"Put everyone back?"

"Interstellar war, collateral damage, resurrection, remember?"

"Yeah, but - do you even have reason to believe it's possible -"

"I can put fifty-four million of them back. The remainder are just a different species. I haven't been here long enough to assume it's out of the question and Bar hasn't told me I'm out of luck either."

"- that's kind of a lot of collateral damage."

"It was a planet."

"You've got a lot of nerve, saying maybe we can't be trusted with starships."

"Yep."

"You have scarcity-ending magic, you use it to blow up a planet, but you want to tell thirteen billion people you've never met that maybe we're not virtuous enough to have children."

"I want the books."

Cam bows his head and hunches his wings over himself and says nothing.

"Oh, is the difference that you feel bad about it? We worry about pollution and we're not even appropriately sorry, you blow up fucking planets but you feel really sad about it. Tapa kills babies born without a credit, you know. If you're looking for things that are your fault to feel sad about."

Cam takes a deep breath. It doesn't cut it. He repeats it.

"Suicide rate in springtime is five times the rest of the year. Supposedly a spring when you're expecting a baby is amazing. But the rest of them -"

"Do you think," says Cam very quietly, "it's possible someone in the government would be better at reassuring me about how you'd handle meeting aliens."

"Is the door going to stay."

"My understanding is that time will pass in your world if you hold it and if you don't let it close with you on the far side it will stay."

"I have no idea how to get someone from the government to investigate the interdimensional bar in my closet without any proof."

"Do they have private phone numbers or something?"

"Probably?"

"Who do you want to call?"

" - I don't know. We have a ruling council, I guess, if you want to go straight to the top."

Cam fumbles around for their numbers and finds a couple and hands Sahan the slips of paper.

" - okay. I'm going to - think what to say, before I call them."