"Hello. We sent out messages introducing ourselves but you seemed to be having some technical difficulties. Is there a better format for an introduction?"

"Oh, we're under radio jamming - we heard about you secondhand - I don't think anyone's been assigned to greet you if you just, ah, show up, but I can send a priority alert."

"I appreciate it."

And a minute later an old blue-haired woman comes down the elevator. "Good afternoon. I'm Governor Avalor."

"Macalaurë. I apologize for just dropping in."

"You could hardly have announced yourself. Welcome to Voa. How can I help you?"

"I'd be delighted to have a channel of communications, to start with, and past that it's really up to you. I represent one of half a dozen interstellar consortiums that might be of interest, though the Tapai thought our membership conditions were onerous, and we're excited about the potential for colony planets to relieve some of your population pressure."

"I expect Voa to be excited about that too. My office is up this way."

He follows.

Here is her office. "What are your onerous membership conditions?"

Computer chip. "We translated everything and converted it to local file formats. The condition that caused them the most concern was the requirement that laws apply to all citizens unless supported by a majority of the citizens who are subject to them."

"I assume the sticking point is that this extends to red caste."

"No one's yet tried to make the case that they're not relevantly citizens."

"If that would solve the problem I am sure I could find someone to competently argue it."

"There wouldn't be much precedent for that solution. I told the Tapai that bribery's a popular form of handling problems like that, but they were pessimistic that the rest of the population would agree with offering reds subsidies for compliance with rules they presently abide by without compensation."

"Quite. We have our dissimilarities from Tapa but that attitude is not among them."

"Federation won't take caste systems at all, I think Elendil adopted some Federation bylaws but I don't know if that was one of them, but there are a dozen others and I'm sure some wouldn't object, all the ones we have any kind of contact with will be listed on that chip. Or you can go it alone safely enough, particularly if you don't call attention to yourselves."

"How did you find us?" she wonders.

"There are tens of thousands of worlds, we have them all catalogued and make contact with new ones regularly but usually prioritize by need. By which standard you might not have qualified yet, you're relatively long-lived and stable and have not invented certain low-tech ways of annihilating yourselves and won't see an extraordinary quality-of-life boost from an explanation of germ theory or anything. But you came to my attention and are well-positioned to benefit from warp drives if not particularly from joining your neighbors."

"Oh? How did we come to your attention?"

"Personal reasons, actually. My home world has the ability to make arbitrary material objects. I exploited this to look up the girl I'd like best in all the universe, and it gave me a girl in Tapa's army."

"That's a somewhat misleading summary of divinatory powers of that magnitude."

"The 'arbitrary material goods' application is much more widespread than the 'divinatory powers' ones, though courts employ it for forensics and so on. It's a membership perk! So is resurrection!"

Blink. "Is it."

"Yes. And immortality, though in Tapa they were of the opinion that until we give them a colony planet that'll be more destabilizing than appreciated."