He's pretty good at those.

Cool. He gets a little card where the proctors can put the scores and initial them.

Eventually it is Time To Start and he is supposed to sit at a desk and answer written questions.

He's been studying like people's lives might depend on it. Because they might.

They might, though a lot of police jobs are pretty boring.

The test is long and there is a lunch break in the middle; somebody's coordinating a pizza order.

Oh no, he never researched typical pizza topping preferences by caste. Why didn't he do that! What is wrong with him! He'll have whatever helps make the group's collective pizza demand into an integer number of pizzas.

That's mushrooms and peppers.

Well, he doesn't have to like them, he just has to eat them.

If there's lunchtime conversation it's probably a good idea to pay attention to it but he's not quite confident enough to start any if there isn't.

They're introducing themselves. Some of them turn out to have met before in other contexts.

Oh, no.

He will tell them he just moved here, since that's true, and mostly try to be interested in them. People like it when other people are interested in them, right?

"Oh, where from?"

"Mekri. You local?"

"From the suburbs but I was always downtown weekends."

"Cool. Hey, what should I make sure to see here?"

"Museum of firefighting history."

"Binzra Bridge, if you're not in that area enough to see it anyway."

"The zoo's not as good as the one in Gandre but it's got a really good collection of turtles."

"Oh, thank you!" He takes notes. "Turtles are great. I've thought about keeping a little one but I probably won't, they bite."

"I don't think they make great pets, yeah."

"Get a dog. Dogs are great."

"They take a really long time to waste-train."

"It's worth it."

"Maybe if you have a yard. You have a dog?" he says, turning to the person who said dogs are worth it.

"You don't need a yard for a small dog if you take it for walks. I have two, a burrowhound and a goatdog."

"I do hear good things about goatdogs."

Would he like to see pictures of the dogs?

Yes! That sounds like a very safe way for this conversation to go. He can get excited about what good dogs they are.

That will let him coast through to the end of the conversation and then they all go back to testing.

Arguably, the conversation is also a test.

Test test. Sure is a lot of testing.

Yup. It's over in the late afternoon; some people who hit it off particularly well are tossing around the idea of grabbing dinner together but most people are leaving alone.

If they invite him he’ll go but he’s not going to ask. Probably they won’t. it would turn them off their food if they knew