They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
"Hi. I don't have any of your language but Aitim said you were picking up Anitami. I'm Isel, I'm the person who does reds policy."
She gets out some notes. "What do you think about getting some rainforest and telling Biyan they'd better put reds there -"
" - might do it on your say-so. Once the reds have trained replacements, which the reds are not going to want to do."
"Unless magic can do it, not sure - could probably get the reds to agree to train their replacements in exchange for their children getting safe passage to the rainforest but..."
"Whole country of Biyan has the population of this city. But yeah, not the best use of your time." Sigh. "Biyan has an ambassador, right, I can try to feel them out about whether there's anyone there competent and reasonable enough to retreat from the purple training thing..."
"I wouldn't count on it, though. Everyone hates reds and they're scared in addition to angry."
"It really seems like as excited as everyone is about finding new places to live I ought to be able to make them be nice."
"Oh, the fact you care about reds is the best news in all of history for them. It's just - still harder than it should be."
"No one else is moving to rotation right now, couple places are debating it and waiting to see how it goes in Biyan. If you have somewhere to put them then it gets much easier."
"If you mention you're upset at the treatment of reds it might deter some places from various horribleness. Also might inspire stupidity but I think it comes out ahead on balance. I'll ask the reds if there are specific policy changes they'd like you to mention you approve of."
"Too much too fast gets you backlash, too little too slow and they don't trust you enough to give you accurate information, it's a bit of a balancing act."
"Most people want them dead. Almost anybody, given the chance to press a button and replace them all with robots, would. They - it makes no sense to them that anyone would care for its own sake. So if someone shows up acting like they care, it's likelier to be a - test, or a self-aggrandizing performance of altruism - until you actually do things for them, they just won't believe you that you care at all."