Anyone who didn't like it could just move back after making sure they were at that moment compliant. They can't get spaceships gross.

Yes, that makes sense. They say that of course they would consider the implications of Tapai laws before moving in.

On a related note, they are very interested in sharing information about disease and medicine so that they can forestall anything bad before it happens.

Yes of course here is lots of information on that right now.

They do the same.

Remna body medicine basically only has emergency care and treatment of infectious disease – they don't have the concept of chronic illness. They do have genetic disorders, though – in all of those cases the disorders only manifested itself late in the development of the child, since if it was immediately apparent they would have aborted the fetus or killed the newborn.

There are many references to body control in the books, which seems to be like a more advanced form of proprioception. There are many many exercises in the books about poking and prodding specific areas and thinking of specific mental motions and trying to feel particular sensations – which likewise do not have Tapap equivalents – to both detect injury or disease, or manage its healing.

Sounds so useful! Amentans don't have it, alas, which might be why they have chronic illness - they can't clear it up by controlling their bodies in this way. There are also diseases of aging, which remna wouldn't have.

That is so sad! Some of the Imperials express hope that their better biological analysis technology could be used not just to better Imperial health but also Amentan health – extending lifespan, perhaps even indefinitely.

It would probably require a drastic restructuring of child credits were such a thing to be successful, though. Though now that space exploration is a thing, perhaps that won't be an issue.

They'd sure need a way to keep the planets coming but if that were squared away it sounds great!

The Zmavlipre are very interested in knowing more about the spaceship's air and water filtration systems, since you cannot just eject the air and water into space if you want journeys to be able to sustain themselves for long. Instead, you have to recycle it. How do they remove all the contaminants? How do they make sure the air remains clean and smells fine? Pleasant or neutral scent and good air quality are very important to them.

Spaceships actually do not smell super great, there's kind of a stale mineral quality to the air, but they get everything dangerous or distressing-to-Amentans out like so.

The stale air is kind of really awful but who cares about deeply-unpleasant-but-ultimately-physically-harmless sensory qualia when you have SPACE. Almost any deeply-unpleasant-but-ultimately-physically-harmless sensory qualia can be excused by that.

What does constitute being distressing to Amentans though? The Imperials have a pretty good idea of what's dangerous to them, given the similarities in chemistry and body plan, as well as the medical information, but what is sensorily or psychologically unpleasant?

Loud noises, temperatures outside these ranges with some individual variance, the fear of contact with dangerous substances, bad tastes, rough textures...? They don't like the way spaceships smell, either, it just didn't seem like a priority on their radar.

That makes sense. And yes, taking care of smell would also be far down their list, unless they were planning on staying on the ship for a long time.

A message arrives by drone, and says that Restem has a preliminary proposal for an arrangement for Amentans to live here, if they are ready to do diplomacy again.

Sure! What's the proposal?

"You may wish to pause or cancel the current building, unless you are planning to have it be an embassy – this land is close to the capital, so it would be a good spot.

We have thought about places which are good to host Amentans in, and have settled on a plot of state-owned land in Glabis Province. It is temperate, with temperatures dropping to below freezing in the winter, and with roughly equal durations of each season. The land is suitable for some agriculture, but the soil quality is middling. We have conducted geological surveys on the land and found that the land is suitable for tall buildings – we suspect that you would build large buildings since you have better civil engineering. The land is close to the provincial capital, Guskai City. It is about three hours away on foot – shorter if you use automobiles, although the city prohibits their use inside it. You may also extract material resources from the ground, so long as this is not polluting, although the land does not have any significant material deposits. Perhaps you may find some with your superior mining technology.

We would prefer that all Amentans who wish to leave the plot be escorted by a Keeper interpreter and their drones, both to resolve potential tensions before they occur, to translate in case of language difficulties, and to protect Amentans in the rare case of danger. We will not forbid Amentans from leaving without this escort, but we will have to have them sign an affidavit saying that they absolve us of responsibility in the case that something untoward happens to them. We do not expect this – Glabis Province is below average in crime – but going unescorted necessarily means that we cannot guarantee their safety. We will be able to dispense with the escorts once we have worked out the differences between Imperial and Tapa laws and can integrate Amentans and Amentan practices with our law system, and vice versa, and thus have Amentans be managed by the same law enforcement systems. 

How big the plot would be depends on the number of people we agree to host. We would like to send a number of Imperials to live on Tapa equal to the number of Amentans who will live here.

Where on Tapa do you believe is good for us to live in?

We are unsure of how many people can be transported by the spaceship at once, nor how many spaceships you have available for transporting settlers. We would prefer that the initial number of colonists be transportable by a single spaceship such that all of them can be evacuated at once in the case of disaster."

"That sounds lovely. I have a few questions about the details. If Amentans wish to leave the area with non-remna escorts or self defense contingencies, what's the limit on what is permitted there? Will the Amentans living here be permitted children, or is the population meant to remain fixed?

"This area here -" a space on the map, "is equatorial Tapai territory. It's currently farmland, and privately owned, so we will need to buy it from its present holders but we expect them to be willing to sell, and remove the tenants if you don't want to hire them yourselves. It would be convenient if the farms continued producing the products grown there on the open market, since otherwise the prices of those things that only grow on the equator will jump quite a bit, but it wouldn't be a condition of your residing there.

"We have more ships coming off the line back home, as interstellar exploration is very valuable to us. I'm not sure what the advantage of having a single ship able to hold all the colonists will be over having a fleet of ships at any given time in orbit sufficient to hold them and the latter offers a lot more flexibility as the ships could go back and forth with trade goods as their replacements came in.

"You've several times referred to drones in a way that makes it unclear to me if you normally count them as population; we would, since they eat and breathe and take up space, for this purpose."

"You may bring your own escorts, and may bring any armaments you wish, so long as they are not disruptive to others when not being used, such as by moving on large loud wheels or treads, for example. We used to have personal arms laws but nowadays we do not – we likewise do not restrict you on whatever personal armaments you wish to bring, only in the manner in which they are used. Please take care when engaging – we will consider it fully justified if you aggress against someone who aggressed against you, but it would cause a diplomatic incident nonetheless.

We would like the population to remain fixed. This arrangement is very preliminary and seeks only to make sure that any 'fish-in-water' revelations occur in a controlled setting. What I mean by that is...there are many things in cultures which appear to be obviously true and sensible, such that you expect them to be universal, even though they are actually not. We can discuss things all we like, but the only way to discover these is through direct experience. We would like to facilitate these direct experiences while minimizing fallout from the resultant culture shock.

Our plan is for this arrangement to remain for one Zmavliterdi year, after which we may renegotiate. This would also be the minimum amount of time for you to see whether Amentans can biologically accommodate the drastically shortened year. It is currently ten days after the summer solstice for the southern hemisphere, which this place and Glabis Province is in. We have not decided whether to permit replacements in the case of deaths – this will probably have to be negotiated if it comes up, when we have better context on the situation. Likewise, we will prohibit any Keepers from having children, both Keeper and drone children, and will not send replacements until we have negotiated for this to happen.

We are fine with this arrangement. Will we be permitted material extraction rights on the land? Will we have to pay land value tax, or other taxes? I should clarify that any Amentans living here will be exempt from taxation as long as this arrangement is in force. We will probably sell the items on the open market, since we're not sure whether the crops will be palatable to us. Probably the supply would decrease, though, since some people would want to try to grow our own crops there instead. We are likely to hire some of the tenants as consultants to advise on handling Amentan growing conditions and crops, but would not hire all of them.

Oh, I see. I had modeled your spaceships as being rare, and only being able to go on voyages with large expense. In that case, I retract that suggestion.

Apologies. Drones are population biologically, but not socially? They are not Imperial citizens. I qualify my earlier statement to say that we would like an equal number of remna to go – remna encompasses both drones and Keepers."

"We can actually tell quicker than a year if we season here - after a short period of re-seasoning, anyone who can season here should fall into step with the local seasons, so we'd know in a couple of months, and could swap out anyone who didn't, allowing plenty of people to test themselves for compatibility.

"The same non-polluting requirement applies - I can get you copies of the Amentan standards for that - but mineral extraction can be part of the arrangement if it's important to those living there.

"Spaceships are currently rare, and new, but we expect the number of them to only go up.

"I don't expect to have any trouble finding as many Tapai interested in trying to season here as there's room for. About how many remna do you expect to want to live in -" She calculates the area. "Forty thousand square miles, in the optimistic case where we can buy it all up?"

"Oh, I did not know that. In that case, it would be better for us to mutually agree to be able to swap out settlers at will so long as the total number remains constant."

The other delegates will accept the Amentan non-polluting standards and will read them.

"I don't expect any of them to do it – buying it on the market is more convenient and cheaper – but here buying land means you can extract resources from it, so I would want to negotiate for that in the off-chance someone is interested.

That makes sense."

Wow. That's...a lot.

"I'm...not sure. I don't anticipate there to be that many – many people would want to visit Amenta, but much of our wealth is tied to structures and investments into the land, which cannot so easily be sold to facilitate moving. In any case, I would not want to try fitting as many remna as could fit in such a large area at once, especially since the purpose of this initial arrangement was to forestall conflict with regard to differences in way of life between us, and also to give time for our institutions to accommodate people with different lives. 

I was anticipating a number more like, a dozen gross (1728). Or perhaps a dozen and six gross (2592). They would probably require...about five dozen square miles of land."

"Well, if that's all the interest on this end and you strongly prefer population parity rather than, say, land area parity, I guess we can do a small trial town of Amentans."

Restem does care about land area parity and would prefer the Amentans not buy up all the land, but that's his personal preference – the Imperium has no preference either way, which is why he's not going to say anything about that. In any case, this has been going better than he thought: he was afraid that the Amentans wouldn't respect their property rights. Right now, his biggest anxiety has to do with potential cultural differences.

"We would probably need a dozen days to prepare the land for you, both in setting up cordons, informing the nearby people, and also putting up our own structures outside of the plot to house our own officials. A little longer to find people who are willing to move to Tapa and farm. Probably two dozen days. It is fine with us if the Amentans arrive on Zmavliterdi earlier than the Imperials arrive on Tapa."

"All right. We can start screening volunteers and buying up the equatorial land now."

"Wonderful. We will do the same."

The Imperials continue to communicate with the Amentans over radio, now that they have a mutually intelligible encoding scheme. 

A five dozen square mile roughly square-ish plot is cordoned off with a fence of stakes, with strings with yellow and red bunting between them, the stakes bearing a sign with the Imperial seal. It isn't meant to keep people out or in, but merely to denote the exact borders of the Amentan plot of land. Imperial law necessitates that the borders of private property be clearly marked, otherwise, the claim to the property is invalidated. Aside from the seal, there's a sign explaining that the land is for the use of the Amentans, and has directions to and the teletype address of the Imperial consulate near the entrance to the plot.

The area has a temperate climate, with roughly an equal division between four seasons, with winters being well below freezing. The ground is flat, except for the east, which has small, gentle hills, and the northwest, which has a lake and lush temperate forests. There are smaller forested areas throughout the plot, however. At the south is the 'main gate', which is the only opening into and out of the plot, and is connected by macadam road to the main road leading to Guskai City and elsewhere.

On the other side of the gate is where all of the Imperial buildings are located: the consulate, guardhouse, radio tower, and various other things, although many of them are temporary and makeshift and are intended to be replaced with more permanent versions later.

The Imperials transmit the coordinates of the plot to the Amentans, and coordinate a landing spot near the main gate.

Down they come, in several shuttle trips, with construction equipment and supplies and great big excited smiles! They are gonna put farms on the hills and put their downtown up against the lakefront and most of the residences in the easy flat part. The initial wave is mostly purple and second-mostly green, just a handful of blues and a double handful of yellows and enough oranges and greys to cover their internal needs. The greens are here to study all the everything and the purples are here to assemble the city; the ones who don't season, or go home to buy a credit, will be gradually replaced with a changing caste balance over time. They're going to call the town Enisha, "new star".

The Imperials have brought a company of drones playing cheerful marching band music. They've also prepared food, which mostly consists of snacks – they've been prepared elsewhere and brought here. There's enough such that all of the Amentans, despite their large numbers, could get one if they wanted to. There's sweet bean paste dumplings, various hard candies, and meat puffs. It's clear that a lot of effort has been put into the plating and presentation of the food – the way the food has been arranged and cooked looks like it belongs in a fancy restaurant.

Restem and the other delegations from the previous talks are also here. They distribute bilingual Tapap-and-Standard-Imperial pamphlets to the settlers giving a map of the area, where to go to contact Imperial officials, how to get an escort if you want to go out, potentially dangerous animals in the forests, and otherwise Generally Useful Information for travelers, but with more context, and assuming the people know less. The pamphlet says that more services will be available in the Imperial buildings near the main gate as they set up more. For now, the main one is Standard Imperial lessons if they feel like going out without needing interpreters. Both the Amentan and Imperial diplomats and delegates have learned each others' languages, at least to some degree, but the other settlers and the natives wouldn't have.

Does Tapa inflect for number? If so, the Amentans might want to reconsider 'Enisha', because Zmavliterdi orbits a binary star system. Otherwise, it's a lovely name.