"I do not actually have a grievance."

"I do. They stunned us both, woke him up paralyzed in the middle of the night, asked what was likeliest to interrupt the conversation and clarified that the children and I wouldn't but not why they were sure, spent two hours asking him questions on truth drugs most of which they could have gotten off the internet, demonstrated the mind control spell, and then erased his memory."

He smiles fondly at his husband. "And I conquered their planet. I wish they'd left Shasali alone but I think it's fair to say the responsibility lands somewhere."

"- Shasali Aven? They didn't mention her."

"Got my name in the same fashion, from the first blue they ran across. On the principle that blues are fair targets, which, I mean, is reasonable but breaks down around Shasali Aven in a way I have not yet been able to convey to them."

"Yeesh. I can poke that with Miranda."

"The things that would be useful to communicate are that - I can't substantially change handling of the planet without the rest of the council, and I cannot take them to meet the council now unless they are willing to read from a script."

"Because they will say random provocative shit?"

"It's a cultural difference. Our way isn't better, but they make threats and imply endorsement of threats their friends are making very very lightly, without clarity on whether they'll follow through, and they communicate minor annoyance with casual personal threats, and I expect we can just about work with 'our planet has secret wizards with horrifying powers' but that on top of the potential for a miscommunication and someone is as likely as not to go 'well, if a ship hit the planet going very very fast..."

"They didn't threaten me. Did offer to cause my accuser indefinite computer trouble. I honesty can't figure out if Minor, like, approves of me existing, or not? He sort of vacillated between being happy for Miranda about my existence and declaring me part of the family on her behalf, and being incensed at my having predictable political opinions and the traits of my species."

"Maybe he convinced himself that a Miranda Amentan wouldn't be, well, Amentan."

"Human me is human. Not unpalatably religious or anything like that, for which I am glad, but apparently 'bizarre for the species' isn't a trait of ours."

"Anyway, I appreciate that they haven't threatened you but to my knowledge they have meticulously only threatened blues and so it doesn't especially bode well for letting them come talk to the council."

"Dear, I think you should unpack -"

" - you're right, I should. Okay. So the thing contributing a time limit to what could otherwise be a long and happy process of negotiating a mutually satisfactory solution is the population controls. They're sabotaging the trials of birth control and I think I can delay about two Amentan years on the strength of 'it'd be horribly unfair to impose while we don't even have perfect birth control', but at that point someone's going to object that we had better just do the best we could, shouldn't we, and sterilize everybody after two if necessary and over the next year or two that objection is going to get louder and louder and I'll have to at least try it somewhere."

"By 'have to' he means 'it will start to get politically dangerous' -"

"At some point I get recalled or lose reelection and then someone else picks this up and that's going to end badly for them. I'd be deeply unhappy with plans that involved flirting with it, and I don't think they're a good idea. So. Two of our years before population controls, and then a gentle rollout - such a gentle rollout, it took a lot of fighting for..."

"The plan approved by the council and the international observers is that we'd announce that the first two are free and for subsequent ones you need to buy permission, for a nominal fee. No enforcement at first and bags of baby care things with your purchase, let them get used to buying a credit cheaply and getting diapers and toys and clothes and food in exchange. After about two Earth years depending on compliance rates we're supposed to introduce enforcement, which would just be sterilization, not adopting the kid out. Then make the credits nominal-fee if you buy them before you get pregnant but expensive if you wait, to get everyone in the habit of buying them in advance. And then proper enforcement, and then edge the prices up. People may not be mathematically literate enough for an auction, we'd just have to set it regionally to hit the target if they aren't. Over the course of about an Earth decade, all told."

"Right now the wizards object to any of this, because it'll scare people. If we needed the extra two Earth years I think I could argue that the first bit is really pretty unobjectionable. But even with that we've got about an Earth decade to come up with a plan for Anitam to stop enforcing population controls on the humans without a war. The option which I think some of the wizards favor is 'they send us home', which is catastrophic but might not involve a war."

"We've been quietly favoring not expanding credits too much but past a point it's a hard stance to explain and comes off extraordinarily callous -"

"And I don't think they'll do it, they just find it much easier to engage when it's available as an option. So not that. Timothy has aired some less awful ideas, including calling an international conference on Amenta, showing themselves, and explaining that Earth is theirs, they'll tolerate our continued presence because we've been well-behaved but there will be no population controls until the human population hits ten billion, and anyone who tries to start a war over that will jump in front of a train the next day."

"Still pretty awful, obviously."

"He's a wizard, they can be nonlethal trains. My objection was - and I don't think it's likely but any chance is too high - my objection was that someone might decide Earth is a threat which could be mitigated only with a ship going at warp speed and aimed appropriately."

"So Aitim's been entertaining options for breaking the news about wizards in the least threatening way imaginable, and possibly for implying that there are wizards not on Earth."

"Most easily implied if it's true, but I don't want to set them up on Amenta because - well, the ones who are us are fine, but many wizards casually use mind-control to avoid having to pay for their purchases in stores and some grab people and take them home with them for entertainment. Can't send the ones who are us to Amenta because they are a package deal and they mostly trust me but not as far as 'would definitely behave myself if they were on a different planet with no way of going back and forth which I did not control'."