"It... can be, yeah, but it seems to me like giving people more resources they won't need is in general better than forbidding them from ever having the chance of getting them."

"Oh, schools for gifted purples are a good idea, it's sending all your purples to green school that seems cruel."

"I'm not saying we should use that model here, I'm just—less sure that it would be as terrible as you think. If people perhaps had the option to switch schools—or, even better, switch castes—"

"There are people it would make very happy. Very few of them, but not none."

He shakes his head. "I'll let you deal with that, I'm not fit to actually work with policy changes."

"If we live forever there are lots of things we'll pull off eventually."

"I very fervently hope so."

"I have a brother who is a caste abolitionist. I don't think it'd be a disaster, but I do think it'd have a lot of costs that we avoid successfully."

"While incurring some other costs, most of which you probably don't notice the same way my world mostly doesn't notice most of its education systems are not very good."

"Our education systems are really good. Everyone in Anitam without a serious disability affordably reaches adulthood trained to be successful at something they can make a living at."

"Yeah, it has a lot going for it."

"I don't think it always sorts people right. But I think you lose a lot when you set things up to tell kids who could be a great chef that they're a disappointment for not being a great astrophysicist."

"—oh no some universities totally do have, like, culinary courses and stuff. They're much broader in scope than universities here."

"That's not what I mean. I mean that if you track all the kids the same it's impossible for them not to feel like there's a best outcome of their track and a worst one."

"...perhaps. I don't remember enough from when I was human to speculate on what I was like then."

"Don't remember?"

"—my memories are only perfect from the point I turned on, and with the extra senses one minute of being a vampire was as much sensory information as my whole life prior to that, so I—only remember the parts I made sure I'd keep."

"That's quite a drawback. Not that we were planning on - vampiring people - anyway."

"On the whole I much prefer being a vampire and—I was only shy of five when I turned and I've had a few hundred years of memories since—but yes it's not an unmitigated good."

"When we have lots of planets perhaps one can be casteless."

Nod.

"Anything else?"

"I don't think so."

"All right. Take care. I'll let you know when we have your things."

He texts the Orvaran reds to say he'll be making the poles habitable soon and also this is a picture of him as a boy, sometimes that's a thing, they shouldn't be alarmed if this is what he looks like next time he visits.

He kills time until Aitim has his stuff.