What happens to the kids if you can't terraform the poles afterwards?

Then I keep them on a boat until I can figure something else out.

Please spray anything you have touched after touching the kids with red chalk. If you can, take a video camera and document the situation - there are rumors that Biyan is torturing the children, which will not make people supportive of the action you intend to take but it would, if proved, make them complain less fervently about it. Without the kids held hostage their parents will probably stop working, what's your plan at that point?

Rescue the parents and then start screening people to receive magic which hopefully should serve to fill in the gaps.

If you give reds magic people will panic and probably attack you.

One, I meant non-red people in Biyan, two, if I did give reds magic that wouldn't necessarily result in anyone else knowing about it, three, if people decide to panic and attack me that sounds a lot more like their problem than mine.

If your magic makes you and the red immune to missiles, and you're far from any collateral damage, then maybe it's not a concern. It'd still result in a dangerous mass panic and possibly violence against reds in other places.

Hm. Okay, that's bad.

Yes. Whatever you actually do, tell everyone that you're keeping the reds contained and not giving them magic.

Unless I have a shot at convincing people the magic de-reds them on the relevant level.

Well, does it?

In order to do magic, you have to transform into an alternate state that looks like you but doesn't actually share any of the same matter. Based on my understanding that ought to work but I've been here less than a day so I don't claim my understanding is perfect.

Permanent? Verifiable in any way?

Permanent no; repeatable and sustainable with practice. I know it's been verified back home but I don't know how, I was kind of not expecting to end up here and encounter this specific problem. Also it seems really likely that if I give them magic after explaining everything at least one of them will end up with a way to do it permanently separate from the transformation.

Thank you for letting me know. Do you have a plan to acquire some poles?

Yep. Not going to tell you how, though, unless you think it would actually be useful for damage control; there's an unwitting accomplice I don't want to get in trouble.

People might not presume your accomplices were unwilling.

My actually willing local co-conspirator seems to think we're not going to get him in a lot of trouble but we haven't discussed it thoroughly.

Telkam sometimes underestimates that kind of thing.

...

Who's Telkam?

An unreliable source on how much trouble you might get into.

...Uh, okay. Anyway, does it help if I say there is no reason whatsoever that given a sufficient population of magic users some of them shouldn't get FTL?

You'd have a lot of leverage. Just - are you thoroughly in control of the mechanisms for giving out magic -

In control is not the word I would use but the effects are equivalent. The mechanism for giving out magic is a person and she trusts my judgement completely.

Thank you for coming to me. I think if you're cautious enough this could work out very well for our world.