"It's probably the best you can do as a default." Sigh. "The incentive to not be seen as primitive and backwards is quite strong."

"Yep."

"Wouldn't have done anything about reds but it can fix lots of other things."

"Why wouldn't it have done anything for reds?"

"It's not amenable to pressure unless you've also got a solution in hand, and no external party could credibly propose a solution. People really would go to war with a hopelessly superior alien society rather than integrate their reds, they wouldn't even consider it a real choice to weigh carefully..."

"Could you have - shipped them off to live with someone else -"

"Not someone else who was trading with everyone."

"You couldn't go, 'oh, nobody will trade with us until we've solved this problem anyway, but if we send our reds to live on Earth, we can at least import anything we can wash' -"

"But polluting the entire galaxy is permanent, see, and means no Amentan could ever emigrate...in practice I expect our children won't have the fear of pollution nearly as badly, what with not being raised around actual reds, but I don't think most people share that expectation."

"Mm-hm."

"If someone showed up and said 'hand over your reds, we will resettle them' people would hand over their reds. But I don't think it'd be tractable to build an internal consensus on sending them abroad - I could maybe have arranged that Telkam sneak a bunch of ours out, then if the galaxy's ruined anyway..."

"Just because you couldn't be sure they hadn't gone any particular place? Couldn't you - settle planets that didn't look like anybody had been there yet?"

"Oh, yes, definitely, just not ones that resettled a bunch of them or trade with places that resettled a bunch of them. With that many degrees of remove there's space for some convenience-motivated calls. You can't stop an enemy from settling an area by letting your reds touch things there, they'll just torch it - plus it's a war crime -"

"Of course it is."

"People found it unreasonable of other societies to consider the deliberate killing of civilians a war crime."

"I take it it's not on Amenta."

"What, are you going to take peoples' land and not live there?"

"...that explains it."

"My history class when I was two debated whether it was wrong of the Oahk Empire to handle conquered nations by lining up the blues and killing every third. And if so why it was wrong exactly."

...sigh.

"Won't be like that for our kids. Part of why I waited so long to have them."

Nod.

"Do you happen to know what Telkam is up to -"

"...I could see if he's written anything care of me?" Check.

He has reported that he has joined a Bajoran terrorist group and would like Kantil to stop funding his island if the blues arrange themselves special legal protections and privileges.