"I am afraid I'll cause a great deal of resentment if I confess that we'd been aware this system was inhabited for a while. It's an infinite universe, there's a prioritization system -"

"- I see. Well, I'm sure whoever went ahead of us needed aliens too."

"There's a lot of need - and lots of places can be tremendously improved by, for example, teaching them how birth control works or the germ theory of disease. The resources to help a modern society are scarcer and in greater demand. We won't waste time now we've reached you, though."

"So you have an agenda in mind? What is it?"

"Some people asked the ship as we were arriving about food, is that a ongoing concern?"

"Yes, I'm afraid our neighbors, who are major exporters to us among others, poisoned their supply."

"What do you need, and delivered where?"

"I can put you in touch with the rationing department."

The rationing department has the following suggestions! There's a billion Tapai to feed and they can also list the other countries worst affected.

Does the list include the country that let people with red hair pack trucks full of food?

As an afterthought.

He writes it all down. "They can expect a delivery in twenty minutes. Who should I talk to about ongoing assistance, ending the war, the interstellar consortium my nation belongs to..."

They get him names! They have their shit together and while no position formally already exists for "entertaining offers from interstellar consortiums" they know just who to repurpose.

He would kind of prefer it if they were terrible and he could go 'fuck you, the only worthwhile person in this crazy babykilling rainbow apartheid country is my beautiful girlfriend' but it would be totally unjustified by the interactions up to this point.

He explains Vanda Nossëo. "Usually colony planets are awarded to people who get an idea approved and enough prospective citizens, or as rewards for twenty years membership - shorter years, five of yours - but countries have a lot of flexibility to request the perks most relevant to them as a tradeoff - fewer resurrections but your own colony planet up front, something like that..."

"Resurrections are interesting but of much less use to our flourishing as a people than a planet, I think."

"Sounds it, yes. And we still do resurrections in cases of political assassinations, even if you don't take any as a perk, that's - useful to have as a universal commitment, for obvious reasons..."

"I don't expect political assassinations over making deals with aliens for planets, is that a common problem?"

"Some of the resources we have unfortunately make it easier. And on the whole we find that deterrence is perfectly adequate with extraordinarily powerful law enforcement and very humane prisons and the fact that political crimes are totally ineffectual, but without that last bit some people from societies with different standards might find themselves inspired to suddenly-possible crime. It's still rare."

"Hm, I see. What things do you have that make political assassinations easier -?"

"If I say 'magic' is that more or less useful than saying 'things from places with different laws of physics' -"

"...yes, I'd expect things from places with different laws of physics to be - normalized in transit somehow, naively -"

"So then 'magic' is more accurate. We keep a tight lid on anything really dangerous - that's why there's still scarcity of things like resurrections and planets, the necessity of screening people to have that kind of power - but there are lots of things freely circulating that are moderately dangerous."

"Is resurrecting people really dangerous?"

"The process of getting resurrection powers makes you in general powerful. Teleporters are dangerous, though we have never had an incident with someone who passed screening and should not have."

"I can see how teleportation could be abused."

"Uh huh. So the things in this column -" rationed membership perks, shuttle service and immortality and resurrection and healers and teleporters and terraforming and magically-aided forensics and magic cognitive enhancements - "are either intrinsically limited or dangerous in the wrong hands, and we have to restrict them somehow so we restrict to nations that choose to become member states. Hourly shuttle service to the nearest major transit hub you get to have anyway, because it's hard to evaluate whether you want to join a consortium if all your visits to see it are tightly controlled. Someday there'll be enough to go around, but - it may be a very long time."