"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?"