Also, if they can't find him, they can't make him leave. 

He finds an out-of-the-way corner where he can't see Chloe or Sadrin and opens up Charity for Reds: Corrupt, Purposeless, Parasitic, which has the most bigoted title and might give him a sense of what bigots believe. 

Apparently the organizers of charities for reds are almost universally preying on simpleminded nitwits who think reds require charity; the money doesn't even actually make it to the reds most of the time. Many of the charities operate arms that don't specify what they're about for people who reflexively give "to charity" but then take shelter under lax oversight regarding their cause area.

Does it say why the reds don't need charity?

In regions where for whatever reason there is no charity directed toward reds or none makes it there there's no corresponding decline in red services or increase in red crime rates.

That is... conspicuously missing some of the obvious reasons one might want to donate to charity.

It's nothing obvious. Nothing he can point to, nothing that would convince the people of Cascadia that they have to take red refugees. No one's said "muahahahahahahaha we like torturing red babies and eating them for breakfast." But he has a bad feeling.

They don't say anything obviously objectionable. But they... don't talk about reds like reds are people that matter.

He closes his eyes and reconsiders his reading strategy. amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho seems like obviously the most valuable book as an apparently representative sample of red lives. But there's no way to skim it. Reading the introductions to all the nonfiction books might give him a better sense of what people think about reds faster, and he'll know which of them is valuable. 

He gives into temptation first and finds out what FORBIDDEN RED is about.

Porn!

It's not straight-up porn, it's actually a book by a sex worker talking about red fetish, how to accommodate clients who have it without compromising personal boundaries, the porn that red fetishists write and read, and a little look into people who actually go and have sex with reds with negligible attention to features of that situation that would in Cascadian terms make the difference between rape and non-rape.

Creepy!

He skims through the prefaces and first chapters of the two books called Reds, The Seventh Caste, Primary Pollutants, and Developments of the Red Caste 2090-3040.

Reds (the first): turns out to be about reds as a motif in fiction! They're sparsely used in theater, or even music, but in literature, which people normally have the opportunity to react to privately, they are sometimes used as villains or props in various ways across literary styles.

The Seventh Caste is about reds' social separation from everywhere else and the resulting dialect and cultural differences. It's a translation from a Doetaran book but includes Voan examples.

Primary Pollutants is about the process of reds becoming primary pollutants by extended multigenerational contact with pollution and the likely effects on their cognition (negative) and character (likewise).

Developments of the Red Caste 2090-3040's preface is all about how esteemed the author is and how great her other books are. The first chapter is about the increase in the use of glass.

Reds (the second) is about red districts' effects on city planning, property values, policing, infrastructure, budgeting, and resource allocation; it might have been intended as a textbook for blues.

This is... starting to fit together into a picture. 

Does either part of amateur memoirs, by any chance, have an index?

Nope.

He pulls out a notebook and makes quick notes-- systematized rape?, red welfare not important charity outcome, deprived of education, cultural belief that reds are stupid + evil, villains in plays, universally (?) found disgusting, social separation.

He looks at Red Crime and the Voan Social Work Encyclopedia.

Red Crime's first chapters are about pollution violations, which range apparently indiscriminately from deliberately grabbing people through sneezing while at work without a mask on.

Lev doesn't have a pollution sense and is not about to judge people who have one about what triggers it. 

He tries to get a sense of whether there's anything non-pollution-related that's illegal for reds and not everyone else and if this book agrees that reds are generally stupid and evil. If there's a chapter about clean-on-red crime, he reads it.

This book is solely about crime committed by reds. In addition to pollution violations it discusses illegal work stoppages, violent crimes against cleans, failure to consistently appear red, population violations among reds, financial crime, out of caste work violations on the rise since the invention of the Internet, and, of course, rioting. Incidentally he may notice that Voa doesn't practice adversarial justice.

Lev has no strong opinions about the merits of adversarial justice versus alternative systems.  

His notes say, cleans can just commit crimes against reds? strikes illegal.

Why do the reds riot?

Roboticists, whom it is speculated they must identify by creepily going through people's trash, but also occasionally policy announcements that they don't like - relocating some of them to a polar science settlement triggered one, there were a few during the Oahkar occupation over the sudden enforcement of Oahk-style population controls, etc.

Riot to express disapproval of policies inc forced migrations. Lack of voice in govt? Opposed to roboticists. Necessary but disliked minority-- genocide?

He underlines genocide a couple times.

He turns to the social work encyclopedia.

It's a guide for oranges entering the red liaison role. It assumes this was not the reader's first choice. It refers a lot to other reading and its own content is a little sparse, but it talks about situations in which you do and don't need a full five hour decontamination after work, how to tell if reds are lying to you, examples of things you might need to do (check up on population compliance, follow up after police complaints, talk to them about supply issues).

Lev quits after like two pages. It's unclear to him whether red liasion social workers are actually despicable or if he just feels that way because of his profound distaste for all social workers.

He's not sure that further reading of books by clean people is going to enlighten him that much more. He starts amateur memoirs about a quarter of the way through and skims anything that seems like it's not related to oppression.

Things related to oppression appearing in amateur memoirs:

- the time there was no sugar all winter
- police brutality; the memorist's sister couldn't walk for six months
- everybody hates the social worker so much!!!
- seducing a deliverypurple to get rice in reliably for reds with an allergy to the other main staples
- inadequate supplies to deal with postsurgical infection, though the surgery itself seems to have begun innocuously
- various Oahk-related complaints
- somebody making friends on the Amentan equivalent of a BBS, then being caught out as red and instantly losing his whole social life

Um. UM. 

He writes quick notes on all of those and more details on the seduced deliverypurple and the police brutality. 

"There you are!" Chloe says. "The meeting's done."

The seduced deliverypurple seems to have previously been reselling rice deliveries intended for the reds; after seduction, she was incentivized to show up and apparently felt awkward about showing up without any rice and still expecting to get sex out of it, so rice appeared on the regular. It isn't hard to tell which of the cleans have a red kink, they're the ones who can't stop staring at your hair.

Memoirist's sister worked a trash route and encountered a cop but doesn't remember a lot of details because she blacked out during the subsequent beating and her co-worker was unclogging an apartment trash chute at the time the cop's attention was acquired so he doesn't know either. Has a bad hip now, can't drive or carry heavy things, switched to inwork telephone appointment booking.

Lev stuffs his notes in his pocket. "Sorry. Books are interesting. You guys finish talking about trade or whatever?"

"Yes, and Avalor wants to meet with the Mexican and Canadian ambassadors, which means we're out of here."