"So I should make it known that I'd like some rainforest?"

"Yeah, I think so. Though that's not a long-term solution - not for all of them -"

"Long term, I hope, is planets."

"They'll be delighted."

"If you mention you're upset at the treatment of reds it might deter some places from various horribleness. Also might inspire stupidity but I think it comes out ahead on balance. I'll ask the reds if there are specific policy changes they'd like you to mention you approve of."

"Probably better than flailing."

"Too much too fast gets you backlash, too little too slow and they don't trust you enough to give you accurate information, it's a bit of a balancing act."

Maurabel looks up words. "They don't trust you -?"

"Most people want them dead. Almost anybody, given the chance to press a button and replace them all with robots, would. They - it makes no sense to them that anyone would care for its own sake. So if someone shows up acting like they care, it's likelier to be a - test, or a self-aggrandizing performance of altruism - until you actually do things for them, they just won't believe you that you care at all."

"But I'm an alien."

"Doesn't matter. - I guess it might help a little on the margin. But - you're an alien, you met us, smart and kind with impressive things to give you, why would you decide we were all wrong -"

"Because you are so rich and then Penumbra found a red neighborhood and had not been told reds existed and they were not so rich, and they're your -" Note consultation. "- species, and I'm not."

"You don't actually need to be scared, you're clean, it's easier to care about clean aliens than unclean neighbors."

"You didn't check," she points out. "For all you knew school mages have unclean chores."

"It'd be the kind of unclean you could fix with a shower, it has to be generational to get - reds."

"I mentioned what my parents do but I didn't say what their parents do."

"At that distance it just wouldn't be expedient to consider you unclean so they won't."

"They're just making it up?"

"Not - exactly? There are things that aren't at all up for debate and then there are things which you wouldn't want to risk guessing wrong on lest there's a pollution hysteria and then there are things where whatever the ruling people'll be fine with it and you may as well rule the overwhelmingly convenient way, and 'alien whose grandparents might have done red work' is the last thing."

Sigh.

"Thank you for doing this."

"Of course."

"Aside from the thing where we treat three million of our people like garbage, how's everything?"

"Aside from that it's so much better here!"