“And then. The Biolab. I walked in that first day and discovered that half of my coworkers were guldmen, and my immediate supervisor was a gulden man. I couldn’t credit it. That a guldman could be capable of the fine deductive reasoning and scientific research that had taken me so much study to achieve—well, it would be as if you told me a fruit tree could compute higher mathematics. I would not believe you. Not until I saw it work its own multiplication tables, writing in the dirt with its lower branches.

“Well. It took me the better part of a year to overcome my amazement. Pakt—he’s my supervisor—he was very good with me. I think he must have known how I was feeling, and he allowed me to learn on my own how skilled and efficient a guldman could be. And I admire Pakt more than any man I’ve ever met—gold or blue. I truly do. But I have to admit—”

He paused again and looked down at his hands as if unsure of where they came from or to whom they belonged. The train clattered across an uneven section of track, making both of them sway in their chairs, but still he did not look up from his folded hands.

“You have to admit what?” Kit demanded, when it seemed he might not complete his sentence.

“That every once in a while, I slip. I see a guldman on the street, doing something, and I think, ‘How can he manage that?’ A guldman brushes up against me accidentally, and I recoil. The ones I know—Pakt and Colt and Dade—the ones I work with every day, seem intelligent and individual to me. The ones I don’t know … I cannot entirely accept. It’s not just that I don’t consider them my equals. It’s that, for a minute, I forget they’re even human.”

Kit smiled, though she felt completely humorless. “See, then? You have proved my point.”

But Nolan hitched himself forward in his chair, leaning toward her with a frowning intensity. “But I think the fault is in me, don’t you see? I don’t blame my mother—her mother—all the blueskin women who over the centuries taught us that they had bred some master indigo race. I have a brain and a will. I should be able to overcome that training.”

She was unexpectedly moved. “Well, give yourself time. Perhaps someday you will achieve unthinking parity.”