"Hmm."

"Spies are usually grey, and that involves pretending to be other castes, so you have to be smart. It wouldn't surprise me if smarts helped with lots of sports, too, although I don't know which ones."

"...sports don't seem like a smartness thing."

"I think that they are. Keeping track of - ball trajectories and the correct way for your team to react to a situation and making fast decisions about which moves to make. Not all a smartness thing but a thing where smartness gives you an edge."

"Hrm. I think it is different if you can be good at a thing just by being smart as long as it's enough smartness and a thing that you also need other stuff no matter how smart you are."

"I think most things you also need other stuff. If you were a genius with terrible communication skills, or terrible work ethic, then no one would really appreciate the genius."

"....hmmmmmmmm."

Scoop?

Scoop. Yes. "The thing I meant is not about people appreciating stuff."

"I don't think there are any jobs where you can get by on just genius, even unappreciated."

"Hmmmm. Oh well."

"You have lots of other good qualities."

"Yes, I know."

Snuggle. "I expect you will be a terrifyingly competent blue."

"Terrifying?"

"Competence is scary for people who don't want the same things as you. Most competent blues are very scary. It's not a bad thing."

"It seems maybe a little bad to be scary. Do you scare people? Does Aitim scare people?"

"Aitim scares people. I don't think I scare people but that's because I don't need to because Aitim does. If Aitim did not exist I might have practiced being scarier. I think there are bad kinds and good kinds. If someone accidentally cuts you off getting on the train and is worried you will ruin their life over it, that's bad scary. But if someone is thinking about whether to try to get away with something bad and knows that you'll find out somehow and knows that you'll be hard to convince to overlook it that's good scary."

"Who's scared of Aitim?"

"I think people are - vaguely aware that Aitim has an uncanny amount of information and meddles in ways that are hard to trace back to him and will end up very powerful and is a useful person to be on good terms with. If they are scared of him it's because there's something they don't want him to find out or because they don't like there being people around who have different interests from theirs."

"How does he know all the information?"

"He has a lot of friends, he can learn a lot from rather little, lots of people report to him directly or indirectly...there are lots of freelance writers who are quite good, but in a very competitive industry, and they will research various topics and make sure that certain perspectives make the news in exchange for enough money for their projects, Aitim does a lot of that. There are other writers or journalists who want access to our grandfather and tips about interesting stories and will share things in exchange for that. There's the sort of work that we do in our department on information management, Aitim knows people there."

"That sounds complicated."

"It's very complicated."

"But you think I can do it?"