"We told them to do the caste where they'd most easily get a job, so they'd integrate fastest, and I suppose collecting rent is the easiest way to get a job if you own a lot of property."

Tapai blues look uncomfortably at each other.

"It's so good of you to be going ahead with this. Everyone at headquarters who was apprised of the situation was tremendously relieved that local leadership was stepping up. Maybe you can show him off to galactics who have heard nothing about Tapa except the reds thing, call it a diplomatic job."

"One, maybe. If there's one in every neighborhood that adds up."

"....what does it add up to, exactly? Thirty? And if they're not good with money they can't have kids, it seems a very self-correcting sort of system."

"More than that. Tapa's a large country with more than a hundred red neighborhoods."

"It seems to me like you're pretty good at keeping unqualified blues from ending up in a position to cause trouble - unlike some other people, maybe - is that the worry, or is it something else?"

"It's not that we have to give them office, but allowing them to be blue at all is awkward."

"Oh?"

"The caste itself implies aristocracy whatever the de jure positions held."

"I'm still not sure I understand - should I think about this as if we used blue to mark our royal family? Where no matter what the legal status associated with that were, a stranger just wouldn't be? -- unless they grabbed the genes for it, I suppose, but I do not think the reds did that."

"Even if they grabbed the genes for it they certainly don't have the culture."

"Maybe we should invite him here to discuss this, I bet he's given it some thought and it'd be useful for, uh, estimating how much the culture fit will be a problem."

Uncomfortable blues.

"I'd really like to know if there's a problem so we can figure out if our resources can help resolve it."

"It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that your resources would be directly relevant to."

"All right."

Peka gets a little notebook. It contains instructions on composing magic music. (This only works in Ardas, says the preface.)

The heck is an Arda? She reads it anyway.

It is very detailed and does not explain what an Arda is.

She plays with her beads and her fancy tent and feeds her baby and bewilders her parents and runs around on the empty mountain range singing songs.

...she tries the magic music thing in the mountain range.

Yep!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~

Vanda Nossëo emails the new ex-reds to ask how they're integrating.

Some of them are doing all right and they are helping the ones who are doing less all right.

It's something.

Would theologians like to agree on something that could be wished up for babies, so being rid of reds doesn't have to wait for them to grow up to the age where they can control a morph?