"So it'd be all kinds of trouble if she just vanished?"

"...sir?"

"I would like to take Peka and Katin away with me, if they would like that, and I think they will. I do not want anyone else to be endangered or frightened or inconvenienced by this, but I'm worried something bad will happen if I wait to approach her until we've made formal diplomatic contact with your world, because bad things, uh, often happen to her."

"...sir I don't understand -"

"Yeah, fair enough. Okay. You're familiar with - the stars are other suns, around them are other planets, some of those planets have other civilizations, right?"

"...yes sir."

"The estimated population of this universe is two or three trillion. There are several different interstellar consortiums. Some of them have a policy of not intervening in civilizations that haven't developed faster-than-light travel yet, and some of them do intervene but they can't help everywhere, just because this universe is so big. And then, complicating matters, there are, uh, parallel universes. And there is a parallel universe where I met a girl named Rebecca with a daughter named Catherine -" illusion - "and married her and embarked on a gloriously happy life together. And there are other parallel universes where by chance we did not meet, and bad things happen to her. But here she's alive, and she's all right, and so I came to meet her and offer her the life she and her child deserve."

She doesn't seem to know what to say to that.

He should probably give her a little bit of time.

"Peka is, ah, red-caste. So is the baby."

"I don't know what that means."

"...we're untouchables, sir."

"Does that mean that Peka will not want me to touch her or just that under local law it would not be allowed?"

"...you are not supposed to touch us, or things we've come into contact with."

"So the local law thing. Okay. Well, in my kingdom we don't have that law and Peka and Katin will be able to go anywhere and touch anything they please."

Blink.

" - we'll do something for everyone else, too, of course, but that's politics and might mostly mean bribes or subsidies - are there countries with better local law -"

"...red caste are untouchable everywhere sir."

"Or we could just take you all home with us. How many are there?"

"Peka has a sister and a brother -"

"In the whole world, I mean."

"- I don't know sir. Millions."

"What goes wrong if they all get the option to emigrate to somewhere that doesn't think they're untouchable?"

"I... don't know, sir..." Katin finishes her bottle. Her grandma sets it aside. "Especially during the war - I don't know -"

"There's a war?"