"Inconveniently, though, that would be us..."

"And we're not telling them about us! Let's see, what else...he thinks he could end the death penalty in ten years with Veritaserum, but again that requires making it clear that magic exists. They have a base on Mars and want to settle it too. They want to pave over the whole planet. They are in the process of allocating themselves all its land."

"Charming."

"Imperiusing him doesn't really get us much - at least, not compared to teaching him how to throw it off so no one else can and then making it clear it's in his interests to do what we want. If Anitam's entire leadership decided to stop human population control they'd be invaded by a coalition of their neighbors. Asked how many people would have to die in an invasion before the Amentans would give up. He said 'definitely millions, probably not hundreds of millions'."

"...I guess if that's how they have to enforce them at home... we don't try to population-control centaurs or anything, I guess we have more experience with different species than they do."

"That's how they do it at home and as far as they're concerned the costs of doing it where it's not needed are negligible, the credits won't be expensive. I briefly tried to explain that - someone having that kind of power - is a cost, but I didn't get much into it because he wasn't going to remember..."

"Are you going to go back and let him remember this time?"

"Probably. I want to make sure we're all on the same page, see if we can think of anything I didn't think of while speaking to him, verify a few things he said just to be sure that, I don't know, it didn't wear off really fast because alien biology and then he lied his way through... but eventually I think it's in our interests for him to know what we want."

"Cool. Puppet government."

"Sending them all home seems intractable if we want the industrial base to eventually defend the galaxy against them and don't want to kick out Amentan children who were born and grew up here and might not be allowed at home. But I'm thinking puppet government for ten, fifteen years, as long as we can delay the population controls thing and depending whether he can stop the executions, and then human government that's tolerant of its Amentan citizens as long as they don't try to impose Amentan values on this human planet."

"They might actually be able to afford all the Veritaserum they want. If they don't pave all the magical habitat."

"If we sell it to them their scientists will notice as soon as they try to reverse-engineer it that there are things in our world with magical properties. I don't know how far that gets them on its own, but it's definitely a cost."

"I don't think it gets them much - there are Muggles who believe in magic but don't have enough detail to find any - but yeah."

"Seems worth it to end the executions - and give a reason they should be careful about environmental destruction - but we should give it some thought first. He's enough me that I'm not very worried about giving the memories back soon, or about avoiding doing that to him again, or anything."

Nod.

"If there's a you we should ignore her unless we absolutely have to but in whatever sense he's me he'll be fine. Oh, he has kids. They're like five. He was worried we'd hurt them."

"Didn't run into a me though."

"Who's their mother."

"I have no idea. Aitim's brother Makel, though, is married to a girl named Peka, and they have a Katin, Ana, Elemi, and - maybe I shouldn't tell you the fourth name out of curiosity about what you and Rebecca name your fourth unguided."

" - huh. Is Katin -"

"I did not ask."

"The names thing isn't consistent, 'Kantil' doesn't sound like 'Aaron' -"

"And 'Timothy' and 'Aitim' are a bit of a stretch."

"It could be about etymology."

"But then for our kids' names it is about sound -"