"At the moment nothing too terribly dire we haven't been able to work out with Aitim, but we feel population control is unnecessary for humans given the example wizards provide of lower human interest in reproduction and that attempting to caste humans would be harmful. Some of our faction also feel very strongly about human self-governance per se."

"If population controls aren't necessary then credits will just be free," says Intal.

"The process of setting the price and establishing that anyone who doesn't interact with the credit system, free or not, is subject to having their child taken, would be damaging."

"Hmmm. The second problem seems solvable by just giving a credit to everyone who becomes pregnant, if demand would really be low enough that that worked. For the first one, do you mean that auctions will be upsetting and confusing? There's a provision for us to just set the price at something we're confident is appropriate. Not enforcing population controls starts wars; a credit auction where credits go for nothing will be vastly more soothing to our observers and our allies than our assurances that the rate is appropriate."

"I am familiar with the reasons Amentans need population controls. What I mean is that the contingent reasons Muggle humans currently have large family sizes will take time to noncoercively attenuate and you won't get the slow growth rate you want immediately."

"I don't think anyone's going to let us get away with that," says Aleva.

"The wizards have offered to communicate wherever it might be constructive that this is a concession to the terraforming teleporting people and not a policy we'd be pursuing in order to see what we could get away with."

Intal winces.

"My understanding is there are promising preliminary results from a non-magical human population on the subject of how many children we will have unchecked."

"The best you're going to possibly get is agreement that as long as Anitam as a whole stays under the agreed-upon growth rate it doesn't matter how we're doing it internally. There are a billion humans - I'd have to get someone to run the numbers for some potential human birth rates but it really sounds like we would have to stop issuing credits for a few years to wait until humans, uh, changed culturally."

Miranda writes this down.

"We issue nineteen million credits a year - an Amentan year. With humans the negotiated agreement is a Voan system and six million credits on top. In little monthly allotments, not all at once. We could maybe renegotiate in light of the terraforming, if the terraforming were available, but not to 'humans do whatever humans do', to a specific number, the price for exceeding which would still be war."

Miranda also writes that down.

"I realize that the situation is much more complicated than the comparison implies, but if we polled our populace on whether they'd rather have no credits for the next four years or be occasionally kidnapped and raped by roving wizards, it would not be a close call."

"I'm not sure what tradeoff you mean to imply is analogously in force."

"To the extent that we have to dramatically cut our child credits in order to make an alliance work, it will be a deeply unpopular alliance no matter how obviously good and justified the cause we're allied towards, and any politician who favors it will lose reelection."

Miranda writes.

"How far out is terraforming? That'd allow your faction to enjoy the leverage to accomplish a much higher growth rate for humans."

"Possibly less than an Amentan year out but we're neither of us primary researchers on that."

Intal grimaces at Aitim. Aitim almost smiles.

"This is a lot to take in, and I'm getting the sense we should read up closely on the situation with Earth as well as get people working on a plan for treaty renegotiation and for, ah, human self-determination. How long are you two going to be in Anitam?"

"A week."

"Are there representatives of your faction who should be involved in planning for treaty renegotiation and in developing project proposals for human self-determination."

"Yes, although we're a small group and a lot of us are playing multiple roles so apart from Karen and I they've stayed home. I'm more politically involved than Karen."

"We could send a planning team to Earth to work more closely with you but then I take it they're at risk of magical attack."

"The risk is much less if they're accompanied by friendly wizards and they don't make it obvious to any hostile ones that they know about magic."

"In that case, why don't we plan to send some people back with you who are fully informed and can develop with your faction plans for treaty renegotiation and human self-determination which are mutually satisfactory, and plan to meet again in a few days to talk about preliminary proposals on that front and make sure you're on approximately the same page before you leave?"