"I want to apologize. I cannot regret moving this quickly, but I do regret not bringing the forces necessary to move this quickly while also communicating clearly. I didn't do that, and it was I think a particular unfairness to you. We have the personnel to correct that now. What can we do for you?"

"I'm sure I don't know," says Governor Avalor. "Your capabilities and how you're willing to use them are fairly mysterious."

"I'm here mostly to straighten that out. Do you want an overview, or would it be more constructive to start with specific things we're doing or considering -"

"An overview would be lovely."

"Around seven thousand years ago the first Elves awoke - as adults - in Endorë, which is a planet roughly the size of this one twenty-five lightyears from my homeworld. We are told we were designed and put there by Eru, who styles himself a god. A few centuries ago I would have told you that all of the capabilities of our gods were beyond our reach; now I can only accurately say that most of them are. Perhaps in another few thousand years it won't make any sense to call them gods. But the things they can do are at minimum very very hard to do without them. Eru designed us immortal; we have chips in our heads that back up our brains, and there's also a god who collects backups - instantaneous, faster-than-light - on Valinor if we're killed in some manner dramatic enough to destroy the chips. 

There was a war on Endorë, between gods. One of them was uploading and torturing people, the others disagreed. The war sank a few continents, and would have destroyed the world had both parties not been invested in its continued stability."

"I think we have the right number of continents, so I'm not sure why you're telling me about that when I already know you're planning on fetching one of those gods over."

"You need not fear for the safety of your world. The Valar took centuries to be moved to act in that case, and the provocation was much greater, and less destructive avenues unavailable; and obviously nobody present needs gods to sink continents, really."

"It is not a need I have ever encountered."

"May no people ever find themselves in such a need. Melkor, the god of the uploading and torture, had a bioengineering program on the side and had populated what remained of the world with all kinds of horrifying monsters. The other Valar, the Powers who are his equals, therefore extended to us an invitation to come to Valinor, which they'd built to be a paradise. Some Elves took them up on that; my ancestors did. There are Elven kingdoms in Valinor, Elven kingdoms in Endorë, and orcs and Dwarves in Endorë, those not being invited to Valinor because their needs as a species were incompatible with the Valar's conception of paradise. Yours probably are incompatible also. The Valar are useful in small doses - for example, they could likely be persuaded to make your species stop with the aging, if you'd like that, and they might be able to do resurrections - but I do not recommend offering them the rule of your country. I am not very worried that you would be tempted."

"I do not feel so tempted. We have enough population problems as it is, although I suppose if your brother gets his way on tempting some fraction of the populace away and the balance among them isn't catastrophically wrong those who remained would have some breathing room in which to be immortal."

"The Vala who is coming here, Yavanna, does crops - increasing yield, making them grow faster, that kind of thing. We've promised Tapa they can have eight harvests in eight days. I imagine she'd do that here, also, if you want. Is food the main resource constraint driving your population controls?"

"No - well, it wouldn't be if Savo hadn't pulled his stunt and Tapa weren't trying to steal our farmland - living space is, too many people want to live in the biggest cities, they sprawl and the transport infrastructure isn't good enough."

"Transportation infrastructure might be one of those things where jumping two hundred of your years - that's about the tech differential - ahead might just straightforwardly help with no attendant complications."

"Perhaps, especially if you have some way around the elevator footprint problem. I appreciate that you're trying to add some upside to yoking complete strangers to an alien morality."

"We do our best. Are you still working with a model where a single elevator has a dedicated shaft -"

"No, a few cars and they can swivel out when they reach their floors, but any in transit prevent any beyond them from passing, I'm not an engineer to tell you why they can't swivel in the shaft too."

"If your engineers want to be in touch with ours we can arrange that easily."

"I can pass that along and I'm sure someone who has devoted their life to elevators will be ecstatic. Is this recompense for the stays of execution or is there a separate price tag?"

"Would you rather we pay piece by piece for all the things we want or just lay them out and then separately do technological and cultural exchange -"

"Since it's clear there are some things we cannot refuse to sell, perhaps those things could be handled together. For convenience, you see." Insincere smile.

"I don't actually think our wants diverge very much. This isn't the sort of country you'd build if unconcerned with your citizens having happy and safe and prosperous lives."

"It is the sort of country that occasionally exchanges universal eudaimonia for practical stability, but of course I can't make any deliberate demonstrations of the necessity of these tradeoffs without allowing your blundering to actually cause a catastrophe, so I assume you will go on - forever, as I understand it - thinking we were simply paranoid, unless of course all our efforts can't hold things together, whereupon I assume you will be very sorry."

"In which case we'd bring in more resources. I believe you that many of the tradeoffs you were making were necessary given the resources you did have."

"That's rather at odds with framing it as a moral issue. Do moral people retire to live on a boat instead?"

"I have no personal investment in framing it as a moral issue. And no."