"So'm I."

"Replicators are easier to get now, right? I was thinking of looking after Little Aral Adri myself for fine-tuned environmental monitoring, at least unless I find it unexpectedly necessary to make more business trips in spite of having delegated pen-sprinkling. It will probably be harder to get one to take home if there are only a handful on the entire planet."

"In case you haven't noticed, my love, you are very, very rich. You could have your favourite model shipped here from Beta Colony if you felt like it. But yes, there are more replicators on Barrayar now than there were then."

"I actually don't know much about standard-issue models. I should look into that in case it interacts with my previous education on incubation in some way and pick one out."

"There you go, then. And then I suppose we decide when we want to start him... I confess I'm still nervous about the parenting aspect of this operation."

"He'll be precocious; I don't know if that helps or does the very opposite."

"I don't know either."

"I've been taking notes from Ekaterin's example and I am not particularly intimidated, but there's no rush. Any halfway decent replicator can be bought well in advance and permitted to collect dust in a closet until you're good and ready."

"Yeah. That sounds good to me."

She kisses his forehead. "But he is going to be outrageously cute."

"In the best family tradition."

"With his dad's eyes and everything."

"Nigh bottomless. Let's see. Would you like the story of why I'm never visiting Jackson's Whole again? Or the story of how the Dendarii pulled off the third biggest prisoner-of-war escape in history?"

"Those both sound fascinating. Can I have them in the same volume?"

"They're not actually all that connected, except that some ass from Accounting decided to grill Illyan about what he spent on them, so they're fresh in my mind. Would you like them in chronological order?"

"Sure."

"Right. So Jackson's Whole is, well, a hole. How much do you know about the place? Do I need to explain what various Houses do and who runs them or will you be sufficiently informed if I just say 'Fell, Ryoval, and Bharaputra'?"

"I haven't made much of a study of the place. I don't plan to ever visit, on the grounds that it is not a civilized planet. But I know Bharaputra's specialty."

"Heh. So. Fell does weapons. Ryoval does ghastly prostitution, often in the form of custom bioengineered sex-slaves. At the time of my first, latest, and hopefully last visit, Baron Fell was a man named Georish Stauber, half-brother to Baron Ryoval. Not that I knew that genealogical detail going in. Do you also know about the Jacksonian brain-transplant business?"

She makes a face. "Yes. If Dr. Cheung gets anywhere I may be able to render it partially obsolete."

"I will happily dance on its partial metaphorical grave. Anyway. Ryoval was on his second body at the time; Fell still on his first. And Fell had just had an attempted transplant-clone assassinated before the operation could be carried out. Fell suspected Ryoval, because they hate each other. The mission that dropped me in the middle of this mess was to pick up a geneticist, Dr. Hugh Canaba, who wanted to quit House Bharaputra. My cover was a Dendarii resupply at House Fell. I took the Ariel, me and Thorne went to schmooze with Baron Fell at one of his parties, and Thorne immediately developed an enormous crush on a quaddie musician Fell had performing - do you know quaddies?"

"I've heard of them. I haven't met any."

"She played the, what was it, double-sided hammer dulcimer, quite exquisitely. Thorne was infatuated. Then Ryoval sauntered along and made remarks about how he'd like to purchase her, and Fell made remarks about how he would ever so politely rather Ryoval go jump in a lake, and Thorne got into an offended rant about how selling people is illegal, and Ryoval decided that this was the height of humour and proceeded to bait it expertly for a few minutes until I had to drag it back onto the ship."