"Even with servants to cheat?"

"Depends how hard we can cheat. Supply chains have a lot of inputs. Kib's working on a generalist servant. I guess if it's general enough, and we can assembly-line it - it'd be nice consolation, if we could leave this world a post-scarcity paradise except for the necessary infanticide to keep it that way."

"And they don't seem poised to murder anyone as soon as they have the technology."

He flinches.

She looks at him levelly.

"It's still happening and now we're here and can't do anything."

"I wasn't going to survive anyway."

"I know."

"You said Isel sent you to see if I was alive but you got more involved than that."

"She wanted me to get you out if I could. I - couldn't think of a way but it was worth trying more than 'not at all' - and I was legitimately curious who fed you the information, because if it's Isel she's not careful enough and it's going to torpedo the efforts through legitimate channels when she gets caught and if it's someone sufficiently disconnected from the political efforts, well, there are other things they should maybe learn about."

"It wasn't her."

"Yeah, I gathered that. 

We had a plan. It was a long shot anyway but it stood a chance and they can't do it without me."

She winces.

"What was it?"

"Gonna argue you could clean people with something in the vein of chemotherapy."

"And then what?"

"And then get everybody to agree not to boycott or invade us for trying it and keep a stranglehold on the press to tamp hysteria down - we were delayed several years by that blithering idiot - and privately fund 'cleaning' a couple people and let them go about living their lives and once it was past the point where people could reasonably panic, once they'd been touching things for a year and lots of people knew them, do more - we could by more or less liquidating all the assets my family possesses have done sixty, maybe, but once people were out they could save up for other people, and there are bleeding-hearts who'd care, and even if no one wanted clean reds afterwards they could live in the equator and people could set up factories there."

She nods tightly.

"But I was - I worked in foreign affairs that whole side of it was mine, I had angles on most of the people we'd need to persuade and I didn't write things down because they weren't safe things to have written down and - it probably wouldn't have worked but -"

"I hope you're wrong, I hope they didn't need you."

"Me too!"

She goes to give Kalatha lunch.

He takes a bath.

Kib settles in. He works on his golem design.