"What sort of things did that involve?"

"Collusion on credit prices, deescalating and resolving internal conflicts, putting together something resembling a safety net, coordinating intercity travel, designating interface people for the social workers when we had those, getting doctors trained in appropriate quantities, that sort of thing."

"Coordinating riots? Always seemed unlikely to me that those were spontaneous."

"They aren't."

He raises an eyebrow.

"Is there a particular reason you're curious about that -"

"My sister-in-law wants me to figure out if we can get away with this. I'm not going to be able to guess by seeing how you answer questions about the weather."

"Isel has accumulated a great deal of credibility and it will only increase if we're successfully recasted."

Nod. "I'm not worried about riots. I am worried about whether you have the skillset to pull off being a blue ex-red. It's going to require a lot of fairly careful navigating and it needs to be - sustainable even if people start thinking more deeply about reds than they're currently in the habit of."

"If you think I can't do it for reasons of skillset or for reasons of receptive environment my second choice would be yellow, probably aiming if possible for something in a personnel management position."

Nod. "I don't know yet. Why would you rather be blue?"

"I think I make the best available test case and could acquire the skills associated with most blue occupations given the opportunity."

"What do you want to do?"

"I'm interested in judiciary but I'd be happy to hear advice pointing elsewhere."

"That's a track with a lot of classroom time before they let you start the internships."

"My baseline lack of background will come less into play, then, so long as I keep up with the studying."

"The courts see cases to do with reds sometimes. Do you think they handle them fairly?"

"I think it would probably be best if I didn't handle those cases so the question need never enter anyone's mind."

"Ah huh. We've gotten distracted, we were talking about riots."

"I think it is entirely accessible to have this purification procedure rolled out without anyone panicking about the robot apocalypse, with some combination of Isel and us keeping the community up to date."

"In Anitam or everywhere?"

"Within Anitam. It's possible that clumsy announcements abroad might confuse other reds, but it's plausible that too can be forestalled assuming everyone is in fact planning on cleaning reds instead of extermination."

"They'd like to have the colony planets set up with robots. That seems like perhaps the kind of clumsy announcement you're thinking of."

"Yes."

He frowns consideringly. 

"All right. I think we can make this work. In Lina, I don't know anyone in the Lakla judiciary well enough to be sure of them. Something that gets you exposure without anyone having anything to gain from making a fuss about you - maybe orange -"