We're signatories to the war crime and population control treaties, and have kept nonagression pacts with all the major power blocs. We allow foreign inspection to assess the first two the same way everyone else does.

He keeps peppering the blue with questions for a while, occasionally asking if he has any questions or anything in particular to cover. (Oh, and: This seems like a pretty nice inland sea, he likes it!)

It's a lovely inland sea! They use it for intranational shipping and fishing.

The Seeker has Fishing Opinions, apparently. They aren't overfishing, right? And, Some Draak may wish to live in Amenta's oceans, arctic, or equator regions, eventually.

They aren't overfishing, they carefully regulate it and farm a lot of the fish. That doesn't sound infeasible.

That's very reassuring, good ocean management.

I think 'eventually' may end up being a while, but we will see. When I go home, I should be able to return after a month or two with more news.

How long of a while?

Until we are ready to work out deals with Amenta? We can probably begin real negotiations after a season, perhaps less. No promises. Until I trust that nothing disastrous would happen if I let some young kin work out a deal and find a place here? Two seasons, perhaps much longer.

What sorts of deals might they want to arrange?

Territory, art, gold and silver and gems, hunting and fishing rights, tutors, perhaps things I have not thought of, in exchange for whatever skills they might have. I worry that some young kin would not be interested in understanding Amentan laws, or in following them.

That would present a challenge.

And is the reason I intend to have such applicants tested thoroughly.

How would you test for that?

I am not yet sure. Making them learn to read would be the start. Asking questions about whether a situation is legal. Exercises of memory. Giving them a pointless command that they must follow none the less for a month. Perhaps I should collaborate with countries to develop the test.

That would be an interesting exercise. What kinds of skills might they bring?

Pardon me if I ramble, I will let my mind wander to answer this...

Sapphires like me could inspect or place underwater equipment or explore the deep oceans. Perhaps we could manage seafloor farms. Rubies might tunnel faster than tunneling machines, and have an instinct for ground stability. Emeralds do not have any special abilities relevant to Amenta, I think... Many Draak will be skilled at learning things about animal and plant behavior and keeping an ecosystem, delicate or not, managed. Consulting on agriculture or aquaculture, perhaps. We find factory farming offensive and may wish to discourage it or create meat-bearing plants, but fish and mollusk rearing is not nearly so bad and could be made more pleasing for the fish and more productive at once with some effort, I think. And ordinary farms might benefit this way too - I am not yet sure. 

Using our tools, which can do various things, too many to describe briefly. We could talk to people no longer capable of speech, or translate thoughts. We can sing calmness or stunned confusion into the minds of others if needed. We can be very, very durable, and immune to heat and cold. We are strong and capable of flight - we could work with sea rescue, wilderness rescue, and emergency response. We could verify the sterility of clean rooms or watch for intruders over a wide area or assist with pest control by identifying infestations. We can breathe fire - usually as a weapon but perhaps it has other uses, or novelty value. We could tell telepathic multimedia stories. We can analyze objects with the song for internal flaws or to learn about them.

The True Song of Healing restores every animal it has been tried on to good health, working most efficiently on wounds but sufficing for many kinds of disease and even beating back aging for a time, but it is very, very difficult. Lesser songs of healing exist as well. The skill of Enkindling genetically modifies animals and plants in a variety of ways, and usually grants them magical powers and unaging natures, though I count the masters of it at only eighteen. Some of us are skilled artists who can take stone or wood or gold and turn it into something beautiful, then sell the result for yet more materials.

Most of those abilities would be very valuable indeed.

Good. I think I will write that up, as well as much of what I told Tapa, so I can tell governments about it without explaining in person repeatedly. Amentans seem to do much of your best work in writing, anyway.

It makes it easier for a lot of people to make sure we all have common knowledge.

I do wonder just how much your systems are influenced by your nature, how you think and feel, and how much they are by the fact that there are very many of you who need to work together and cannot possibly talk to everyone else in existence. It's probably impossible to tell for sure.

If there are enough places to put colonies, it's likely some of them will be very small, at least to start.

I have explored for some few years and found no planets that bear life except yours and my own, though I found some exoplanets that would make good targets for terraforming projects. But that exploration was leisurely, by one person, using experimental equipment, focusing on discovery in general rather than discovery of habitable planets in particular. Who can say for sure what the future holds?

We'd certainly dedicate a lot of manpower to the project.

If you have better ways than I do of identifying likely stars from a great distance - which seems likely with how quickly my ship was detected upon arriving - a list of stars to investigate would speed my own exploration and I could bring promising candidates to the attention of Amenta.

We do have such lists and expect other countries do as well. I think we'd want a firm agreement in place about what to do with the results of such a joint project.