"Historical infanticide reasons?"

"The Oahk Empire was picking a fight with everyone whose population controls weren't sufficiently stringent. - they were very good at conquest, the Oahk Empire, and they'd slaughter the blues when they took a place so there was incentive to surrender instead of fighting, they were growing very fast - and Tapa said 'well, is this sufficiently stringent population control' and saved themselves a war -"

"Is this empire still a going concern?"

"They are not."

"And, what, they kept it up out of inertia?"

"You can issue more credits if you aren't allowing for cheaters."

"And all you gotta do is kill some babies."

"Not even very many!" Sigh.

"I feel like you are getting less in happy accredited families than you lose in moral high ground with that but maybe I'm just underestimating the desperate need for pavlova you're balancing there."

"We don't do it. Peka was going to lose Katin, that's why she emigrated -"

"I did not mean you specifically. I'm glad she escaped."

"If they'd somehow found out about that while they were already mad at us -"

Nod.

"I'm very glad she's okay."

"Me too."

"But we are very lucky dozens of people didn't die for it."

Nod.

"We're nearly done angeling people."

"That's really good."

"Yep. We may let ourselves be noticed to have a warp signature after that."

"And then the Feds will come say hi and you will say good morning, we like our caste system but how about them interpolity trade relations."

"Exactly! Much nicer than 'what are your population control rules and are you clean'."

"Quite. Although I'm sure they're used to variously colorful first impressions."

"Telkam writes that most of these places have glaring social problems. I do wonder what they'd have done about us if we'd met them without solving anything - ignored it? Gone to war with us?"

"They seem to strongly favor 'leave it alone' as a default, it's only so ironclad a rule for prewarp civilizations."