"I see," replied Chloe, "did Maria's people voluntarily join your Star Empire?" she asked. The question was loaded, in a sense, in that the answers would tell her, and the rest of the Var who cared to know, a lot about the Star Empire of Manticore. A particularly quick Var biologist had already determined that the likelyhood of a creature like Maria being capable of becoming space-faring on its own was low, mostly because technology tended to be writ large in early development eventually transitioning to small, moving from small to large would be, very unlikely, though not impossible.<br/><br/>"Excuse me if it is not an open subject," she said, "but the methods of incorporation between very distinct species into one society is of particular interest to the Var."<br/><br/>This was true of course, because there really wasn't any way for two species to be more distinct than the Var were from almost any organic species.