"Should that matter?"

"I mean, I suppose if you're coming back to Barrayar you might meet Vivienne eventually but I can't imagine that this would be particularly useful prep work," says Ivan. "Is this just 'Ivans are fascinating, even when they're going on about total strangers to make point by point comparisons'?"

"Yes."

Mark gives a little shudder. "Children. No thank you. Not even a child Ivan. Especially not a child Ivan."

"He was adorable, and very well behaved if I do say so myself," says Ivan. "His cousins were yelling and he was perfectly content to play whirligig. Children on Easy Mode."

"I fear the effect of me on children, not the effect of children on me."

"Why?" asks Aurin.

"I'm not very good at talking to people without inadvertently horrifying them. I don't care to test myself on people who are likely to be harder to understand and easier to upset."

"What about a little Miles, since you're the expert on Mileses?" wonders Ivan. "If he'd been here alone."

"...I am slightly less overwhelmingly reluctant to interact with a child Miles. But I'd still rather flee, all else being equal."

"Which one are you calling obnoxious? The one you grew up with, or the one who was in here earlier? Or both?"

"Both, although I noticed it less when I was also a small child," says Ivan.

"What, even with the collapsing escape tunnels?"

"I noticed, but I didn't attribute it to obnoxious childhood," corrects Ivan. "At the time."

"What did you attribute it to?"

"I don't remember. Maybe I should've asked Little Ivan."

Mark giggles.

Finnah goes up to the bar and asks for a book of candy recipes Elcenia doesn't have with which she may make a billion aaberik when she has her own store. She gets a fat volume in a language nobody in the bar has seen before and flops down into her chair again to read it.

"At least you didn't know me as a small child," muses Mark. "Now there was a little fucker you didn't want to get on the wrong side of. You know they shipped me off Jackson's Whole early because I was such a troublemaker? I think they were afraid one of my escape attempts would succeed."

"Where would you've gone?" asks Ivan.

"Away. Anywhere. Offplanet, as soon as possible."

"I meant more like, would you have ever turned up at home."

"Who knows? I didn't really start getting the details of my heritage until I was already on Earth. I caught enough references beforehand that I probably could've pieced it together eventually, but it would've taken a while and I might not have cared unless I expected a warm welcome I could exploit."