"Yes. So, I'm her, and you're apparently Asterion who I know only by secondhand report, and Lalita is half of my husband's clone Mark, and my husband has his own alt Stalas - Mark and Stalas are both are elsewhere at the moment but may be expected to reappear eventually - and Ivan over there, my husband's cousin, is an innocent bystander, at least for now. So far only Lalita and Mark are the exact same species; I'm a human, albeit a heavily genetically engineered one, whereas she's a hybrid and rumor has it you're admixed."

"Yeah."

"Asterion's also admixed," Miles contributes, "but not with nonhuman sapients, because there aren't any around."

"Well, that barely counts, there are ba with cephalopod-derived eye anatomy designs, they're still humans - there is nothing else for them to be, unlike Isabella who clearly has something else to be. Speaking of all this, Dr. Hall, would you object to my taking a gene sample? I have no intentions whatsoever of cloning you."

"I don't know you," Dr. Hall points out. "What exactly do you intend to do?"

"If I ever get one from Asterion, compare you. Have a look at your engineering advantages, especially as compared to Lalita's and mine."

"I'll think about it."

"Thank you." She finds a good starting place on the history of medical advances and reorients the projection of the pen so Hall can see.

Time to learn things!

Ivan snorts and borrows a deck of cards from Bar to play solitaire.

Isabella peers at the tour of medical history with layperson curiosity.

Lalita is more interested in Ivan's solitaire.

"Oh, right, you're the half of Mark that finds me inexplicably fascinating, d'you want to kill some time?" Ivan shuffles his cards together.

"Does he also have a half that doesn't? Sure."

"I don't know, I don't know how his fractions work. I don't know how his anything works. What card games do they play wherever you're from?"

"Depends on the century. Poker's stuck around, and it's always fun."

"Poker has not stuck very well, least on Barrayar. Do you want to teach me something or vice-versa?"

"Oh, you teach me, that sounds much more entertaining."

"Inexplicable Lalita reasons," he says cheerfully, and attends to the explanation.

"Mark was here first."

"Sure."

Cards cards cards.

Ivan is not that good at cards! But he has some experience with genetically engineered people and picked a game that's mostly luck.