She eats dessert. "Aitim thinks we should remove the circles. But I did directly ask him if he thought we were in danger if we didn't and he said no."

"Why does he want the circles removed?"

"Reading between the lines, whatever understanding the Anitami government does have of Cam the circles aren't helping, and they're not going to serve an arrest-related purpose because - oh, another thing about Milliways - when the door is closed, time is paused in the world you entered from. The Elves are paused. The Elves can just stay paused forever."

"...then he'll just. Never be dismissed. Unbound black hole demon, forever - if there's no one else who can open the door there -"

"No one else can open the door there. Has to be someone from that universe."

"Fuck." She looks at the baby. "Sorry."

"It's okay. It's - a hell of a situation."

"So to speak." Niari laughs nervously.

"If the circles aren't doing anything and the people talking with Swan think they should come down it's probably smart but - impossible to explain -

- if he were to come through and get rid of the circles because they were annoying him -"

"How can they be annoying him, he's not even in Hell!"

"I don't know! It can't even be that he wants to visit, he's a pariah there too."

"Can't you ask whoever's been - handling him - for more detail -"

"Probably. It'd be useful to have a sense of what happens if I get it."

"What do you mean?"

"Who do I take it to, can we even take the circles down if it's a good idea..."

"Chua, I guess, he's not requested from one particular subscriber... The subscribers would have a right to know why."

"Would 'defendant has interworld travel, seems likelier to come here if we get his attention' suffice -"

"Uh, maybe, but it wouldn't exactly calm anyone down..."

"Yes, publicizing any of this would be a disaster."

"And the public already knows there's a demon who holed a planet and we put out circles."

Sigh. "Are there human authorities who'd - make things better on balance if they were informed -"

"The president of the AU is honestly kind of incompetent, I don't know the others as well..."

"I'm reluctant to drag my society into it too much because - not to put too fine a point on it but right now he has practically no reason to bother us -"

"Right. Although did he need a reason to bother the Elves -"

"Arda has four species. Orcs, Dwarves, humans, Elves. He only did the killswitches to Elves - made some orcs he took prisoner a nice little space station to live on, and sent them home after the war - and he was concerned on behalf of red Amentans - it might in fact be something about Elves, though don't ask me what."