"Are you some kind of persecuted minority, is that what this is about?"

"...ma'am?"

"You're 'reds' and this is a 'red neighborhood' which suggests some kind of ghettoized situation and you're all--defer-y--and you think that you or we or both would be worse off if people knew we had interacted. I mean I could be off base like with the research project hypothesis but I'm not just wildly making stuff up."

"If you come back to Amenta," says Kashi, "dye your hair black."

"I don't think that'd work in the long run for, uh, several reasons. Seriously, though, we're not going to take the other guys' side just because they're the dominant social paradigm on one planet. In all twelve star systems of Villarosa," she tosses her hair, "there aren't any stigmas around hair color."

"Ma'am," says Kashi, slightly alarmed, "while it will be understood that hair colors on aliens do not have the same significance, you look similar enough that a first impression would ideally not include red hair before you can explain. I don't recommend - confrontational approaches - to the situation."

"I mean, I wouldn't be the first impression, if I wanted to come along I could manage it but I do not in fact have any formal authority to handle a first contact on purpose. Hence why I offered to fetch Tanya. I can not show up until the situation has been explained, but--it would be impractical in the long run to hide that I do in fact have red hair and then I would have to explain why I had been concealing it, since my civilization leaves me no reason to do so. And probably we could manage something but it seems...unnecessarily awkward. Particularly since if they do interact with us for any length of time they're going to notice that we have people with red hair, it's not, like, rare. If they can't get over themselves then there's no point in making formal contact at all instead of just, I dunno, evacuating any of you guys who wanna be evacuated."

"In the same way you were understood by people who didn't expect aliens here to be one of us, other Amentans may also think that you are one of us, if they see your hair before getting an explanation," says Kashi, "ma'am, so presenting someone who doesn't happen to have it would be ideal, but if you suggest that you've been listening to Amentan broadcasts or looking at the Internet that would suffice to explain dyeing it."

"I will definitely tell people that the first contact team should either not be redheads or dye it but actually I just decline to hide my pretty hair color that I really like and people have nicknamed me about because people are prejudiced and stupid. Political delicacy and 'that sounds like a you problem' can coexist."

"As you see fit, ma'am."

"I realize you have no reason to trust me, and I promise I am not scolding you for not trusting me, but I have to put it out there that if I would prefer that you argue with me if I'm doing something dumb."

"Thank you ma'am," smiles Kashi, which is notably not an argument.

She had to try, but that's fair really. 

"Is there anything else I should know about? Any other hair colors people are going to be stupid about?"

"Any shade of red, but otherwise no."

"By 'any shade of red' do you mean, like, also pink, or do you also mean colors that have red in them like orange."

"Also pink. Not orange or purple."

"Strictly better than otherwise, I suppose. Anything else before I go back to the ship?"

"I'm not sure if Amentan star charts will be useful to you but I can show you one."

"I would appreciate that."

It takes a little bit to figure out the unfamiliar format but Solace-delta-prima is able to figure out where they are to civilization-as-they-know it. It's...a long ways off. But nothing they can't handle, mathematically speaking. 

Linda goes back to the ship with this information and tackles the glitch and discovers that it is in fact one of the quick-fix options.

They jump the skipper back to the Grande Rosa system and turn it over to mechanics who will examine it for subtler flaws in the enchantments or damage from having been on the surface of a planet, where it was very much not supposed to have been. 

And instead of securing the services of another skipper, Linda finds Yseult and explains the situation. 

Yseult is fascinated. 

She agrees with Linda's assessment that the fact that they've never encountered for-real aliens before and suddenly have is probably not coincidental with the fact that they have now firmly exited any of the timeframes covered by any of the versions of Roses of Villarosa in the world Yseult left behind. 

She authorizes Linda to do further reconnaissance with an eye to first contact. She cannot, currently, come along, because affairs of state are more of a bitch than any little girl who dreams of being a princess would guess, but Franz is free and insists on coming. 

The results are...not encouraging. 

The caste system is, whatever, it manages to be more democratic than Villarosa without being more egalitarian, which, you can't expect aliens not to do crazy things, really. 

The problem is the secret that the organizer wanted her to be not in a red district when she learned. And Linda cannot blame the woman. 

"Yseult is not going to be happy," Franz observes. 

"I'm not happy," Linda says flatly. "I'm glad Tanya isn't here, can you imagine?"

Franz winces. 

"Maybe they could be convinced to cut it out with sufficient bribes," he suggests, not sounding optimistic. 

"Franz, your mother is religious. If aliens offered her fabulous gifts and prizes to flush holy wine down a toilet--"

Franz winces again, much harder. 

"My concern is actually less how they'll react if they learn that aliens have not, in fact, somehow independently invented the same religious taboos that they have, and more what happens in five generations if we uncork the lot of them and they decide they're big enough to start making us follow their standards of ritual purity."

"...Yseult will be disappointed if we have to scrap the project, but she's practical."

"I know," Linda says fondly, but shakes her head. "I don't think we can make contact with all of them, not now, but...they do have a sub-population that doesn't bear that risk." 

"Ah. Hm. Right." 

...

A little more than a week after the aliens crash-landed in a red district and left again the same day, a much smaller, atmo-rated, single-person pod quietly pops into existence in the same alleyway. Linda casts a spell of obscurement on herself and her vessel, then makes her way back to the organizer's office. She dismisses the obscurement on herself and knocks on the door. 

A few people recognize her on the way there but they seem terrified to interact with her.

Kashi calls, "Come in!"

She opens the door. 

"Hi. I don't think we can work with the cleenz."

"...oh?"

"The second princess's mother was a coroner. They don't seem likely to take that well."

"Ah.

"I'd - expect them to work very hard to see their way clear to tolerating it but it would be an obstacle."

"Okay, sure, but we don't have any reason to settle for them seeing their way clear to tolerating it. And we are genuinely concerned by the possibility that if we give the cleenz FTL then in a few generations there'll be enough of them to form a military coalition to impose their ritual purity opinions on everybody else. Humans don't have as strong a baby-drive as Amentans do, we had a relatively short period between when birth control was invented and we got genetic engineering good enough to handle the consequent evolutionary pressure to develop one. So our populations don't grow as fast."