"Babies dying horribly is pretty much the worst thing. Ugh, not looking forward to figuring out how to actually administer a country, though." She sighs. "Governments do lots of stuff besides having a state monopoly on violence, and roads and other infrastructure is mostly not that big a deal for me in particular but that still leaves, like, a bunch." Another sigh. "Suck it up, Christina, knowing what you have to do next is a hard thing is way better than having no clue what to do next."

"Well, I mean, you don't have to do it all by yourself. You can get Commander Waterford to defect and do housing administration for you, or whatever."

"Is he, like, actually good at that? I like his taste in literature but he didn't seem to get why I might object to adultery and statutory rape but not gay people, so."

"I feel like that's actually a sort of a complicated set of beliefs that the vast majority of people throughout human history have not come to," says Keturah, diplomatically. "Um, but he's like, not entirely grossly incompetent, and he knows about housing? And if you collect an advisory council that consists entirely of random housewives then they will probably not be so good on the 'not grossly incompetent at housing policy' front."

"I mean even if you don't think being gay is fine it seems like an obviously different category of not-fine than the other two. Self-debasement seems like a different category than harming others. But I take your point. I suppose he's a better place to start than, well, any other idea I have right now."

"I don't think all instances of adultery and statutory rape are more obviously harmful to others than homosexuality is. But this seems like a thing the Earth theologians and the Martian theologians can debate later, when the Earth theologians are in better shape and the Martian theologians exist. Do you, uh, need anything else?"

"...D'you mind if I come back later? You're sensible. And you give good hugs."

"Yeah! Yeah that's fine. Dante's gonna be back in a few days but it's not like I'm doing anything important in the meantime. And I wanna go to Mars if you end up opening it up for business."

"That can definitely happen!"

"Cool! I mean if it's OK with Dante. I guess he has stuff here. But I'll ask him."

"...Do you want to continue being married to him? Take this as an entirely academic question if you have moral objections to divorce, it's just, you know, you didn't get married under the most romantic circumstances and my guess is that most people-who-make-that-kind-of-decision would be swayed by the part where he's apparently a Satanist. And no one's going to attempt to forcibly impregnate you on Mars."

"Oh we're not actually married! At least not in the, uh, actual sense."

She appears deeply unsatisfied with this wording.

"Huh?"

"Well you can't make someone marry someone, right? Like, if someone holds a gun to your head then it isn't a real marriage even if you have all the paperwork on file, and the same holds if you're a handmaid with religious objections to being same and if you don't get married then you're going to be sent to prison and be forcibly impregnated there. Plus there are, uh, things with lack of form and disparity of cult and all, and also I think if you marry someone without telling them that you're actually a spy for a foreign power then that might not be valid. So the not being validly married is really overdetermined, at this point."

"Are you Catholic?"

"Yeah. Badly. In theory."

"Well, for what it's worth, you were talking more like--in my experience--a Jesuit than any kind of near-Gileadite Protestant I've ever encountered, so."

"Oh. Well. Maybe I'm doing something right, then."

"We'll see! And with any luck you will soon have more access to Catholic resources."

"That would be cool of the aliens. Helps with the avoiding religious imperialism, and all."

"Quite."

"I think you're doing OK on that front so far. Most of the godlike Star Trek aliens were much harder to reason with."

"Q was an obnoxious twit and I hold myself to far higher standards than 'better than him'."

"Oh I wasn't even thinking of him! Like, in TOS the Metrons were all - uh, you know what, we shouldn't have this discussion right now, you have babies to save and planets to terraform and housing to develop."

"It's good to take a breather every now and then, but good point, I should probably be going."