Amentans are waiting on the roof! Some blues some greens some yellows a couple greys.

The Krissan team is a mixture of humanoids and small birds on little scooters. They're all in rather pretty space suits, with rank insignia displayed on their backs and shoulders. One of the Krissan is clearly in the lead - a humanoid Meda, with brown skin and black hair and a purple-and-silver insignia that indicates a head ambassador. There's no indication of caste, of course.

"Welcome to Amenta!" exclaims a delighted blue. "I'm Koan Mitape, I'm heading up the welcoming committee here in Tapa."

"Thank you for the welcome! I'm Ambassador Tahemb. It's good to meet you all!"

"The elevator down into the museum is just this way, although the photographers down there would be delighted if you waved first." She indicates photographers at street level behind a cordon, taking pictures.

She knows how to do a smile and a wave! And her people follow suite, including some wing flaps from the birds.

The photographers take many pictures! And they can go inside the museum. The elevator lets out into an atrium that branches off into sections of various centuries and locales and media so they'll be able to have some small discussions in 3100s Boat Cultures Sculpture and others in 3000s Lleuwid Portraiture.

Tahemb is admiring! The Avi seem less interested, but the Meda are all - to varying degrees, but still a fair amount - interested in the architecture and art displayed even in the atrium.

"We should probably pair off specialists early on," she says to Koan Mitape. "I suspect our scientists at least would rather get on with more science and less diplomacy."

"Of course!" She introduces the greens she's brought along, and describes who she's got on standby - lots of xenologers and astronomers and ship engineering specialists and such, as well as linguists and an art historian and anthropologists.

They seem to divide 'scientists' differently; they did bring a historian and an anthropologist, but they're in the same broad category as the Ambassador herself. Their present scientists mostly focus on engineers and biologists in varying specialties.

The greens can figure out who they want to talk to and call in a non-art historian of their own and some biology types and send them out to stand in various parts of the museum, greys lurking discreetly.

Tahemb doesn't do much directing of her people, there, focusing instead on staying by the blues - she has an Avi and a Meda who stay with her, the second Meda explicitly as an assistant, the Avi as a 'Junior Ambassador.'

"So our priority for this visit is mostly to get used to each other and lay some groundwork for future travel and trade," says Koan, when people have dispersed some. "Do you have any questions for me?"

"Our priorities are similar, and I have a few questions, mostly on cultural background assumptions. The castes are - curious, to us. Our scouts received some conflicting information on the number of castes. Do different countries have different numbers?"

"Ah, mostly not," says Koan. "Mostly it's seven. Ereith has six, because as a historical quirk they count everyone in the country as grey-and another caste - grey and blue, grey and green, etcetera. I think that's the only exception."

"Forgive me if this is a delicate topic, but the information about the red caste was - odd, and sparse, and possibly not translating well."

"Oh, I suppose some people leave them out of the count, too, they're a little uncomfortable to talk about. And there aren't many of them, so it's usually pretty easy to talk around them instead. Is there something you wanted to know specifically?"

"What do they - do? We got some vague explanations, but I don't think we got all the connotations of words?"

"Ah, reds are responsible for jobs that involve coming into contact with waste and dead bodies. They also collect garbage, and some fraction of their population is engaged in internal services in red communities."