"Once we'd pulled it off without hiccups Tapa tried, and then Voa did. Everywhere else - well. Evalee pressed forward with their plan to train purples and kill them, and the reds took blue children hostage and demanded their decontaminations paid for and safe passage to Anitam, and we were hardly going to have them but agreed to do the decontaminations if there was somewhere to send them afterwards, and they bought up some rainforest and started their own civilization there, made it into a lovely productive manufacturing and remote work economy, took in the reds from the places that wouldn't decontaminate them and did it themselves. Well, Anitam supervised. And so everywhere, except a few places who said they'd send them on and killed them instead just because."

"Just because." Sigh. "How goes the rainforest country?"

"It was a grand success. I was honestly astonished that they pulled it off - given my choice of citizens I'd expect to find it a real trial starting a rainforest country from nothing with distinctly hostile neighbors - but they did all right and Evalee resisted the temptation to go shoot them all and then we got starships and they mostly went off to found a red planet. The equator's a good place for a spaceport, there are still some there who don't mind the weather."

"What do decontaminated reds do? Rotate like the Orvaran purples?"

"Some of them! And if they'd been a red teacher before we let them become orange after - the purples resented the idea that they'd all be purple, you know, one said to me 'the castes aren't blue, green, yellow, orange, grey, miscellaneous -' and some wrote memoirs and some observed that they were the owners of a whole lot of prime real estate and Anitam sputtered a bit and then said 'fine' and now they are unusually wise and adept and loyal blues."

"Unusually," says Avalor skeptically.

"There're fourteen of them, of three million reds. Even assuming reds have much less aptitude for being blue than clean castes, that's a very strongly selected group. I am sure their descendants will be foolish at the usual blue rate. You are welcome to meet them and tell me if I'm blinded by all my modern liberal sentiments."

"Did my counterpart have an opinion on the whole decontamination business?"

"She died before anyone thought of it. She was on the record, from the hospital, as favoring finding something aside from massacres, but it was easier said than done."

Nod. "Was Riado a terrible disaster?"

"I liked you better and I think you wouldn't have played wait-and-see quite so long but he had opposition that moderated his pet labor policy nonsense and he was a sensible voice against invading the equatorial red country, eventually."

"Good."

"Yes. And Voa had a nearly bloodless transition. A - great show of institutional competence, that. Tapa had some messes. In your place I would be proud."

She smiles.

"I represent none of the new colony planets but I expect most of them would welcome colonists from here, if there are any interested or if we and you end up with a different caste balance among those considering leaving."

"We have a lightleaper-based colony system but the Elves maintain a stranglehold on the ships, I'd like to get your version of FTL."

"If there are greens who want to come back with us and pick it up at the source they can; otherwise I'll assign some people to come teach you."

"I am sure I can collect some interested parties."

"We'll be delighted. - Anitam kept it a secret while it was under development, wanted to make sure that if there were alien civilizations we'd be able to maybe make sure all the space teams had responsible people heading them. But it didn't last very long, because once we knew we had it we doubled our credits and several of our neighbors got very alarmed."

"If you increase greys you're planning a war, if you increase everyone you're planning to raze a civilization and live there yourselves."

"Well, we weren't. But yes. So we came up with secret planet-distribution agreements and then it worked and aliens were not immediately about and we were able to hand it out left and right and now everyone has a colony. Some of them are being run as the home state with more living space and on some of them we would be considered hopeless reactionaries for having a caste system at all."

"Oh, how does that work out for them?"

"Well enough, I suppose. The ex-red country was like that too - they don't like 'ex-red'. A clean casteless people. It means your labor market's awfully flexible but there's less channeling for people who need it."

"It would complicate the school system dreadfully."

"I have no ambition to try it. I shall have purple staff and a yellow secretary even once my great-great-grandchildren think this makes me too embarrassing to bring to parties. But I'm - glad they have space to go see what happens, and proud of the place they have to fall back on if it turns out it doesn't work."