"What does it have to do with having children?"

"Oh, you also have to be slow to do that. Some people think children need nothing, or are another kind of consolidating nothing, or something like that, but whatever it is you have to be slow to start growing one, and if you speed them up they die, and they speed up on their own gradually after you extract them."

"Huh."

"We figured out how to make two at once," he adds proudly. "I haven't heard of anyone else doing that."

"I'm not sure I have either, is it hard?"

"I shouldn't say more than that," he says regretfully. "But as far as I know no one else has done it and they'd have plenty of incentive to."

"I'm not going to steal your idea, I can't have children and wouldn't want to."

"Yes, but you could tell someone else."

"I suppose. What's the incentive?"

"Well, children are really useful, because they start out intensely indebted to both parents, especially the one who slowed down and gestated them. It's slow and a hassle but unless you've got some unique talents it's probably the best way to acquire someone who's consistently in your debt."

"Everybody I've met has been very interested in avoiding debt."

"That's because you're a weird stranger. Getting entangled with weird strangers is bad. Being entangled with children is - well, some people do prefer to avoid it but you get to raise them, you can teach them how to behave, and they tend to be much like their parents in personality, and since they're yours you can kill them if you get one who is a disaster and liable to drag you down with them."

"Ah."

"Why do people have children where you're from?"

"I didn't hang out with breeders very much, but I think, uh, broadly similar reasons."

Nod.

"How many do you have? Is it just the two, does the one I've met have a twin somewhere?"

"Seven! The one you met is my oldest."

"Seven! Okay. That sounds like a lot to me but I don't actually know if it would be unusual for a breeder kind back home."

"It's more than most people here have, because there aren't many things for which you need seven people indebted to you, but they all turned out differently, it was so neat!"

Giggle.

"And they're all very clever. If it weren't so much trouble we'd probably make even more of them."

"The one I've met does seem very clever though I'm not ruling out the possibility that everyone around I'd met before him was merely very stupid."

"They very well might have been but he's very clever."

"It was convenient."