"We have a lot of stages at which we can identify a problem before anyone is in danger. Here, it sounds like the equivalent would be figuring out if anyone is developing dangerous spells before those spells are complete."

"Mmhm."

"Once you have Bella it'll be easier."

"Sounds like it. What does your candidate pool look like?"

"That'll depend a little on what skills are most relevant."

"I'm not sure how you want that information presented."

"You have to be at least a little smart and for inventing more spells you have to be really smart. For not dying I think mostly you have to be boring."

"What sort of skills did learning the spell you learned require, Pelape -"

"Holding a lot of moving parts and their interactions in my head at once - sort of like trying to decipher a - still diagram of clockwork and how it would move."

"So then until we can design a suitable aptitude test maybe we'll start with people who do military research and have a record of being trustworthy with dangerous things."

"The phrase 'military research' doesn't actually inspire trust in me."

"No?"

"I mean, for secrecy, sure, but not necessarily for judicious use."

"The thing we want magic for is to colonize planets. I'm confident that existing secret research can very easily be redirected to that end, whereas I worry that if we prioritize well-meaningness over competence with high-stakes secret projects we'll get people making costly mistakes."

"You're planning on doing the surveillance thing, which ought to prevent leaks but can't interfere as well with malice. Competence yes, competence someone has elected to channel into the military I'm not so sure."

"Most researchers who chose to do military research are attracted by the R&D budget, not the desire to do people violence."

"I confess little exposure to the green end of the pipeline but you do also fund universities."

"And I am delighted by the people who come out of them but none of them can keep a secret to save their lives and their disappearance from their usual circuit of academic pursuits would be conspicuous and Materia is likelier to consider them objectionable."

"Secret keeping per se wasn't a criterion."

"I'm not very worried about a war resulting from qualified people misusing magic but I am somewhat worried that a war could result if it leaks that we have new capabilities but not what they are, or that there's an alien here, or that magic works."

"That has nothing to do with Materia finding them objectionable. Why did you bring up Materia finding them objectionable?"

"Because it's also a constraint, until we've rescued Fëanáro's friend."

"But not one that has to do with - never mind, I have re-parsed the paragraph - you think it's easier to find a benign military R&D green who spends their career figuring out how to make planes go faster from a base to something they're going to blow up, than to find a sufficiently humble and taciturn student of flatworm biology? Really?"

"Do you want to go for a walk around this lovely resort and talk about our goals here in general? I think it might make conversations about the details more productive."

"Fine."