"I lied to him about how reds mostly died in the storm because I wanted to justify lots of visas, and lots of visas would be more justifiable if more reds had died than actually did."

"He won't count?"

"Well, he said at the end that two hundred seemed too many and he'd only approve as many as Isel could document reflected higher losses than usual this year but I was hoping he'd do even less checking than that and that is still an amount of checking that leaves some margin to err on the high side."

"When do I get to meet Isel, do I have to wait until the thing isn't happening because she's busy with it?"

"She's pretty busy right now but I think she could meet you tomorrow."

"Good."

"When I talked with you I talked like reds were people who we wanted to help by finding them a country, and when I talked to Shavanti Neli I talked like reds were annoying animals we had to have around for now and which it was currently convenient to import."

Nod.

"If I did not care about reds I would have told everybody 'I am home on parental leave with my new daughter, figure it out yourselves'."

...nod.

"Caring about reds is complicated and costly and not caring about reds is very easy and that is why almost everybody does not care."

"Isn't caring about pollution complicated?"

"Yes, but we can't choose not to care about pollution, not being sure about pollution feels horrible. If hurting reds felt horrible the way touching something a red might have touched felt horrible then we would be very nice to reds."

"Why doesn't it?"

"People - vary, in who they care about hurting. Some people don't care about anyone. Some people just care about their family, or about people who are like them, or about their caste or their city or their country. But these days lots of people care about everyone in the whole world, and that is because with more peace and more education and the internet it is easier to know people far away and believe they are a lot like you. 

But reds most people won't talk to because it is so unpleasant, and most people don't even think they're really people anyway, and no one is really trying to get people to care about reds except I guess Allocator Savo, so they just don't get counted."

"If people find out I am a plant will they think I am not a person?"

"Some of them might and for lots it would probably depend on details but you are clean and that will make it much easier than reds."

"How do you know?"

"We don't know anything about how pollution works for plants but it is awfully unlikely that generations of your ancestors were all sewage workers if you don't even have a caste for that."

"I don't remember."

"Well, if they did then we have a much harder problem on our hands," shiver, "but it's not likely and we have no reason to think it."

She bites her lip, looks a little irritated.

"I know that pollution seems ridiculous to you."

"That's not the thing this time."

"Oh?"