"I bet people will be fine with substantial immigration. Yes, more competition for credits, but as long as they're still getting steadily cheaper not doing it as fast isn't as salient, and we want to be a majority-Amentan society, right now we're majority-human. - how much of the vote are you planning to give them -"

"That, ah, depends on some factors presently outside my control. The roadmap the council approved gives them ten percent as an interim measure until we figure out what makes sense with respect to castes."

"What kinds of aptitudes are they showing in school?" asks Shasali.

"All over the place. I think some of them will be smart enough to keep up in a university once they have adequate prenatal nutrition - not ten percent of them, but not a token handful either. The male ones are stronger and taller than Amentans and will dominate various sports if we let them do that. The girls are likelier to want to do teaching and childcare and nursing, but that's as likely to be for cultural reasons as aptitude ones. Kids who were already literate are at enough of an advantage it swamps everything else. It's going to be a long time to be sure."

"If we're having a grey labor shortage pushing some marginal athletes into policing or piloting by letting humans compete might not be a bad thing," says Shasali.

"I guess there's no better time to potentially displace a bunch of grey athletes than when there are other jobs begging them to sign up."

"We've had relatively few discipline problems considering how many people without experience in this kind of role we've imported."

"How are you managing that?" Shasali wonders.

"Aggressively circulating the observers, warning everyone that we're going to be investigating things to the satisfaction of the observers - they appreciate the executing everyone who attacks them, makes them feel like we have their back and aren't just giving them an impossible job and then dragging them off for fucking up at it - most patrols have an accompanying translator, whose job is not to meticulously document anything illegal they witness but who are, you know, the type who'd absolutely do that..."

"Are we suffering problems in this department where Veritaserum is being tried, because it's no longer an execution offense -?"

"My impression is that Veritaserum is largely appreciated for its contributions to law and order but if there are problems I might not have caught them yet, someone does have to report them."

"Are you confident in the channels allowing humans to make reports?"

"I don't think we've had anyone walk into a courthouse but people talk to their teachers, talk to their priests, sometimes send emails - you can voice-dictate them -"

"I think we probably hear less than half of it, but enough to get a sense of whether the rate's gone up somewhere."

Shasali nods.

"They care about such strange things I'd expect lots of complaints that are about genuine accidents."

"There's some of that, too. Bunch of places where women will be substantially harmed by being alone in a room with a soldier because of reputation things, and before we got procedures nailed down to avoid that there were complaints and we'd follow up - 'what did he do' - 'oh, nothing, but my life is still ruined' -"

"We're making support payments for things like that."

"Does it help if the soldier is female, since they're so -" Shasali waves vaguely.

"Yep, that solves it, unless they don't believe that the soldier is female because who would have women soldiers."

"...I don't think anyone has been assuming I'm actually a man but perhaps this is less pronounced for judges."

"And it's been obvious." He coos at the baby who is the reason it has been obvious. "I think that one'll change pretty quickly, when they have examples to work from."

Baby Seklen regards cooing adults impassively. "I hope so," agrees Shasali.

Kefin and Pelape hang out in their impossible tent.

"Our counterparts thought you were having a bit of a hard time of it living with them. Are the pickings in Britain particularly thin?"

"No, I have the same problem back in Anitam. I don't like hooking up with other greys because they all remind me slightly too much either of my dad and sister or of the kids who beat me up in school, and non-greys are really hard to sift for - stereotypes, like, 'why don't you look like you spend every morning in the gym and/or perform professional grade acrobatics'. I swim when it's convenient, I'm not a twig, but I do not spend every morning in the gym. So the entire process is irritating and exasperating and just this side of better than nothing if it's strangers. I had a regular arrangement once till he moved but it took a long time to find."