"I think that's the key - a population that typically has children at eight and gets four of them might well be happier than one that starts right away and gets three, but sticking it out until eight in an environment not set up for that is miserable and it's a test of willpower even when it's ordinary. It's worth a small, opt-in test, then we'll see."

"I also wonder if people might go for longer-acting forms of contraception now that it's free."

" - I hadn't realized it wasn't."

"Only three percent of our public health 'budget' was making it to public health! People made do, of course, but I expect they went for the options they could afford and that were offered somewhere near them, or the ones where it was easy to verify you'd gotten the real thing and not adulterated product from a shady provider, or the ones where they hadn't heard their neighbor's cousin died of that... We're tentatively expecting a shift in what methods people are using once all the clinics are open and all their options are free."

"Three percent? I knew it was bad but I didn't know it was that bad," says one of Avalor's staff.

"I think we published the documentation on the 'accountability and past conduct' section of the website, I can have someone send it to you if you'd like to see it. Six billion ahk to private charity for public health purposes, about one hundred eighty million ahk in health services provided."

"How was that priced?" asks the Voan staffperson.

"Varied by clinic! Some places charged you and then promised to refund you when the private charities refunded them - some of those actually did refund you if the private charities funded them, only the private charities didn't do that reliably. Some places if you were supposed to get something free or subsidized they'd arrange navigating for the subsidy for you in exchange for a collections fee. Some places services were free but you had to pay quite a lot to get a spot in the clinician's rotation, some places services were quite affordable but they'd bill you outlandishly so they could try to get recompensed at the higher rate, some places were uncomplicatedly very cheap but the providers weren't licensed and the medicines weren't sourced reliably. The price you'd pay in practice for oral contraception varied last spring from thirty awk a month to six hundred forty awk a month, by district - thankfully the outlandish prices were mostly in clinics serving green and blue -"

"Of course they were, not that all of us can trivially cough up that much, why didn't they just order from abroad?"

"I think lots of people did but you have to know which online overseas medical organizations are legitimate - easier if you speak the language - and there was a real problem with valuable shipments going missing or getting partially depleted at customs."

"Aha."

"Charging for contraception just isn't right."

" - was abortion free -"

"There were free methods of abortion. Not necessarily perfectly safe."

Squeeze. 

"Now that's just stupid, you have to provide free abortions on demand if you're going to have population laws at all or you just wind up sterilizing lots of random purples and that's more expensive," says Avalor's staffperson.

"I am sure there was no one who went 'abortions should cost more than random purples can afford', we just didn't have a good avenue to turn government revenue earmarked for population controls into reliable free abortion access everywhere. People did usually scrape together the money - for travel to the nearest free provider or for one closer to home who charged - but we sterilized more people than Voa last year with a fifteenth of the population."

"You were not in Calado last year," says Avalor softly.

"Public confidence in a corrupt system takes a long time to rebuild, and we've found that 'this is what was wrong, here's what's going to happen now' does more than 'oh, that was the last government' to restore the foundations of that confidence. But yes, I was not in Calado last year."

She does not press the point.

He looks tempted to say something to her and resists temptation. The conversation meanders to topics other than how much of a disaster Calado was before the coup.

The conference wears on. There are panels and committees and astronomical exploration planning sessions. There are little alcoves in the convention center with benches in for sitting with coffee. Avalor does that.

Elves plan and sit panels and committees. Maitimo is having so much fun and observing thirty different things at once and so doesn't immediately process who is in this alcove. When he does he wants to flee again. He reminds himself for the second time that this would be immature. 

- it wouldn't be immature if she were in the middle of something, though. "I'm sorry, Governor, am I interrupting anything?" he says rather hopefully.

She raises an eyebrow at him. "No."

"Would you like to say something or should I trust my imagination is filling it in accurately?"