She reads the laws of war book.

When a country goes to war, lots of people die. "Well," says Salie, "when I run the country we will never ever go to war."

Unfortunately, this is not as safe a rule as it seems. If everyone knows that Salie's country will never ever go to war, they might kill her citizens and intercept shipping and demand lots of money for no reason. The safest rule, if you want the country you run to never go to war, is to be very clear about which things you would go to war over, so no one is confused about what will happen if they do those things, and invest in defending yourself so no one wants to go to war with you. Another thing to do is to have lots of trade with everyone, so no one wants to risk their economy by starting a fight.

Another thing to do is to have agreements with your neighbors. If they are responsible and someone attacks them anyway, you will help them protect themselves. And if you are responsible and you are attacked anyway, they will help defend you.

Countries that do these things see more peace than countries which try to be threatening or countries that promise never to go to war. But no one has figured out yet how to be perfectly sure of never having a war (maybe you will be the one to figure it out!). For that reason, there are rules about how countries should conduct themselves in war, to make sure the wars are less awful and that they can quickly be ended and peace restored. 

It is absolutely forbidden to attack people sent to negotiate things about the war. ("That sounds silly," says Salie. "People don't think it's inexcusable to kill a thousand people, but it's really evil to kill one if they are negotiating?") But this is because no one can negotiate if they have to fear for the safety of their negotiators, and that means wars will never end.

It is absolutely forbidden to press into service on your side of the war people who you have conquered during the fighting. This is because it makes wars unstable - whoever makes initial gains can put those gains to work for them and get even stronger and gain more and use that also. This makes people more likely to jump into wars in the first place, since if they don't move first they will probably lose. 

It is absolutely forbidden to break explicit agreements made with the other side of a war.

It is forbidden to deliberately spread pollution or use pollution as a weapon in the course of war. 

It is forbidden to target medics on the battlefield.

Discussion questions: what are the reasons for the last three rules presented? If you were to add a rule, what rule would you add?

"Pollution?" asks Maurabel.

"I don't know how to translate the concept, it doesn't seem like you have it - when lots of people live close together, like in a city, there can be horrible plagues that spread from person to person and kill nearly everyone. So after a long time living in close quarters people develop a very very strong sense of horror at certain things that are - reservoirs of contagion. All Amentans have this very strongly. If people know a place is polluted they'll be - disgusted - a while back someone polluted all the food, because they thought people would get over it if they had no choice. Instead, there was mass starvation - it was just that intolerable to try to force yourself to eat something you knew to be polluted."

"I mean, I'd have to be really hungry to eat something that was moldy or something..."

"It's entirely psychological. Not food that will make you sick, just food handled in ways we associate with sickness - like, by a person who works in the sewage, but who has washed their hands."

"...Huh."

"I was surprised it was such a mess, honestly, I also would have guessed before the disaster that people would get over it if they really had to. But - no."

"Why did somebody want them to get over it - is it because of the feeding children problem -"

"Well, it's hard on the people who work in sewage."

"How do you even get anyone to do that?"

"There's this little independent community that doesn't have the disgust problem, they do it and live separately since no one will touch them. But it's hard on them, which is why that guy tried to change it."

"Why don't they have it?"

"My best guess is that if you raise someone from birth around sewage and bodies and so on then you get desensitized enough but it might be they're also selected for not having the problem - how intensely it affects people does vary -"

"Selected?"

"If the people who can do the work without being too disgusted make more money and have more children, and disgustedness is heritable..."

There's a sound of footsteps. The balcony door closes. Penumbra remains invisible.

"I'm curious about heritability, you seem to know a lot more about it than we do."

He can explain! At great length, with disclaimers that humans might work differently. 

They can hear Penumbra moving around sometimes but she stays invisible and doesn't say anything.

When heritability has been explained to Maurabel's temporary satisfaction she reads the birthright citizenship book.

No country in the world takes immigrants anymore, unless you can find someone who wants to swap with you and live in your old country. If we did take immigrants, then we couldn't have as many children. This is a sad situation, if a necessary one, because immigration used to be the greatest check on abuses by governments. If they treated their people badly, their people would leave for somewhere better! If their city was destroyed in a war, they could flee somewhere that was at peace. 

Even though immigration is not allowed anymore, some people do come to Anitam without permission. Sometimes they cross as a tourist and then never leave, living with friends or under a fake name; sometimes they hike in across the mountains; sometimes they buy false papers. When we find these people, we send them home. (If we did not do that, what would happen?)

Children born to people who came here illegally are in a hard position. Under the law until recently, they were not Anitami, but they can't return to their parents' country either. This happened rarely, but in a country as big as ours, even rare things can be a problem; if one person in every ten thousand is here illegally and has children, then there are sixty thousand non-citizen children born every year. (Usually their parents purchase a credit. If they do not purchase a credit, the children are adopted out and are Anitami citizens like their adoptive parents.)

People became worried that these children would form a permanent class of shadow people, not allowed to take most jobs or have children, poor because the rules on foreign workers are not designed for people in this situation or illegal because they are ignoring the rules on foreign workers. They proposed a rule: everyone born in Anitam is Anitami, regardless of whether their parents were here legally.  

This was controversial. People worried that immigrants might illegally cross in order to have Anitami babies. But eventually, a form of the rule was agreed on that resolved everyone's worries. There are no shadow people in Anitam today. 

"...what is the form of the rule that resolved everyone's worries?"

He reads over shoulder to figure out what she means. Then he looks it up. "If children born here are eligible for citizenship elsewhere then they're citizens there - since the idea was helping people who've nowhere to go. And you can only buy a credit if you've been living here for a year unless you get a waiver, so the kids the rules apply to are all children of parents who have been living here for a year."

"How do you get waivers?"

"Apply to the relevant agency. There's a web form."

"Huh, okay."

The hem of her shirt (she accepted local clothes after learning it was customary here to change one's outfit on a routine basis) is disturbed like Penumbra's tugging on it. "I think I'm done for the day," Maurabel says.