in color | Glowfic Constellation

His hair is green.

His mother was green, and in lots of places he would follow her, but Anitam is not one of those places; castes are patrilineal. He is a blue with hair inconveniently reminiscent of his dead mother, that's all. He will grow up and be a politician or a diplomat or an ambassador, like his father, like his father's second wife. His mother did embroidery, stunningly beautiful tapestries and fabric concepts and artwork that hangs in the state buildings and museums. But he's not green, and he can't follow her.

He runs away from home, of course. He would probably have done that anyway; looking back on it it feels a bit overdetermined. The hair would have been enough. Entis, his father's second wife, would have been enough. His siblings - two of them, blue in hair and ambitions and manner and talents - would have been enough. His hair is green. He runs away from home and shows up at a university in Anitam's third-largest city and sits in on classes, front row, asking questions and taking notes and turning in effortlessly brilliant problem sets.

In the third week he tells a professor, biting his lip, that he's not technically enrolled - family couldn't come up with tuition this year, and said maybe next, but he didn't want to wait - and the professor ruffles his hair (green!) and says that it's a delight to grade his work, he can keep sitting in and if he does well he'll talk with the administration at semester's end.

He excels in all five classes he sat in on. They find a scholarship. He vaguely mentions his mother's family.

He graduates with honors and co-authorship of four papers and offers from eight higher degree programs. He accepts one and publishes machine learning papers at a pace that has his advisors gently asking if he's going to burn out and he's green green green and he lives off microwave dinners and praise and envy and he marries the co-author of one of his papers about fluid dynamics and eventually someone pieces together his parentage and asks -

"Are you," he says, "suggesting that someone wrote my papers for me?"

" - I - what - no - I was at your thesis defense, no one else could possibly have -"

"Right. So then are you suggesting that the person who achieved those things wasn't even green?"

"There's no need to be confrontational. I was just - it's matrilineal lots of other places."

"Yes, it is."

And he's green green green.

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"I'm very much aware. The money isn't enough money for a war to be financially worth it, but people get - hung up on pride -"

"So proud of having probably not deliberately woken up in the morning planning to slaughter thousands of people." The ambassador shakes his head.

"It would've gone the same here, if a district had rioted in the middle of everything. Of course, I like to think we were trying harder to make sure they didn't feel the need, but -"

"Dramatically harder. It's like everyone else thinks reds have psychic powers."

"Tapa had a very good command of ways of preventing riots - curfews, mixing up the districts, cutting off the internet - everything but 'credibly explain that you are in fact still committed to decontaminations'."

"They allowed enough communication that people were able to get in touch with decontaminated friends, which - helped."

Nod. Sigh. "If I had a voting majority I'd have gone into Rivik the day after the mess and I'd tell everybody else we'd be delighted to do the same for them and I'd train the army to handle the high-friction pieces of the transport themselves and it'd be outrageously expensive and a complete change to Anitam's role in the world but the massacres would stop. But no one else wants that, and it's not in the national interest, and you can't halfheartedly gesture at war."

Sigh. Nod.

"I can probably assemble an external review committee that decides who gets the money back but they'll be prejudiced against Miolee because everyone is."

"Can you get - there's an ex-red yellow deep in the closet, if you could sneak her on -"

"Probably but she would have to actually push for the decisions she wants without raising suspicion -"

"She does a fantastic impression of thinking reds are gross and she has the - fussy exacting yellow personality - she can come at it from an angle of wanting to be very meticulous."

"Then by all means - name -"

"Katani Ehal."

"I will see what I can do. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Is there anything else?"

"I don't think so. Thanks for trying."

Nod.

He waits a few weeks for things to settle down and then proposes the oversight committee.

If they'd get money for supplying one sure why not.

Miolee is exasperated with the need but will pay if some country agrees to it.

Great. He'll go ahead and assemble people so that if some country does agree there needn't be delays. He looks up Katani Ehal.

Programmer-slash-standards-consultant in her twenties. Lives in the sticks.

Invited to apply for the oversight committee along with lots of other people.

She puts together a resume and sends it in. She's done a lot of open source and remote work and has legitimate work history from well before decontamination.