Shell Bell puts up her sign and nibbles her most recent charity meal. Not potatoes! It is not potatoes. Or fish or clams. It is rice and curry and a fruity yogurt drink. That nice person told Bar she could use his tab for four meals, and this is meal number two.
The people ignore them except for some brief curious glances at the unfamiliar face and his weird outfit. They have schedules printed on their arms and are all bustling hither and thither to obey them.
Tulip leads him to an office with a secretary, and introduces him to the secretary, and then they are ushered past into another office with a severe-looking woman whose door says PRESIDENT COIN.
"Investigating opportunities to help your citizens," he says. "On my home planet I don't customarily bless foreigners, but I do establish embassies where, among other things, my acolytes and manifestations can distribute disease immunities to anyone who asks."
"I have the divine power to share immunities with a touch. When I touch someone, I collect copies of all the immunities they possess, and they gain all the immunities I have already collected. It's a very useful ability to have."
"That's true," he says. "Ultimately the only sources of information you have about me are my word, and observation of my empire from the outside, since you have so far declined to send a delegation of your own."
"A long time from the mortal perspective," he acknowledges. "Do you object to hosting an embassy, then?"
"I fully intend to continue respecting your borders," he says. "How threatening you find me while I go about my business inside my own empire is not under my control; I have learned that through extensive experience."
"There are more and less threatening ways to go about your business. So far you've been projecting a public face such that our plan A to keep you from encroaching on District Thirteen was to send a polite intern to the surface to ask nicely, but if you maintain or expand the Capitol's capacity to make war, disrespect our security precautions in any way, or otherwise indicate that the continued sovereignty of your neighbors is not a priority for you, you will begin to seem threatening."
"I find the Capitol's methods for making war both distasteful and unnecessary," he says. "On my home planet I maintain a military whose main practical purpose is disaster relief and escorting diplomats, because no one has tried to invade my empire in many centuries; I anticipate something similar here, but I will not even need them to escort diplomats since I am acting as my own ambassador and require no escort."
"The continued sovereignty of my neighbours is a high priority," he adds. "It is my sincere hope that I never again encounter a country so disastrously run that I feel compelled to conquer it for its people's sake; until I heard of Panem, I thought that I never would."
"By all accounts the people of Panem are mostly pleased with this development. District Thirteen, however, has been operating separately since the initial rebellion, and our people are provided for without child sacrifice or vast social stratification of the sort I assume you objected to in Panem. We are not in the market for a regime change and appreciate your understanding of that fact."
"I did object to the child sacrifice. And the mass starvation. Needless suffering offends me. It is good to hear that you don't have that sort of problem."
He refrains from pointing out that the easiest way for him to conduct such an inspection would be to extend his domain over her district and have a look.