" - I mean, possibly? I'm not particularly expecting results that manifest in this generation, though. I want humans and Amentans economically and culturally integrated a hundred years from now, and I'm not sure that predicts it, especially since they won't actually have a caste and I'd expect the benefits to all be benefits of actually having a caste."

"Having a control group at all, though..."

"Sure, fair, we can refuse a random half of the ones who want a caste."

"Although I can predict what the diplomats will have to say about that." Sigh.

"It would have been politically useful if the first casteless society was more advanced than us and had population controls which worked without a caste system and didn't have slavery and so on."

"Well, you found us now and not in however many decades all that would have taken."

"And a good thing, because the intermediate period between when you invent methods of mass slaughter and when you invent methods of global coordination is not something I'd wish on anyone. But it makes this a harder sell."

"I'm not so sure history will always pass through similar stages on every planet, but I guess it might have."

"That particular thing feels inevitable enough to me that I'd be surprised to run across anyone who didn't have it? Guns are easier than coordination and there are a lot of forces that push industrial societies into wars."

"Might be easier to do without the coordination step. Just keep having wars all the time forever."

"Oh, yes, that one seems plausible."

"It wouldn't have been better exactly if we'd found them further along, but - end state of integration'd be tidier, given certain assumptions - if the religions had been noticed to be false and they'd invented birth control and the birth rate were already falling -"

"Yeah, it's much likelier that we'd have met on more equal footing. On the other hand, if we meet someone out there who's our equal and has no population controls and their birth rate isn't falling, that'll probably end with the destruction of one civilization or the other - I think humans raised Anitami are not going to be worse-equipped to go colonize a planet with very short years than humans raised under any plausible human government that could have arisen over the next two hundred years, and that the planet they found probably won't be worse."

"That sounds about right, yeah."

"I don't disagree but so much unnecessary, stupid damage is going to get done on the way."

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"It's probably not the best use of me to go work on getting up to speed to help with terraforming Mars so there can be less stupid collateral damage, when I'm needed for my critical not turning people into shrews skill, but - ugh -"

"If it helps, sometimes I think about what we'd have done if we'd been fully-informed going in, and the answer is probably "set up on the Moon and quietly negotiated with or abducted amenable wizards and waited six years until we had a crop of wizards of our own" and during that time Earth would have gone on having slavery and a child mortality rate upwards of a third and that would have been stupid collateral damage, too, just a less distracting sort."

"...I guess from a certain angle that might help."

Malo stirs. Kan tucks his limbs back under him and kisses his head. "Hopefully by the next time this comes up we will be better at it."

"I hope so too."

Elsewhere, the witch who had such trouble photographing her owl learns that if she moves to Anitam she can have multiple husbands if she feels like it and decides to go visit to make a final decision about emigration.

The Anitami wizarding community would be delighted to have her! They have their own shuttles now. 

And onto such a shuttle she goes. "I bet you have very good schools what with everyone so concerned about children and all the redheads being teachers and so on."

"We do! Though we're trying to import people willing to teach your style of magic; it's different and it seems likely that most immigrants would be upset if their children only learned ours."