Afen pats him.

"This kind of revises up my estimate of how much value we're providing."

"It's not at all common."

"Also the value you're providing is 'take the kid, sterilize them'."

"I know you know how deterrents work."

"Current circumstances are really deterring and yet it still happens. To the extent you are more deterring it is only because what you're doing is actually worse than a life on the brink of starvation."

"And we're also providing the birth control in the first place."

"All the medicine you're providing is great. It's everything else that sucks."

"Plumbing. Internet."

"Aitim censors the internet."

"It still plausibly beats not having any."

"He's not censoring, 'hi, spouse who was exiled to Australia for being in debt, how have you been'. He's not censoring crowdfunding - or access to credit, which some of the human religions throttle terribly - or educational materials -"

"Yeah, he's pretty much just censoring discussion of abuses that have been committed by his soldiers, which is better than censoring more than that but still, sheesh."

"It snowballs if people panic. I know it's sketchy."

"And you're all just kind of used to it in a way I don't really want us used to it."

"I'd say it'd be a good target for, like, give-and-take negotiation, but I'm not sure you're in a friendly enough mood to bother with that when you could just make demands."

"Aitim frequently persuades me that something which seems like a good idea isn't one, or that more could be accomplished with the same resources directed elsewhere."

"I guess that's sort of like give and take if you squint."

"Wasn't much give-and-take before we came to their attention either."

"It's hard to do that with people who you don't know to exist."

"I wrote him letters. Making suggestions. ...one got implemented, I guess that's some give-and-take."

"Which one?"

"I wanted him to answer frequently asked questions on the bulletin boards where they do announcements for our region. He might've been planning to do it anyway, it's kind of obvious in the areas with enough literacy."

"Waiting for someone to ask might be a signal that it'll be well-received?" Shrug. "Which ones didn't he take?"

"Uh, the first thing we sent was a petition for the conquerors to end slavery, when we were still trying to figure out if you'd get shot for looking at a soldier funny. That one I can't imagine wasn't decided long in advance. After we'd picked up the language we found out you were hiding population controls and that's when we stopped sending petitions."