"I'm not going to run off with her."

"I don't expect you to. It's hard to put her down."

Nod. "I think blues don't spring as badly, on average."

"I've heard that."

Sigh.

She pets the baby. The baby yawns and nuzzles her. She offers the juice; the milk is all gone. The baby drinks juice.

"I'm going to go back out and work on the language."

"Do you want to bring her so I can sweep or whatever here -"

"Why don't I try to ask at the front if that's an option and if it is then yes."

Shasali nods.

More nights, no money, Shasali help cleaning cooking?

Yeah, okay, they can have an extra night if she helps the scullery.

Then Aitim will take the baby and go back out to the market to watch people.

Everyone is so confused that he has a baby.

But they had babies of all ages in the daycare so it can't just be that it's the wrong season. Her name is Kalatha and she is so tiny and the only thing in the world that is good.

Nobody seriously objects to him having a baby, they just think it's strange.

That's fine. 

He tries to pick up more words and notice more things about the locals.

None of them have babies. Or are pregnant. They don't seem upset about that; even the heterosexual couples are engrossed in shopping and conversation and things. There's a dance performance in the square; nothing about the dancers is markedly similar. There's a cop. The cop has a robot with him. There are animals people don't talk to and control in a more conventional manner - trained but merely trained dogs; flock of ducks herded through the streets. They seem based on how their visible aging works and the population statistics like they might age faster and die younger than Amentans; there's a higher ratio of obviously-old to look-under-twenty. They don't have very good dental care.

He watches them. He picks up another dozen words. He takes Kalatha back to the inn with him.

Shasali's scrubbing tables. "Hi."

"Hi." New vocabulary - "people", "baby", "why", the name of the city, the names of two dozen people he talked to, the local word for the robots (it's "servant"), "dancer", "hair", "night", "morning". 

"None of them have kids. There are kids about but none of them have them."

"...no one, at all? That's... what is this, some kind of - even adopted kids?"

"No one pregnant, no one with kids with them - I don't know what it is. If they looked upset and if there weren't a daycare full of babies right there I'd say maybe they're not allowed to issue credits for three years, that'd fit, but they don't seem to care and there is a daycare full of babies - if we did that there'd be a line eight blocks around just to see them -"

"Whose babies are they?"

"I have no idea! - maybe when it gets to be summer most people just - stop caring at all - but how could you -"