"But surely that wouldn't be a serious problem, would it, not if birth control is available and you're trying to discourage births..."

"Oh, birth control is available, free, strongly encouraged, distributed in schools two weeks before the first day of spring to three year olds, but people want children, Commander, and we don't have your infertility problem."

"Humans don't. I mean, people want one child, or two... but pregnancies are awful and babies keep you up all night and they scream and you can't go to the movies without hiring a babysitter. Gilead has made birth control illegal, we've made surrogacy a religious duty, we have financial incentives for children, we've made women working outside the home functionally illegal, we have every child-friendly policy we can think of and our birth rate is a hair above replacement because people will smuggle contraceptives from Canada to stop themselves having children."

(Fred files away 'three-year-olds being given contraception' in the 'baffling' folder next to 'spring sideways.' Maybe they start sex education early.)

"...I see," she says. "Er, if you happen to know, how did you not die out as soon as birth control was invented? Also, how is forbidding women from working going to help?"

"Reliable birth control was only invented a hundred and fifty years ago and was frowned upon by many religions for much of that time. If women can work outside the home, they won't start looking for a spouse until after they've finished college, they'll delay having children until their career is together, they'll stop after one or two kids because more would be too time-consuming, lots of women won't have children at all because of the cost to their careers... that's what's happening in Canada."

"Of course, God also wants women to be keepers at home," he adds as an afterthought. 

"A hundred and fifty years is a l- how long are your years?" she asks.

"365 days, a day is 24 hours, an hour is 360 seconds, a second is as long as it takes to say 'one-Mississippi.'"

"Our years are longer than yours," she concludes.

"...Thaaaat makes sense of you giving three-year-olds contraception. Our three-year-olds are this high"-- he indicates-- "and if someone has sex with them it is a very serious crime."

"- hopefully they're not even fertile yet so small," she says. "Ours aren't till they turn four, sometimes five."

"Oh goodness no, our children aren't fertile until twelve or thirteen. By law, they aren't allowed to have children until they're at least sixteen."

"All right then. Four year old Amentans are adults, with adult proportions. They turn four at the start of springtime - do you even have seasons -"

"We have times that are warmer and times that are colder due to the tilt of Earth's axis but we don't... require everyone born the same year to have the same birthday..."

"We can only conceive in spring. There can be up to a season of variance in chronological age and later-born children are more likely to spring at five instead of four."

"Humans are equally fertile in all seasons."

"There are species on Amenta that work like that, but we aren't one of them."

"Good thing, too, I can't imagine how bad your overpopulation problem would be otherwise."

"We have population controls, which are everywhere now thanks to Oahk, that being the only arguably good thing they did with their war machine. Most countries have instituted a system of selling child credits by auction. There's us and a few imitators, and there's also Oahk and some countries that spent longer under their sphere of influence and assimilated more and copy their system, where some blues are authorized to give permissions to handpicked parents."

"It seems like if your species had our infertility problem you could just let the fertile ones have as many babies as they want and not have to do anything else. Sounds nice. Other than the riots from the infertile ones, I mean."

"We'd probably have to have some kind of punitive taxation on any household that contained only two adults and their children so they'd acquire roommates and share," says Avalor.

"We strongly encourage surrogacy. It is not at all uncommon for a woman to have two or three children before she has ever had sex."

"Surrogates exist in Amenta, but it's generally considered a harrowing occupation - having to give up a baby -"

"Oh, surrogates in Gilead love it. It's a blessing from God to be able to do it, you know."

"I suppose if you don't like babies very much. You did say pregnancies were awful?"

"Three months of fatigue and vomiting, three months that are basically okay, and three months of being swollen up like a whale that constantly has to pee. --I have to say, I had been previously under the impression that humans like babies the normal amount, given that they are both very cute and very hard to take care of."