"It's nice to meet you both! Governor Avalor says you're interested in castes, where would you like me to start?"

"We have two primary concerns about castes. First, Cascadia accepts all immigrants that want to come to our country. We don't think it's very likely we'll have many Amentan immigrants, but before we take any we want to avoid any disasters that might come from applying human laws to an Amentan population, no matter how small. Second, certain of the things said about reds in our discussion with Governor Avalor are likely to be... concerning... to many Cascadians, and we'd like to have a better understanding of the position of reds in Amentan society."

"Reds are one of the smallest castes - in most countries they are about as numerous as blues but Voa has unusually few blues. Their central advantage for their work is, roughly, hyposensitivity, which is a mental illness in clean Amentans but essential to sustainably performing red work. They do not have very much interface with the rest of society because they are polluted. What human laws are you thinking might interact with castes?"

"Well, we don't have castes, and would naively allow Amentans to work whatever jobs they please regardless of their hair color. If there is some way in which that would be disastrous, it would be good to know." 

"You certainly can't let reds do it if you want to retain any credibility about taking pollution seriously. For the clean castes... We have reason to believe it would be bad for people's flourishing if they didn't adhere to their casted roles but it's possible you prefer to value short-term freedom more highly? Castes provide tailored, attainable archetypes for people to raise their children toward, there are cultures and dialects and many generations of genetic specialization. Intercaste marriage is still incredibly controversial, although it is legal in Voa with matrilineal inheritance."

"I expect that we will, in general, not take pollution seriously, except to provide certified-clean trade goods and hotel rooms for tourists and such. This is one of the reasons we expect few Amentan immigrants who are not... hyposensitive? We of course have no objection to people raising children within their culture or encouraging them to take certain jobs."

"We don't have any reason to believe that meddling with the caste system will have dramatic, morality-tale-style consequences. We do think it's better for people to the point where it's worth enforcing - intercaste children have worse outcomes along a number of axes, Ereith has done an irregular thing with greys that led to war crimes and they're so isolationist it's hard to imagine they think they can compete economically on the international stage, and every Amentan polity has converged on the same style of caste system with minor differences in the casteting of a handful of careers so it seems overwhelmingly likely that we've hit on the right way to do things for our species."

"I think Cascadians, in general, will say that if it is the right way to do things for your species then you can do things that way without government enforcement."

"I think a good analogy is, like-- I'm Jewish, which is... sort of like an Amentan caste, I guess? We exist in a bunch of different countries, it's genetic, we have cultures and dialects and various ideas of what a good Jewish person ought to be. But also I don't do any Jewish things and I don't feel any particular connection to Judaism and the government doesn't do anything about it and the only negative consequence I face is that my fiance is irritated when I eat bacon. --Jews aren't supposed to eat bacon."

"...there are no castes which are not supposed to eat bacon, or any other particular food. It's a matter of skills, ideals, and culture. Individuals sometimes feel impulses to deviate from their casted roles but their children are better off when their ability to carry out these impulses is limited by law."

"To be clear, being Jewish is also a skills and ideals and culture thing. Like... we argue a lot, we kvetch-- what does that translate as, I'm curious-- we are overrepresented in intellectual professions especially at the highest levels, historically we were often limited to certain professions such as moneylending..."

"- that would be much too specific for an Amentan caste career list."

"It was more than just moneylending. I don't know all the professions we were limited to off the top of my head, like I said I'm a very bad Jew."

"I'm not sure it will help with the translation if I just say 'kvetch' back to you - it's a green- and yellow- associated word for complaining. Anyway, it's likely that humans don't belong in the same castes as Amentans, and that Jews or anything else castelike turned out to be wrong for you. I'm in part drawing on the fact that all Amentans do this and the ones who do less of it are worse at many objective measures."

"Huh, that's not a bad translation, if greens and yellows have the culture I think they do. I wonder how this place works."

"Thank you for your advice," Chloe says. "It doesn't sound like it's urgent to enforce castes, the way it is to enforce population controls, so we don't necessarily have to settle things before Amentans perhaps begin to settle."

Lev glances at the Kindle and notices that every book is in English. Then he notices that the books that are in Voan are, as far as he can tell, in English. 

He reads.

Bar has provided him with twenty books about reds in Voan! They are titled:

Reds
Developments of the Red Caste 2090-3040
The Redfetcher (A Novel)
Reds and the Occupation
Technology and Red Work
Summer Glory AU where Lirdon doesn't run away if you know what I mean vote on a real title in the comments
amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho part one
amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho part two
Red Crime
District: Case Study
Charity for Reds: Corrupt, Purposeless, Parasitic
Reds
The Seventh Caste
Primary Pollutants
Reds Abroad
Collected Notes of Dargvo be-Ondari
Reds Online
Voan Social Work Encyclopedia Volume 27
Handbook for District Deliverypurples
FORBIDDEN RED

amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho part one sounds promising. 

Chloe continues to talk with Sadrin about castes.

amateur memoirs is what it says on the cover. Tandi has collected 5,000 to 20,000 words apiece from a bunch of reds and organized them into a book, apparently in approximate order of how old the memoirist is at the time of the main anecdotes in their chapter; the first chapter is about someone remembering being almost one, being told how much attention he'd get come spring.

Lev skips to halfway through the book. 

Halfway through the book is a chapter about somebody with a barely-elaborated-upon old injury reaching Amentan-menopause at age twenty and reflecting on the different relationship she has with descendants born before and after that mark.

He gets up and goes to the Bar. 

"Is there a way I can pause time so I can read?"

Not reliably, but if you go out of line of sight of other patrons your time may desync and it may be favorable.