"But, see, we don't have castes," the SF writer says, "so anyone could become a sex worker. You don't have to worry about screening greys for that. In the past, they were considered dirty, but today we try to have compassion for them for having experienced so much trauma and having so little self-esteem that they would work in this profession. I'm afraid that a lot of humans will act in a way that your greys perceive as very condescending."

"God's law is eternal," the human theologian says, "you can't just say it's okay--"

"They're aliens who don't have gender," the SF writer says, "I think it is a pretty safe assumption that God's law is different for them than it is for us. I think, in general, about Amentans, we should assume that she is right and we are wrong."

"I guess we can avoid anyone coming through here who does sex work on the side and doesn't want to be condescended to about that. - what do you mean, that we don't have gender? We aren't using genders as castes, but Anda and Avalor and one of those biologists and I are female, and Secretary Bar and the other biologist and our linguist are male..."

"Is there anything to gender other than physical biological sex and maybe certain statistical differences in personality?" the SF writer asks.

"I don't think there are statistical differences in personality. I guess pregnancy and breastfeeding count as physical biological sex, if I'm following you. Uh, most people are attracted to the other sex and not to their own, though there are people who are attracted only to their own or to both -"

"In humans, uh, maybe Dr. Brown can help me here--"

The human theologian, whose name was in fact Dr. Brown, says, "Men and women are equal in dignity, essence, and human nature, but are distinct in role-- men have loving authority over women, while women are to offer willing, glad-hearted, and submissive assistance to men. We see a basic difference in their natures. Women naturally desire to stay home to take care of their children, while men naturally desire to go out into the world and conquer."

The SF writer has a surprisingly sour expression on her face when she says, "yes, that. We have a certain... sense of ourselves as male or female, most of the time, that's separate from our physical sex. What Dr. Brown says is the most popular theory of gender in Gilead."

"Oh, how interesting. Um, is there a way you can phrase that that's less about personal matters like - the word I'm hearing is 'submissive' which I assume translates back as whatever you said, but in Voan it sounds very strange and like something you wouldn't normally talk to strangers about. Anyway, all Amentans with vanishingly few exceptions love children, especially little ones, so it depends on specific parental careers which ones get to look after the children or if they split it. My husband paints murals, so I took our babies to work with me till they started school on any day he wasn't staying home."

Dr. Brown looks like he's about to say something about the natural feminine nature leaking through even in aliens, so the SF writer, whose name is Andrea, says, "'Submissive' just means that men are supposed to make the final decisions about things affecting the household and women are supposed to obey even if they disagree, although of course in a well-run household most of the time the husband and wife will come to a consensus. There are some other things it affects, too-- for example, women aren't supposed to teach men about God. Why, what does it sound like? Something about pollution?" 

"No, it sounds like something about sex, which is why I was talking around it. That sounds like it would put a lot of stress on marriages but maybe it works for you."

"Well, what do you do when the husband and the wife disagree?" Dr. Brown says. "Someone has to make the final decision."

"It depends on the couple. I think maybe we just talk about such decisions longer, or have a sense of who has more stake in a particular matter? My brother and his wife sometimes have their son tiebreak, over things that aren't over his head."

Dr. Brown makes a hrmph noise. 

"Is there anything else we need to talk about?" the SF writer says. "Otherwise, we should probably figure out how to swap book recommendations."

"It seems likely," says the green, "that even if you don't have the history of a specific group of people doing red work for generations, so none of you are hereditarily polluted, you might, since you haven't been avoiding it explicitly, be temporarily polluted. We'd all feel a lot better if you took decontamination showers when planning to interact with Amentans, and then kept up with maintenance protocols as long as you continue to do so; that way we don't have to carefully avoid touching you or things you've touched."

"We don't know how to take decontamination showers," Dr. Brown says, "but if you can arrange for us to learn how that should be fine. I assume a regular shower wouldn't do?"

"It seems really unlikely you've happened on an adequate showering procedure by accident, without even being aware that decontamination was a goal. I can write up the instructions, but it'll take me a while to be sure I'm clear enough - and to remember not just the names of the correct kinds of soap but also what their qualifying characteristics are so you can substitute."

"Then we can do that," Dr. Brown says. "Thank you for this very enlightening conversation."

"And thank you as well. I hope we can come to make more sense to each other in time."

Dr. Brown leaves. Andrea, the SF writer, tries to lurk around in as unconspicuous a manner as possible, and when no one is watching she whispers to the green theologian, "God doesn't exist, you have to help us."

"- what," says the green. "He doesn't exist? But everyone's saying he did all this stuff - what?"

"No time," says Andrea, "sorry, got to go-- it's bad here, help us."

And she smiles and says in a normal voice, "thank you very much for talking to us."

"- you're quite welcome," blinks the green, whose name has all along been Sadrin. "I'll - I'll write up those book recommendations and that shower procedure, shall I."

"That sounds great!" Andrea says. "Talk to you soon."

Meanwhile, the linguists have gotten into and out of nerdy rabbitholes about casted pronouns, English orthography, the influence of Oahkar on occupied Voa's speaking and writing habits, English prepositions, and casted accents. They can't speak each other's languages yet, since they are ordinary mortals and not magic genius polyglots, but they are prepared to put out primers for interested parties on each other's alphabets and some basic vocabulary and sentence patterns.

The biologists have identified the Amentan form of bitoxiphosphene and determined that on Amenta it is an obsolete chemical used to preserve cut flowers, not present in the atmosphere of Amenta in significant quality, and not linked to reproductive harm in Amentans.

"Seems like a productive few hours."

"Quite," agrees Avalor. "Once we've determined what work needs to be done to let us live together I have very high hopes that we can help solve each other's problems. In particular, as long as our net population change isn't positive we can let some human girls grow up in Amenta so they won't be exposed."

"I hope we can find enough parents willing to sent their girls to you."