"That's been explained, but presumably her husband still makes decisions for reasons?"

"Some men would prefer their wives focus on keeping the house, or are concerned about their wives overextending themselves, or worry that she might cheat..."

"You routinely have women forbidden to leave the house because their husbands believe they'll have affairs? And a science fiction author might be forbidden to speak to aliens so she can do house spouse tasks?"

"Not forbidden to leave the house entirely! No one forbids their wife going to church, or going grocery shopping, or taking the children to the library. But if Andrea is going to consult with aliens regularly, that's something some husbands would have worries about."

"I'd suggest that Sadrin visit her at home but we don't have translation fully handled."

"Unfortunately she has to commute through my bedroom, which some husbands would have concerns about. That said, I'll talk to her. --Do you have any questions I can answer, Ambassadors?"

"While the nature of the access to your world presents an obstacle, it's of interest to more countries than just Voa that there's unoccupied territory," says the Tapai ambassador. "How much of it is there? How long are the years, which will affect whether Amentans can season there?"

"How many countries are there in your world, and should we expect to hear from them soon?" asks the Cenemi one.

"I don't know how much there is in the world off the top of my head, but more than a quarter of Gilead right now is nothing but forests and pasture. Our years are 365 days, a day is 24 hours, an hour is 60 minutes, a minute is sixty seconds, and a second is how long it takes to say 'one-Missisippi.' There are... about a hundred and eighty countries, I think? How long it takes before you will hear from them depends on how much time we intend to let run in our respective universes. We have not yet contacted my government."

"I thought you were part of your government," says Avalor.

The Cenemi does some math on her everything and comes up with the figure that one Earth year is about one season. "That's probably too short for anyone with a delicate system and then some, but I bet some people can season there," she says.

"I'm part of my government, but I handle housing, I'm not generally the person you go to for alien first contact. Season?"

"Amentans," says Avalor, "experience different reactions to different seasons of the year, most importantly spring. In environments where our bodies can't tell for sure that it is a non-spring season, they go into the spring cycle until that changes, which is generally considered undesirable. So our equator and the areas near our poles are only very sparsely inhabited despite the population pressure. Voa doesn't have any equatorial territory, but we do have some polar territory."

"I'm sorry that Earth is not as helpful as we might have thought, then... I don't suppose there's anything you can do with lights or chemicals to help?"

"It's a topic of serious study, but we haven't made much progress. There is variance in how sensitive our systems are and it's likely that some Amentans will be able to season comfortably on Earth in places with distinct seasons, but we shouldn't make any plans based on it being many of them."

"It sounds like your polar regions could be a good place for families who have girls to move to, without having to worry as much about laws that work well for Amentans but less well for humans."

"Yes, that's what I was getting at earlier. It will still have to come with some Amentan movement onto Earth, though, as presently our uninhabited regions are considered emergency reserves - if we had a population problem, we could settle those areas without threatening our neighbors."

"On the bright side, we won't have to limit immigration! Earth can take as many immigrants as are willing to come."

"Amenta contains about thirteen billion people, Commander."

"We have five billion and a lot of empty space. I'm not super-familiar with the estimates of the carrying capacity of the Earth, it's kind of an academic problem, but certainly we could take two or three billion? The main bottleneck seems to be that they all have to walk through the one door."

"Yes. I'm going to turn at least the relevant floor of this building and likely the whole wing into a sort of funneling center to allow transit. You will probably need to move house likewise."

"Too bad, Serena Joy loves the place."

"Lacking the ability to move the door, perhaps you can sell the house for enough to acquire a similar or better one," says Avalor without much sentiment. "When are we going to know about the accessibility of your science-fiction author? My theologian was quite insistent."

"Assuming she's outside the door, I can get Mrs. Jones-Waite to her in literally no time at all. But I'd assumed you'd wanted to finish up the conversations with the ambassadors first."

"The theologian is currently parked in an office down the hall. She didn't imply that she needed a non-concurrent interaction."

"Excuse me, then, ma'am."

Andrea Jones-Waite is promptly fetched and brought to the theologians' office.

They will have to meet in Milliways to understand each other, but they can go off from the main meeting to avoid mutual distractions. "Can you explain what you said earlier in more detail?" asks Sadrin.