"It's meant to be! I want people to like them."

"That seems like it's going to work well."

"It will depend on how much spending money the pens net me how fast. Probably a lot of - groundwork-laying. There are a lot of very long term projects I'd like to have running. A lot of things I'd like to learn about. I might take classes at the university - localize my genetics knowledge, pick up some neuroscience and whatever else looks good - and then go shopping for scientists to throw money at once I know how to distinguish the potentially useful ones from the others."

"Genetics knowledge...?"

"Learning a lot about genetics - human genetics - is standard for haut women. But I'm only eighteen, so I didn't have a complete education on the subject, and I'm sure it was riddled with lots of - local jargon, not to mention local underlying customs. I might as well test into some advanced class here and see what it's like."

"And then do... what with it?"

"Be able to converse intelligently on the subject? I don't really know what other affordances I might have to use it. I'm still getting used to - Barrayar. But one class wouldn't be that much of a time investment."

"Well, but then what did you mean by long-term projects?"

"Uploading. Sophisticated cryorevival. Wormhole generators. If it's ambitious and useful assume I'd like to be involved."

"Wormhole generators? Is that even theoretically possible...?"

"They happen - and for that matter cease to be - somehow. Artificially generating the conditions would obviously be complicated or we'd have managed it centuries ago, but there is probably no conceptual reason why the galaxy has to produce the things all by itself."

"Well, I don't know anything about that."

"Neither do I, yet. It would just be so nice if I managed it that I think it might be worth working on at some point."

"True..."

"Have you got long-term ambitions? Or does it become impossible to think about such things while mothering? - I wouldn't know, I don't even have a mother."

...Madame Vorsoisson blinks in startlement. "Um?"

"...I sort of have a mother, but it's unconventional to refer to her that way and I only met her once."

"I'm afraid I don't... know very much about..."

"...I can avoid the topic if it's discomfiting or I can explain the entire process, whichever you prefer. Like I said, I'm still familiarizing myself with Barrayar."

"I wouldn't mind if you explained," she says. "If you don't mind explaining."

"I don't mind in the least if you don't. So - most people are made by random assembly. Haut aren't. I have two principal gene contributors, who in my case are one woman and one man, but together they only supplied about 75% of my genome. The rest is inclusions from other people, handmade sequences from no one in particular, and adjustments made to bring me up to the state of the art as of about eighteen years ago - for instance, all haut who are currently age twenty or younger can see more colors than older haut or non-haut. The woman who designed me is one of those principal gene contributors, but I was brought up on a separate planet from her, encountered her only when she was in the area for a speed chess tournament, and have effectively received no mothering whatsoever. My other principal gene contributor has been dead for several decades now; my designer's arrangement was with his - and consequently my - constellation, which is sort of like an extended family, not with him personally. You could describe my designer and my constellation-selector as my mother and my father, and sometimes haut relationships are summarized that way for simplicity in explaining who's related to whom, but I feel that it's misleading to describe me as having parents. It might be less so if I were a within-constellation cross, because then my designer would have been more easily accessible to me, but the relationship still wouldn't have been socially parental."

"It sounds... lonely," says Madame Vorsoisson, thoughtfully.

"I suppose I can see why it would, but there were plenty of people. Peers and minders and teachers and servitors. I wasn't particularly sociable or sought-after company myself, and I still had plenty of people who would talk to me if I wanted to talk to someone."