"This was about seven hundred years ago. The Atapli were a trading civilization living on the coast of what's now Tapa and Voa, and while lots of places had caste systems of some kind they were the most - administratively sophisticated - of the pre-industrial empires and had the most formal caste system. With roughly the modern roles, though green and yellow were much smaller than they are now. They set up cities all along the coast, and the cities grew very wealthy, and they were administered according to the Atapli system, and it was adopted in some cases voluntarily and in some cases at the insistence of the local government. Some trading partners of the Atapli had a green aristocracy, and blues overthrew them with Atapli backing; other places were grey-ruled and found that the royals they wanted to marry their children to were all blue and declared themselves very-pale-blue. All of these societies did unusually well for themselves, compared to societies without a caste system or with a differently organized one, and many of them conquered their neighbors or just expanded and pressed their neighbors back into undesirable lands. It wasn't universal at that point, but it was very widespread, and continued to outcompete alternatives until there weren't any."

"Huh."

"It seems possible that aptitudes are more heritable for us than for most species."

"Possible. It also occurs to me that getting you summoning means introducing it to your whole universe."

"We could certainly be conservative about introducing it to aliens."

"They would probably want pretty badly to get it."

"If aliens showed up with summoning and said to us 'we'll give you planets but not teach you how until we're sure of you' we'd manage."

"So you'll just have your yellows summon extras to address their various scarcities."

"These are getting to be decisions on a scale we're not equipped to be making, but that has the - small-scale and reversible - advantages."

"What about other countries?"

"There are countries that probably shouldn't have summoning. This is again - not decisions I'm in a position to make."

"Well. Is it possible people who are should be here?"

"I can recommend the council come and talk with you."

Nod.

She opens the door and sends an email and then gestures for one of the yellows to come and hold it open and wait. They do that.

Cam reads.

"They're all in Lina, it takes the train about an hour to get here."

"Okay. I'm not in a hurry right now."

And an hour and a bit later quite a few security guards (grey) walk through the door, look around impassively, and spread around as unobtrusively as uniformed and armed people can be.

And then the ruling council of Anitam walks in.

There are more people trailing them. Blue and yellow and green.

Uh.

Quiet blues and yellows and greens who have clearly been instructed to shoo and not bother the alien and who will do that, with varying degrees of reluctance.

Uh!!!!!

Off the extraneous people go, to explore Milliways a bit and probably listen in and advise.

The council sits down at the bar. "Cam, right?" says Intal. "We spoke a bit on the phone earlier. It's nice to meet you."

"Yes, that's right, hi. Introduce me to extra people -?"