"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."

"I hope you work it out between you somehow," she says. "But - maybe I'm just too Barrayaran - if everyone's children were designed by geneticists, even if the parents don't have to be geneticists themselves, that still implies whoever, um, helps them out, would have some kind of goal in mind beyond 'produce a healthy child'. I like healthy children as much as the next woman. I don't think I'd like to - provide the material and the parenting for someone's design project. Unless you meant something I don't understand by 'the approximate haut-wife process'."

"The approximate haut-wife process is - approximate, here. Certainly if I were operating a consultancy like that I'd take client goals into account. And... We may have different standards of 'health'. I do not feel a strong pull to select my children's eye color or their hormone balances or their metabolic tendencies; I'd do it anyway if I were unfettered by Barrayaran prejudice, because abdicating the decisions in question doesn't seem like an improvement and it just won't take me that much time since I absconded with plenty of genetics helper software on my pen, but I'll abandon that sort of quibbling over genetic details if Miles prefers without complaint. What worries me is that I will have a child who develops - allergies or headaches or arthritis or something. A child who is in pain because I did not argue thoroughly enough with their father, because I left them to the mercies of a process that is not intended to improve their quality of life."

"...I see what you mean," Ekaterin says slowly. "And I don't quite disagree. But... I feel we would lose something, as a species, if random assembly wasn't an option anymore. Even if helpful geneticists were freely available to design children for inexpert couples, even if they - took client goals into account. I don't know what, but I do feel we'd lose something."

"I am afraid I cannot help you articulate what it is you think would be lost," says Linya.

"The option itself, if nothing else. I don't know."

"Any competent geneticist with enough equipment to do nonrandom children can also do random assembly. With sufficiently well-engineered parents this probably isn't even harmful for the first or second generation on the levels that I mentioned as worrying me, although shuffling it enough would start to damage some of the more elaborate complexes after more than a couple iterations."

"Well, what's the point of involving the geneticist just to do the random assembly? Other than getting the child checked over for all the sorts of things galactics ordinarily check for, but - I've heard that's mostly automated anyway."

"It is, yes, takes about ten minutes if you have the right tools - my point is that even if there's for some reason no way to make a baby besides going through a geneticist, one who was responsive to client goals - which could include 'random assembly' - would be able to do that. So loss of the option would basically have to involve geneticists who were not responsive to client goals somewhere along the line, which was not the hypothetical we were working with."

"Oh, that's - no - I was imagining it being outlawed or something," she says. "All children being produced by someone's deliberate design, whether by law or custom or I don't know what."

"Oh. Well - I don't think that would be the worst of all possible social outcomes, but it isn't required in the hypothetical I was entertaining."

"That... wouldn't be so bad, but I'd still rather people could do the - low-tech version of random assembly, even if hardly anybody ever chose to."

"The appeal is completely lost on me... I don't want to take something from you and people who share your opinion that you want to have, but I find myself quite incapable of appreciating why it would be wanted."

"Old-fashioned notions of romance? Not wanting to involve people outside one's marriage in the production of one's children? Independence? Sentiment? I don't want to sound like I have all the answers. I hardly have any."

"Well, that's more answers than I was generating."

She smiles.

It is at this moment that Ivan chooses to wander by. "Hullo," he says. "Lady Vorkosigan, and, I don't think I've had the pleasure?"