Tide uses the Cube Earth's UTC.

"I assume you are about to give me an extremely good reason to cross the bright line that allows us to coexist with persons many of whom still bear scars from the Yeerk Empire's behavior," she says.

"Is that something you get a lot?"

"I got an agenda briefing. I'm not going to say yes, if that speeds this up at all."

"Are your people free to emigrate?"

"Not without morphing into something else first or by special arrangement. It's one of the reasons we're not part of Vanda Nossëo. There are a lot of people who'd like to kill every member of my species. I am not going to give them an excuse or let anyone else do it either."

"I am not myself empowered to make promises on behalf of the military of New Jerusalem but it sounds like you could use their protection if we can find a way to arrange it, is that right?"

"No. We do have an arrangement with Vanda Nossëo. But long term Yeerk civilization needs a record of inarguably on-the-level behavior. I cannot pull off the mass infestation of a bunch of incommunicative torture victims to that standard."

Sigh. "You managed to talk yours into it and I don’t think he talks."

"He didn't have a tongue when he arrived. With that healed he was capable of speaking."

She laughs. "Really. I wouldn’t have done that."

"No?"

"You don't get anything for it. You don't get - awareness that you have abilities their old masters didn't, or practice with different ways of relating to people. You don't make them noticeably more comfortable. It takes a lot of work to keep their injuries from healing. There are hells that put that effort in just because their victims hate it. Their victims are a different population that I've never worked with and that we aren't talking about. You meet someone from the tunnels whose body is obviously changed, it's always something complicated. Usually something like preferring it that way and being ashamed to, or believing it'll keep them from belonging anywhere else but feeling like anything else would be a lie, or weirder things that I have fewer different examples of. It just makes it look like you've done something helpful. I'll bet you he didn't ask you to heal him and I'll bet you if you interrogate his Yeerk about it you'll find out he begged to be maimed. But I can see why not bothering to check up on that would be more appeasing of genocidal aliens than trying to skip the step where people spend months or years or sometimes longer starving and barely awake except the few minutes a day when they manage to have nightmares instead and either disturbingly eager to please or experiencing abject despair about the entire concept of human interaction."

"You're welcome to ask his Yeerk about the details yourself. I'm a head of state, not Vanda Nossëo's charity arm or some kind of bizarre vending machine you put emotional appeals into and get Yeerks out of."

Sigh. "Thank you for your time."

"Of course. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"I suppose you could give me Cody's Yeerk's contact information - I know that's not his name but he answers to it - or pass mine on if you prefer." (It is theoretically possible that Ristrell might have paid attention to the right memories to have noticed that a barista declared that the guy from Fake Purgatory looked like a Cody and that ended up being the name they called whenever his coffee was ready.)

"Ashkon 1159's email." She writes it out on a postit and hands it over.

"Thank you. You have a lovely day."

"Likewise."

After the meeting she emails Ashkon 1159 to ask if he needs help and also if he (or his host) has useful commentary on how they could improve their procedures.

<Hey lookit.>

Mrrr why would he have something to say. That seems like the sort of thing someone who wasn't completely incapable of learning anything about the world would do.

...It seems good when good things happen? He was doing sort of okay on his own at avoiding bad things but there's this whole other level of not-sucking that things can do and it's been very nice to have someone introduce him to things that are good. He doesn't have any idea whether that's news to anyone.

He's curious what Ashkon will say.

My host and I are doing great, thank you! He likes music and pretty things. I don't know if that or if anything else will generalize, because I haven't met anyone else in his situation. I have some time at [click here to choose your time display preferences] if you want to meet in person and ask more specific questions?

One of her underlings who hasn't spent longer than a human lifetime burning out on the whole cause area can meet with them at that time.

Ashkon can meet the underling in an Elf coffee shop, where he orders a cup of tea in case his host likes that more as a caffeine delivery mechanism.