"A little. So you got along with Mark?"

"Yeah. He explained the circumstances of his existence and I summarized the ways my world is different from standard 1986 Earth and we both think Ivan is lovely."

"In rather different ways."

"That's how Ivan can tell the difference between Mark and Miles. Miles doesn't like Ivan quite that much and Mark can't fake it. I just bought a medical scanner."

"Peculiar."

...

"Shut up, Edie."

Linyabel blinks at Edie, who didn't say anything.

"Emily mentioned that our world was divergent from the standard 1986. I'm a telepath."

"A telepath who makes unhelpful comments."

"If you're asking if I can read minds, the answer is 'yes, but I don't on nonconsenting targets.' I haven't observed anything more of your mind than that it exists. If you're asking if I could do things to peoples' minds the answer is 'theoretically but I've never tried it,' because finding a consenting volunteer for that is neither trivial nor something I particularly care to pursue."

"That's good to hear."

"Uh-huh. Telepathy is one possible manifestation of a phenomenon that Ivan was particularly startled when I referred to it casually because we're called mutants."

"I hope he didn't offend you too badly."

"He eeped. He apologized for it later, which from what was later said was fantastic for someone raised on the infanticide planet."

"...It's not principally characterized by infanticide and if you meet Miles I don't recommend describing Barrayar that way, but yes, Ivan is between Miles and me positively enlightened compared to some people on Barrayar."

"He was...vaguely skeptical about some of it, but yeah."

"Skeptical that a mutation would produce a telepath? Well, I would be too, if I hadn't been talking to Bar for hours. I'm sure you're working on some kind of revised physics relative to our own, but that's bog-standard for Milliways, it seems."

"Skeptical that a mutation could produce someone who shoots plasma beams out of their eyes but the Cetagandans hadn't been able to do it on purpose."

"Well, he is not fully apprised of all the considerations that go into deciding exactly what the Cetagandans will and will not engineer, but there are engineers nearly so clever and much less restrained. Tetrachromats, of course. Winged people, yes - Cetagandans have done that, even, although it hasn't been rolled out into general use, interferes with other desiderata. Plasma eye beams - no."

"We have a few people who have wings."

"Which is genetically doable but absolutely preposterous as a single-step mutation - on my world. Not that I wouldn't be intensely curious to have a look at samples."

"Mutant's a bit of a misnomer. What we have is one gene that activates a lot of what would otherwise be junk DNA. It's recessive, so when you have two perfectly normal people who have a weird kid--it looks like a mutation."

"And yet humans have no ancestors with wings, nor plasma eye beams - on my world at least - so the junk DNA explanation also does not explain single-step wings."

"You're not wrong. For all I know we were genetically engineered by hyper advanced aliens or something, but we haven't seen any evidence of that in particular."

"Although I am a human, designed entirely by humans, I suspect I am hyper-advanced relative to your society - but still could not pull off plasma eye beams, not with a laboratory that was the stuff of dreams, not with anything short of 'copying it from somewhere'. Bar makes copying a more viable means of advancement than previously supposed, but still."