Nod. "People haven't been trying to do shadow-walking without an elemental, since you can just do it with one, although it takes a lot of practice to steer right. But that one seems harder than something that makes air."

"Once you can do it once is it straightforward to repeat?"

"Uh, sort of. It's a craft, there's still complex steps even if I know what they all are. Easier, definitely."

"I think it'd be an exciting step if you can get it working."

"In the long run you will need more humans. Maybe I should empty a mage orphanage. Except Amentans would probably raise them with that stupid red prejudice. Unless I gave them to reds, which I assume you will tell me would be a disaster even if their adoptees washed their artifacts before they were sold."

"People might conclude it was fine or there might be pollution hysteria or they might try to rescue the poor children from the reds. Humans also might not have it even if raised with it, it's not clear how much it's cultural and how much we've been selected for much stronger disgust reactions as a result of a long history of high-density living."

"Humans mostly pick up stupid things they are raised with."

"Fair enough. You could have a couple elementals terraform some moon and I could send my brother there to found a casteless experimental community and they could be raised there."

"It'd probably be good to start with a moon you can travel to without Shadows anyway, make sure terraforming with elementals even works right."

"Uh huh."

"This won't upset people who are vying for early planets? If I do a moon for an experimental community? - Can reds go there, since it's casteless?"

"Not if anyone else is going to live there. I think if you say it's practice terraforming for the planets it'll go over fine."

"Even for a casteless community reds are still no good, huh."

"There are probably people progressive-minded enough to cope with red neighbors but not with no one they care about ever visiting and no exports and everyone considering them revolting."

"You have reds around here."

"Oh, the moon colony could have them if they lived separately according to all the usual precautions but that kind of defeats the purpose of 'casteless'."

"So you can't actually do 'casteless' anyway. Just a red caste and a non-red caste."

"I think you are underestimating how much social progress a clean casteless society would represent."

Sigh.

"I promise I'm not trying to throw up obstacles, here."

"I even believe you. I just have this rainforest full of people with nowhere to go and I am separately going to make places for people to go and I ought to be able to solve the one with the other."

"You can put reds on the moon! No one else will go live with them, but you can still do it!"

"But nobody will trade with them or anything."

"Uh huh."

"And therefore ugh."