"Why not?"

"The robots still run, it can't have been that long, you can't manufacture them on this tech level. But those walls took a long time to build and only make any sense in the context of very low tech warfare."

"...then what happened?"

"I have absolutely no idea. Maybe there's a higher-tech civilization elsewhere which, uh, isn't conquering them because.....balance of power? Morals? It's probably not morals."

"But why haven't they resolved the tech differential?"

"That's not implausible to me, the thing keeping tech differentials small in our world is mostly that you'd get conquered. There might not be enough people here to actually run an industrial society - or you might need sufficiently smart people, and a small population even with the same average and variance isn't going to have anyone smart enough - or you might need resources you can't get if you have nothing to trade anyone for them."

"But they do have robots."

"I don't think this society could possibly make computer chips. Make something worth trading for them - don't know. Crops that take a lot of land to grow, plausibly. That could be sustainable, export crops and import robots and pocket everythings, as long as no one wanted to conquer you. ...maybe there aren't seasons here."

"They're some kind of alien, does that even matter?"

"I don't know. You need something like that, though, because - well, I'd conquer this place, and I have never met a war I liked."

"To get the robots? You said you didn't want us to have robots."

"I don't want Anitam to have robots, it'd be a disaster. If we had contact at all we'd get robots, wouldn't need a war for that. No, I'd want this place because we could keep everybody and give them two apiece and still fit an extra hundred million people."

"It probably doesn't go on like this forever."

"Couldn't fit that many if we happen to have just had the misfortune of walking and then riding the whole length of the country, I suppose. But it wouldn't have to go on forever."

And here they are at the city! Witwa doesn't stop to shoo them, she proceeds through the streets.

...It's not a very clean city.

 - yikes.

The people don't mind?

Nobody seems alarmed. (Shasali wrinkles her nose and holds Kalatha closer. Kalatha has only peed on her once.)

"Are you bothered by -"

"...I don't know what you think our neighborhoods are like but they don't smell like this."

He curls up unhappily in his seat. "We can't raise her here."

Shasali nods fervently.

"Place that makes the robots probably doesn't take immigrants - ugh -"

"Maybe they take alien immigrants? Anitam would, just on principle - even if they were lower tech, just in case, if it were only a couple - wouldn't it?"

"Yes - definitely -"

"Maybe they will."