She makes a face. "I can suggest a poll like that but I really don't think it'll fly."

He nods cheerfully. "Sometimes what happens is that one country figures out a way to make it work, gets a stunning new skyline and a busy shuttleport overnight, and then there's the political will elsewhere. Perhaps if you wait a few months you'll find you have the leverage after all."

"I guess there might be enough money flying around, but - if I'm reading this right the votes can't be weighted? The purples alone could sink it, they'd hate the idea of paying reds not to touch things."

"Unweighted, yes. You can frame it as a tax reform or something? I can write someone who got that world with the three thorny religious minorities who hated each other through the membership process, they might have more tips and tricks."

"Maybe. I'll see what I can do."

"Replacing all the reds with robots also sounds like it'd make things more tractable."

"Believe me, we'd love to, but the reds have enough functional power to scuttle that idea."

"Because they don't expect to survive the transition? We could find a place that wanted to take them in."

"That would be lovely, if this place really didn't mind and wasn't going to let them roam the universe wherever they like -"

"They don't strike me as equipped to go universe-exploring, are they so inclined?"

"On their own, no, I don't really see them shipbuilding."

"So maybe that's the best approach. We'd need to be very transparent with them about where they'd be going, to avoid violence, are there good communication channels there?"

"There are some people who do community interfacing! And they have the internet."

"Perfect. I'll see who can take them in and handle contamination concerns appropriately and then talk with them about that."

"Thank you!"

"The neighbors who poisoned the food, do you have more information there?"

"What kind of information?"

"What caused the war, how likely they are to react well to the war ending, did they export to other countries -"

"They introduced red contaminants into virtually their entire supply chain. They knew we were relying on their exports to have enough to eat - we have some domestic food production but not enough - and then sold us polluted food and didn't tell us till we'd paid for some of it that it had been mishandled. Even then I'm not sure they were ever planning to warn us; we found out when they had domestic trouble over the same thing, fortunately before the first harvest hit stores. They'd probably love the war ending, although I don't know how the economy will take losing their export revenue... they did export elsewhere but we were the only buyer with enough need that we couldn't meet it otherwise."

"Do you know why they did that?"

"I couldn't begin to guess."

"Are all the countries here in agreement on what kind of contact spreads contamination, what handling procedures are adequate -"

"There are differences but they're minor enough and people are conservative enough that trade's usually unencumbered after initial agreements about it."

"Are they based in scientific phenomena - is there a physical difference between contaminated and uncontaminated things - or is it metaphysical -"

"Well, anyone handling anything will leave behind a few cells and some skin oil and so on, and reds do have both more exposure to disease and toxins than other people and worse hygiene practices, but it's not mostly about that or we'd just be advising everyone to cook the food more thoroughly."