"Really, really terrible science. I don't know why he thought mutants were caused by the advent of nuclear physics, but he thought that it would make us stronger while it was busy killing off everyone else."

"Oh, right, most universes don't have them--in my world, some people are born with weird powers--or develop them at puberty, whatever. We're called mutants."

"Oh, we have mutants."

"That. Sure was a tone of voice. Care to share with the class?"

"I - look, you look completely normal, I didn't know - I am actually very progressive by Barrayaran standards for whatever that's worth?"

"I mean, I"m not one of the ones with nifty hair colors or blue skin or something, I just do this," she says, wiggling her fingers. A handful of loose change floats out of her shirt pocket and in front of her hand.

Ivan makes an undignified eeping noise.

"Magnetism. I can fly, too, when I'm on a planet."

"...That's not the kind of mutants we have."

"Well, lots of us do other things. My father's a telepath. But yeah, I am aware that most things that can be described as 'mutant' are...not that. Like, you know, blue eyes or lactose tolerance."

"...That's also not the thing people are usually referring to at home when they say 'mutant', it's more, flippers for arms, six eyes, entire body a mirror image with the heart on the right side and all, sixteen toes."

"Does that happen? I know random malignant mutations happen, but I've never heard of a physical change that dramatic that wasn't accompanied by awesome powers."

"It happens. And no awesome powers, fairy tales aside. It used to happen a lot on Barrayar. Less now, but out in the sticks a baby with a cleft palate or funny-looking ears is - is in trouble. They haven't necessarily come around to the idea that galactic medicine can fix the whatever, and before we had the galactic medicine it was all just infanticide. M'cousin has a teratogenic health problem - completely clean gene scan, nothing fiddled with that, but his mother was poisoned while he was a fetus and he looks like a mutant and gets shit for it. Most of the reason I'm so progressive by Barrayaran standards."

"That is terrible."

"Which part?"

"Mostly the infanticide, but all of it! ...Except you being progressive by Barrayaran standards, not that."

"Well, yes. And then the flip side of m'cousin's situation is his wife's. She's absolutely healthy. And heavily genetically engineered. Doesn't help that her planet tried to conquer ours a few decades ago; adds up to she has to go out with a bodyguard on Barrayar."

"Well, 'they tried to conquer us' is...better than some reasons. What's she engineered for?"

"Everything. I haven't seen her pick up anything heavier than her husband or anything, mind, she's normally a very intellectual sort, but to hear her jabber about the work she's doing on their kid-to-be and the compromises she's making to be sure he winds up half his da - apparently the idea of the haut, the whole bunch of genetically engineered people she's from, is, let me see if I can remember this straight - you're supposed to be able to drop half a dozen haut five-year-olds on a half-terraformed planet intending to leave them alone for thirty years only to find that after twenty-five they've all survived and invented space travel and came to see what was taking you so long?"

"Okay, I'm impressed. Not that being my kind of mutant doesn't have all sorts of advantages, but you generally only get one or two apiece."

"Well, she doesn't have - magnet powers, so, yeah, there's that. Miles isn't letting her overengineer the kid. She has to justify anything she wants to do as a 'quality of life' intervention."

"I'm on the higher end of powers awesomeness, some of them are really hard to control and some of them are dangerous if you can't control them and there's overlap."

Ivan shudders. Just a little.

"Technology helps. My friend Scott is in the overlap and he has this visor that prevents his plasma eye beams from hurting anything."