People! Lots of people; skyscrapers lining both sides of a pedestrian street that is just full of briskly-moving people. He can hear a subway underground, and see the stop two blocks in the distance, people filing up and down escalators. People brush impatiently past him, apparently undisturbed that he appeared in the middle of nowhere. They're distinctly shorter-than-human and their hair comes in an astonishing variety of colors: bright yellows and oranges and purples and greens and silvers and white. Yellow seems to be most popular.

...and literally no one has dark hair. Huh. He should—perhaps not stand out quite as much. His hair turns yellow fast enough someone else might think it was just a trick of the light.

He's still the tallest person around but his hair stands out less! People continue to indifferently brush past him.

Okay good. He supposes.

He doesn't have local currency, but he can wish up some. He looks for some hidden alley.

That's a hidden alley! It has garbage cans, and is painted red.

Uh huh. He zips that way and looks around to see whether it's really empty—

Looks it.

Okay, he reaches inside a small pouch that is way bigger on the inside and grabs a pink fist-sized crystal. He wishes up some local currency—

Now he has some colorful cardstock-ish bills in his hand.

And the pink crystal becomes pink dust which he's quick enough to collect inside the bag of holding.

Next up: looking for a cafe or some such.

When he walks out of the alley people glance at him with alarm and disgust and veer out of his way and in a few cases run off. 

...what.

Anyone talking about it?

Not really! Pulling other people out of his way, in one or two cases, with a gesture at the alley as if that is self-explanatory.

And now there are silver people with batons directing the crowd around the entrance to the alleyway and walking over towards him.

...sounds like something he doesn't understand and he's not entirely sure he wants this world's first impression to be him in prison. He zips through the alley too fast for the (human) eye to see and out the other side and a bit away before rounding a corner at a regular speed.

He is among unalarmed colorful people again!

Yeah now he'll go to a cafe.

Purple-haired servers will take his order. 

He has translation magic; he orders whatever seems most normal or common or whatever there, and...

...he doesn't like to think of it as listening in but that's what it is. He'll stop paying attention to any conversations that sound too personal but he wants to understand this place a bit better.

" - trying to get a second mortgage on my parents' house so we can afford a baby this year, if we wait until next we'll be shorthanded in the restaurant -"

" - my manager's a sweetheart but she's not very good at her job and so the department's kind of treading water - they could promote me but no -"

" - owes me four hundred ni and I'd take her to court but I think filing fees and so on come to half that and if she doesn't have the money there's not much they can do -"

" - and then he was like 'I just don't see a future together' and I'm like, okay, but you could have said that to me three seasons ago and not wasted my time -"

" - the R was shut down between Cobblestone and Central because someone threw himself onto the tracks, can you believe how inconsiderate - disgusting -"

He can pay attention to a large number of conversations. He'll just wait there, with his eyes closed, until he catches something meaningfully different, paying more attention to weirder conversations and less to more mundane ones.

"My grandson wants to study robotics, I'm so proud of him of course but I'm not going to sleep a wink - he's an only child, I wish he'd choose something safer -"

"It was creeping around the alley behind our house in the middle of the night, startled my husband and he shot it - the police were very understanding but discharging a weapon within city limits is still a very expensive fine - we're going to try to explain to the judge -"

"She's a gift for singing but she hits the out-of-caste income cap by mid-season and then it doesn't help us with the bills at all -"

" - my cousin married blue - Inaset, you remember her, stunningly pretty and knows how to use it - and said he could maybe arrange a travel visa but nothing's come of it yet -"

...yeah those all sound interesting he pays attention to those.

"I thought the university protected them," says first conversation's interlocutor dubiously, "put them in the medical devices department or something so no one had to know -"

            "Oh, I mean, it's not as if they have a department of robotics with a sign on the door but there are ways it could get out -"

"Firing into an alley shouldn't really count as discharging a weapon in a city," agrees second conversation's companion, "the point of that law is presumably that you could negligently hurt someone but no one's going to be in an alley -"

           "That's what I think! And the fine'd be a real hardship, and we've never been in trouble with the law before -"

"I know someone who made tutorials, put them online, said they were teaching singing and then it's in-caste income -"

           "That's clever, I'll tell her to try it - does it matter if most of the money's not really from the teaching -"

Travel visa people have moved on to discussing sites they'll see on the planned trip if they get permission.

Travel visa person can be ignored, he can pay attention to the others.

"There could be a high-security facility somewhere -"

       "Then the riots would just be at random -"

"When's the court date -"

      "Tomorrow, I took the morning off work -"

"I think you could get in trouble if someone really had it out for you but not otherwise."

     "Well if someone really had it out for us I'm sure the daycare's breaking some obscure rule I've never even heard of -"

Okay but what was creeping, strange person? And what's that about riots? And he's starting to think the castes have to do with... hair colour?

People use a couple words interchangeably for the castes but, yes, some of the words they use are colors and the colors seem to match the ones that are around. (There are no blues in this coffeeshop; things attributed so far to blues have included the ability to arrange travel visas, so much money they could 'pay it off and never even notice', the allocation of child credits, and connections in the courts). 

The person whose husband shot something says 'it was red' as if this is self-explanatory; her companion certainly seems to agree. 

He will try to pay more attention for the word 'red' in other conversations.

It's not a popular conversation topic! 

" - walked right out of the alley, and when they called in greys he just vanished. There's a surveillance photo circulating but it's blurry -"

      "- yellow?"

"Yeah."

     "So what was he doing there -"

"How would I know?"

...he should not be yellow anymore, but he's not sure what to be...

...green. Seems to be the scientist or artist caste, if he's getting these conversations right. He'll pay for his drink and slip away and continue to pay attention to conversations around.

People are worried about making ends meet and annoyed about their commutes and the train crowding and wishing they could afford to get out of town for the winter. Orange professions mentioned are teacher, daycare worker, paramedic, therapist; yellow ones are secretary and software developer and auditor and journalist; green are roboticist and university professor and mathematician and photographer and novelist; blue might be the government and everybody's landlords; grey is military and police and sports; purple is retail and manufacturing and farming. 

People really don't talk about red much. Eventually - "I hate hiring reds, hate it, so we've been putting the pipe repairs off for months - we might go on vacation for  a week just so I don't have to fear the children getting near them -"

" - and then a red does the autopsy, and you watch - behind glass, of course - to get an understanding -"

Reds are "dirty things." Whom people don't care if they shoot. Got it. He slips off into an unwatched alley again and changes his hair to green...

...makes himself shorter...

...he's still unearthily pretty but he likes that and it will only stand out normal amounts.

He's not going to rush this. This world is crap; so are most others. Rushing things won't help, it was already going through crap before he arrived, if he rushes anything he'll probably cause way more harm than good. He needs to learn more.

First things first, then: he'll need to officially exist. People don't just start existing out of nowhere. He's not sure how hard that will be, it depends on how electronic this society is, whether they use paper ID or something more complex—but the existence of paper money suggests they're not too far beyond his Earth, technologically.

Hmm. If he got things right, a good place for a green to be might be a university. He zips around a corner so it doesn't look like he's coming out of the alley, then starts walking with the flow of people and trying to pay attention to anything people have to say about where one might be.

There's a conversation within range about a university but not about where to find it.

He looks for the speakers. Are they green?

They are!

Good so he could plausibly ask—" Excuse me."

"Hmm?"

"I'm a bit turned around, where can I find—" and he names the university they were just talking about.

Take the S train six stops and walk along East.

He thanks them and looks/hears for the train station.

Train station! Incredibly crowded, with every color but red.

Including blue? He once again pays mild attention to all conversations around him.

Yep looks like blues are not important enough to avoid public transit. There's a more expensive car up front where they mostly sit, though. 

" - and the execution's on Friday but I don't really know if I want to go, and I think the kids had probably best stay home -"

" - you'd think they could set a price for immigrant visas, even if it was outlandish, and then there'd be some hope -"

" - gave money to a red girl and I think I know what that means - couldn't bring myself to report him but I sure reported her -"

Death penalty. How incredibly charming. What was the crime? And what's that about visas and a red girl?

Crime was trying to strangle her during a domestic altercation, sounds like. 

Visa person is upset that there's no allowance for legal immigration to this country where he wants to go to university. 

Woman caught her husband sending money to a red girl and reported the red girl and left the husband.

Ah huh.

She's now assuring her friend that she didn't take a single thing from the house not even her great-great-grandmother's earrings and showered for eight hours once she'd gotten to a hotel.

...he'll try to reserve judgment until he's figured out whether there's some biological basis for their worries.

Friend soothes her that they'll take care of the red girl right quick and she was right to leave and very even-tempered not to set him on fire first really.

Ugh. How do these people even exist if they hate their plumbers so much.

It's his train stop.

Oh good. He steps out of the train and follows that green-haired person's instructions.

And he finds a university campus full of green-haired people. It's well-trafficked, but not swarming, dense but with parks where students are outside with tablets reading or working. There are libraries and research buildings and classrooms and student housing.

He looks around for the place where people enrol as students.

There's an admissions office but it appears to be mid-season, and additionally to require all your secondary school marks and scores and recommendations and independent project work and so on.

What if he just wants to sits on classes?

Still have to be enrolled, they're not a charity.

Hmpf. He will try to surreptitiously gather information on whether their records are digital enough that he'll have a hard time faking them.

Records are pretty much digital! Stuff from distant poorer provinces is still being digitized in some cases but mostly that's for historical records, not for last season's school reports. There's no one actually checking if students who sit in on classes are enrolled, though.

Oh well that is useful, then. What classes are there, around here?

This university seems to specialize in physics, mathematics, computer science, second-millenium history and comparative literature.

Hmm... any classes happening right now?

Lots! They're all mid-season though.

History seems most useful so he'll sit one class in that major and pay attention to a few others (especially compsci and physics) that are within range. He'll stay at the back of the class, though, so as not to draw too much attention.

They're ahead of Earth at compsci and physics but not hundreds of years ahead or anything.

Second millennium history covers an ugly series of wars and how the world settled on the caste system in its present (and presently universal) form and the emergence of the first democracies and early instances of regions having population problems (which they solved with wars or internal mass murder or let starvation sort it).

...what a terrible place. Anything about why they had so many problems with overpopulation so early in their history or is that taken for granted?

It is considered fairly obvious that any society will have problems with overpopulation unless they have lots and lots of people dying very young for some reason.

Uh huh. Does he have access to the library?

He could leap the little turnstile thing fast enough no one noticed.

Yup he'll do that and look up books on biology.

Locals live for forty local years and are fertile for fifteen of them and most people have a mild preference for a child every spring of their fertile years and a strong preference for a child at least every two springs. Adoption sort of counts and living with children who aren't yours sort of counts and multiparent arrangements sort of count but the unrestricted birth rate given universal access to free birth control and abortion is five children per woman. 

Every country in the world has population controls. This one, Anitam, auctions credits by caste. If you have a child without a credit they get adopted out and you get sterilized.

...okay so they will probably be more resistant than humans to being turned, if that even works on them, that's useful to know. What are other countries' population controls like?

Some places do lottery instead of auction; some places do two-children-per-family; some places award extra child credits for service to the nation; some places do a mix of all of those.

Do they all sterilise people?

A couple kill the babies instead.

What the fuck.

He cannot go save all the babies. There is nothing he can do to countriesful of people who kill babies for population control. He should not go do anything about that.

...what is the incidence rate of these things.

Pretty rare! Why would you have children if they will get taken away and you will be sterilized. Anitam has six hundred million people and around eight hundred babies were adopted out last spring. 

...okay. That's less worrying.

He will start being a pretty assiduous student and sitting on many classes.

No one gives him a hard time as long as they're big lecture-style classes. History class covers the formation of Anitam and miscellaneous tribulations and wars on its way to its present state. Yellows and greens have grown as castes over time, and greys shrunk (though no one is willing to let them shrink too much, lest there be a war and they can't mobilize enough soldiers for it). There was, recently, a war; Voa poisoned their food supply and Anitam aided one of Voa's neighbors in annexing enough farmland to be self-sufficient.

Anitam is presently technically a democracy, with votes weighted such that blues (.5% of the population) count for about 40% of the vote.

...seriously? Okay. Why did Voa poison their food supply?

(Also she is sometimes a girl. Probably recognisable, given the unearthly prettiness and the smarts.)

Gets her some weird glances but that's about it. This planet doesn't seem to feel strongly about gender. Couple people seem to hesitate to ask her out because of uncertainty about, uh. 

Voa poisoned their food supply at the behest of a single scheming blue who thought if everyone had to eat disgusting food they'd get used to it. This was not how it worked out.

If anyone asks her out she will politely decline, saying she's already in a committed relationship.

As for the disgusting food: did this single scheming blue make reds do something? He did, didn't he. She's sure he did.

Let them handle the food.

She reminds herself for the four hundredth eighty-ninth time (she's been counting) that this is a Hard Problem and she needs to learn as much as she can about all the everything before moving on to doing something. She feels like she's soon gonna reach that point, though, and she's still not sure of what to do. Perhaps go visit some reds at some point. For now, she'll sit on classes and be brilliant and pay particular attention to anything involving reds and sometimes look up books and pieces of news that mention them. She'll also wish up their version of a smartphone—pocket everything, what a cute name—so she can look things up on the internet about what's going on in the world.

One country decided recently to get rid of all their reds and just rotate people into the reds jobs and thoroughly decontaminate them afterwards.

Get rid as in kill them?

They just drove them out. ...wasn't anywhere for them to go but whatever.

Did they in fact go anywhere?

Some of them tried and got shot at the border! Some of them managed to get a boat and got to the opposite shore and got shot. Some of them have doubled up with relatives in cities that had not yet transitioned away from reds. Some of them are trying to do subsistence farming in an abandoned mining town in the middle of nowhere. They're not allowed to be there but the government hasn't bothered with the expense of a security team and cleanup crew.

...mining town visit sounds like a potentially good idea. She should probably go there.

Visas are a real real hassle. And the airports are closed in anticipation of a massive storm.

...she can run real fast if she needs to, and a storm is the perfect cover...

Olvala is halfway around the world but she could try to run there if she wanted. 

The storm, as promised, storms.

Halfway around the world is... well, perhaps a few days running. And she's really pissed off about not being able to do anything so yeah she just might do that. She goes out during the storm.

There are reds! She won't have seen any reds; in important buildings they have separate access tunnels so no one has to see them. But there are some right there in a trash alley shivering.

Fuck.

She walks over to where they are. She's wearing warm clothes—it'd be weird to not dress according to the weather, call attention—but not nearly enough for this storm.

They look at her nervously.

"Hi. I have—you can keep my coat but it won't be enough—" She removes her coat and throws it in their direction. "I don't buy into the craziness about reds here but I understand if you won't take my word for that."

One of them catches the coat. The least wrapped up one puts it on.

...should she use magic. She does not know if she should use magic. "I could bring you stuff. Coats, blankets, a heater. I will be incredibly fast while doing it in a somewhat inexplicable way but I can do that. Is there anything else you need?"

They're sort of staring at her.

"I will go be inexplicably fast and after I have your stuff you can tell me if you need any more stuff, 'kay?"

They voice no objections.

She walks away and after turning around a corner zips off to the nearest clothing store. She doesn't need a very large wish crystal to unlock the door and turn off the alarms and surveillance, at least temporarily, and she can be fast enough about it to get lots of clothes without being caught by any other cameras. She does the same thing for a heater and blankets and then returns carrying all those things. She leaves money in all stores as well as a note that she really really needed it so it's only technically not stealing.

The reds are still alive. And very confused.

"Here I am, an inexplicably short time later, with stuff for you." She throws them in their direction, then asks, "Now, is there anything else you need?"

They look at each other. They put on hats and coats. One murmurs, "It depends how long the storm lasts."

"Let's for now assume it'll last through the night?"

"This will keep us through the night ma'am."

"Okay. Is there anything I have failed to think of that might make this insufficient? Like, will anyone else want to beat you up if they run into you and see you wearing actually warm clothes or anything?"

"...we're allowed to have clothes ma'am."

"I know, I'm just—this whole system is so stupid, this whole no touching thing is so stupid, did you hear about those reds in that mining town? I was heading there and there was this storm—I'm not making a lot of sense right now, never mind me."

Silent staring reds.

"Also—could you maybe not mention to people about how inexplicably fast and helpful I am? Trying to keep a low profile."

".......yes ma'am."

A person rounds the corner to the alleyway and blinks at Sadde and the bundled reds and the heater and the blankets. He blinks particularly at the box the heater came in. He walks towards them.

...well, there goes that, then. This green will wait for the blue to walk towards them and not run away at all.

He's all bundled up but probably-on-purpose left some locks of hair showing.

"There was a report some people were stranded here."

People, huh? Not garbage?

"Well, there are some people stranded here. They will now survive the night in spite of this fact, though."

"Now?"

"Well, they perhaps weren't going to, before, on account of the lack of warm clothes and a heater."

"A good thing you happened to have some lying around."

"Oh no I stole them. Well, I also left the stores I stole them from money and a note explaining I really really needed these things so it's only technically not stealing."

" - you heard there were stranded reds and you broke into multiple stores to steal them heaters and blankets and leave money and apology notes?"

"That about sums it up, yes."

He glances at the reds. "We're going to go inside and talk. Would you like to come in as well, or would you rather wait it out out here -"

"- we are fine here sir," one says from where they're huddled around the heater.

"Mmhmm." He wants to know their names but if he asks now they'll be terrified. He can probably look it up from public records later. He sets down a package of sandwiches. He looks back at green self-confessed thief. "Aitim Neli."

"Oh I never did think up a plausible name—Sadde Woods," she says, not translating her last name. Then looks at the reds. "Is it likely that there might be other reds in the same situation as you?"

"...probably ma'am."

She turns to look at Aitim. "Mr. Neli, I think I should go help the other reds inexplicably quickly before I talk to you in private."

" - it's not clear to me what avenues of assistance are available to you but large-scale theft of heaters and blankets seems much less useful and much more illegal than, say, clearing the road enough to get them home or to the nearest tunnel. It's also not clear to me how you mean to find them but where work permits were issued yesterday might be a good place to start."

"—helpful and good ideas, thank you. Do you have good ways to go home or to the nearest tunnel if the roads are cleared, will your trucks and whatnot actually work in this temperature?" she asks the reds.

".....we could put the heater on the engine ma'am."

"Yeah but then I will still have to technically-not-steal heaters for other reds—unless I could use this heater here and then bring it to the other trucks..."

"You can't touch it if they have."

"You have no idea how little I care about this world's purity intuitions, but okay, which do you think is better, stealing lots of heaters so they can use their trucks to get home or using the single heater in every one?"

"Theft under sixty ni is a misdemeanor; gross and willful pollution violations are a capital offense."

Probably once upon a time she would've smiled.

"And I'm sure I don't want the government to attempt to kill me, it will be so unpleasant for everyone involved. I will steal some heaters and clear some roads. I asked them to not tell people about everything inexplicable about this night, do you suppose I could ask you the same?"

"I will eagerly await your return for an explanation and spread no bizarre rumors while you are out rescuing."

"Thank you. Do you happen to have the locations where work permits were issued yesterday memorised?"

"Inconveniently I don't. I could pull them up for you but I will confess myself curious if you have access anyway."

"I could get access anyway but the way to do it is by using up a somewhat approximately scarce resource and I'd rather not spend it right now if I could help it."

He pulls out his pocket everything, types some things, lists some addresses.

"Thank you." She turns to the reds. "Do you have suspicions about other addresses that could have reds?"

"...my everything's out of charge -"

"Would you be able to access whatever it is from mine or should I go find a charger?"

"A charger would be better ma'am."

"I'll go get one, alright?"

"Is this by petty larceny again?"

"I could also spend my mysterious scarce resource to get one without stealing but let's be real here there will be a lot more petty larceny happening tonight."

"There are homeless purples and greys, are you planning to rescue them also?"

"...well, now that you pointed that out, yeah."

"There are thirteen billion people in this world. Do you mean to run around counterfeiting our money and stealing goods off our shelves and degrading our institutions and alarming our populace solving problems as someone mentions them in the hopes that by those means all injustice will be righted?"

"No, I've been here for weeks and not done that, you're right that I can't fix everything in one go and that just doing whatever looks right as soon as I see it is a terrible idea but I cannot walk past a bunch of people freezing to death in a stupid storm and not help them like that, I can't—can't function like that—I can go spend my mysterious scarce resource, though, if you think it's worth it, it's not even that scarce it'll just take a few weeks to start getting renewed but hopefully there won't be any more blizzards—"

"I would appreciate it if you didn't steal any more heaters or counterfeit any more money but - if one thing your mysterious scarce resource can do is access government records at will then real money won't really be a problem, and the circumstances do constrain acquiring them normally. I can get you a bank card and you can find a functioning cash machine and then leave non-counterfeit money for the heaters and rescue everyone you please and then we can talk, all right?"

"—yes alright. Thank you."

He pulls out a bank card. "The identification number is 128981."

She accepts it and walks away at a sedate pace before zipping off to a cash machine once she's out of sight. She gets a charger and returns to the reds and puts it on the ground then takes a couple of steps away.

They collect it and start charging an everything.

She waits.

A few minutes later the owner of the everything starts haltingly naming people and where they were likely to have been caught.

Sadde doesn't write the names and places down. "Thank you. I'll go mysteriously clear most of the snow away and get other people."

She goes off to do just that.

Reds stuck in tunnels and alleys and trucks-in-snowdrifts and such take advantage of the cleared snow and make their way home.

She will also provide any homeless people she sees or hears with heaters and blankets, and will furthermore actively look for them after she's done with all the reds.

And then back to where she started.

He is standing with his arms folded, a ways farther away from the reds. "Sadde. Is the city cozy for everyone?"

"It should be, yes. Thank you very much." She hands him the card back.

"Rather seems I should be thanking you. My office is this way."

She shoots the reds one final glance then follows him.

The building is warm and well-lit once the sensors notice them and thickly carpeted with fine wood furniture and leather couches. He finds a spacious office with his name on the door. 

He unbundles. "Are you an alien?"

"From a bit farther away than you're imagining, but yes."

"A bit farther than I am imagining."

"I'm not from anywhere that is spatially contiguous with the universe this planet is in—the term might be 'alternate universe'—and my mysterious means are literally magical."

He sits down heavily. "Okay. Are you representing some - extradimensional magic organization - or are you here of your own recognizance?"

"Recognisance perhaps implies rather more planning than was involved. My means of interdimensional transportation does not let me pick targets as much as it picks them for me. To the extent that there's an extradimensional magic organisation, I have been cut off from it for the past few hundred years."

" - okay. And you're here, and - doing small-scale do-gooding?"

"I'm here and learning things. I've been sitting on classes and studying history and trying to understand how you work and tonight I was going to go visit those reds in that mining city so I could both help them and learn more about them and then I'd—I'm not sure yet about that part, there is so much and nothing that's solvable with a flick of magic so eventually I think I was going to do something like," she gestures around the room and them, "this."

" - how were you going to get to Olvala tonight -"

"Well I'd probably take a few days but I was gonna run there."

" -okay. So the thing Olvala is doing is potentially good - it'd be better for everyone if reds were replaced with some alternative for handling their work - if only there was something to do with the reds afterwards. I take it you do not have access, or have only intermittent access, to other, ah, dimensions?"

"I do not have targeted access. The way it works is that I can open a door to another world but which world depends exclusively on the specific spatial location I pick to open the door from. Allow me to demonstrate—"

She closes her right hand into a fist and then opens it to reveal a small golden key. She sticks it into a random patch of nothing, turns it—

—and the glowing outline of a door appears there.

"- okay so then all we need are more worlds - are any of them empty -"

"Several—most—but the problem is—" and she opens the door. The other side contains the vacuum of space, with a few stars visible in the distance. The air of the room is mysteriously not sucked through it. "It's really not targeted. I've learnt to—feel—for certain characteristics, like 'contains magic' or 'opens to a rocky planet' but habitable planets are vanishingly rare."

Nod. "Vanishingly rare as in you might try for days before you got one, or years, or - centuries -"

"Potentially years—I got a string of successes when I first found the key but less and less since, I'm not sure why but I have a few hypotheses—but that's not the whole problem. While the door is open, time between this universe and that one is synced. When I close it—" which she does, although the outline of the door is still there "—it's not, and a few years here may be a few seconds there or vice-versa. Plus this door is not visible from the other side while it's closed, so even if both sides notice it got closed immediately that may still mean the other side will experience untold lengths of time before the door is reopened."

"Oh, I doubt the reds would want the slightest thing to do with us once they got set up."

"And be justified in it," she says, turning the key as if to lock the door, which causes the outline to disappear. "But my shareable resources are not limited to 'transportation' and it would be suboptimal for me to merely provide reds with a way to go somewhere else and be done with it."

"I think you might be underestimating how many problems it would solve if everyone had a way to go somewhere else. Most of Anitam's unpleasant tradeoffs are a consequence one way or another of the population pressure."

"I want to solve death entirely, or at least give you the means to do so. I'm aware of how many problems are caused by your population pressure but I'm not convinced giving you access to one new planet or twenty—and that's if we can even find twenty habitable ones—will be sufficient. And that's not to mention the fact that if we even find doors to habitable planets they are extremely unlikely to be equally distributed between all countries here and I'm hesitant to give any strict subset of all countries here access to other worlds like that."

"I would rather our biggest geopolitical rival have a planet than not. And curing death until we've somewhere to go would just be a disaster."

"I know, I'm completely on board with giving you planets, it's just still not obvious to me this is the first large-scale thing I should do, and if so where, and what I'll do to fix the longer-term problems then and how to announce it and how to ensure there are no undesired side effects like the deaths of a million people."

" - I can arrange that part but I can see why you'd have no reason to take my word for it. Okay. What's the picture on - everything else you can do -"

"Okay, so, first thing is that my species is inherently magical and extremely overengineered—it's how I'm inexplicably fast and strong and all that. People from the nonmagical species in my world can be turned into my species via an extremely painful but completely harmless process. I'm disinclined to experiment much with that, though, because I don't know of a safe way to test whether it's possible to turn your species and because amongst the perks is extreme immortality but amongst the downsides is infertility amongst females and an unquenchable and overwhelming thirst for blood."

" - those are some drawbacks, yes. Are you - drinking peoples' blood?"

"No, I have a form of personal magic that allows me to generate biological matter endlessly and costlessly, so I'm covered. And animal blood works, too, I would never drink a person's blood."

"I am sure all the people appreciate it. All right, so infertile immortality with blood-related drawbacks - it'd be popular with people too old for children anyway, for what that's worth -"

"Yes. And the males are not infertile, and they can have hybrid children with mortal females—the females need to be turned after the pregnancy, though, or they die—and hybrid children of both sexes are fertile with mortals and—vampires," she explains, borrowing the word from English.

"Even when they're past twenty the male ones are fertile?"

"My species' males are fertile until death so I don't know how it would work, and I think this may all be academic anyway because there's no guarantee the process would work at all for yours, not to mention that building the necessary infrastructure to support a population of vampires would be extremely costly and I have other methods of making people immortal."

"What are those?"

"I have another form of magic called sorcery. It feeds on five aspects of a source called lifeforce—wakefulness, breath, stamina, health, and youth—and it is possible to transfer those to other people. Vampires don't produce any breath, wakefulness, and stamina—I don't actually need to breathe or sleep and I could stand still as a statue for hundreds of years—but we generate endless amounts of the other two. I could transfer a million years of youth to you right now and a comparable amount of health and you wouldn't age for a long, long time. You'd also be able to share this with other people, so I'd at least buy you enough time to develop a technological solution." Pause. "Also everyone in this world has been capable of using sorcery since I arrived."

" - that does sound a fair bit neater. We really can't do it without somewhere for people to go, though I can think of a good candidate for an exception."

"Who?"

"Might be worth extending the life of a specific politician who'll be notably better at achieving the things you want than her likely replacements. It's not urgent on the scale of weeks, though. And I might not have a full picture yet of what you want."

"The flourishing of all sapient beings."

"Okay. Is that all the relevant magic or is there more -"

"The last bit of relevant magic is the sorta-scarce resource—I have these crystals one can wish upon, the larger the crystal the more complex one can make the wish, and they turn to dust after being used. But if you collect this dust and expose it to sunlight for long enough it coalesces into a crystal again. It only works at conjuring things or creating physical effects—or, if it does anything more then it needs larger crystals than I can make with the dust I've collected."

"Type of sunlight matter? How long does it take to recoalesce? Have you wished for more crystal dust, have you done a chemical scan of the crystal dust -"

"No, it takes a few weeks of intermittent sunlight for it to start recoalescing into pebble-sized crystals but a pocket everything costs a fist-sized one which is about two months, I have and it doesn't work, the crystal dust and the crystals are as far as I've been able to determine literally just ordinary rose quartz that is somehow magic."

He nods. "When you say everyone in the world can now do sorcery -"

"Do you want the full explanation? Summary is that everyone now can perform certain actions to achieve certain magical effects, plus everyone who suffers trauma has a tiny chance of developing a magical ability in response, although I haven't heard of any cases so far."

"I would very much appreciate the full explanation."

"Like I said, sorcery is fueled by five things related to biology: breath, stamina, wakefulness, health, and youth. Those are literally spent when you perform magic, and youth doesn't regenerate. Sorcery is divided into gifts and rituals: the gifts are the magical abilities I mentioned which can appear either due to trauma or via meditation, and a person can have up to five, one per lifeforce aspect; rituals combine certain base actions in certain ways to achieve certain effects. With me so far?"

He combs his fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck as if this is a broadly-recognized communicative gesture. "Yes."

Sadde's been around long enough to recognise it, yes. She'll skip the green parts. "If one is not taught how to do sorcery they're very unlikely to learn on their own as even the simplest rituals don't involve common actions—they're more like chanting things, or burning herbs, or drawing circles on the floor. Someone who does know sorcery and has enough fuel can generate fairly arbitrary physical effects, create wards, become undetectable, grant boons, or even open portals to other worlds if they have something from these other worlds to use as focus. Gifts are more intuitive, and involve things like telekinesis, or enhanced senses, or antimagic fields, or the ability to create new ways to perform rituals."

"For you, health and youth can be sacrificed costlessly - how much is sacrificed to achieve an effect, for anybody else -"

"The different aspects are more suited to different types of effects—for instance, stamina tends to fuel more physical or energy-related effects, like things relating to speed or endurance, while youth is usually sacrificed for the most powerful effects, like permanent boosts. You could chill a glass of water and become a bit winded, or spend an hour at twice the speed and then need to rest for a couple of hours, or sacrifice two and a half years of youth to create an entirely new way to do sorcery."

" - and that's the one you have infinite access to -"

"Yes. And can grant arbitrarily large but finite access to to anyone else."

"Your ambitions seem reasonable to me." 

"I think so, too. But your world has the distinct problem that most straightforward ways of giving people more power end up with lots and lots of people dead."

"I think we can route around that but there are certainly ample ways to get it wrong. What were you planning to do when you got to Olvala -"

"Pretend to be an alien who was very moved by the reds' plight, with the advantage that it wouldn't be pretense at all, and try to help them not die, and listen to them and figure out what their side of it all is since most people think of them as garbage when they think of them at all. I'd definitely not implement anything involving them without at least meeting some of them."

"They'll be utterly terrified of you."

She changes her hair to red.

He mostly conceals a grimace. " - might help but it's not really about the hair, there are reds for whom it grows in something else -"

"I know, but this would at least soften the first impressions, and after that I'm not sure there's much I could do that wouldn't terrify them so I'd at least try to be terrifyingly helpful."

Nod. "I think once the immediate safety of Olvala's red population is assured you should start doing things in Anitam. I know I would say that but we're big enough to matter if we throw our weight around on red welfare internationally or other concerns of yours, flexible enough to in fact do that in exchange for magic help for our people, and stable - we can experiment a bit without worrying about undermining the whole state or inviting international trouble or provoking a sudden civil war. And there are already people here trying to figure out what can be done for reds, if there are any elsewhere I don't know of them and I actually think I would. I work in foreign affairs and it's something I pay a lot of attention to."

"Yeah, I was going to ask, what's your angle? Seeing a blue bring a bunch of reds sandwiches was... unexpected." As an afterthought she changes her hair back to green.

"The next few years are going to be trouble. I was pretty pessimistic about things before you arrived, honestly. Everyone wants them gone very very badly, and they've successfully put that outcome off only by rioting whenever anyone suggests it. Lots of them die but so does the politician who brought it up - sometimes they'll just burn down the house - and it goes back to quiet muttering. And now Olvala's gone and done it, and unless it's a disaster lots of places will copy them, and even if places are willing to send the reds somewhere there's nowhere to send them. Anitam doesn't have an unusually strong faction in favor of mass murder but if everyone else is doing it we'll absolutely get on board eventually - there are sixty-five million of them globally -"

"And it's admirable that you care but I'm still confused on the why."

"Maybe I like being admirable."

"Everyone does. The only person doing the admiring here is an alien that literally appeared out of nowhere, though."

"I know some people who'll smuggle Anitami reds weapons, if it looks about to come to that. I - desperately want it to not come to that. This is my country, these are my people, I've got some time and some room to maneuver in and I want better than that."

She nods. "Who's the politician you want me to dump youth on?"

"Voan, not here. She won't want Voa to be your test case, too conservative, but she'll make things happen stably and cleanly there and I've much less confidence in her successors and she's thirty-nine. Governor Avalor."

"Do you think I should tell her or should she just be mysteriously healthy for her age all of a sudden?"

"I will call ahead as soon as I have a clearer picture of what to say when I do."

"I'm not in principle opposed to it being known I exist, although I expect the situation to become​ politically delicate if it looks like I'm working with Anitam in particular."

"I actually expect that to work much better than most alternatives - people won't expect us to suddenly get assassination-happy or expansionist or reckless given new underspecified resources, an alien on its own and indignant about reds is likelier to invite someone to be stupid in a variety of ways. But 'no one knows at all except as necessary to convince them to keep their reds safe, at least until we have planets to send people to' is one of the probably-superior alternatives."

She nods. "I feel it's crass to make threats but I hope you realise I'll be very put out if you turn out to be misleading me. You have this 'too good to be true' vibe going on."

"Do you want hostages or something?"

She looks as horrified as she can while still being mostly emotionless. "Of course not. If that turns out to be the case I'll just stop working with you and possibly stop whatever it is you're doing instead."

"...okay."

"I was completely honest in everything I said, if you really are what you look like you are then you're a ridiculously lucky break and it'll be so much easier to improve things, but these past few weeks have given me the expectation that everyone here thinks some people fail to be people depending on the colour of their hair—I have excellent hearing and I was in a university, I heard incredibly intelligent greens arguing that reds could maybe be considered people from a moral uncertainty standpoint—"

"- I am not confused about your surprise, it is in fact unlikely that you'd find someone who agreed with you or even someone opportunistic enough to go along with you by randomly wandering Anitam a few weeks. The thing that confused me was, ah, that you said you hated to make threats and then threatened to, uh, be annoyed and stop working with me. That's not really the kind of threat most people hate to make."

"—no, the part of your suggestion I objected to is bringing​ other people into it, my 'just stop you' was 'destroy your political career and perhaps you' as opposed to 'take hostages and hurt them.' I do hate threats in general but if I need to make them I'd rather be as precise as I can be."

"Oh, all right. Consider me appropriately notified. Do you want a plane or something to Olvala, it'll go faster -"

"...yeah, actually, that would be very kind of you."

"It's going to take me a little while to get you papers that stand up to inspection unless I take this to the council and I am undecided on that. But I can get you something good enough to fly with." He pulls up his computer.

"Yeah, this world's records are electronic enough that I have some trouble working around them."

"Can't wish things into a computer system? I can have them edited but it's not risk-free and I haven't the leverage to keep the yellows out of trouble if they get caught doing it."

"I can wish things into a specific computer but not to create consistent widespread records—or rather, I can if I know enough about the system and where I should insert things but not just straightforwardly wish for the desired end result."

"I might know enough about the system to pull that off, then. Citizen IDs are on file in a national registry and regional databases, both of which have on-site and off-site backups, lists name, address, year of birth, caste and child credit number and taxpayer ID number and the identification numbers for formal licensing in fields that require it and for security clearance if you have it. You shouldn't try to give yourself credentials, that's harder to fake. It'll want to know your parents, I can look up some greens who died. The system also tracks how often your records have been accessed, and by who; a convincing fake usually has an access from accounting every year to match things against your tax records, an access from your university to confirm you're green and a legal resident, maybe an access from your landlord to check the same. Tax records if you're pretending to be a student you want us to have the standard student exemption form on file, legal details should match."

"I don't have a landlord, I'm not actually living anywhere, and I have been only unofficially sitting on classes, I'm not actually enrolled, there was apparently some blue who wanted to be green and was brilliant and convinced the teachers to help him get enrolled and they changed their policies since then..."

"You should probably have an address on file but I can put you down as sleeping on a friend's couch for paperwork purposes. Do you want to enroll, might limit your flexibility some."

"I don't, particularly, I was using that so I could learn more about your world and culture and the returns had diminished enough that I decided to go to Orvara."

"All right, sleeping on a friend's couch and trying to make it as an actress or something - no income to report and no one will expect you around. Is that enough information to wish you into the system?"

"If I'm not physically near the computer I'm doing this to I should at least be near a computer with an open connection to it. I'm also genderfluid, I'm not sure if there are any official things that would take that into account."

"Gender's only on the paperwork for the purpose of caste, if you're not capable of childbearing or child-fathering then it doesn't matter in the slightest and can probably be left blank." Tap tap tap - "this computer has an open connection to all three relevant databases - national, regional, tax forms. The couch you're sleeping on is 4922R, University, 765340. Your parents are - Hafat Ilin and Kasa Menalat, died in a train accident two years ago, estranged from their family because he married purple."

"I'm capable of child-fathering and probably can stretch my magic to become capable of childbearing but I'm definitely not going to do either so that works." She reaches into the little pouch she carries with her and gets a piece of rose quartz about the size of a human head.

She doesn't do anything visible, but the crystal—becomes dust, all at once. And then she catches all of the dust in the pouch before even a single speck of it falls to the floor, moving fast enough her arms become a blur, and she attaches the pouch to her hip again. "Should be done."

He checks. "Congratulations on your Anitami citizenship, Sadai."

"It feels a bit ironic that you cared that much about counterfeiting money for a few heaters but not about this—unless that was for show?"

"To who, the reds? No, I'm just not sure how your money-counterfeiting works and what'll happen when the very confused police try to run the bills to figure out who last had them but it's plausible the answer is not 'the stores get paid back'."

"Won't the bills I left there be traced back to you, then?"

"Yes and the investigator whose job it is to tread lightly when things look oddly blue will stop by and I'll say yes foreign intelligence operation that got hampered by the storm please do make sure all the shopkeepers are squared away and there's nothing on the books."

"'Foreign intelligence operation.' I suppose it was strictly that, wasn't it. Okay. Thank you."

"My pleasure. Airports are going to be closed tomorrow but I could get you a travel visa and flight to Olvala midweek."

She purses her lips, but nods. "Voa's closer."

"It is. Trains go there and they'll be open sooner than the airport."

"When are you planning to tell Governor Avalor about me?"

"I'm trying to decide who to tell on the council and how much to tell them, and then after that conversation I will call her."

She nods.

"How can we best get in touch?"

"I have a pocket everything," she says, showing it. "I could in theory make a magic something if you want to be in extremely untraceable contact with me."

"I might be circumspect on the phone but I don't expect to need a magic something. You said you didn't have anywhere to stay - do you need anywhere?"

"I don't need anywhere, no—I don't sleep and generate my own food and don't have any biological needs best fulfilled by living somewhere."

Nod. "Then do you need anything else from me? And could I have anything innocuous but clearly of magical or non-Amentan origin to save time convincing people I haven't gone crazy?"

"I do not need anything else from you, and absolutely—" Pause. "...I should perhaps introduce you to someone not quite else who's been part of this conversation if only indirectly."

His face is still for a very short time and then he smiles. "I'd be delighted."

And a glasswinged butterfly emerges from where it had been hiding in Sadai's hair and flutters to her palm.

"This is Crystal. She's my soul."

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance," says, apparently, Crystal.

"Likewise. Your soul?"

"I visited a world where people's souls lived outside their bodies and that was contagious. They have—rather interesting social customs around this fact, their souls do parallel socialising, and they're never really alone. But it's extremely painful to have someone else touch your soul and Crystal prefers to... mostly just talk to me or advise me."

"I have never had any reason to think I or anyone here has a soul."

"I think it's not exactly a thing that's already in you as much as certain aspects of your psychology given physical form by that world's magic."

"Makes sense. Do you have a way to get back to these worlds -"

"Yes, I have been collecting things that can serve as foci to the portal ritual, but if my hypothesis about metacosmology is correct they will not be very stable and will eventually spontaneously close."

Nod. " - something to save time on demonstrating I met you, then -"

"Part of the reason I introduced you to Crystal was because I predicted you would prefer that..."

"...but another part was that I suggested I could be such demonstration. We do not have any visibly magical objects and the ones that can be created by sorcery and are appropriately obvious need the lifeforce aspects we don't produce. It is in theory possible for us to convert between them but we do not know how."

"I very much appreciate the introduction - if it's vitally important you not be touched I'm not sure how to arrange that -"

"I am as physically enhanced as my person, it will not be a risk. I merely disprefer being... around... when I can't talk to people. Not talking to people is distressing."

"I find it so too. It is safe to tell my boyfriend and if you'd prefer I can leave you at home when I'm not introducing you to demonstrate the existence of aliens."

"I would prefer so, as well. Thank you."

"Of course." Sigh. "Uh - have you been going around touching reds and their things -"

"I stepped into two alleys the day I arrived, but I have since replaced my shoes."

Nod. He empties a tissue box on his desk and offers it to Crystal. "I expect I have something nicer at home."

She flies to the box and lands on it. "Thank you."

"Should I get out of your hair, then?"

"I would be happy to talk longer if you'd like, but if that's everything I will get to work on notifying the appropriate people and running plans by people I can trust with that.'

"My preferences on the matter are immaterial. I'll go."

"All right." 

And he calls the most levelheaded councilor he knows and trudges over through the snow to talk to them. "So," he says to Crystal as he goes, "it's politically - unhelpful - to come across as overly concerned with reds, because people don't want to think about them and will avoid you and tune you out if you're one of those reds people. I'm going to aim for a framing that doesn't invite those complications, which will probably not sound very much like 'they're people too and murder is bad' but which I do think will keep them safe. Does that work for you?"

Sadai and Crystal were not separated before; the last time this almost happened they couldn't bear it. Now Crystal barely flinches when she feels the bond strain and snap.

There are worse things.

"Yes. We have been here long enough to learn that much."

"Thank you. I don't want you and Sadai to feel like I'm - telling everyone what they want to hear and advancing none of it - but being forthright to everyone will just walk us into walls. The person we're going to meet is Fela Neli, one of the rulers of Anitam."

"We understand politics. You have bought a lot of goodwill by all you've done so far, we're willing to believe you."

"I appreciate it. 

Sadai seems very unhappy."

"We are. There is an aspect of being a vampire we did not talk about because it did not seem productive."

"Is anything about the situation fixable?"

"Not by any resources you have access to. We do not mind if other people know, but there is nothing to be done."

"Okay."

And they reach the house and he thanks the purple at the door and goes into a library.

        "Aitim."

"Neli Fela. Thank you for your time."

       "You said it was urgent."

"I ran across an alien during the snowstorm. She shapeshifts, looks Anitami at present but it's not clear to me that her natural form bears us even a passing resemblance. It's a delicate situation. The alien has somewhat limited and very inconvenient-for-her access to a means of making portals to other planets; she has other things we'd want, including ones that I'd at least approximate as magic. Societies where she's from are structured differently and she's mistrustful of ours and undecided whether she might want to help us."

       "Can we -"

"We don't have anything she wants and I think if we try to coerce her we will die trying. I very much doubt she's told me all of her abilities and the ones she has mentioned - suffice. I want to introduce you to her - representative -"

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Neli Fela," says the glasswinged butterfly, fluttering its wings once. "My name is Crystal."

Blue-haired woman rather goggles. "It is a pleasure to meet you as well. Welcome to Anitam. What can we do for you?"

"Letting us solve all of your problems with minimal fussing would be ideal."

She blinks confusedly at Aitim. 

          "Different societies might not see eye to eye about what constitutes a problem we want aliens to solve," he says.

"And it's rather the obligation of a government to review and oversee changes which affect our people."

"I think we can agree on basic things like 'suffering and death are bad.' Do those sound like problems you want aliens to solve?"

" - death? Solve? The commitment Anitam makes to our people is that they will have a secure and clean and orderly and peaceful society in which their role is valued."

"We are not part of your government, we are a very powerful alien with mysterious goals that involve minimising how often sapient beings experience things they would prefer not to experience, including ceasing to exist. We realise this is not a trivial problem to solve, that's why I'm talking to you."

         "The problem with your - goals - is not that they're too hard but that they're under most circumstances incompatible with values far more important to us. He said you can do a planet, can you do a planet -"

"She can with considerable personal inconvenience arrange a planet, and is likelier to arrange it for people pursuing her aims."

         Sigh. "Our pleasure, of course. Is this an agreement or just your optimism -"

"I am very good at my job, councilor, and happy to put my name to this."

         "- and they're going to be meddling either way -"

"They are. And I think I can find aims we have in common and communicate ours such that there is less risk they'll be incidentally damaged in the pursuit of alien ones."

         "You think."

"On the strength of my optimism about a potential agreement I am requesting your permission to pursue this with my time, my resources, my staff, and enough administrative cover that no one mistakenly concludes I am plotting a coup. I did not come here to request you risk anything but to apprise you of what I am risking."

          She stares at the alien butterfly. "What do the prospects for a planet look like?"

"We expect it would take us a few of your years to find and secure stable access to one. We are willing to stay here long enough to give you more than that—your values matter to us, too, if a secure and clean and orderly and peaceful society in which people's role is valued is what people would prefer to experience then we want you to have that."

" - all right. And what do you want from us right now -"

"We would like you to cooperate with Aitim Neli."

        "If this doesn't serve our country by our own standards inside, say, three years-"

"Then I will have been very gravely mistaken, and I have no doubt people will look into whether I abused the trust that was placed in me."

        "Be sure there's no confusion about where your loyalties lie, Aitim."

"I am grateful for the trust you have extended me."

        Nod. "What else should we expect you to require, Crystal?"

"We do not strictly require any material goods, freedom of movement and the benefit of the doubt if we do weird things should be enough."

"I'd like someone to refer the police to if they're investigating alien activities. I'd like an introduction to a military strategic advisor who can exercise suitable discretion. And I'd like a line of funding appropriate to foreign intelligence operations."

       Sigh. "That all sounds fine."

"Thank you very much," Aitim says. 

      "I hope for your sake it works."

"I hope for all our sakes it works."

     "Should I presume it to be always - listening in on you -"

"I asked Crystal to stay with me to save time in persuading people I'd witnessed alien activity."

"And I would prefer you use 'she' pronouns."

"Of course," she says. "Lovely meeting you."

"Likewise."

"The weather's really something, isn't it," he says, moving the box for Crystal. 

       "Terrible. And they say a harder winter means a stronger spring -"

"Do they? I hadn't heard that one. What a shame."

       "I think there was some kind of study. Prices of aftermarket credits against weather patterns."

He sighs. "Maybe in a few springs everyone who wants a child can have one."

        "Wouldn't that be lovely. You take care."

"Thank you. I will."

And when they're safely outside: "I find your government's priorities strange."

"Oh?"

"...perhaps that's not the best way to phrase what I mean, but—it seems to me that the point of governing is trying to ensure your citizens have the means to lead fulfilling lives and that looked more like caring about attaining certain states-of-the-world that are proven to be reasonably satisfying to most people rather than caring about the end goal itself."

"Idealistic people usually make the world worse. Have you heard about the war in Voa a little while ago? The best way we know to ensure our citizens live fulfilling lives is to carefully pursue the few states known to stably produce that. Aim at the achievable and you achieve it; aim at the perfect and you get disaster."

"That is reasonable, but one would expect some rethinking to be done in light of unforeseen resources."

"I agree with you, of course, but I think deftness with unforeseen resources is a different skill than the ones mostly required to run the country well and so the people who govern us are not particularly likely to have a gift for it."

"I suppose. We consider ourselves very lucky or very fooled to have met you.—or, if our hypothesis is correct, very led."

"Hmmm?"

"The magic that tells us where to go next might have arranged something like this."

"Does it frequently do things like that?"

"Yes. It has landed us on a few worlds that benefitted from our help, although they were more—straightforward to help than this one."

"I expect you'll be able to do extraordinary good here. It just might take some work to get there."

He goes back to his office. He calls Avalor.

"Please hold," says Avalor's secretary.

Avalor answers two minutes later. "Aitim."

"Hello. This evening I met an alien who claims to possess magical powers. She's coming to visit you day after tomorrow but I wanted to talk first."

"...and this person doesn't merely claim the part about being an alien?"

"She demonstrated abilities consistent with her story. Shapeshifts; looks Amentan at present but might in her native form resemble us hardly at all, I'm not sure. Can conjure things out of thin air. Doctored our computer records without touching a computer while I watched to give herself a legal identity. Opened portals to random locations - they mostly open onto deep space, of course -"

"That sounds hazardous."

"I am not sure if it was by the beneficence of the alien or the safeguards in her technology that my office was not sucked into interstellar space but we are all safe and well."

"And she is visiting me because..."

"Her wants are delicate and the situation could easily be mishandled and I'm keeping it internal, but she can make people immortal and in indefinite good health and I said while that broadly seems like a project for once we are on better terms and have in her eyes earned ourselves a planet there is one case that'd be worth it now. If there are going to be delicate complicated alien situations I want Voa to have you."

"I appreciate the sentiment. She can do only one planet?"

"She can probably do many planets that are varying degrees of convenient to access and settle but each one might be years to find a portal for."

"Each planet is obviously worth years to us, how can we make it worth it to her?"

"When I met her she was running around stealing heaters and warm clothing for plumbers dying of exposure in the blizzard. We make very sure nothing happens to our reds and things that do are prosecuted like they matter and we lean on Orvara to do something besides driving them out to die - I do realize there isn't really anything convenient -"

...sigh. "There really isn't. Do you suppose she wants to render some seasonless land inhabitable? Something near a pole, too cold to even have interesting insects for greens to look at -"

"I'll ask. There's - we were going to have to deal with it anyway and I was not pleasantly anticipating shooting all ours, help getting rid of them is probably worth it even before we start thinking about planets."

"There would be non-red casualties anyway, they riot at the least provocation."

"And no doubt they're watching Orvara and learning. Maybe once there's enough to go around they can just have their own planet. I expect everything else the alien wants'll be more palatable, it mostly amounts to 'give all your people safe happy lives'. I expect expansionist ambitions would be hard to sell her on but Anitam will happily stick to using the magic for internal improvement and I can't imagine Voa'd feel differently."

"I have no plans to expand. I seldom even grumble very much about the loss of Imde."

"I am very glad everyone managed to settle at that. Perhaps that idiot Savo of yours would hit it off with our alien."

"As far as I know he doesn't actually like reds, but I could see if he'll come out of hiding."

"I think pragmatic objections to hurting them count for nearly as much as fondness? I got lots of credit for saying 'people' in place of 'garbage' and expressing a mild preference the world not descend into riots and retaliatory slaughters."

"I'll see if he won't turn up for vague reasons so I can present him if it seems appropriate."

"Then I think you are as well-equipped to meet her as any insight on my part can make you."

"Thank you. Does anyone else know?"

"I took it to Fela Neli so I need not worry anyone might care to apply rules about secret high-stakes dealings with foreign powers to powers even more foreign than that. You make three people with any meaningful information - oh, I guess the reds witnessed some magic. I don't think they'll need encouragement to shut up about it."

"Are you planning to tell more people in the near future?"

"No."

"I appreciate your confidence."

"Of course. May good health find you always and in particular the day after tomorrow, afternoon sometime."

"And you as well."

"All right," he says to Crystal cheerfully. "Now we can go home, if that's all right with you."

"It is."

Home they go! "What's the planet where you, uh, started existing like?"

"It was... strange. The dominant sapient species there was very unlike yours or ours—they were very large arthropods, divided in colonies with queens who were the mothers of everyone else. But we believe there may have been another version of my Sadai's planet in that universe, as well—we got a translation in our native language to the name of the thing I am, which should not be possible unless someone in that world had already invented it."