"I'm not sure not having aliens in charge makes you free people, really. Osirion was ruled by other countries until very recently, and most people are subjects of some government or other even if they're not slaves."

"Hmm. That seems true of everyone I know of, although the Alteri have a lot more freedom to do what they want than we do. I think - if I'm going to free everyone I want to find some way to keep them from just falling into some other horrible pattern where large groups of people are treated like slaves."

"That sounds hard."

"I know it sounds hard! But - I have to try, I think, I can't just ignore the possibility that someone will try making an entire sex subservient, or start making all kinds of unfair laws - "

“They - are gonna do that. I think every civilization there has ever been did that. Not that they’re all equal, some places are a lot better than others and it’s worth shooting for that, but there’s never been a civilization that had this figured out. Maybe Starfarer’s, but they’re not human.”

"Well, maybe we won't succeed, then, but - I don't want it to be because we assumed everything would be fine and then let everything end up exactly as it was without even trying to counteract it."

"Nah, I think you should definitely have laws against slavery and protecting the rights of women and stuff. Just, if you are expecting that with good laws you won't get any social problems you should know that you totally still will."

"I'm sure you can't make people be good, just with laws. But - I don't want to end up in a situation where our laws are creating new inequalities and encouraging people not to treat each other well."

"If I were trying to come up with a society and the gods weren't helping out or anything - I guess you can have Elizabeth help out, so you should probably do that - I guess I'd have all of Andoran's stuff about freedom and so on except about sex, where it's horrible, and divorce, where it means you can just leave people."

"I guess I should probably hear about how Andoran is. I think - the Quendi seem all right at things, and they run planets. I'll probably keep asking them for help. But I might have to do it slowly, because I think they might terrify people a little."

"They definitely seem very - I'm not sure they've solved any hard social problems because I'm not sure they ever had any."

"Uh, they did have an evil god who tortured lots of people until they didn't want to live anymore? But - they might not have had a lot of problems in the middle range of seriousness."

"Yeah, that's fair, that's a pretty bad problem."

"I'm not completely sure how applicable it is to solving our problems. I guess I'll probably have to talk to lots of people about it. I'm - not really the best person to figure it out, but..."

"Why not? The my dad likes you, you have magic, you're doing really well at everything..."

"I'm just - I'm really young, and not that good at stuff? I don't really know that much about leading people yet. Just - poetry and fixing spaceships and raising kids. And, like, those things are important, this is all just - really big."

"A lot of things are really big right now. I think - almost all of our planes have problems that are too extensive for any of us to solve on their own. But we're not on our own, anymore. You don't have to build a civilization by yourself."

"Yeah. I guess not."

"You were talking with Fazil?"

"Yeah."

"How'd it go?"

"Pretty well. We talked some about marriage and some about why Osirian women are less educated than Osirian men, and some about how contraception changes things, and some about clerics, and then I told him about the Efari gods to see if they were anything like the ones he knows about."

Nod.

"I am glad that we have people to help us. Hopefully once we get some of the people from my ship there'll be more people who can help sort out what sort of help we're likely to need."

"That makes sense."