"We have computers and some kinds of robots. We don't have ones that can replace living workers entirely. If we did I kind of think they'd kill most of the slaves. You don't have to feed computers. They wouldn't get rid of the suke, they're as Alteri as anyone else."

"Ah. It would be nice to give them something to keep their society from collapsing when they are forced to stop keeping slaves, but it sounds like that won't necessarily be straightforward."

"Yeah. I mean, I'm not completely confident that they'd kill us, but they don't like keeping useless people around, and I don't really like the idea of giving them a reason to kill off most of the Liars they have." Frown. "I guess I don't want all the Alteri to die, but I'd rather bet on them figuring out how to avoid starvation than on us managing to escape a society that's decided we're superfluous."

He nods. "Where do you think most freed humans would want to live?"

"I... can't really answer that. Earth already has eight billion people. I don't expect any of the Alteri worlds to accept us. I've been really happy here, but I haven't been to Endorë and I don't know whether it has space for us. I think we'll take what we can get, wherever that is."

"Endorë does not really have space and is in any event very dangerous - I will explain more about that in a little while. If some place had a lot of industry, we could build a lot of lightleapers and explore for a safe planet, but I don't know of anywhere in the universe that might do. Are habitable planets rare in the experience of the Alteri?"

"Habitable means different things for different species. Habitable without any support is practically non-existent for everyone. Planets that can be terraformed are rare but not ridiculously rare, if you check enough systems you'll find one. The main considerations are cost and distance - not distance, I guess, with the lightleapers, but it's still true that some planets are going to take more effort than others to make habitable. But we'd take a planet nobody was using, sure, if you managed to find one. There are planets with industry we could take - Earth has some industrial capacity, of course, and at least some spacers who could probably be trained to build new kinds of ships, but I'm not sure what 'a lot' means and I couldn't give a meaningful estimate of Earth's capacity anyway."

She notes that their own space exploration and terraforming tech can't be that far along if they don't have the answer to that one. Either the lightleapers are pretty new, or they have a worrying lack of curiosity. Given the rest of her interactions with them, she's leaning towards the first.

"Which planets have industry, aside from Earth?"

"I think almost everyone has some? I've only actually been to Yahi, but Yahi has factories and orbital shipyards and stuff. There are planets in the network that are mostly focused on agriculture, I guess, so maybe not literally everywhere. I think - Danvada has a lot of factories, Kasua Kel and T'vadli have notable shipyards... there are others I'm sure I've heard things about, but I can't be certain of the specific level of productivity. I could point them out on a star chart. I don't know all the Alteri planets, there are a lot, but I could point out some major points of interest. Anything not part of the stellar network is likely to have some industrial capacity, since it has to be mostly self-sufficient, and will also be harder for the Alteri to defend."

"It would be really useful to have a star chart with everywhere you know of and what resources they have. Perhaps you and Ettelië can sit down afterwards to work on that. The stellar networks allows for faster communications and transit?"

"Vastly faster. Not instantaneous, and not as fast as the lightleapers over very large distances, but you move your timescale down from decades to weeks, or from centuries to months. It takes a huge amount of time and resources to connect a new star system, though, they only do it if they expect the planet to be hugely economically useful for a very long time."

"So if contact were made with a planet not in the network, it would take decades or centuries for word to reach the network?"

"Depends on how far the planet is from the closest planet in the network. In most cases it'll take years to maybe three decades, they usually don't build major colonies much further away than that. It's possible that they could intercept Carthon communications, which are instantaneous - that's how they found out about Earth as quickly as they did - but it would still take years or decades for their warships to reach the planet."

"Hmmm," he says mildly. "Is anything else coming to mind at the moment as something we should know about, or should I move on to explaining our situation?"

"Oh. Um. Probably lots of things you should know about, but I'm not sure what they are off the top of my head? Uh, they told you about the mind readers?"

"I know that it's a capability the Alteri have sometimes, but not more than that."

"I haven't heard of any of the Alteri themselves having it. The psyons are modified Liars. They only take in information, they don't transmit it, and there's a range limit, but I don't know what it is. And they can't read Alteri or Sluggards, but they can tell where Thieves are, and since you seem more like Liars than Thieves I'd expect them to be able to get something from Elves. So it's just - I'm sorry I can't be terribly specific, but you'll want to watch out for that."

"They can read any of your thoughts? Can you feel them doing so?"

"You can't feel them doing it. I'm not sure if they can access any of our thoughts. It's safer to assume they can, but I doubt it's that simple in reality. They can definitely pick up sensory data from the people around them. They depend on it, they're blind and deaf."

"Is that deliberate by the Alteri or a consequence of their abilities?"

"Deliberate. According to Mathrael, anyway. Makes it harder for them to rebel."

"Mathrael?"

"My work crew leader. She knows a lot more than I do - she's older and has been to more planets and speaks more languages than I do. I don't know if she's right about everything, but most of what I know is word of mouth, and I'd trust Mathrael's word above most people's. Not everyone would, but - not everyone likes her, she's very insistent about people doing their work and not slacking off." Pause. "I think she's doing her best."

"Why does she care if you slack off?"

"Because if we do, and we get caught, then we'll be punished. Often the whole group together. So she has to strike a balance between keeping us as safe as she can, and also not cutting out literally all of the good things we're trying to carve out for ourselves. There's no approach you can take that won't leave some people thinking you're being careless with their safety and other people thinking you're deliberately trying to torture them."