"...Elves can read minds," Butterfly points out.

"Space Elves can't."

"- true. But it'd still be plausible that they'd been misled."

"And it would probably take time for the word to spread far enough - if the Empire did not keep it a secret anyway -"

"I'm skeptical of finding substantial numbers of volunteers for such a process but a forked Space Elf, missing eidetic memory but with complete and high-context memories of the general operative policies of the relevant entities - so, a fork of someone who's heavily involved in wide-spanning projects - would present a fairly unambiguous bid for good faith operation. The Empire choosing to withhold that information, or taking a long time to decide what to do with it while our scouts tolerate ambiguously tolerable conditions, is much less under our control even assuming unlimited convenient volunteers."

"I would have to ask whether anyone who would have the relevant qualifications would be comfortable volunteering, but I tentatively expect so, Elves seem very -"

He misses his tail. He shakes his head instead. "Pro-social with a bit of a martyrdom complex."

"They are, and some of the Space ones have a remarkable casualness about forks. I suppose the 'tolerable conditions' bit could potentially be alleviated if chiplocked suicide apparatus perfected during their war would still respond to them even while they were infested."

"That is at least straightforwardly tested. Shall I send whoever's handling personnel in Ambaróna a message asking?"

"Perhaps not right now, we may think of something else."

"It may also turn out that the idea for affecting the stars won't work."

"Do we have a way of testing that? What's the plan if it doesn't?"

"Oh, yes, an ordinary Kandrona generator plus an ordinary star and someone who can morph Yeerk should demonstrate proof of concept, it's not hard to test, just might not work. Solar shade is an option, if a more laborious one and harder to prevent the Empire from just blowing up."

"We can probably disable their ships' weapons systems without any casualties. I wouldn't know what to target but we can build a copy of the fleet they have in orbit and practice if necessary."

"But it is certainly preferable to avoid space combat, even if it may be accomplished without casualties - it probably adds nothing to our credibility that we have to conventionally defend our solar shields and can't just turn part of the star off."

"I wonder what would happen if we just advertised the availability of resurrection and affected not caring whether we get surrender de jure or surrender de facto via suicide?"

He glances at Ristrell, who must be finding this conversation fascinating.

Enthralling. "I suppose they won't know that you'd have any more trouble locating suicides than generators," Ristrell allows. "I would imagine some would call your bluff. You will certainly have to field demands, especially while demonstrating sufficient formidability that it will be easy to assume anything they might want would be trivial."

"Any particularly famously dead Yeerks who could be verifiably resurrected? What sort of demands - will demanding that everyone leave their current host body and take a basement-dweller host we provide for them at the generator site go over better than demanding they leave their host body for a pool?"

"We haven't actually checked basement dweller hosts yet, have we?" says Butterfly.

"Plenty of famously dead Yeerks. Nearly impossible to verify their identities. We all look alike," says Ristrell, "and people who could confirm that they provided information only they would know would be few. They will certainly feel less helpless in hosts than in pools."

"So maybe 'we have resurrection and intend to get everyone back if they suicide' works best as part of the good-faith scouting plan. We haven't checked basement dweller hosts but animals morphed human work -"

"What is the stupidest animal morphed human that has been tried?"

"I have spent the last several years in political prison. When I left it was 'lab rat'."

"There hasn't been a lot of call for experimentally going any stupider than lab rats and a basement dweller is stupider than a lab rat - and won't have human instincts, either, which morphing presumably provides rats just as effectively as it does people."

"So we could provide replacement nonsapient hosts for everyone but it would take a lot more effort, can't just make them."

"Basement dwellers might work fine, we just haven't tested it."