"Lady Vorkosigan," he says, with a friendly professory sort of smile. "A pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise. My father-in-law tells me you're an engineer, although not the same kind as I am?"

"My specialty is failure analysis," he says, brightening. "And yourself?"

"Electrical. And software, but that's, I think, even less related - unless among the failures you analyze are cryptographic ones, or perhaps crimes against design and taste?"

"I don't think I'm any kind of expert in outward aesthetics," he says. "If I have a sense of style at all, it's based in function and efficiency. Systems working to produce intended results."

"Well, that produces a sort of style all its own, sometimes. Although apparently sometimes it also produces ImpSec."

Amused, he says, "That horrible building? As far as I know it isn't ImpSec's fault as such, but I may be misinformed. Architectural history isn't my specialty either, at least not until the buildings fall down."

"Well, it's someone's fault; whether ImpSec is culprit as well as victim I couldn't tell you. It seems to serve its every ostensible purpose, including, so far, not falling down, so it could be described as a system working to produce intended results - the problem appears to have been a deficiency in the list of those intents."

"Perhaps the ugliness is meant to produce a result too. I wouldn't know."

"Well," says Linya, "it serves as a conversation piece."

"A result, if not necessarily an intended one." He smiles.

"I asked Miles why it was left... like that... and he mentioned expense as a motivator, and I told him it would be improved if neighborhood children were turned loose with spraypaint. And I suppose they'd need ladders, too."

"Perhaps the ground floor. Any higher, and I'd worry that the neighbourhood children might fall off the ladders. Children are not known for their unquestioning adherence to safety procedures," observes the professor.

"Safety ropes," suggests Linya. "Whatever grav equipment is most easily resized for children."

"Ah, but once you're using grav equipment you're back in the realm of expense."

"Fair enough. I'm unaccustomed to the relevant habits of thought, although I've been taking economics lessons to fix that - the family business manager is helping me both with the academics and the practicalities, since I'm trying my hand at the electrical-and-software-engineering thing with more of an audience. Mass-producing these." She holds up her pen. It seems she always gets around to showing off her pen.

"And what are these?" inquires Professor Vorthys.

"I call them pens, although I'm going to need to come up with some sort of brand name to distinguish them from the sort that contains ink." She does her line-of-light-through-the-air demo. "They can handle most comconsole functions. But, obviously, are heavily miniaturized."

"Fascinating," he says. "You designed this yourself? The calculations must have been incredible, to maintain a fixed projection from a freely moving source. How did you manage it?"

"Lots of little hacks - and a lot of it inspired by others' work in other domains and a lot of it handled with machine learning rather than directly written code. It matters that there are projectors on both ends - Miles and his father both want versions that look like old fashioned fountain pens and that's been an interesting challenge - and that the pen can 'see' what it's doing from both ends too. But it also senses momentum and hand pressure and tilt directly, and people don't move nearly as fast as the pen can think. You could throw it off if you took it on a fast carnival ride of some kind, but it'll adapt to straight-line acceleration gentle enough that you wouldn't lose your grip on the thing in the first place."

"If you succeed at the fountain pen version, I wouldn't mind one myself," he says. "Or even if you don't."

"Well, there's a first batch of the ones that look more or less like this, in various colors and with the option of partially visible electronics, available already - Cordelia has one of those. The fountain pen version will probably not be ready to go for months yet, maybe longer, but I am fairly confident I can do it eventually."

"I'll wait," he says. "The fountain pen version sounds charming."

"That's three for three on Vor men who want their pens pointy. I wonder why."

"Well, how many Barrayarans of other categories have you asked?" he inquires reasonably. "And how many of them have wanted pointy pens?"

"Tsipis, the business manager I mentioned, accepted a plain one. With the silver casing. I suppose Cordelia might not count, depending on how much native-ness may be acquired over a couple decades' residence."

Madame Vorsoisson offers a slightly nervous smile. "Pleased to meet you, Lady Vorkosigan."

"Likewise. If you don't mind helping me with what you might term market research -" She draws another light-line. "If you acquired one of these to serve portable comconsole functions, would you want it to look about like this, perhaps in a different color, or more like an old-fashioned fountain pen?"

"Oh - a fountain pen, I think," says Madame Vorsoisson, watching the trail of light. "Form echoing function."

"It seems useful," murmurs Madame Vorsoisson. "And lovely. But - how do you tell which of your ends is which?"

"What colour are you out of?" wonders Madame Vorsoisson.

"Are you planning to do a similar promotion for the fountain pen version?" asks Madame Vorsoisson diffidently.

"Not on such a scale, but I wasn't planning to charge my husband or my father-in-law, and if they do well enough I need not charge my friends either."

"Oh." She smiles.

(Madame Vorsoisson smiles and nods slightly at 'might defeat the purpose'.)

"The fountain version will probably come in other colors, too. Maybe a wood-like finish, or a few choices of same."

"Very appropriate."

"'Of course' they don't network with each other as cooperatively? How cooperatively do your pens do it?"

"The pens are all the same, and dozens of people make comconsoles - if I have competitors later then this will presumably be less true, but for the time being the pens can securely talk to each other as much as their operators want without the setup rigmarole of consoles. If Cordelia has her pen on her person - or if it's upstairs, even - then I can send her a 3D drawing or whatever else I like without having to do anything more complicated than identify who I want it to go to. Getting the pen to talk to the household network so I could do things like talk to my manufacturer about Vorsoisson's pen was more complicated."

"I see..."

"One eventual possibility is that people who live in rural areas and are unconvinced of the point of other technology will find a handful of pens per village useful partly for that reason - they may not want to talk to Vorbarr Sultana, let alone Beta Colony, but they might want to take pictures of their children to show their neighbors."

"That would be ... nice," she says.

"I think so. It depends on being able to drop the price point, but I'm optimistic."

"If you are, then I am too."

"Do you mean you're designing these things mainly by yourself? It's an amazing thing to be doing," says Madame Vorsoisson.

"I already had my own pen developed in its current form when I married Miles, for personal use," Linya said. "Most of the software in the others is the same, with a few features most people won't want or need removed. All I had to do was make sure the design still worked with more scalable materials, and find a manufacturer - Tsipis has been invaluable - and teach them to make the pens, and come up with a tutorial and make particularly sure that the network and data formats popular on Barrayar were best supported."

"Oh."

"But you did still design them yourself?" asks Professor Vorthys.

"Barrayaran enough," says Madame Vorsoisson.

"Those both seem reasonable to me."

Madame Vorsoisson curtsies.

"I've been showing off my pen again," Linya says, putting her hand on Miles's shoulder when he has finished kissing it. "Professor Vorthys and Madame Vorsoisson both want fountain pens, like you, but Vorsoisson's going to get a silver one in the mail."

"At this rate you'll be supplying the entire Vor caste with free pens," says Miles. "Fountainoid or regular, according to taste."

"I don't know about all the Vor. Unless you think pens would make a particularly good peace offering to the ones who are inclined to need such things? Because that might add it up."

"Not sure. Some of them, maybe. Others would probably find a way to get offended."

"Then certainly not the entirety of the Vor. Some of them will just have to buy their pens. But not all of you." She kisses Miles on the top of his head.

He gazes adoringly up at her.

"Could you - I don't know - offer a pointing-operated virtual keyboard?" wonders Madame Vorsoisson. "As a stepping stone?"

"That's a good idea - I switch alphabets pretty routinely, but if the main customer base will be using Barrayaran Cyrillic all the time - I'll make a note of that for an update. There is a virtual keyboard but it's there to troubleshoot finicky custom gesture recognition and it's not too accessible -" She makes a note of this suggestion.

She smiles. "I'm glad I helped."

"I appreciate it. This is half of why I'm giving away the first batch - feedback from people who know better than I do what people who aren't me need from pens."

"Very sensible."

"But I talk too much about pens - what do you do with your time?" Linya wonders. Mostly of Madame Vorsoisson and not her husband.

"Oh - I don't think you talk too much about pens. Pens are interesting. I don't do anything nearly that interesting," she says. "I garden, when I have the time - we have a young son, just a year old."

"Nikolai, right?" says Linya. She did her homework. "What do you grow besides him, though?"

"I know almost nothing about Barrayaran flora - I actually haven't left Vorbarr Sultana since I got here. But I've always liked bonsais. How old is yours?"

"About sixty years, I think."

"I'm impressed that non-Earth-derived life forms even bonsai. Does it need a lot of maintenance?"

"Some. But it's not hard once you know how."

"Do skellytums flower?" wonders Linya.

"Technically no. Barrayaran native plants don't produce anything we'd recognize as a flower. But it does do something similar."

"Visibly?"

"Yes."

"Prettily, or just in such a way as to inconvenience people with allergies?" Linya glances at her husband.

Madame Vorsoisson follows the glance.

"I am violently allergic to an amazing variety of Barrayaran plants," he confirms.

"Oh. Well, I don't know how pretty it is, but it's... visually striking. Very red."

"Maybe I should look up pictures of skellytums. Or you could borrow your husband's pen and send me one of the bonsai, next time it does its nonflowering."

"I'll try to remember to do that. How would I know where to send it...?"

"Pens have numbers. Mine is 'one', and it'll happily take messages from any pens in the first batch since I want the user feedback but that will work just as well for pictures of plants."

"Well, that seems simple enough."

"When the pen starts up for the first time it'll offer the tutorial for all the basics that you won't have seen on a comconsole before, including the messaging between pens function, and you can get the tutorial back again if you're borrowing by going into the point-and-poke menu or by flailing the pen around confusedly in any non-drawing mode."

...She giggles.

"Very, what's the word, user-friendly," says Madame Vorsoisson.

"Friendly of it."

"It's meant to be! I want people to like them."

"That seems like it's going to work well."

"It will depend on how much spending money the pens net me how fast. Probably a lot of - groundwork-laying. There are a lot of very long term projects I'd like to have running. A lot of things I'd like to learn about. I might take classes at the university - localize my genetics knowledge, pick up some neuroscience and whatever else looks good - and then go shopping for scientists to throw money at once I know how to distinguish the potentially useful ones from the others."

"Genetics knowledge...?"

"Learning a lot about genetics - human genetics - is standard for haut women. But I'm only eighteen, so I didn't have a complete education on the subject, and I'm sure it was riddled with lots of - local jargon, not to mention local underlying customs. I might as well test into some advanced class here and see what it's like."

"And then do... what with it?"

"Be able to converse intelligently on the subject? I don't really know what other affordances I might have to use it. I'm still getting used to - Barrayar. But one class wouldn't be that much of a time investment."

"Well, but then what did you mean by long-term projects?"

"Uploading. Sophisticated cryorevival. Wormhole generators. If it's ambitious and useful assume I'd like to be involved."

"Wormhole generators? Is that even theoretically possible...?"

"They happen - and for that matter cease to be - somehow. Artificially generating the conditions would obviously be complicated or we'd have managed it centuries ago, but there is probably no conceptual reason why the galaxy has to produce the things all by itself."

"Well, I don't know anything about that."

"Neither do I, yet. It would just be so nice if I managed it that I think it might be worth working on at some point."

"True..."

"Have you got long-term ambitions? Or does it become impossible to think about such things while mothering? - I wouldn't know, I don't even have a mother."

...Madame Vorsoisson blinks in startlement. "Um?"

"...I sort of have a mother, but it's unconventional to refer to her that way and I only met her once."

"I'm afraid I don't... know very much about..."

"...I can avoid the topic if it's discomfiting or I can explain the entire process, whichever you prefer. Like I said, I'm still familiarizing myself with Barrayar."

"I wouldn't mind if you explained," she says. "If you don't mind explaining."

"I don't mind in the least if you don't. So - most people are made by random assembly. Haut aren't. I have two principal gene contributors, who in my case are one woman and one man, but together they only supplied about 75% of my genome. The rest is inclusions from other people, handmade sequences from no one in particular, and adjustments made to bring me up to the state of the art as of about eighteen years ago - for instance, all haut who are currently age twenty or younger can see more colors than older haut or non-haut. The woman who designed me is one of those principal gene contributors, but I was brought up on a separate planet from her, encountered her only when she was in the area for a speed chess tournament, and have effectively received no mothering whatsoever. My other principal gene contributor has been dead for several decades now; my designer's arrangement was with his - and consequently my - constellation, which is sort of like an extended family, not with him personally. You could describe my designer and my constellation-selector as my mother and my father, and sometimes haut relationships are summarized that way for simplicity in explaining who's related to whom, but I feel that it's misleading to describe me as having parents. It might be less so if I were a within-constellation cross, because then my designer would have been more easily accessible to me, but the relationship still wouldn't have been socially parental."

"It sounds... lonely," says Madame Vorsoisson, thoughtfully.

"I suppose I can see why it would, but there were plenty of people. Peers and minders and teachers and servitors. I wasn't particularly sociable or sought-after company myself, and I still had plenty of people who would talk to me if I wanted to talk to someone."

"But no one who was - family? I suppose you might not know what I mean by that... I suppose I might not know what I mean by that."

"The only family I've watched up close is Miles's. I didn't have any of those, it's true - but if I had, it would likely have been much more of a wrench to leave."

"Yes... I've never even been as far as Komarr. I can't imagine."

"I'll miss some things about Eta Ceta, but I was looking for a way off the planet when I was as young as eight, so I don't have any regrets about it per se."

"So young...? What was wrong with it?"

"I didn't want to leave when I was eight, I started looking for ways to leave later, when I was eight," clarifies Linya. "It was a lovely place to grow up in most ways. But I didn't want to stay there, dedicating my life to relatively useless hobbies and a small handful of slow genetics projects."

"Oh. You wanted to... go out and do things, instead?"

"Yes. So here I am."

"Well. Congratulations, I suppose."

"Thank you. I'm very pleased with my results so far."

"Well, good!"

"I was very fortunate with respect to Miles's - availability, though."

"Hmm?"

"I am literally the first haut-lady to marry a non-ghem-lord. I needed a favor from the Empress haut Lisbet to manage it."

Madame Vorsoisson looks mildly daunted. "Oh."

"And of course Miles had to do something plausibly worthy of a haut-wife, since that's how that works."

"I don't know anything at all about that," Madame Vorsoisson admits.

"Usually if one is born a haut one stays within the sort of - sphere, that implies. Haut women are sometimes awarded as brides to ghem-lords who have accomplished valuable things - to rid the haut of anyone who isn't up to their exacting standards, to incentivize doing valuable things, to get haut genes into the ghem population in a controlled manner. If Miles hadn't come along, one likely possibility for me looked like remaining in my constellation until I was thirty or so and then marrying some ghem-general or similar."

"And Lord Vorkosigan did a valuable thing...?"

"Yes. But it was a classified valuable thing, sorry."

"Oh. That's fine."

"I probably could have stayed and not married a ghem-lord if I'd really wanted, since Lisbet was disposed to do me favors by then, but I preferred to come here with Miles."

"Do you like him?"

"Very much."

"Good."

"Yes. We're thinking of having a second wedding - we had a haut-wife ceremony, with some aesthetic tweaks as a nod to him being Barrayaran, but it was very little like a wedding as they're understood here."

"No vows?" she guesses.

"Not a one. The parties getting married barely speak except to accept the offer presented of the prospective spouse."

"I made a proper old-fashioned southern-continent oath when I married my husband. I can't imagine just... accepting him in trade."

"Well, in the usual case with haut-wives, personal relationship is an afterthought, if one is to exist at all, and what the ghem-lord is really being offered is his wife's genome, expertise in using it to make half-his children, and a social status marker. But this does not seem to encompass how things have worked out between me and Miles."

"I... see."

"I worry I'm making it sound worse than it is. It works for most haut most of the time. I'm unusual, or I wouldn't be here."

"I... worry about the unusual people who aren't here, I think."

"There are a handful. But only a handful. Does Barrayar work very well across all its strata for its unusuals?"

"Well - I don't know. But at least we have marriage. I'm sorry - I must sound terribly provincial."

"The haut have romantic relationships amongst themselves, I assure you. Just not - standardized ones."

"Oh. Is that... good?"

"I didn't have any, but they seemed to be arranged how their participants wanted them."

"It sounds good, then."

"By and large the way the haut live is a nice way to grow up and it would make a good place to retire," Linya opines. "And if it were more - porously bordered, it could be nice for the rest of one's life, too, but it is not."

She nods. "I'd hardly even heard of the haut at all before, well, this party."

"What made you decide to attend?"

"My uncle offered us an invitation, and Tien said - well - most of the people here are well above our social grade and we aren't likely to get many other chances to meet them."

"How does the social grading work...? If it's not a sensitive subject or something."

"I'm - I'm not sensitive about it exactly, but I don't have the first idea how to explain. I suppose I could start with, not all Vor families have a Count anywhere nearby... we're all related to some if you go back far enough, of course, but that hardly, um, counts. None of my immediate ancestors for a few generations are especially famous, and even Uncle Georg wasn't anyone special before he was appointed Auditor. High Vor are all the ones who are closely related to someone with military or political importance, and the rest of us are... descendants of second sons and so forth. Still Vor, but not very important Vor."

"Huh. Do you happen to know how Lord Vorpatril with his courtesy title fits into this? He's Miles's second cousin."

"Courtesy titles are at least a little bit important... and if he's second cousin to a Count's heir, that's not too bad either. With there being so few Vorkosigans, he might be one of the closest people to the Vorkosigan Countship, and even if that doesn't matter for inheritance, it matters for - I'm trying to find a politer word than 'nepotism'." She smiles tentatively and adds, "Without success, as you can see."

"Yes, if I recall correctly Miles has referred to his family tree as 'pruned'... Is there a concrete reason to want to attend high-Vor-ish parties or does it just seem to be the thing to do?" Linya wonders.

"Well. One attends High Vor parties to try to make friends with some High Vor, is I think how it's supposed to go. It can be almost as good as being their immediate relatives, you see."

"Yes, but armed with all that nepotism, you will accomplish - what? I've always had this problem understanding social status games and they don't make any more sense here than they did in Cetaganda."

"Well... it makes opportunities for advancement easier to come by," she says. "Not for me, really, but for Tien - if there's a position to be had and the person in charge of filling it happens to know you already, he's likelier to consider you. And... if you have High Vor friends they might invite you to more High Vor parties where you... can meet more High Vor until you find one who'll give you nice favours? It sounds so mercenary when I put it like that."

"It makes much more sense as a mercenary operation than it does as a time-consuming purposeless hobby, anyway."

"I suppose maybe some people just like having highly placed friends the way some people just like collecting empty wine bottles, for that matter."

"...Is that a real hobby?"

"Yes. One of my brothers' friends does it, I think. Why?"

"I've never heard of it before. They don't strike me as particularly collectible, but I don't have the impulse to collect at all, so maybe my understanding of what does and does not please collectors when lined up in quantity on shelves is off."

"I don't either," she says with a little shrug. "I guess some of them are pretty? And some of them have history, if they're special kinds of wine, or something..."

"Wine's another thing I know nothing about, but I'm told it does come in varying specialness."

"Oh. It does," she confirms. "Very... varying."

"Apparently I will be missing out on an entire dimension of social interplay if I retain Cetagandan habits with respect to ethanol, but nothing about the stuff sounds appealing to me so thus far I've been circumspect. I haven't gotten around to trying authentic animal meat either."

"Authentic...? As, um, opposed to?"

"Vat meat. Which is often patterned after some sort of animal, but never has an attached creature that walks and squawks."

"Oh. I'm not sure I've ever had any that wasn't, um... squawk-derived."

"Nor I the reverse. Miles has had both and prefers the sort that at one point in its history had the power to wake the neighbors, but..." She shrugs. "It would, I think, feel a little like being offered a salad made with a carrot which the day previous had been able to tapdance."

Well, the image of a tapdancing carrot is hilarious, if Linya does burst into giggles likewise herself.

"Tap-dancing carrots!" she gasps. "It's - sort of unsettling but - tap-dancing carrots!"

"They would be very charming! People would keep them as pets. And I would not really like to eat them even if I were assured they were as bright as rocks."

"I wouldn't like to eat them either, but I have no problem with, oh, geese," says Madame Vorsoisson, finally recovering from her gigglefit. "Perfectly ordinary non-tap-dancing geese. All in what you're used to, I suppose."

"But geese can do a number of things that a vat of goose-inspired meat cannot. Hence the analogy with the charming carrot."

"...I think I'd be worried about eating the charming carrot for - different reasons."

"Oh?"

"Um... it would seem like... such an obviously strange kind of carrot, with who knows what bizarre modifications I couldn't possibly understand... might not be as healthy for human consumption as the sort you would find in an ordinary vegetable garden?"

Tentative smile.

"This party is more or less intended to demonstrate to people that I am nontoxic. And get a read on who is unwilling to make the experiment of being in a room with me," says Linya dryly.

"Oh. Well - I don't think you seem to be toxic at all. Although I would be surprised and alarmed to find you on my dinner plate," says Madame Vorsoisson.

"I feature in no comestibles whatsoever. The actual name for the party that was used while we were planning it was the 'Lady Vorkosigan Doesn't Bite Party'."

...She starts giggling again, both hands over her mouth.

Linya grins.

Madame Vorsoisson grins back.

"So far it's going well, although I haven't talked to most of the guests. Perhaps they are all quietly mollified by the piano playing."

"I hardly know anything about music, formally I mean, but it sounded very good."

"It's by a Barrayaran composer and I picked it up more or less specifically to appease suspicious guests. Though there were a few places to improvise, which is what I'm most accustomed to doing."

"Hmm?" she says, in a please-feel-free-to-elaborate sort of way.

"On Eta Ceta I belonged to an improvisational music group. We didn't maintain a standard repertoire, or even properly rehearse together - we'd just collect where music was needed, especially on short notice, and meander around in response to each other's cues. I have some repertoire, but much less than I would have if I'd taken up music in any other respectable-for-a-haut-lady capacity."

"That seems - clever of you, to find a respectable way to make music that didn't need rehearsals - did it save you a lot of time?"

"Quite a bit. And the piano in particular was my instrument because if I'd chosen something that is not played in a stationary fashion I'd have been expected to learn to dance at the same time, and I have been known to fall over while changing direction at speed, which is very embarrassing in a haut constellation."

"Oh," she says sympathetically. "Well, doubly clever, then."

"Thank you. The drawback is that I don't operate as well solo - I can produce pleasant sounds for a few hours without any cues, and I can read music, but I'm accustomed to a musical environment I can't readily duplicate here. My bandmates weren't close personal friends, but we could read each other and it was fun. If something similar is available to be had here - well, for one thing, it's anyone's guess if they'd have me, and for another I haven't managed to locate them."

"Oh. I'm musically hopeless, or I'd volunteer," says Madame Vorsoisson.

"I appreciate the thought regardless. At least when I moved in here there was a piano that no one minded my retuning. And it's not like I can't retrain for solo playing insofar as I want music to go on occupying my spare time."

"Well, that's not so bad, then. If you wanted to take up, I don't know, companionable gardening, I might have a little more to offer."

"How does one companionably garden?" wonders Linya.

"I don't know, I only just invented the phrase."

"Ah, a pastime unfettered by tradition. I don't think I even know for sure what activities principally constitute gardening. Weeding, I suppose? Planting things? Depending on the time of year."

"Yes. And planning, of course, and going out and getting things to plant - where I grew up we often had to do a lot of soil enrichment before Earth life would even grow, but here that's been less of an issue. And watering and otherwise caring for the plants. Once they are planted."

"And in gardens I'm familiar with there is often non-plant decoration around the plants - stones, water features, that sort of thing? Does that count as gardening?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"And then of course," continues Linya with a perfectly straight face, "if one has planted any carrots, at the appropriate stage of development one must teach them to tapdance."

Linya beams.

Ekaterin beams back.

"Where is it that you typically teach carrots to dance?" inquires Linya.

"Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with dancing carrots."

"Aha. Where is your dancing-free garden, then?"

"Oh - not too far from the capital. Just a few hours by groundcar, and much less by air. We moved recently, for Tien's new job."

"Miles is going to teach me to fly a lightflyer but it's a little hard to arrange in the middle of the city. I don't know how to operate a groundcar either, but I tend to go with a bodyguard when I leave the house anyway and I suppose some of them can drive."

"I can't imagine needing a bodyguard."

"It took some getting used to. I used to go most everywhere outside constellation grounds in a force screen attached to a float-chair, but I gave it up when I got married. There I didn't expect to be attacked, it was mostly just a haut-lady status symbol thing - here, there is the risk that someone will ignore the fact that I am unarmed, a noncombatant, female, married to a Vor, etcetera, not to mention the fact that the war has been over since well before I was born, and decide that violence is the answer to their - confusion."

"I hope no one does that," she murmurs.

"Yes, so do I. But at any rate I take an Armsman along when clothes shopping or what have you. I can't help but wonder if they're bored - nothing requiring their protection has come up yet - but it seems rude to ask."

"I imagine they must be... but I suppose a bored bodyguard is better than the alternative...?"

"Enormously an improvement. Which is only another reason to regret the necessity. And I'd probably find it difficult to make transactions if I just reengineered my force-screen and went around embubbled whenever I left Vorkosigan House."

"Embubbled?" She smiles.

"The force-screens are spherical, can be made any of a variety of pleasing colors, and hover a bit off the ground since they're generated from float-chairs," explains Linya. "The effect is very bubble-like."

"That sounds cute."

"I don't think most haut-ladies would like their personal defensive equipment and status-broadcast to be described that way, but it is, a little. What's really cute is when little girls three and four years old get to be old enough to pilot the chairs and go zooming around bumping into each other deliberately, shouting at the top of their lungs, and then abruptly demonstrate total decorum when told that it's a requirement for going out in the chairs."

Ekaterin giggles.

"Male haut just go around with ghem guards in the same contexts ladies use bubbles, but it's much harder to ride those around at speed and crash into your friends."

"Oh dear, yes."

"I mean, I'm sure it's been tried, but probably not successfully."

"It seems like the guards themselves might object, and it would be hard to arrange without their cooperation."

"Yes. And the ones escorting little boys here and there work for the constellation, not for the little boys. By the time haut-lords employ their own retinues they're a bit old to sit on their shoulders and order a charge full speed ahead."

"I'm sure the guards are happy about that," giggles Ekaterin.

"I'd assume, yes. I've generally found it a little hard to get a clear read on how more or less anybody working for the haut felt about it. There are far too many clear expectations about how they ought to feel about it and this could be rather obscuring."

"Oh. Hmm. Yes, I can see how that might be - like you said, obscuring."

"The ghem at least have to have sought their jobs at some point with something north of indifference. I worry more about the ba servitors."

"I don't know what one of those is," confesses Ekaterin.

"I think they're very little known outside Cetaganda - outside haut circles in particular, I suppose. The ba are a class of sexless individuals every bit as engineered as the haut - often more so, because they're a testing ground for most new ideas for genetic tweaks - which do most of the day to day servitor work around constellations, private haut estates, and other relevant establishments. There is - nothing else for them to do and nowhere else for them to go, they are every bit as smart and talented and highly potentiated as haut are by express design, and - by some mechanism no one ever detailed to me - they turn out uniformly loyal and malleable servants who do everything from raising baby haut to cooking to chauffeuring to lab assistant work. It doesn't seem to actively distress any ba I have ever met, or I might have prioritized doing something about it over other projects, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of tragedy in a quiet way. At least on a collective level haut indolence is self-inflicted; the same cannot be said of ba servitude."

"...I can't help thinking that - you might not know if they were distressed," says Ekaterin. "They might not be inclined to let on."

"Well, yes, of course, expectations for how they ought to feel about haut apply even more strongly to ba than ghem. But I am haut, so - if some ba who is in distress declines to communicate this in any way to any haut - then while they might benefit from help, I have no way to let them benefit from my help. Even a dramatic show of interest-in-helping-ba intending to gain their trust would have me making some sort of intervention in their lives without their cooperation."

"I see. But... are they ever going to get any help from anyone who isn't haut?"

"There are more ba than haut - by a factor of something like five or six, I think. They could do it themselves if they fomented sufficient dissent. Ba sometimes interact with ghem and even proles. And of the haut - Lisbet is very - sensible and methodical, but in a sort of - careful way accompanied by people skills that absolutely dwarf mine. I have a lot of high hopes for her tenure in various spheres, this one included. She has more coordination power than I could possibly have acquired in any span not measured in decades; if there is something that haut in general can do to be kinder to ba then she is likelier than I to find out what it is without upsetting any ba in the process and dramatically more able to effect its happening."

"Oh. Well, that's good, then. Lisbet is... the Empress you mentioned before?" she hazards.

"Yes, that's her. I imagine she'll have some spare time between stages of designing the next Emperor."

"...Is that... what Cetagandan empresses do?"

"That's a principal component of the job, yes. Design the Emperor, or possibly several Emperor-candidates for the existing Emperor to choose between; approve novel genomics projects and oversee less experimental creations; participate in the occasional awarding of haut-brides to worthy recipients."

"On Barrayar we don't design our Emperors. They sort of - well, I suppose 'happen by accident' isn't quite right..."

"Random assembly," supplies Linya. "Is I think a reasonably neutral term."

"Random assembly. Yes, that sounds much better."

"And the term of art I've been using for unengineered organisms is 'heirloom' - which is complimentary in every sense except for being originally meant to describe produce."

"I see. Does that make me an... heirloom human? I've never thought of myself in terms of not being engineered before."

"You are indeed an heirloom human," says Linya. "It wouldn't be a particularly useful term if there were no other genetic engineering products besides the haut, but there are also of course the ba, and the ghem get some engineering done, and there are plenty of things elsewhere in the galaxy where it's practiced. I'm sure all manner of things and people have been made on Jackson's Whole, for instance."

"Ick," says Ekaterin. "About Jackson's Whole, I mean. I don't know very much about the place, but the little that I know is... ick."

"I agree completely. If it had turned out to be a complete disaster to have me here and there had been no choice but to ship me off somewhere else my stated criterion was that it be a reasonably civilized planet - defined significantly to exclude Jackson's Whole."

"That seems like a reasonable definition of civilized. But... I hope Barrayar will be civilized enough to keep you."

"I'm very happy here so far. I have a piano and a market for pens and a Miles."

Ekaterin giggles. "Is that last part very important?"

"Quite. I'm terribly fond of him."

"I'm glad!"

"He's so cute."

"He did seem charming, from what I saw of him."

"...He's very good at it," says Ekaterin.

"It sounds it!"

"How did you and your husband meet?" wonders Linya.

"Oh - he knew my father, and my father arranged us."

"Is that commonplace here?"

"Among the Vor, yes. Although I think it's getting less so. My father is a little old-fashioned."

"Does it tend to work out reasonably well? I'm gathering that unlike the awarding of haut-wives, where it's entirely possible for the pair in question to barely interact, there remains an expectation for arranged marriages under other circumstances that they be - marriagelike."

"It's... it's all right. We're not forced to marry, if we don't like each other - if I'd been put off Tien from the start I could just have declined to say my vows, and not have suffered anything but my father's disappointment. I took my oath of my own will."

"Okay. Well, I suppose it's okay unless your father has particularly disastrous disappointment."

"Not especially, no."

"All right then. Haut out-marriages are usually ostensibly volunteered for, if not as enthusiastically as mine, but someone who was meant to be shown the door and didn't go would find this uncomfortable after a few declined opportunities... internally there's no relationship arrangement of any kind, though."

"Uncomfortable?"

"Oh, if I had gotten to age forty-five without befriending Lisbet or marrying Miles or doing anything else very much off-script, and I'd turned down two or three or four ghem-lords due to be awarded brides over the last fifteen years, I imagine I would find that on aging out of my improv group the more advanced one would find that I mysteriously didn't pass their audition, that the kitchen was always having mysterious shortages of whatever I wanted to eat, that I couldn't convince any of my favorite servitors to put in for transfers to a private estate when I was ready to move to one, that I couldn't secure such an estate at all, that whenever I marked a spot in any lab or workshop as being mine I'd come back to find all my tools put away and my project disturbed, that no one would talk to me, that if I had a love-poem - I'm not sure of the best word to encompass the category in local dialect; lover? - if I had a romantic interest, at any rate, that all his friends thought he was too good for me and ought to leave me to my lesser marriage-related fate, that I was not invited to go anywhere or do anything but sit in my apartment and become resigned."

"That sounds... uncomfortable, yes."

"I'm introverted enough that I could have put up with it if all the ghem-lords were odious enough, for a while anyway, but obviously I hunted up a third option at earliest opportunity."

"Yes, of course."

"Anyway, this is uncommon. Most haut-ladies meet their constellations' standards just fine. There's more than a million haut and someone's only married off every couple of years, on all the planets put together."

"It seems... strange to have such a thing in the first place. There's no way to, to get kicked out of the Vor."

"Not in terms of ceasing to have it attached to your names, but - socially? No? Nothing?"

"Nothing. Vor are Vor. It's possible to be an unpopular Vor, I suppose, but not... not the way you're describing."

"What happens if female Vor marry non-Vor, then?"

"Well... they don't. But if they did, I imagine... he might take her last name; she wouldn't take his, unless she really wanted to, I suppose. But she wouldn't stop being Vor. The most that might happen is that she might... lie, pretend, take his last name and then deny ever having been Vor in the first place. It's completely strange to think about."

"Huh. Vor-ness trumps the patriarchal lines. Except for the part where they don't do it? Not ever? If you have a daughter and she wants to marry the - I don't know, the son of somebody your husband works with who doesn't have a Vor in his name, when she grows up? What happens?"

"I... I don't know."

"I mean, I'd likewise say that outside awarded haut-wife arrangements haut tend not to find love-poems outside the breed, but if they did they wouldn't be marrying them anyway, so it could be very quiet and I wouldn't necessarily hear of it..."

"I haven't ever heard of a Vor woman marrying someone who - wasn't. I suppose it must have happened at some point. It's just so strange."

"Huh. Maybe I'll look it up. Obviously Vor men marry non-Vor - or at least Vorkosigans do it."

"Yes. That's allowed."

"I would be very annoyed if I had managed to be unallowably married all this time. So are there a lot of Vor lady spinsters or a hugely disparate death rate or just not enough Vorkosiganlike behavior to cause a problem in the ratios?"

"The last one, I think."

"Makes sense."

"If there's a difference in the death rate I'd be astonished if it didn't lean toward the men, especially now that we're not constantly dying in childbirth."

"I suppose so. Although that must depend heavily on the generation, mustn't it? There is not literally constant warfare."

"Yes, but - um. I'm not sure we've ever managed to go an entire generation without a war, until this one."

"Maybe I ought to read more Barrayaran history."

"Maybe. I don't know very much, but I don't get the impression we've ever been an especially peaceful planet."

"No, I suppose not."

"And, well. Then we were invaded."

"Yes. ...Again, that was before I was born."

"Before I was born, too. I'm not trying to - it's just - if we were ever going to turn into a peaceful planet, I don't think that helped. I'm not trying to say it's your fault, or anything - that would be utterly silly - but it's something that happened. Part of our history."

"It was a pointless and counterproductive thing to do."

"Really? I mean - I'm inclined to agree, but - counterproductive? Counter to what, um, production?"

"Any production worth producing. Even if the invasion had somehow, bloodlessly, overnight, acquired Barrayar, the integration project would have been -" Linya pauses, unable to think of a polite word for "a clusterfuck". She shakes her head in lieu of generating alternative vocabulary. "And even if the bloodless overnight acquisition was accompanied by seamless magical cultural integration, why? I don't think anyone involved was motivated by the desire to see Barrayar or Barrayarans grow and thrive. It doesn't have galactic strategic importance, there is nowhere to go from here but to turn around and leave the same way one comes in. Cetaganda isn't overwhelmingly hemmed in for need of living space; no one was planning to park excess proles on your excess wilderness and work diligently on converting the soil and beating back the native wildlife so they'd have a place to raise children or open clusters of restaurants or what have you. It just looked like an easy target to people with bad judgment, obviously, and the decisionmakers - were acquisitive, wanted to look accomplished to the people who judged them, didn't need a better reason and so didn't trouble to turn one up or pause for its lack."

"...that might be the most insightful analysis of the Cetagandan invasion I've ever heard," says Ekaterin, blinking. "I mean - I don't want to give the impression that it's competing with very much, but - I feel like I understand things that I didn't before."

"...Really?"

"Yes. I... haven't heard very many people seriously thinking about, well, what the Cetagandans were thinking. I think."

"Some of them may have had more complex thought processes, but I guarantee a lot of them thought let's go conquer that technologically backward planet and we'll be home in time for lunch and the Emperor will give us the Order of Merit and a haut-wife apiece."

She giggles slightly. "Oh, dear. One is almost tempted to feel sorry for them. If it weren't for - the details of what they wre trying to do."

"I'm not particularly tempted. I'm reasonably sure that the same ghem-generals who didn't give a second thought to how the Barrayarans would feel about the matter also didn't spare a moment to wonder if their prospective wives were going to be willing participants."

"Well - yes. I just have an instinctive sympathy for people who make poor decisions thinking they will be rewarded, and get the opposite."

"Because... it's easier to forgive stupidity than malice?"

"Hmm - I have some sympathy for stupidity but less for thoughtlessness."

"I... see what you mean."

"Although it's possible I'd have less sympathy for stupidity if I had to endure more of it in close quarters than I've historically had to."

"Have you had to endure a lot of thoughtlessness...?"

"Some. Arbitrarily intelligent people can decide that they don't care."

"And... what don't they care about?"

"Well, for a ready-to-hand example - whether I wanted to conform to the standard laid out for me in its every particular."

"Oh." She nods sympathetically.

"I managed - obviously - but a more thoughtful setup might have some release valve for malcontents besides allowing a small fraction of one sex to occasionally get married and thereby leave behind anything we might have actually liked about our initial situation all in one motion."

"Yes. It seems like... any amount of thought could have improved the situation. The definition of thoughtlessness, I suppose."

"Exactly."

"How would you improve that situation, if you could?"

"Hmm," says Ekaterin. "Not a solution I ever would have imagined, and I can't help thinking there would be trouble if someone tried it... but maybe it would be better for everyone if they had designed it that way from the start. Since the Cetagandans seem to design everything anyway."

"Yes. Unfortunately, 'let's design the haut to like being haut in exactly the way we have arranged for being haut to be' is a strategy with a non-negligible failure rate."

"I don't think people are quite that designable."

"Not quite. Although there have been amazing strides made, complex psychological targets keep having side effects and confounding factors. I am technically a psychological design experiment."

"...Um? What were you - if it's not a rude question - what were you... for?"

"It's not rude," laughs Linya. "I'm an attempt to eliminate akrasia. It basically worked, even. When I've decided how it would be best to spend my time that's what I do. I just didn't decide it would be best to spend my time pursuing traditional haut life."

"Oh. Congratulations...? I suppose those would be more appropriately directed to your - designer. Although I can still congratulate you for deciding to go and do useful things with your... ability to... do things."

"I'm very pleased with my designer's work, but it's also socially acceptable to compliment successful experiments directly regardless. And thank you."

"Well, good, then. And you're welcome."

"I do sort of wonder if she's going to make any more children. Lisbet seemed impressed enough by me that she might ask for some, especially since I personally am no longer available for most practical purposes."

"I suppose you aren't, yes... what was your designer's name, do you know?"

"Sathanne Niari. I did meet her. We had one long conversation and then that seemed to suffice. I don't know if she's heard about my departure yet, although certainly someone will tell her eventually."

"I wonder what she'll think of it... if the Empress is likely to ask her for more of you, I suppose she won't feel too bad."

"Oh, yes. Getting to make haut children instead of just ba experiments or none at all is a coup; getting to do it more than once a bigger coup; an express commission from the Empress the biggest of all."

"What an... odd arrangement."

"Is it? How so?"

"Well - competing for who gets to design the next generation."

"Everyone does that, just - clumsily. Someone who gets themselves killed before they have any children, or simply can't convince anyone to cooperate with the project, will not be participating in the next generation. The haut way has its disadvantages, but it's much quicker at getting results once one has results in mind, and less bloody."

"...I'm not sure that's what I meant. Of course ideally no one would get themselves killed. That's a separate issue from whether or not one should have to win a design competition in order to - well - surely if everyone had a free choice, there would be some people who'd choose to reproduce the old-fashioned way. And their design skills wouldn't matter to the, um, project at all."

"That's - all true, yes. I mean, a lot of haut have children made from their genes without having personally designed them - my constellation selector wasn't a geneticist at all and here I am, about thirty-four percent him, because my designer was impressed with how he conformed to her project vision. It's not entirely about design skill even when it's all done by design."

"But design skill determines who creates, even if it doesn't determine who... serves as material."

"Yes - is there very much to miss about the old-fashioned creation process that can't be had a la carte?" wonders Linya archly.

"Well, being able to have children without getting a degree in genetics first. And - who raises little haut?"

"Ba, mostly. Haut who like children are free to take an interest if they like and some do. Although the reason that cross-constellation children are not placed in the designer's constellation is that we're more likely to be experimental and it's frowned upon to tweak the experiment by - customizing your design's environment overmuch."

"Well then. For those of us who want to have and raise our own children, with our co-parents... co-parenting, the haut system sounds completely impossible to get along with. That's not an advantage to be had a la carte."

"True. Although a lot of the advantages could be combined by just having - the approximate process that typical haut-wives go through in making their own children, applied to everybody's. I... haven't talked to Miles yet about how much he's going to let me intervene for ours, when we get around to having them, but if I'd married a ghem-lord I'd design our mutual children and then co-parent them. I imagine plenty of people would be willing to do something similar for would-be parents without genetics degrees. Although I imagine someone trying to start this consultancy on Barrayar would have public relations difficulties."

"There would certainly be Barrayarans who couldn't be convinced to let anyone design their children, no matter the charm of your public relations. I have no way to know if your husband is one of them - I'm sorry."

"If he wants random-assembly children, he's... entitled to them. I am hoping otherwise but there is no rush."