It should indicate that he is speaking for amaliens as a group - maybe have the signatures of a few dozen, enough that it's obviously not just one guy and his friends - and that they are interested in purchasing, outright, a warp capable ship, for an Amentan grey in their employ to pilot until such time as amaliens have fully learned how to operate the controls ("you don't have to tell them that Vira's probably competent to pass the test already"), with the understanding that if, through amalien-specific expertise and monster access, they are able to make particularly valuable discoveries, they will make Voa their first port of call in attempting to responsibly disburse these discoveries.

Lucien checks with Deet, Keeta, and a few other respected amaliens (he tactfully leaves out Meelia) before adding their signatures to the email. 

And now they wait. She'd be surprised if the turnaround was worse than a week but doesn't have a very fine grained prediction.

Lucien asks if she's available to do the practice chicken debates they had planned in the meantime.

"Sure. You want me to pretend I'm a purple or a blue first?"

"Blue? I have more experience with them I think."

Pelape clears her throat. "So the agenda notes for this meeting say 'chickens', can you say more about that?"

"I'm representing concerned amaliens, who would like to find an app-roach that makes amaliens happier about how chickens are treated and doesn't hurt Amentans either."

"So, the chicken industry takes inputs such as grain and land and labor, and produces outputs such as meat and eggs. If you want an industry to produce a new output, even an irregular one like 'amalien happiness', that's going to take new inputs or reduce existing outputs. Since you don't want to hurt Amentans I take it you mean to add a new input rather than turn eggs and meat into unaffordable luxury goods?"

"Yes - we'd like to provide more land."

"Our understanding had been that you had already volunteered much, if not all, of the land you were willing to turn over to Amentan projects. If there's more available the first thing we'd spend it on wouldn't really be chickens, left to our own devices; my constituency is clamoring for more places they can start families."

"I actually suggested a small portion of land partially as a means of helping us learn to live together - we could provide more land I think. Though we might have to work on def-ending it, but some amaliens would do that if it helped chickens. I'd be nerv-ous about giving more land right away if we can't solve our prob-lems. And in the long-er term we are hoping to find more planets for you too."

"I'm delighted to hear that. It occurs to me that if new land is granted earmarked solely for chickens, the chicken farmers might not actually move to make use of it right away. Of course I'd need to check with my yellows to be sure but my understanding is that we're no longer importing fresh eggs or meat into Chaspanti; if there's further construction to be done on the farms as they were originally planned it's certainly less than what would be necessary to relocate them entire. So the farmers will need compensation, part of which could maybe be in the form of letting them live on-site of their workplaces, and presumably they'd recoup some the value of the parcels the original farms are on; I do wonder if you have anything in mind to cover the transition cost, though."

"Could w grant additional land as an added bonus and provide amaliens who can help them move?"

"Additional land would certainly go a long way, especially if it's adjacent to Chaspanti or sufficient to found a second city. I'm not sure what the value-add of amalien assistance in moving would be, can you expand on that?"

"Help with building new places for chickens - so you could save on costs of paying Amentan workers."

"While I'm sure you can build a chicken enclosure you're satisfied with qua chicken enclosure I'm less confident that the farmers will find it equally straightforward to collect eggs and look after chickens in a context built to an unfamiliar standard."

"We'd be happy to work with you to design and build them, if you'd like."

"Do you have reason to believe that Amentan chickens can in fact be successfully farmed under conditions you find agreeable? Has it been done?"

"It's not a singe defin-ite thing. There's better or worse and we want to get it better."

"So, do you anticipate that this will be the last time you want to adjust the chicken farms?"

"Quite likely, until clean meat is perfected."

"Well, I think with enough of a land grant we can make it work. If there are other things we're currently doing in a way you object to for reasons of limited space it might be wise to have those all assembled in a single proposal I can take to my people, optimally allocate the land to the new uses - I'm not a farmer, of course," she touches her hair, "but presumably not all land is created equal for all agricultural purposes."

"Oh! I know about how to install irriga-tion to make lots of land pretty good. Would prolly be best to give you nearby land to Chaspanti, even if we have to give you a bit more cause it's not quite as good."

"I think irrigation is less the trouble than soil composition and suchlike but, again, not an expert," hairtouch. "Near Chaspanti is wonderful, of course."