"Yeah. Unless you, I dunno, have a store of a couple hundred planet-destroying bombs somewhere, or something. Someone somewhere will take you up on freeing their slaves, if you're scary enough, but most of them won't. The majority of the slaves we'll have to fight for."

"And that's horrible. But so is slavery, so I guess probably we'll decide to do it anyway."

"Won't matter whether you do or not, in terms of whether the war happens. Unless you either can't turn off the implants or you decide to withhold the technology once you have it. We'll - no, we wouldn't wait until after Melkor was stopped, actually. You should probably withhold the technology until that happens, for the sake of your own goals, if the plan is to ally with the Alteri. But the point is that as soon as we have something resembling half of a sliver of a chance, we're going to take it, and that's going to mean war."

"That makes sense."

This is gratifying, anyway.

"Mm. And it's going to take more than a lifetime, even with lightleapers. You don't take over hundreds of star systems over the course of a few decades."

"Do you have to take over? Rather than just - agree on which places have which laws and stop fighting?"

"Yes? Not forever, not entirely, but I don't see how we can free slaves throughout Alteri lands without taking at least a majority of their territory. And - I want to be optimistic, I want to hope for things, but the Alteri mostly aren't the sort of people who lie down and just accept other people overturning their basic way of life."

"You'd know better than we would."

"Probably. I guess I don't know." Sigh. "The point is, we are more than likely going to be at war for the rest of my life. For as long as anyone I know is alive."

"Are you imagining that every single human settlement is going to be a warzone and there won't be anywhere where fighting isn't happening or imminent?"

"I don't know exactly what it's going to look like. If the Alteri somehow get lightleapers then there just won't be safe places, but even if they don't, they can always send warships to systems, and - evacuating a planet is an enormous undertaking, and it has enormous economic and strategic costs. And it's just - you're not wrong, OK, it would be a better galaxy if we could easily move people around, if there could be peace, if people could be safe, but if you think Earth is a warzone then yes, there's a tremendously good chance that everywhere will be sort of a warzone for a while. And by a while I mean until I am dead, even if nobody gets around to killing me."

"And - maybe that is the best we can do but it is very terrible, and bringing children into it is even more terrible, and perhaps sometimes the very best thing you can do is still awful and terrible but - but it would be a great loss to think it was good."

"It's not good, OK? I readily admit that it is a terrible situation and I wish we were not in it. I keep wondering if the Alteri had this conversation however many years ago, and if they decided that yes, it was going to be terrible and it was going to be terrible for a long time, but it was worth it not to have to live on their knees. And I just - I don't want to make the decisions they did, I do not want to become what they are, but - "

Damn it, she cannot have this conversation while flying. She takes her helmet off and frowns at him.

He takes his off too. 

"It sucks, OK? Life sucks and then you die. But if you are given the chance to have a life that sucks less than it did - if you are, more than anything, given the chance to help people who are begging to have lives that suck as little as yours does, then you do not roll over and live in your relative paradise and ignore them. I know you don't, because you didn't and you aren't. And maybe Elves can do that and then just wait until the world is OK again to have children, but we can't wait that long, and our lives have never been OK, as long as there have been Liars we haven't been OK, and I am not going to pick now, of all times, to decide that this is a world that isn't worth living in. Because - because life sucks and then you die, but if we are very brave and very strong and very clever and very, very kind, then it doesn't have to suck quite as badly for my children. And there are so, so few Liars who can say that right now. So I am not going to regret bringing children into that world, into a world where they have hope that things can be better, when that's been true for almost no one since the creation of my species. Even if that world still kind of sucks."

Babies being born into warzones is absolutely horrible. 

Clearly Imrainai needs to believe that this isn't the case, or at least that it shouldn't be regretted - but what does it mean to say something is absolutely horrible but shouldn't be regretted - because she's having a baby and planning a war. 

That - makes sense. 

But it would be lying to agree with her. Babies shouldn't be born into warzones.

"Sometimes - sometimes in war you go land in an orc city and sweep the city shooting every single orc you see, including the children, and that is less horrible than any of the other options. And - maybe some people find that what works for them is to do that and regret it and also believe it was the least horrible option, but maybe some people find that they can't regret it, that it isn't - healthy - to regret the best choice that they had. Maybe it isn't. But - but if someone said that to live with it they had to stop believing that it was horrible, then I'd be really worried, because - because it just is horrible. And babies in warzones is horrible. And I don't think you should do anything different and I don't - know if you should regret it, that seems like a question about you. But - but I guess I'm worried if you think that Liars need to think it isn't terrible, because that doesn't sound very good for Liars, even - even given everything."

She thinks about that for a bit.

"Lots of things are horrible," she says, eventually. "There are lots of things about my life that I sort of knew were horrible before I came here, and other things I didn't really realize were horrible until after I did, and maybe there are other things that I still don't realize are horrible, even now. But I think it's better to be born on Earth than it is to be born an Alteri slave. And maybe someday there will be Liars who know what it is for things to not be horrible, and maybe someday they will look back at me and talk about how horrible the things I did were. And - good for them, then, honestly. But if those are humanity's choices - raise babies in places that are sort of warzones, or make sure that the only babies ever are raised as slaves who are desperately hoping to be freed by an aging and dying revolt, then - then I'm sorry I couldn't offer them better, but I'm going to offer the babies the best we have, if I think that will result in a world where some people eventually get to live lives that are not completely horrible."

She sighs. "I'm - glad you can talk about things being horrible, though, I think. Nobody does that where I come from. It was really nice to come here and have someone acknowledge that things were bad before, because it seems obvious, but sometimes you wonder if maybe it doesn't make sense to talk about things being horrible when nobody's ever had anything better. But I hope someday the world is non-horrible enough that you don't have to remind it that it's horrible anymore."

"That would be lovely."

She nods.

"...We know how to stop Liars from having children. I mean, beyond the obvious way where you just don't have sex. I am not super sure I trust you not to use it to make some of the only free Liars anywhere die out in a generation, but the technology exists."

"I expect they'd be terribly greatful for that, on Endorë. Not everyone wants to have children who they will watch grow up to go die or be tortured horribly. Some people would be - really glad not to."

"Then I guess they should have the option," she sighs. "You'll have to ask the Alteri for it, we don't really control those things. I suppose there are probably some Liar doctors who understand it well enough to offer it to other people, but the Alteri are the most likely to know."

"Will the people on Earth know?"

"...I think so, actually. I'm not a hundred percent, but they seemed like they probably did. I guess you could probably try asking them, too."

He blinks rapidly in the way Elves do when they're making a note on their computers. "Thank you. I should have asked that much sooner."

She shrugs. "It didn't come up. Glad if we can help, though." Sigh. "Man, I don't want to be a horrible person."