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Elsseth's position is three cities away from her mother's. This isn't uncommon, but it can occasionally be inconvenient.
She has a matter she would prefer advice on, and now is a good time to travel; she calls up a set of dancers, and--
everything should have gone fine. But someone came in with a minor emergency, not having been notified of her visit, and ran right into a key definer.
She vanishes.
She does not reappear in her mother's city.
...Half their population is queens????????????
Half their population can get pregnant, and the other half can get them pregnant. They have some species that work like the aliens, though. See, they are really very different.
Uh. Wow. Having everyone be either a queen or a consort sounds...messy??? How do they keep their population from growing out of control.
They have strict laws about it and medical birth control.
That sounds awful.
They don't like it a bit. That's why they're so excited about the teleporting! They would like to teleport to other planets, and live there, and have room for more people.
That seems reasonable but the torture thing might be a sticking point.
They are happy to stop!
It seems like the problem might go deeper than that but they are not queens so.
Yes, the locals would love to talk to their queens about how to productively interact with the aliens.
Assuming anyone comes back. These aliens were all plausibly dead, after all.
And they can't teleport?
Well, they could, but it might not be a good idea.
Why not?
If the Amentans can teleport and they see the aliens teleporting home they might be able to follow them.
The Amentans would love to visit, but they would much rather wait for an invitation than drop in uninvited.
(Elsewhere, someone pulls security footage of the dancing aliens in the booth with the queen.)
They are not sure they want to trust the people who thought torture floors were a good idea.
(The dancing aliens: totally dancing, except for two holding up the thoroughly-battered red-haired queen.)
If they would like privacy in which to dance home the green can leave. Unless they have any further questions.
They are not confident they would not be spied upon.
If they would like an open field to dance home from they can do that too.
They are really not getting how much the torture thing is dinging the available trust here.
They are very, very sorry about that. If there is anything they can do to make it up to the aliens they would be so happy to.
That is really not the point!!!
The green is very sorry he is not better at translating.
The aliens suspect that the translation is not the problem.
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