"All right. Hopefully it won't matter. What else?"

"So they don't bother each other, the standard binding for Ganymede doesn't let them approach anyone within ten feet without affirmative invitation, does that run into an issue of yours?"

"Not directly, but it seems like that makes it very easy for other people to hedge them out of places, intentionally or otherwise."

"It does, the hallways in the prison are really wide and have plenty of alternate routes to prevent traffic jams. It's a compromise distance, doesn't prevent all the harassment but doesn't let them have an uncomplicated run of the place either, the security fairy broke up knots a few times a week."

"Mm. Not great - there's a principle where if someone would be severely enough disabled in a situation they aren't considered to have the option to be in it, even if there's nothing technically stopping them from trying it anyway. And - my impression has been that daeva are psychologically human, do they have the usual need for companionship and interaction?"

"I don't know if anybody's done studies on it but they're allowed visitors on Ganymede."

"If they are then that starts looking like them being restricted to Ganymede, or at least to places specifically built to accommodate them. It's enough of a grey area that we can do that if we need to but I'd rather find another way; is it possible to leave them able to approach people by default but stop them from approaching a particular person for some period of time after they've been told not to?"

"Well, that doesn't work in the context of the prison, the demons can't talk."

"Is there a reason not to make an exception for this?"

"Uh, the long version would take a while to explain but in a word no."

"All right." To Leonor: "Do you have an idea of how long it will take to get our answer about the souls?"

"At a guess the names will be first-pass investigated within a couple days."

"All right. That's going to matter quite a lot; I'm not sure it makes sense to try to continue without it. We'll practically need to make two separate plans."

"We can reconvene after there's been more time to try interviewing them, then."

"All right. You'll email me, or should I check in?"

"I can email you."

He nods. "I might go offworld but I shouldn't be gone for more than a day at a time. I'll send what we have to my contact, too."

"The demon one?" asks the liaison.

"Mmhmm."

"I suppose there's no question of how you correspond, is there. Well. See you later."

Zanel tags along while Raafi goes to get Kat and find someplace to sit and send Cam the details of the meeting.

    "So, Lastai - is there anything we should know?"

"Do you want the whole spiel?"

    "Probably eventually, maybe not right now. Do you know what she'll want to do here?"

"Probably put in a few temples, eventually. From what Raafi tells me we'll have an easier time getting traction here than at home."

    "And you haven't run into any problems?"

"Not yet. We might not, it seems pretty nice here."

    "That's good. How about at home?"

"-your church doesn't usually get along very well with mine, you know."

    "That's surprising. I thought Lastai was a good goddess."

"Oh, she is," symbol-touch, "but it's not always that simple. She cares a lot about chaos, too, it puts us at odds with your community focus."

    "How so?"

"Well, one of her principles is - you can't really stop people from doing things. Not reliably, not if you don't want to hurt them over it. Even harmful things, even things that hurt other people. She still doesn't tolerate malice, but there are plenty of things that people just - want, for their own reasons, that are like that, where they aren't trying to hurt anyone but it's going to happen anyway, if you just let them do what they want. And you solve that by trying to talk them out of doing what they want, and we solve it by helping them figure out how to do it safely."

    "That sounds like a wonderful goal."

"Of course. But you're usually less happy about it when it turns out that we mean kink and drugs and prostitution."

    "...ah."

"It does work, helping people do it safely. Not always, not yet, but we've had some good successes."

    "...I'll want to hear more about that sometime, I think. Not right now, sometime when I'll have a chance to think about it."

"Well, our doors are always open."

I didn't use to work in Martian Portuguese when I was alive, as it did not yet exist, so do still listen to the GCP person if they think any of this is obvious nonsense. If they're just drafting in Portuguese and translate later here are my versions in Mandarin and English, I'm not sure whether the GCP standardizes in one of those usually due to being based in Singapore or what since the circles they have extant are over decades and may represent policy changes.

Thank you.

How hard should I be trying to avoid asking you to come speak to people here or reveal your secret, by the way? I've been assuming you'd rather not and it hasn't come up but it's been close, a few times.

I will reveal my secret if it's expedient, it's not like I was using it for much. And I'll come talk to people as long as I get enough notice that the Limboites don't go "aaaah where'd he go I was counting on the train coming every day".

All right, I won't worry about it very much. Thank you for everything.

When he looks up from his phone, Katri and Zanel are discussing the possibility of sharing a temple, that being a done thing here and possibly useful for getting across the idea of how Oerth's religions cooperate with each other. "Hey, sweetheart," Kat says when she notices his attention, "Zanel says you were supposed to be looking into something about the local religions for them - some kind of disease thing. What happened with that?"

"Oh, there's a book I was going to read, I forgot all about it. You might be interested, actually." He gets it out and translates the title for her.

    "Yeah, definitely. I've got Comprehend Languages today, I can use it for this if there's nothing else?"

"I don't expect there to be." They go back to the hotel, and Katri starts on the book while Raafi goes to talk to the angel cultists.