"I had to think of something to do with them or I wouldn't have gotten to study them! I was also the control group anthropologist for a couple of the other studies but that just requires observational skills."

Nod. "Does spending lots of time observing them lessen the disgust reaction -"

"Yes! I tried to write a paper on that but nobody would take it."

"How surprising."

"It really is, they take all kinds of papers about the reds themselves reacting to experiments."

"Well, imagine if research demonstrated that the reaction to reds fades with exposure and isn't present in children who aren't raised with it! Then what would that say about us all."

"Oh, I'm not sure how you could get one with children not being raised with that past an ethics board and the red children are sort of confounded."

"Anitami children pretty much are raised that way these days, since we're all clean."

"That'll probably let me coast till the end of my career. That and following up on what they do re-casted! And they'll have much higher rates of mixed-caste families!"

"Uh huh! I know a new blue with a orange boyfriend and purple and yellow family. - of course, I also know a born blue with purple and grey and orange in-laws -"

"Goodness, how?"

"They hit it rich, had seven kids, practically all married out."

"Why's that?"

"Uh, respectively, ran away to pretend to be green, hired a girl and fell for her, had an unintended pregnancy, was an economist who got super enamored of the way the CEO of Assemble ran her business..."

He laughs.

"When Aitim - that's the blue I know - was running for office they debated featuring everybody in election ads and decided yellows would have hurt feelings that no one'd married one of them!"

"And none of them ran out and did it? Just to complete the set?"

"Come to think of it I don't know why not! Maybe if my assistant does a good job in Lintholee I can introduce her to one of the single ones."

"It'll play well for reelection."

"Not gonna be a very competitive election, what with alien technology and a war with Yeerks to get excited about - and it hasn't cost nearly enough money yet to be an unpopular war - but yes, he'd probably be flattered to scoop up larger margins."

"Anyway, I think our reds will probably cooperate pretty well with you, they think it's sort of like another experiment and we don't let random nonsense get between us and our experiments."

"Oooh, do you have a lower rate of police murders of reds? Rivik had it through the roof - someone made a clerical error and allowed a few extra red credits and instead of just cutting the allocation the next year they murdered a bunch of pregnant women, I bet that'd mess with an experiment -"

"It'd fuck terribly with one, especially if it had anything to do with the credits or the kids - I'm not sure what the usual rates are - I did have a mental case run off and get into some trouble a while ago but my students were doing side observations on substance abuse and demanded him back -"

"Good for you. I think it also helps that you're integrating them, has more reassuring milestones than shipping them off to the equator."

"Like what?"