Davlia does not join the Federation. In fact, Davlia is quite collectively outraged that the Federation would refuse them entry until they received kindly donated technological insight, and only then ask them to participate in the government that wanted to condemn their would-be benefactor to life in prison. Davlia decides that it's doing all right by itself; it uses what Isabella and Lalita can dump into the nets from their stolen ship's library, and their new warp tech, to make contact with other civilizations, and are presently trading merrily with non-Federation civilizations and scouting a possible colony site a few stars to the galactic east.

Isabella catches up with Lalita on the language, and by the time they've been living among Davlians for a year they're both fluent. Lalita has an easier time making himself useful to their hosts than Isabella does, what with his vast arsenal of variously practical skills, but Isabella manages to make a few PADDs from the ship take Davlian electricity and pokes around on the nets, contributing useful ideas in appropriately modest pseudonymous fashion. (Not under "polarbear". That wouldn't make her inconspicuous, here. She goes by the less than concealing "priv_sky"; if anyone, under all the careful not-prying, is curious about her identity, they may have it, but she's trying to be polite.) Occasionally she gets a Davlia-approved thrill of warmth when something she's suggested anonymously is put into practice and nobody knows it's hers except Lalita.

The ship doesn't have very good bandwidth for subspace access to the Federation nets - it's warp-capable, but it was mostly not intended for long-distance runs, it didn't need to send large packets of information through subspace when it was generally within fine range for radio. Also, the Federation knows where they are, or at least has a very strong hunch - it just can't scoop them up without annoying the Davlians, who they're still trying to court. They can restrict information flow to the Potomac systems (because wherever they think it is, they know it was stolen) and to Davlia's own nets. News of home is not nonexistent, but it is infrequent and probably filtered.

They've been on Davlia for almost six years when Isabella learns that their neighbors have been unobtrusively considering her and Lalita what amounts to common-law married since they landed. She tells him so.