"I get the sense that's a really big deal here. Maybe more than for humans."

"Maybe. It's - a really big deal. People save up their entire lives to afford a credit, in civilized countries where credits are available for purchase. In the Oahk Empire, they - started wars, committed horrible crimes, planted evidence of horrible crimes by others so they could get credit for stopping them, betrayed their loved ones, followed all kinds of evil orders - and some didn't, and those died quietly alone with no children."

"...I think humans are different but it's hard to be sure."

Nod. "So the Oahk Empire - the book says they died of being mean and evil? It's not too far off - blues needed the personal approval of the Empire to have children, and so they were constantly starting or suppressing internal rebellions, plunging all their money into long-shot military weapon projects, framing people for sedition or for assassination plots, created an atmosphere where the Emperor was constantly hearing about enemies internal and external - it had started out well-run, if evil, but it got worse. Eventually there was a coup. After the coup they granted secession to everyone with a claim and Anitam reunified. It was - not in good shape, post-occupation, although some very nice well-funded universities were established in that time period. Tapa - our neighbor - invested lots and lots of money in getting us modernized, because it was inconvenient for them to share so much border with a country with instability. It worked very well, we modernized, we became a democracy, we wrote good laws. There are international agreements - about when to go to war and how to conduct yourself in wartime, about how to be transparent with your population controls, about how to manage pollution and hazardous materials and trade standards - and we are a signatory to all the important ones and good at compliance, which is important, wars are avoided best when countries are known for keeping their word."

"Some of that sort of thing happened when our Empire fell apart. I think less formally."

He nods. "More useful than the book?"

"Well, the book is more useful for learning to read but you're more useful for learning history."

"Fair!"

Giggle.

They also brought other books. They're approximately as sophisticated.

She would like more sophisticated glosses on those too.

This one about the world hits the major points. Equatorial regions are unsettled or not densely settled because people can't season properly there. 

"Season?"

"- yes. When do humans have children?"

"Uh, about nine months after they get pregnant."

"- I mean when do they get pregnant."

"When they have sex."

" - Amentans get pregnant only in springtime."

"Oh. Humans don't have that."

"Huh. If we live near the equator then we don't have that, but people dislike it, it feels wrong."

"Huh."

This book is about how bills become law - "It's correct as far as the formal steps go, there are probably informal ones, you'd really have to ask a blue -" and this one about animals - "I haven't much to add, we don't oversimplify animals that much -" and this one about ways they have tried to get around being out of space. They have built places to live on the moon and underwater and tried ones in the sky but it didn't work well.

Many Amentan animals are similar but not that similar to the ones on her world that she knows of. "Wow - the moon -"

"It was so hard! When we figure out how to season the moon so many people will want to live there but we haven't got that yet."

"I didn't even know the moon was a - thing."