"That's obnoxious -"

     "Does it have to be actually unified or just able to present a united front on treaty-relevant stuff -"

Unclear! Possibly just the latter.

Well, they're more than capable of worldwide binding treaties, but it seems silly to reshuffle their entire governance to convenience the aliens. ...colony planets will have a unified government. Maybe two hundred colony planets can join the Federation and then change the rule about castes.

Federation membership is by species! Exceptions are rare.

...wait, so if they have other planets which do not have a caste system and do qualify for membership, they'll be disqualified by virtue of Amenta existing?

Or they'd have to apply for an exception, ideally as a bloc.

Amentans think the Federation is really dumb but they do kind of need a powerful ally and the other candidates look less trustworthy. ...maybe if they are the only ones with summoning they don't need a powerful ally.

"You can't lean too heavily on summoning, especially with your population skyrocketing. Aren't enough daeva."

"We're not expecting regular use, just - you need fewer than a dozen daeva on-planet for an attempted invasion to fail."

"And then all your neighbors are real curious."

"And probably some are inclined to ally with us whether we have a single species-wide casteless government or not."

"And then they want to know how it works and then it's out of control."

"With all due respect this is more our specialty than yours. It is in fact entirely possible to use technology or magic in self-defense without teaching it to your neighbors."

"Daeva're immortal. You aren't. Forgive my lack of faith in your long-term planning."

"It's forgiven," she says coolly. "I don't think pursuing an alliance with any of the described candidates serves our people."

Some nods.

Sigh.

"I think a technically-casteless colony planet is a good element of relations with our neighbors but it's apparent that compliance with their terms would be as a first-order effect highly detrimental and that we won't have meaningful protection in the long term without full compliance."

       "The ban on genetic engineering is ridiculous -"

"Yes, I do not think we should comply with that."

       "How do you think you'd pull off a technically-casteless colony planet -"

"Robots instead of reds, no income cap, anyone can enroll their children in any school but people'll want their kids to go where they'll succeed. Everything else is custom, not law, they can't outlaw customs. And if the winner of Anitam's Voice is yellow and dyes his hair green and has a singing career, the social fabric will survive."

       "- once we've got several colony planets, sure."

       "Are we presuming someone's got robots -"

"Someone's got robots or we can develop them ourselves, here, where they won't cause trouble. And I think you can use an angel to clean a red but the details are all too green for me, I'm going to take them to some greens I know with relevant medical and theological expertise."

       " - clean one -"

"If you replaced all of the cells making up a red with clean ones you should have a clean red."

      "Angels can do that?"

Aitim touches his hand to his hair. "This presumes the feasibility from the medical and theological side. Politically, it protects us from well-intentioned intervention by horrified neighbors -"

      "Unless they intervene anyway over genetic engineering -"

"If they're going to be tempted we had better have otherwise fantastic PR. The reds play badly to everyone who isn't us, face it and fix it."

"People do seem to go around not meeting Federation requirements without this being an invitation to attack, but the more you can tick off the more trade you open up."

"We can't really trade with anyone who doesn't care about pollution -"

      "Might be fine, it's not like they handle sewage -"

"Even for territory or whatever, stuff they wouldn't necessarily have handled."

"The rule against contact with pre-warp civilizations seems silly but it's not a hill I'm willing to die on."

       "We can have straight elections for a world government that isn't empowered to actually do anything."

"Ooooh, we can have a clean red in the world government, point people at it if they worry about reds."

       "You should pronoun the clean reds," Aitim says, "the aliens will find that weird."

"A bit, yes."

"We can keep genetic engineering projects quiet, at least. Freedom of religion - I'm confused about what they even mean by that -"

"Do you have such a thing as religions?"

" - the word is translating but I think there must be a significant difference in connotation."