"Medicine is green in some places. Sex work is orange in some places. Firefighting and heavy lifting and night shifts watching security cameras vary grey or purple. In some places civil court and tax court and misdemeanors are adjudicated by yellows, and in some places yellows can run city governments."

         "Modelling is grey here but I think it's green in Cene, either that or they all dye their hair for the pictures, it's all green in catalogues from there," offers her wife. "Surrogacy is orange in Anitam because castes are patrilineal here but in places where caste is matrilineal and the gestational mother matters I think they let all castes do it, they kind of have to. Television news announcers are yellow here but in places where the job's considered more like writing opinion pieces they're green."

"Why do you have castes? And why you can't... just let some jobs be casteless? If they're hereditary why would the gestational mother matter?"

"It'd be outrageously expensive to try to train everybody in the country to do every conceivable job, and outrageously stressful to try to figure out peoples' aptitudes when they're one or two by testing them constantly or something, and it wouldn't sort them any better than going off caste - probably much worse. If jobs were casteless officially they'd stop being that way pretty quickly once it was clear who had an aptitude for them."

"It's still sounds... too extreme to be this restricted. Don't you people face issues with lacking people to do specific tasks? Or unemployment because the castes prevent you from taking a job even thought there is a demand? I really don't see what is the harm of having whoever modeling or reading the news."

"Maybe aliens don't inherit aptitude very strongly? Caste sizes are managed to match the job market - it's not perfect, but it's not really realistic to suggest we handle purple unemployment by training them to be programmers."

"Well, I am going to withhold judgment until I have the opportunity to see some graphs or whatever evidence you have. I wouldn't say aptitude inheritance is nonexistent but could just as easily to be attributed to nurture instead of nature. I was thinking more on the reverse. People that can't manage as programmers watching security cameras. Programmers are green?"

"Yellow. The yellow aptitude is for attention to detail and reproducible performance. It wouldn't be fair to purples to take their jobs if we couldn't cut it at ours."

"What are the different castes' aptitudes? Also you never answered why the caste would work by gestational mother?"

"I don't know that, it'd be something about how that country wrote their caste laws. Purples are - dear, maybe you could explain it better -"

       "Purples are good at things where your labor directly produces value," says her wife. "Service industries, manufacturing, farming, if after a day of work you have produced a day of some product or your labor has given people a service they wanted, it's probably a purple job. Hairdressers, retail, carpenters, construction..."

"Greys are good at physical things, anything for which strength and endurance and energy and an enjoyment of movement would be a job qualification."

      "Oranges are good at emotional labor - teaching, caretaking, therapy, nursing."

"Green is for things that require raw intellectual and creative and inventive ability. Blue is for things that require foresight and diplomatic skill and wisdom."

Nod. "Wait, there is no red caste?"

"Oh, reds do unclean jobs."

"...unclean?"

"Working with garbage, sewage, dead bodies."

"That is a weirdly specific category."

" - not really. Things that are a contagion or infection risk."

"Right... how does that interact with doctors?"

"Doctors learn lots of cleanliness precautions. You could probably have garbage truck drivers with equivalent precautions - I think Olvala's trying it - but it'd be a bit of a waste of time and energy."

"I guess that makes sense," head tilt, "are the different colors supposed to relate to anything or each other? I am assuming that the caste colors relate to hair color."

"Most people have the correct color for their caste and people who don't mostly dye it, yes. The ordering in the visible light spectrum doesn't have to do with anything."

Nod. Felix disguises a flinch of pain. "Is there anything you would like to know?"

"I think maybe we should leave that to the experts," Liset says cautiously. "We wouldn't emigrate, probably, we're expecting to be able to afford three."

"...You mean that as 'I lack the expertise to ask the right questions' or 'it's illegal for me to ask these questions' or something else?"

"- I'm just not sure what we'd want to know, in particular, you know? There aren't laws about asking aliens questions - I suppose we could get in trouble if we tried to convince aliens to invade Anitam or overthrow its government..."

"Ah, okay. It's just that I think I would be full of questions in your place. I only mentioned the possible illegality because I am unsure how the caste restrictions are enforced. As far I know it might be illegal for a teenager to babysit for their neighbors... that is orange?"

"Yes, but you're allowed to earn out-of-caste income up to 20% of your income per half-season - and even past that you could babysit if you wanted, just not charge money for it. Explaining things to aliens would definitely be allowed."