Beeple don't either, they just think it's gross when it does happen.

One of the beeple wants to know how Amentans do population control since they can't just restrict access to queen-making nutrients.

They have various medical interventions that people can take to prevent per-act or per-spring or per-part-of-spring conception.

How do they enforce it, though?

They're not gonna like it.

...Oh?

Most places what they do is they take the unauthorized baby away and put it up for adoption.

For historical reasons, Tapa once found it necessary to have extremely strict population controls to avoid a terrible war, which they successfully avoided. This resulted in the lowest worldwide per-capita rate of population control violation, and the policy has been kept since for that reason despite controversy. There is a statute of limitations associated but they kill unauthorized babies.

One of the non-linguist greens pipes up that as long as the beeple remain secret, they could teleport babies slated for infanticide elsewhere and leave them on doorsteps to be adopted out and no one would be able to notice.

...The beeple are very much in favor of preventing infanticide but it also sounds like every other nation on Amenta could use their taxi services.

Yes, it's not efficient, it would just be an option if they really hated the infanticide.

They really hate the infanticide! It's infanticide! But that doesn't necessarily make secrecy a good idea. Maybe they could give the babies-to-be-infanticided to the beeple and the beeple can figure out what to do with them that doesn't involve letting Amentans know they were not infanticided.

Sure. They will do that next time they find one. It is still the time of year for that.

Okay. Good. Infanticide is terrible. Why on earth was it necessary to avoid war?

So, before they had worldwide population controls, somebody decided the way to make them happen - which was genuinely important if badly executed - was to take over much of the world and prioritize places with looser regulations. Tapa did not want to be invaded and got some diplomats to allow that they wouldn't be if they literally killed unauthorized babies. They went through with it and the empire backed off.

That's awful.

They do have a very low noncompliance rate, so very few babies per capita die and fewer parents make stupid choices and lose their children.

Still. Aaaaaah.

Yes. They don't enforce it on their protectorates.

Good.

Any other questions?

They would appreciate tutoring for one of the consorts and a handful of workers in Tapai and to discuss trade deals.

They can provide that!

Excellent.

Tradewise: Things the beeple want: modern infrastructure. Things the beeple have to trade: food and taxi services. There are other things in both categories but those are the big ones.

Food is a short-term need and in the long term not a great use of beeple transit capacity but they could definitely use some of it to alleviate rationing till the war is over. Tapa would love to send them a labful of roboticists and some infrastructure teams and get underway on finding habitable planets they can dance to.

Okay, sure.

They will take some time to assemble the roboticists. What would they need to know about the locations of planets to get there? Can they dance in spacesuits?

...They would need to try it to be sure. They're working on that, they have some vague specifications but will need more specific ones when they figure out which ones.