"I kick problems like that to Maitimo. Under the circumstances I suppose he'll hand it to someone more unimpeachable than all of us will be on that front."

"Should I worry about a war crimes tribunal, say, paroling them from their oath or parts of it after it's just been such a long time -"

"I mean, the drawback to giving any decision power to people other than you is that they might decide differently from you. But everyone knows what happened when we pardoned the Enemy; I cannot imagine that mistake happening again while anyone lives who remembers the original."

"Fair enough. War crimes trial or my pardon otherwise same oaths as the Enemy if they've taken instructions from him."

"Works for me. He might claim he can't do it - some of them are currently offplanet, or something..."

"And if he swears that this is in fact the case - and that he didn't send them offplanet specifically to thwart the attempt - hm."

"Yep. Hard to avoid making any situational decisions, though if we've talked over all possible contingencies you could at least make them swiftly and confidently. ....would it be possible to snatch a copy of the Enemy and play his upload game, try to get a sense of how he'd react?"

"I thought they didn't have chips? And if I try to make a Maia instead of a Maia's body I get nothing at all, I was assuming Valar would be similar."

"They don't have chips, but they must still be computations - though I suppose if they're unrecorded computations there's no way for you to fetch them. Don't try to make a Vala, Eru forbid it actually work."

"I think that's a dead end."

"Yep. Who else are you going to run this by? It's going to be even more complicated than the last one."

"Well, last time Melian had useful advice but this time obviously that won't work. President Círdan and his chief of staff are both competent but I don't know if they're competent at this..."

"You haven't met my son Curufinwe but he and Macalaure should probably both take a look at it. Maitimo says he warned you to keep a small circle in general."

"Yeah."

"I imagine your feelings about Earth are something like ours about Valinor. Gets in the way of thinking clearly."

"...yeah. I'm not gonna be super popular with anybody who ever lived there after this, am I."

"No. And lots of people do like the Valar. I - like some of them as individuals, actually, I just think they are fourteen individuals and count exactly as much as any fourteen Men or Dwarves."

"Lot of concealed internal disagreements on all the things attributed to 'the Valar'?"

"I think most of the decisions I resent were 7 - 5, some of them publicly announced to be so."

Cam sighs. "Great."

"Some of them weren't! Their opinions about marriage are unanimous."

"Well, they run on divine command theory and I have the impression there are divine commands to be had on that one."

He makes an annoyed face. "I'll grant you they think Eru exists and said so. Oh. Eru. If he exists, chance he intervenes. Oaths need to still be valid if that happens. Also you might have to do some fast-talking to this universe's supposed creator. I do not assign the possibility much weight."

"He seems the noninterventionist type." But Cam makes a note.

"What else do you think this needs to cover?"