"What else do they do with magic besides - abduct people?"

"They study magic. They have sports that involve flying on broomsticks. Some of them might help terraform planets. We have an anthropologist placed in a wizarding household who says the ones she observed spend lots of time dueling for sport, inventing and testing magic things, and doing wizard politics."

"Oh, terraforming," sighs the wife.

"Ours would be orange though," says Tahike. "- right?"

"Yeah, of course, orange parents raising her and no idea who the father is. We'll probably just say all hybrids take the caste of the Amentan parent but even if we end up doing something different later, yours is orange."

Nod.

"I recommend you buy a credit here, they won't go on sale back home until right around when she's born, and then head out and we will let you know if ongoing investigation ever turns anything up. We couldn't safely hold a wizard prisoner long enough for a ship to go to Amenta and back, so if we do catch him the execution will probably be before you get notice, is that okay?"

"Yes," says Tahike.

"You said you were covering it?" asks her wife. "The credit."

"Yes. I know there are charities for this kind of situation but you don't really need to be dealing with that right now. I'll have someone send you the money this afternoon."

"Thank you."

"Of course. I'll include contact information with that, if you need anything. Wizarding-related information is a state secret for a number of reasons, but most importantly because wizards would stop abiding by their rules about being inconspicuous if everyone knew anyway, so if you need anything please be vague in an email and just request a meeting."

"All right."

"Take care."

"Thank you."

He goes home. Sends them money.

They purchase an orange credit and tickets home.

Shuttles which weigh exactly the amount they are expected to weigh take off from the spaceport with cheerful regularity. Shuttles which weigh too much would be firmly grounded until the crew determined what was going on, but no mysterious unaccounted-for weight has found itself on a shuttle yet.

Home they go.

Pelape starts reseasoning. She holds the little humans whenever they are not claimed by someone else but is not overtly miserable like Ana.

Aitim writes her asking how things are going.

Everyone's at least reasonably friendly on non-politics subjects. I've started reseasoning and probably won't stay if I don't get out of spring by local autumn, I think that's the upper bound on how long it could just be reseasoning-spring. Ana springs badly, I think it helped with empathy some since their previous benchmark was Hala.

Timothy actually mentioned that! I think it did make an impression. He also went out of his way to reassure me that he prefers my children not die. We're doing a trial of indirect population control in Mombasa, free film editing and welding and boating classes or free trip to go to Anitam and delight anthropologists who didn't get a visa here if you delay marriage and kids.

How goes?

Well, willingness to delay marriage and children by a few months is not wildly suggestive all by itself but if they keep it up then by the time we have long-term birth control I think I could justify doing this first, if only on 'population controls will go over better if we've already pushed their average family size from eight down to five'.

Makes sense. Is there anything in particular it'd be useful for me to be doing here as long as I'm emplaced and it's not yet clear if I'm permanent?

I don't know, do you think you and Miranda disagree on anything substantive? If you agree, what would the solution acceptable to the two of you be?

Nothing really substantive, but we have different defaults because we have different sets of people we don't want to cause friction with. If I were somehow in charge of the planet instead of you I think we'd work it out fine but since it's you Timothy's taking point and she's taking a more compromised stance. I think everybody likes the idea of 'wizards show themselves in the course of terraforming Mars and announce humans do not require population controls, thank you'.