"You wind up with people in a middle layer who never manage anything but more people," nods Susannah.

"I don't see how having them separated solves that?"

"If you have one person in charge of all the interplanetary logistics you've gotta have people who report to them from each planet, and a planet's operations are gonna be huge, they'll have people reporting to them, maybe a couple layers just to get down to whoever's making things," says Ismat. "You can still have people handling the logistics but they shouldn't all report to one best person."

"Stuff gets lost every time it's got to be passed up or down, especially if anybody's got their eye on a promotion and wants to tell you things are doing great and not that your new kiln's busted and you're out of green glaze."

"I don't think every place you'd consolidate would be an example of that? But I don't know for sure, I've spent less time studying big companies than you've spent running them."

"We can probably get some stuff all smushed together proper but only if we wind up all being able to get translation chips for everybody on our staff, or something. Like, I outsource logo design, because I don't need a logo update once a week, and maybe it'd make sense to do it in-house with one yellow if we had enough stuff to logo all told. If we all do logos. But if it's going to be a nightmare to have Ismat's marketing even talk to a logo guy because she's from a preindustrial civilization and there's no digital corpus to even do machine translation to - also, marketing people hate machine translation anyway - then no go."

He nods and observes her fondly. 

"I suppose I can have my yellows do all their web design, as it sounds like possibly no one but Ismea is already doing any of that or has anybody who'd know how and Ismea is probably planning to leave her company to whoever she hates least and abandon it and start over."

Ismea has to demorph about now. <Yeah, I know who'll take it up if I disappear mysteriously, she's fine. As they go.>

"Their loss."

<And they'll have not a clue why.>

"If they're going to start trading with other civilizations someone'll eventually tell them."

<I do not know if we'll start trading with other civilizations.>

"If you don't you're going to have a very bad time of it, you have no magic."

<Oh, I agree that we need to.>

"I will pray for your council to find wisdom."

"Does that.... do.... anything?"

" - yes? Why would I do it if it didn't."

"How does Abadar actually implement that one, though, is it like Suggestion, or what..."

"Nah, it's just - paying more attention to the situation than he would otherwise, which might inspire him to do something or direct someone to do something and might not. He could actually just give them wisdom, I guess, if their world doesn't have magic they probably don't enhance it by default."

"Oh, speaking of, all of me should try this earring. - you can just tuck it like this if you're not pierced. I can make them for you but they'll cost ya."

"I can't go to work wearing an earring - I do like the effect, but I'm still posing as a man -"

"I still have the one I made myself when I was doing that but if you can't wear earrings at all I can do a hairpin - no, your hair's too short - a hatpin or a necklace."

"I don't wear a hat indoors usually... can't it be a ring?"

"Eeh. Maybe. For stuff for your head it's usual to put it on your head. And I don't know quite why so I don't know how I'd stick it to a ring anyhow."