"In mine it'd be one of the constraints on breaking someone out of prison."

"Oh, yeah, can you in fact do that? Is it okay if it's somebody else's laws?"

"I mean, it's not going to knock me into the Maelstrom as a one-off but it's not something to take lightly, especially if there's some passing legitimacy to the original arrest, I can kind of see why a country would sanction its soldiers for irradiating planets and giving everyone cancer even if they were doing it for the greater good -"

<The problem was actually distributing the cure for the cancer, after the Yeerks there were rules imposed about sharing military technology with other species.>

" - ah."

"I guessed that!"

<You guessed the part about the cure for cancer particularly?>

"Morph is not an Earth Thing at this time because she wears the same kind of pants so it is probably an alien thing and you would have been allowed to destroy the planet since Yeerks would not have wanted that by themselves so it was not that you got in trouble for killing people and when you met the Yeerks they learned to have spaceships and then did bad things so then you made a rule! ...I think that makes less sense when I say it."

Anaander sighs delightedly.

<That's correct. I think.>

"Does that constitute an arrest with passing legitimacy?" Belmarniss wonders.

"Yeah. I mean, I think he did the right thing, but in doing so he broke a law that was not an obviously ridiculous law to have and then he went to jail for it and you do not, generally, get to break out of jail because you had a good reason for the original crime. I'd rather negotiate his release, if we can."

"Is that likely?"

<I don't know. It depends who all of you ...are... and whether you make sense to the Andalite government and are capable of being diplomatic at it and want to help with the war.>

"We said who we are!"

<You did not say the things that I'd want to know in order to guess whether you will be able to build a good diplomatic relationship with the Andalite government.>

"...well, what do you need to know to guess?"

<How big are your polities? Do they have faster than light travel? Do they have glaring social problems embarrassing them, like, I don't know, slavery or poverty or inadequate access to medical care or overpopulation or infirmity? Are they going to look visually modern to Andalites - do they have brain-computer interfaces, do they have morph or some other way to avoid having to wear bulky spacesuits when meeting, do they have spacious starships, do they select their leaders in some fashion that rewards a career of responsible public service?>

"Do Andalites have to worry about overpopulation?"

<Before the war we permitted two children per family. Now families may have one daughter and as many sons as they'd like.>

"...because only men are soldiers?"

<With rare exceptions, yes.>

"...okay, so apart from not having morph, chip Elves pass. Between the two worlds of us, since they have lightleapers and we have a little more polish elsewise, I think."

"You can have morph if you want it, it's not magic, right?"

<It's not magic.>