sure that they're requesting extradition of all involved parties and no shooting at all. Calado need not comply but it'll be a barrier to further diplomatic relations.

They didn't want further diplomatic relations anyway.

"What an interesting country."

       "I feel bad for the people."

"Yeah, but what can you do?"

       "Probably a lot of things if we're willing to expend stupid amounts of resources on it."

"...I'm listening."

Someone asks Elendil about the going price for one-off rings of teleport.

They're pricey, wizards being a bit scarce, why?

Uh, there's a country of people who would probably mostly choose to leave, but their government can't be negotiated with because it's, uh, really really bad at its job, and it would be great to give them the option of leaving. What share of people can get good enough to make them, and how long does it take?

Why do they want to do this with rings and not teleporters?

Going and taking people feels a lot more provocative than just giving them the ability to, if they see fit, leave. Also people will shoot the teleporters, or knock them unconscious and try to figure out their secret, or try taking them hostage, or try taking other people hostage to get favors from them -

"It's possible that all of the people who'd be ordered to do those things would, ah, also rather leave?"

"Oh, I'm sure they would, but if they're not coordinated or if there are just a couple positioning for a spot among those who stay -"

Well, the rings will be pretty steep, they're not very introductory material. Unless they want them in a few years.

They will keep it in mind if Calado is still disaster-ing along in a few years. Does anyone from a functioning state have advice on whether it's possible to productively operate in Calado.

Oh, sure, you just have to learn your way around, it's kind of a political maze.

The problem is that they cannot learn their way around if they will be kidnapped even flying near the country and there will be zero cooperation with investigating such kidnappings. You kind of need a minimum level of assurance that it's illegal to kidnap you before you can start learning your way around a country.

Well, yes, aliens are a special case.

So there's just no real way to productively interact with Calado.

Not for aliens and directly, probably.

Fine. 

Vanda Nossëo arrests the people who kidnapped their citizens. They do this with invisible teleporters; it is probably very confusing to the targets.

Well, they were warned. What are they going to do about the baby Datna is holding?

They will wait until she is not holding a baby.

She is spending a lot of time with the baby but eventually lets her grandson have it.

Shortly after that she vanishes.

She finds herself inside a very pretty unreasonably spacious prison cell somewhere with just a smidge less gravity than Amenta.

"Hello?"

No one answers. There's a door.

...she goes to the door and tries it.

Unlocked! There's a big atrium with some people playing table tennis and some watching television. 

"Excuse me."

"Hello!" says a brown-haired woman who is playing a board game of some kind. "This is Dasaer Correctional Facility. I'm Janet, I'm on staff here, how can I help you?"

"...where is the Dasaer Correctional Facility and what are its plans for me?"

"We're a moon off Odour, star system 3255J, Quadrant 116, your galaxy, and you have a preliminary hearing -" she pokes a computer - "tomorrow morning, 9:00 local time, on three counts of kidnapping."

"...and what happens in preliminary hearings?"

"The judge explains the charges to you and appoints you counsel. Then they talk you through things so you can confirm that you've been apprised of your rights, that you find the prison conditions acceptable, and that you're of sound mind and capable of understanding the proceedings."

"...that I find the conditions acceptable?"

"If, say, your species can't survive without at least a hundred miles of readily accessible wilderness, or if for religious reasons you need all your food prepared by a certified spiritual practitioner, or if you require a single-sex facility..."

"..."

"Obviously if there's anything urgent you can let me know right now, but the hearing will cover it."

She sighs.

 "There's a queue to set what's on the big TV but there's a smaller one in your room!" Janet says, returning to the board game she is playing.

She goes back to her room.

There's a big monitor and an unfamiliar keyboard, or it does voice commands, and she can browse Dasaer internet and television.

She pokes around a little.

Locals look like Amentans with rubber foreheads; planet suffered an ecological disaster a hundred years back and since then they've mostly lived underground and on their moons, which doesn't bother them as much as it bothers Amentans (but they still asked for a massive planet cleanup for their Vanda Nossëo membership perk.) Now the planet's lovely and habitable and they're moving back above ground. There are like six billion of them. Dasaer Correctional Facility holds some people who blew up some buildings trying to prevent the membership vote and a couple people who used ambassadorial jobs as cover for smuggling some prohibited substance. The member planet gets 18,000 resurrections, which they distribute to the citizens who died the youngest, and 7,000 immortality necklaces a year, which they auction. 

What's the TV like.

Rubber-forehead alien police procedural! Rubber-forehead alien sports! (Lots of those!) Rubber-forehead alien docudrama! Rubber-forehead alien local news! Rubber-forehead alien presidential debate!

...she can't understand the language. She watches rubber-forehead-alien sports.

Eventually someone stops by with a meal! It is an exact replica of a meal served in an upscale Calado restaurant.

...that's sort of weird but okay. She eats it, if they wanted her harmed they could probably do that without poisoning her food.

The food is unpoisoned. In the morning Janet knocks on her door.

Datna groans and gets up. "What?"

"Someone is here to escort you to your hearing!"

Datna opens the door.

Person is yet another species and in a trim unfamiliar uniform. "Ready to go?"

"If I said I had an urgent hair appointment would you believe me?"

"...I wouldn't disbelieve you - we get all kinds here - but I would not take you to the hair appointment."

"I am ready to go unless I'm meant to be offered breakfast first."

"There's a coffee place at the courthouse." Pop. Now they are in a different building with elaborate alien architecture and lots of people. Person points at the coffee shop. It has a short line. "It's free, one of those weird Elf places."

"I can't read the menu."

"Oh, I can get you a wand - wait in line? I'll be back in a sec -"

"...do you often leave arrestees unsupervised? I can't teleport, but..."

"And I can teleport to you if you're within a couple trillion lightyears of here. We don't really have a problem with prisoners attempting escape but if you're uncomfortable I of course won't leave."

"Are any of the other people in line violent criminals?"

"No, there's a different procedure for those."

She sighs. "You may go."

He is back five seconds later with a strange-looking wand. He taps her. Now the sign is perfectly readable. 

She orders a coffee and a chocolate bread.

They're free. The teleporter walks her to a courtroom.

She doesn't make any trouble.

The judge explains her rights. It's a long list. She has the right to counsel, which will be appointed for her in this hearing; she has the right to refuse to participate in the judicial process, which may adversely affect the outcome of her kidnapping case but will not earn new charges; she has the right to prison conditions in line with intergalactic treaty and with expectations in her native society to the extent those are compatible with public safety; she has the right to refuse to testify under a truth effect, though this will of course affect the credibility of her testimony; she has the right to know the evidence against her and submit questions for her accusers; she has the right to an appeal; she has the right to a clear and straightforward explanation of the law and of the legal process,which the judge duly provides. 

(Kidnapping is the crime of unlawful transportation and confinement of a person against their will;  'unlawful' is met if the kidnapper did not reasonably believe themselves to be acting in their capacity as an officer of the law to carry out an arrest for which they had a lawfully obtained warrant; the penalty for each charge, of which there are three, is between one and six local years' imprisonment. Local years are a quarter of Amentan years.)

The judge wants to know if she understands her rights and whether prison conditions are acceptable and whether she understands the crime she is charged with.

"I am entitled to issue warrants," she says.

"Had you issued a warrant for the arrest of the persons you are accused of kidnapping?"

"My say-so constitutes one."

"What were they charged with?"

"Possession of alien technology."

"Were they informed that they were under arrest?"

"I think they noticed."

"Defendant's counsel, I recommend you talk to your client before we add anything to the record."

       "Yes, your honor."

"Do you understand the charges against you?"

"No. Under what jurisdiction am I charged?"

"Vanda Nossëo."

"According to what law am I extradited?"

"Vanda Nossëo prosecutes certain crimes against its citizens committed anywhere in the universe, barring locations that have negotiated a different arrangement, under Statute 43 of the Third Treaty on galactic operations."

"The prison is fine as prisons go."

"Do you have questions for this court."

"Will my family be notified of or compensated in any way for my disappearance?"

"You are permitted to write home. Is it conventional in Calado to compensate the families of persons arrested for crimes for the inconveniences associated with their disappearance?"

"If you arrest someone important."

The judge looks unimpressed. "You could request that a charitable organization compensate your family for the inconvenience associated with your arrest."

"How would I do that?"

"You have internet access in prison. I am sure the prison staff would be happy to assist you."

Sigh.

Her court-appointed attorney explains what attorneys do (they help you make your case to the court! their job is to make sure you do as well as you would do with perfect knowledge of the law and ability to advocate for yourself using it! what time would be convenient for her to set up a meeting?)

"I have no plans."