Giggle.

And they go to the meeting. Aitim hugs a considerable number of people at his workplace. Aitim deflects questions about the humans. Aitim leaves his guards at the door.

"Okay. So. Miranda, Karen, these are Intal, Aleva, Sonan, and Kethasa Neli. Miranda and Karen are representatives of a secret society of humans who call themselves 'wizards' because they are capable of things they understand to be magic. They are the provisioners of the Veritaserum. They can also teleport, turn invisible, fly, cause a wide variety of temporary and permanent effects at short range, and alter peoples' memories, an ability they've been using to keep themselves secret for ordinary humans. 

I said I wanted all day but I'm actually expecting that we're going to need several."

"We need brooms to fly and didn't bring ours," Miranda clarifies.

Aitim opens the spacefolding trunk and hands it to Intal Neli.

Kethasa peers over his shoulder. Sonan raises an eyebrow at Aitim.

"Oh good," says Aitim lightly. "I was a little worried that someone was going to say 'yes, we knew about the secret wizards', it being apparently traditional for secret wizards to notify one person in the nonmagical government. I think the explanation will be better appreciated once you have more evidence - Miranda, Karen -"

Intal Neli drops a pen into, reaches into, frowns at, takes a picture of, and passes on the magic box. 

Miranda conjures a glass. She fills it with water. She drops it and shatters it before it hits the ground. She repairs the glass and Vanishes the water.

"As you know, our research labs have been attempting unsuccessfully to synthesize Veritaserum. I think that this may be because it does have properties incompatible with molecular chemistry as we understand it. There are about two million wizards in the world. The ability is heritable and probably genetic, I have samples which a research laboratory here has been asked to look into. About fifty years ago they decided to separate themselves entirely from non-magical human society, non-magical humans being unclean with poor prenatal nutrition and not really having anything to offer wizards. They have international law around any kind of conduct which might make it apparent to non-magic humans that magic humans exist."

"You sent Veritaserum for synthesis eight months ago," Intal said. 

"It seemed it would be very hard to give a convincing account of any of this without some cooperative wizards. You'd have gotten an explanation had I been rendered unable to send it."

"Rendered unable?" says Kethasa.

"Wizards make extensive use of the ability to modify peoples' memories in order to maintain their secrecy. We are in contact now with a political coalition opposed to such use," nod at Miranda and Karen, "but the policy of every wizarding government known to me is that nonwizards who become aware of them be made to forget about it.

Also many of them are very emphatically opposed to our plans for Earth -"

" - did Kan and your children make this trip with you -"

Sigh. "No."

"- they're safe."

Intal Neli frowns at her.

"There are wizards interested in collaborating with us on terraforming, improving the treatment of nonmagical persons under magical law, and on Amentan-wizard hybrid children, which are possible and which we have some reason to believe will be magical children with mild springs. I requested that they arrange magical protection for my family after it became obvious that there were also wizards with whom we had much less common ground. They have been gracious hosts, no one's had complaints - Nanha made it known to me that her chef had a much less annoying voice. No one else has had complaints."

"The servants do admittedly have voices that take some getting used to."

"I have a timeline of events written up, I think that might be the most efficient way to summarize." He emails it. 

Shortly after the invasion of Earth, representatives of a wizarding political coalition involved in international negotiations for changes to the Statute dispatched agents to spy on Anitami communities in Britain. They learned the language, tested Amentan weapons against magical defenses (not all Amentan weaponry is useless, footnote on what happened in Portugal...), and eventually in the course of their spying learned that population controls were planned. 

Wizards have reliable access to birth control, are not religious, and do not prohibit their women from entering the labor market; these turn out to be major contributors to birth rates among humans. Wizards are below replacement and maintain their current population size only because magic sometimes occurs spontaneously in nonmagical humans and because they very nearly breed true. Wizards did not see the necessity of population controls, and became concerned that they might be implemented by means of secret sterilization or alterations to the water supply. 

The first contact Aitim knows of between wizards and his government was on this occasion when a representative took him prisoner in the middle of the night and asked policy questions under Veritaserum, then erased Aitim's memory. Aitim now keeps several audio recorders on him at all times, but didn't start that until a month later. They came back on subsequent occasions. They wanted him to stop the population controls. He explained that he could not do that. They thought a Veritaserum-based criminal justice system was more effective; he offered to run a trial of that, but observed that he would need to remember these encounters to be able to make progress on their goals. An agreement was eventually reached under which Aitim would try to collect independent evidence of the tendencies among humans which the wizards thought justified a different approach to the conquest of Earth, and would be allowed to remember that they were talking at all as long as he was able to routinely confirm under Veritaserum that he was cooperating with the terms of this agreement. 

An orange in Switzerland was kidnapped; the wizarding faction with which relations had by then been established was able to confirm that she was the prisoner of a wizard but not secure her release. Under wizarding law the kidnapping was actually lawful, except if anyone had noticed that magic was involved. It became apparent to Aitim that correcting the apprehension of wizards that nonwizards were unclean and not of moral concern needed to be a priority. He set up a shop for nonmagical ingredients. Wizards attended; some were friendly. 

Relations improved with the faction Aitim was in regular contact with. They were eager to help terraform planets. Aitim sent them some anthropologists to do observational study of wizards and some scientists to help with the terraforming plans. The orange was released, pregnant; she wanted to keep the child; she's back here in Anitam now.

Aitim's anthropologists confirmed that wizards, and probably any humans with the right cultural influences, are indifferent about children; report attached. Aitim acted on this with this program in Mombasa; report attached. 

There is a detailed, careful characterization of the Rabbit Incident, with the concluding note that wizards consider it an outrage and an eventual cause of war if a nonmagical government tries to enforce laws on wizards, but are amenable to answering to Anitam's magical government if Anitam has one, which Aitim found it prudent to create some ambiguity about and at this time thinks it would be prudent to outright invent.

In response to the incident Aitim requested and secured the permission of the allied wizards to bring this to the attention of everyone who ought to know about it.

The council read this. Miranda and Karen idly set up wizard chess to play while they do that.

"They think we're unclean because we don't have magic?" says Aleva Neli.

      "Because they're not Amentans those are not precisely the terms in which they think of it. It's not a bad analogy in terms of predicting them but you could take it too far."

"Magical people can leave insubstantial ghosts which can carry on conversations and remember their lives, and nonmagical people can't. In my opinion ghosts are not themselves people, but this is considered evidence that we have souls and you don't. In magical terms you're also all effectively seriously disabled. This happens sometimes with magical parents and those children don't make out very well."

        "Could we -" says Aleva.

"I don't think we'd lose a war but we have more to lose in one and there's no obvious victory condition and we definitely lose the planets if it comes to that."

       "How common are the rape and kidnapping incidents?" asks Intal. 

"I have no idea. There are two million of them and it would surprise me if fewer than one in a thousand finds it interesting."

      "And if we just keeping hanging people for it - or shoot them, if that works better -"

"Then they'll probably start killing whoever they understand to be responsible for us doing that."

"Many wizards intensely resent the idea of being subject to a Muggle government and we mostly only have loosely corresponding geographical claims for linguistic reasons. My understanding is that it would be a little like a red pre-transition-era attempting to arrest a clean Amentan for attacking other reds - even if they somehow managed it there's no way it would be seen as legitimate just because reds had internal community norms against harming reds, and the crackdown would never be settled with 'okay, I guess we'll let the reds retaliate if people hurt them however the reds prefer to do so'."

"Well," says Aleva, "can we make them -"