"That's a very hard question to answer. We don't know anything about what they look like or whether there are more than one of them. We know very little about what they care about. They object to interspecies violence between species they regard as significant. Humans are significant. Presger are significant. The things they did to ships and their inhabitants qualified as some kind of exception the details of which we don't understand at all. They don't object to within-species violence."

"...huh. I'm really curious about that but my curiosity about that probably doesn't call for your personal attention - do you have an agenda for this meeting, actually -"

"I'm curious about the magic and I wanted to make sure you venture off into the Radch informed enough to stay out of trouble and hopefully not terrified you'll accidentally cause some, but I'm in no hurry, really, there are six of me here."

"That sounds so convenient. Do you break lightspeed, to communicate with yourselves elsewhere -"

"No. We'd love to figure that out but we never have. It may be impossible."

"- then how do you stay synced up with yourself? Do you just have like half of you dedicated to running around from everywhere to everywhere else - or can you put updates on a not-you format of some kind -"

"I get updates whenever ships gate in. It takes a few weeks for everything to propagate everywhere but I get most of it within hours."

"Gates? So you do break lightspeed, just not - outright by ansible, okay."

"There's faster-than-light interstellar transit. Some ships can be outfitted with the capability, and permanent gates can enable travel even for ships that aren't outfitted with the - finicky, heavy and expensive - equipment themselves. Most Radchaai systems have gates."

"Cool."

"So if there's nowhere we want to live and raise Isabella's twelve children on this planet we can just pop around till we find one with really nice beaches, is that the idea?"

"I do not think they set up the gate system with our convenience in mind!"

"You can shop around a little. This place has beaches, though."

"I imagine lots of planets do - on what axes do planets most vary?"

"Gravity, climate, atmosphere, primary industries, culture and history, religions - those vary within planets - degree of tolerance for outsiders, the share of the planet that's modernized..."

"Modernized relative to this tech level - how unmodern does it get, are we talking no indoor plumbing, or, the bandwidth is so cramped you need four seconds to download a hundred terabytes?"

"We've got adequate bandwidth everywhere, we need surveillance everywhere or people can kill everyone. Everyone everywhere takes the aptitudes. But there are still places without indoor plumbing, particularly in the planets that joined the Empire most recently."

"Aptitudes?"

"All citizens take tests in adolescence to demonstrate abilities suited to a military or civil service job. The Radch pays further education expenses for the most promising students and tracks them into work they're suited for."

"Compulsorily?"

"You have to sit it, it's too easy otherwise for parents to forbid their children, but nothing happens if you sit there and fail to fill it out."

"I mean the part after you score high."

"No, that's optional."

"Is this like the SATs or is it a fancy sci-fi test somehow?"

She discusses that with the tablet for a while. "I'm not sure I can answer that helpfully."