"We have camera footage of spontaneously appearing fire, and it certainly felt warm to me. Also, they gave us apparently-magic drugs- Montero fed one to a volunteer-"

She raises her hands to ward off the incredulous question.

"Yes, yes, reckless fools. After putting it in the tox scanner, and with informed consent and plenty of monitoring and stuff, Kaylee was happy to be an experimental subject if it was about aliens, and it's apparently doing something medically known but in a way that he doesn't understand at all. In the absence of a better explanation, we might as well use 'magic'."

"Magic, sure. Makes about as much sense as the superconducty battery, to me."

"It's not a battery, it's- Oh, for god's sake, nevermind. Look, as much as I don't want to be left out of this, maybe one of us should stay here just in case there's any kind of incident?"

"Bass is the best driver. Mary knows override codes. Lucy is the leader. I know the bridge systems well. And you're good with machinery and improvisation. The only senior officer we don't really need is Dr. Montero, and he's still with the aliens, learning their language."

"Fine, let's just get going. Maybe the magic aliens have something to do with why we crashed."

"Buckle your seatbelts, ladies and gent! There's one really nasty slope we're going to have to cross but the rest should be pretty smooth, so sit back, settle in, and enjoy the ride."

The rover smoothly accelerates out of the opening airlock with an electric hum.

"A thought strikes me. These people, the aliens, they have magic and they don't have electricity or computers, but - they aren't idiots. I've seen far too many stories where the evil empire dismisses the locals or the resistance or whoever as 'backwards savages' and gets bit for it. Ancient humans on Earth had different ideas, different societies, and limits, but they had the brilliance to use what they had- There is art, architecture, statecraft, literature, from every era of history we can recall... It shows that people have always been smart, driven, and adaptable.

They built a perfectly serviceable biplane. They're learning English from one of our own, and quick. They have some kind of understanding of medicine. I think... Magic or not, respect them. These countries, Lei and Allheart and FD, are - societies. Complex, interconnected, motivated to advance their interests. But also, be wary of ways we could be taken advantage of- Spying, or some sort of magic, or simple diplomatic out-maneuvering."

"Heavy stuff. You were middle to upper corporate once, Lucy, right? Rhinemetall-Schneider, I think? Captain Espanoza had actual diplomatic and governmental experience, but... I think there's relatively few who can say the same these days."

"I was an operations planner for the RM-Schneider heavy industrial works in Lille, yes. I did a lot of regulatory compliance work- Spoke to politicians sometimes, not that it's left me with that much an idea of what I'm doing. But more than zero, at least."

She has an idea how the backrooms complex works... On Earth at least. And some notion of negotiation and incentives.

"It might be corporate thinking but I want Nivis, Exodus, to become the next Silicon Valley. I don't want us to become irrelevant, out-populated by these countries. I want to build capital goods, machines that make machines, and import what we need to work them... Silicon chip fabricators, electronics lines generally, high end machining and alloying, arc furnaces, nuclear reactors, solar panels, robots, everything that can be termed 'productive capacity'. I want Nivis to be a center of learning, I want countries competing to send their brightest to learn. Not only is that... The way to spread the industrial revolution, and the decent thing to do... It's the option that is in good faith. We'll teach, and we'll build, and we'll become a cultural and learning center, and maybe a diplomatic center..." She trails off.

"...We still have to defend ourselves. But I think I see what you mean. It's the cooperative thing to do. It's the thing that will cement Nivis as 'good aliens'. If there were a science fiction story about aliens crash-landing and hoarding their technology and knowledge, and aliens crash-landing and teaching people and trading away their technology... I know which one would have the aliens be - more morally correct. None of this 'not interfering with their path'. The Prime Directive always was bullshit in my opinion."

"Morals and philosophy, pah. I guess we do pay you two to figure that shit out. Are you sure you should be deciding the future of Nivis, Lucy? You're gonna host elections sooner or later, right? You might get voted out. I know a few idiots who will say you're threatening everyone's safety and security by sharing anything at all."

"Whether it's good for my chances of election or not, I sincerely believe it's just... The right thing to do. Absent further information, which we might be about to get."

"Hoarding tech sounds like paranoid Cold War thinking to me, so I like your style, Lucy. Let's teach 'em and bring about an age of prosperity."

"A rising tide lifts all hearts..."

"Amen to that."

"Yeah. Just, let's also not get lazy. These countries are going to be worried, and they're in a war themselves, so we should expect spies, and maybe some kind of hostile action even if not any real fighting. We'll have to step up the encryption... They might not have computers yet, but they have magic, and 'didn't bother to encrypt sensitive data' is probably on some kind of common sense checklist."

"I want there to be lots of operations trading with the aliens, as soon as that's feasible. Not three, not a handful, lots. Although not necessarily one for every country, and I think that's the wrong way to divide it anyway."

"Does that benefit us?"

"Currently the expedition is lucky to be majority FD, and multiplying the expeditions would probably lose that advantage, but there are two benefits:

First, for all Ansaf, if one relationship breaks down it doesn't doom us all. Right now it feels like we're attempting to make friends with individual alien leaders, and we know they're going to elect new ones soon. Maybe they'll teach us about how countries can work together - maybe that's their species magic - but until that actually happens, this kind of relationship feels precarious.

The second benefit is for Freedom and Democracy. They already do democracy and care about freedom in the abstract. So, in what situation would they act in our favor most strongly? In a situation where they're empowered to act, in general, most strongly. Let them get information from many sources, let them express opinions and make choices without their entire future on Ansaf at stake, and they will benefit us.

As a bonus, if I'm the one pushing for this, they'll see that as further evidence of our friendliness, which can't be fake; we really do have the most in common with them, of the three factions, that's why we want them to see that clearly.

We have a resource here, in that we're lucky to control the initial communications with them, and this is the only way to usefully exploit that resource before it seeps away."

"That's a yesterday's-rations fallacy... or not even that, since we haven't spent anything to get you in charge; it really was luck. But I follow the rest. Why are you so sure that we can't trust the alien leaders' friendship?"

"I'm not sure we can't. I'm just worried that it's a risk we don't understand."

"Not understanding a risk is not an argument for it being more risky."

"It is when the risk is currently believed to be small. I think we're assuming, at least I'm conscious of avoiding my own tendency to assume, that just because the aliens have only one species and only one town, their society is simple.

Imagine that someday Ansaf sends a mission like Exodus to another planet, with the agreement that, for the first few deci-years, elves will rule, and then there will be democracy."

"If, in this future, we have somehow neither won nor lost."

"Right. And if there's a way to move shrines."