Sigh. "Anitam is different from here in a lot of ways. One of those ways is that babies do not appear at complete random on hillsides naked."

"Do adults appear at predictable intervals in valleys wearing hats?"

"No. We have offspring the same way as all species have offspring."

"So you're saying you're a talking animal."

"I cannot figure out how humans came about but all species on Amenta evolved from a common ancestor with no magic involved at any points."

"Huh."

"We'd find your arrangement distressing for lots of reasons but one of them is that when you're producing the next generation on purpose you can tinker with their numbers and genes to get the traits you want."

"Like... breeding animals?"

"Yes. The numbers part is actually the more important part, though. I'm very worried that things we do might affect the rate of baby drops and that this might be hard to notice until we've got much better global communications."

"You could find some area owned and routinely canvassed by a small number of people - grazing area, probably, somebody who's always up and down it with goats and finds a baby once a month - see if they get more."

"Only conclusive if it changes on small enough timescales and the - baby distribution - stays uniform, probably worth doing anyway.

The reason this matters is because if saving every baby means more of them drop, then at some point I have to switch to killing them and I'd rather kill a hundred thousand a year than a hundred million."

"Don't you want to live on the moon and stuff?"

"If the babies dropped scales with the population here but not the population on the moon then we can get enough people on the moon that we don't have to kill any babies. I want to have the option so we can check before any of these choices get unavoidable."

"Is there a specific reason you think drops might scale that way?"

"Non-magically-appearing populations grow at a rate related to the existing population of that species."

"...I suppose that's a reason. There are more storks, incidentally, someone's making new ones."

"Stork-making person has very very good reason to be anonymous but I want to talk with them."

"I don't think they're reporting back or you could just attach a letter. I've asked around but I can't find anyone who admits to knowing who they are. I've considered reinventing them but having two stork networks isn't as good as one twice the size."

Aitim bites his lip and looks at him consideringly.

"...what?"

"Whoever's directing the storks has them take the kids to the nearest creche. If they wanted to, they could instead have storks take the kids to the nearest creche they are on good terms with, or back to their own creche in their own city, or kill the kids for population control....one advantage to several stork networks over one is that no one can singlehandedly choke a kingdom out of existence. I think the storkmakers are trying very hard to look like they won't use their power that way, but it cannot have escaped them that they have it."

"I think that's why they're anonymous. In case someone else wants storks used like that."

"That would be a good reason to be anonymous, but so would 'planning to start doing that once you have enough storks'."

"I suppose... the reason you want one stork network in the ideal case is they can communicate, if there's new creches or they've already covered an area recently or something."

"I'd much rather talk with them than supplant them. But if they're not findable I think the case for a separate stork network is pretty strong."