"Yeah, it's one of the ones I read in Oahkar. What's Erethani?"

"Language they speak in Ereith. Isolationalist little island of war criminals up by the arctic circle."

"...War criminals."

"- if you don't have castes you must have - I mean, I hope you have - invented some other way to prevent everyone from being dragged into total warfare, but ours is to have very strong rules against anyone other than a grey in a combat position. If a country's greys can't win a war, they can't conscript their purples and throw those at the enemy in case that works. When it's over with the greys it's over and the purples et al move on with their lives under new management. Ereith for bizarre historical reasons stopped having greys, won't import any, won't let some people become grey - the whole place has mostly grey ancestry, most of them are probably grey by any inheritance law other than Ereith's by now, it wouldn't be outrageous to let some of them act like it - and instead has the entire population supposedly grey in addition to their legal castes. Which, since they're isolationist, is usually fine, but they got invaded once."

Odette buries her face in her hands.

"- are you all right?"

"I am having problems with this situation that would probably not be productive to discuss right now."

"- all right." He moves on to the next children's book with only mild concern.

Children's books, yay.

Tatmi's kitten is pink and spotted, yay.

Ee cute.

And soon the councilor has some food people who are ready for Odette to supercharge their crops.

Awesome. Well, tedious and painful. But still awesome. Where to?

Here's a map!

Then she will fly to that place and supercharge those crops!

They can get planting and harvesting done really freaking fast with ginormous machines!

Gosh. Such ginormous machines! She shoos the clouds if there are any, this is going to require a lot of sunlight. Well, not require, but it'll make it a lot easier.

Should they also water them or does she handle that?

Having water handy would be helpful but they don't need to put it on the plants.

Well, they have irrigation systems.

Okay, sure.

Water!

And--grow.

The fields are ready for harvest in the space of a few hours.

And the giant machines go! Will they need to fertilize?

How long would that take?