Nod. "What would get the Andalites to end the war. If the Yeerks could be constrained to enslaving, like, some planets but not the entire galaxy would that be acceptable."

<The more power they have the more power they can get. Even if they agreed to terms that gave them ten planets or something they would be secretly infiltrating and seizing another hundred, and it would be hard to stop them.>

"So what's the - most conciliatory terms Andalites would agree to - the ones that sound nicest to the Yeerks -"

It's a promising question for her to be asking. It is not one he has ever thought about, and he spends a couple of minutes thinking. <If all of the Yeerks were blockaded in one corner of space with only voluntary hosts and no way to sneak out and take more slaves elsewhere that would be acceptable. I don't think there is a maximum number of planets they could hold except at some point the logistics of administering it would be immense.>

"What if they had, like, a reasonable number of slaves. Lots of places have slaves, Cheliax has slaves, you're not invading us about it."

He hasn't thought about this much either. <War causes a great deal of harm and is not usually worth it to correct the injustices that arise within a species on its journey of moral development. Injustices between species are stickier and less likely to resolve themselves and also Yeerks are uniquely evil, and Yeerk slavery is less self-limiting than the ordinary sort because ordinarily societies that have too many slaves have slave revolts, whereas Yeerks are stronger the more people they enslave.

Also under any conditions where we are in a position to dictate terms it would be silly to demand they give up ten billion slaves but let them keep ten thousand.>

"I mean, I assume under most conditions where you are in a position to dictate terms you are harsher than this, we were discussing the nicest-for-Yeerks deal that Andalites could accept."

<I do not know what the Electorate would decide if the Yeerks for some reason credibly offered to surrender and we were sure we could enforce this and they wanted to keep specifically a thousand slaves and we couldn't get them to budge about the thousand slaves. It is a very unlikely hypothetical.>

"Electorate? How does the Andalite government work?"

<Every six point eight Golarion years every Andalite adult in good health and of sound mind lists the ten people they would most prefer be part of the Andalite governing body, and the top five overall vote-getters join it, with special decision privileges for the top vote-getter. They can serve up to three consecutive terms of twenty point four Golarion years and then cannot run again for twenty point four Golarion years after that.>

"That's helpful but I think not very helpful for what I wanted, which is figuring out - how Andalites decide who wields power - what makes someone likely to get elected -"

<Most members of the council became widely known to the Andalite public for scientific and technical innovations, or by writing a book, or by running a popular news station, or through military victories. In these times the council is mostly great generals and scientists.>

"Science is -"

<The study of the natural world so as to develop new technologies that improve peoples' lives or our understanding of the universe.>

"The people who invented morph and such?"

<Yes.>

"Are you allowed to get a lot of votes by telling lots of people that if they don't vote for you you'll kill them."

<Definitely not!>

"What would happen if someone tried it?"

<They would be arrested by the police for threatening people, which is a crime, and no one would vote for them because we value our democracy and it is undermined by people doing crimes to try to subvert it.>

"Has that ever happened?"

<Not that dramatically but people have illegally doctored evidence of their opponents doing unpopular things, or dueled their opponents, things like that. They were prosecuted and did not hold power.>

"What if the person who tried it was a very powerful scientist, more powerful than the police?"

<...that is not how science works.>

"If someone had morph, and they were the only person who had morph, and also they could throw a lot of fireballs, what could the police do about them?"