"If I were a huge fan of buggers I wouldn't waste entire fleets of 'em, believe you me."

"Who's to say we'd get the same aliens?"

"Eh, maybe you'd get better aliens. But no aliens is a solid option."

"On the other hand, maybe they'd give the Cetagandans something to do besides periodically fail to conquer somebody."

"You'd think our aliens would have unified humanity, but they sort of did a halfassed version of that instead. Also we copied some of their tech, I dunno if you really want your enemies to have contact with aliens."

He shrugs.

Aegis puts both her feet on the floor and twirls. "What's your sister-in-law's name? What's she do, besides be married to this Miles character?"

"Linyabel Miriat Vorkosigan. Invented a convenient little portable computing device."

"Ooh, fun."