The anonymous leadership thing is probably going to have to stop once they in fact have trade deals to negotiate, or are they hoping to do all that remotely?

They can be more open when they are in their rainforest.

All right. 

"I'm very impressed with them, really. Held together nicely for years and years - obviously someone was smuggling them help, but even given that - and they got exactly what they wanted."

"Price for the broader cause yet to be determined. But yes, they did. The hostages were very well-chosen."

He's not looking at Telkam when he says that but Telkam beams at him.

"So they're going to be okay in their rainforest?"

"They were used to doing everything for themselves and will have the opportunity to work for food and some engineers are willing to consult on building a power grid and infrastructure and so forth. I don't know how much of the necessary diplomatic knowledge was imparted -"

"But they can manage without it if they just want to have everyone vaguely annoyed at them, which isn't necessarily much loss from their perspective. It's not as if they have exports they need to protect or as if anyone wants to invade them."

"Have they named the place?" wonders Isama.

"Miolee," says Peka, "it's Evaleen for red land."

"Awww. It's going to be casteless, I'm so excited."

"I remember when how we should do away with castes was all you talked about, it was cute."

"There have been lots of economists who had ideas they thought would solve anything and were wrong. They rather impress it on you in economics school. But if they have no castes and it proceeds to solve everything I will feel very silly for 'maturing' and 'learning some humility' and everything."

Peka giggles.

"It'd have to be a hell of a magic bullet the way they're starting," says Isama.

"They are at quite a disadvantage. But at least that means if it does work no one can possibly attribute it to other things."

"Sure they can," Isama says. "No tech debt, close knit population, I'm sure someone thinks living at the equator is a great idea for some reason..."

"Not enough of one to go try it, probably. - I bet some other place'll throw their reds at them soon enough."

"How many people could fit in Miolee?"

"If it were all built up like a city and imported all its food you could fit maybe half the reds in the world. But it'd be the world's biggest city and there'd be logistical challenges to building up to that density."

"So it can't even be most people's repository for reds, let alone everyone's. I hope Tapa likes the results of their - how many was it, five or six -"

"Four. They took 'em back, I'm not sure they understand why it's important to prosecute violence against them the same as against anyone else but hopefully they just keep their cover and there's time for hearts and minds to change. If Tapa and Voa do it our way and some places take clean immigrants everyone else could send their reds to Miolee."

"Is Voa showing any interest?" wonders Peka.

"Going to wait and see, I think. If we get all the way to robots or rotation gracefully with no pollution hysteria I think they'll get on board."

"I guess it makes sense they'd be conservative," says Isama.

"Yeah. Honestly I was thinking about doing something like this sooner, but then that whole fiasco hit - everyone certainly learned some lessons about hoping you could just brute-force your way past peoples' fear of pollution. Though I do flatter myself that it also mattered that their interpretation was wrong and ours was right."