Thus, the interview is concluded, and they promise to contact her shortly about it.

And home she goes, feeling optimistic!

And Lia brings up what she saw through the amulet, passing back to Patiri as she does so.

"It looks like we'll have to hire her. She and her children have the Gemini magic - it passed from Dateovont to her while I was watching," she tells them, "It took a moment - it was just doing it when I looked through the amulet."

"Oh dear."

"That didn't happen to the ones before her."

"The babies' room is two floors above, they could've been just too distant. ...We should take Dateovont back, through the side door, and check if any other interviewees got it as well."

She nods, "We should - I could take him back while Patiri checks? There are still more interviewees for you to see." 

"True and while I want to come off as weird, I don't want to be rude."

They hand the baby to Lia.

And Patiri checks.

Yup, the magic got one other pregnant woman, it was even the one closest to the door.

And Lia takes Dateovont back to the nursery. 

Eventually, she rejoins the other two. Once the interviews are over, she speaks up. 

"This changes things," she points out. "If gemini powers pass from the children to unborn twins, we can't take any of the children - besides yours, Patiri - around others during spring and early summer." 

They nod. "We could take them to the south hemisphere? At least when they are young. Which... is by far not an ideal solution."

"It would be hard to move around that much, that's at least a third of the year in a given hemisphere and some weird accident might happen. A pregnant tourist from the North could happen to come near them or something. Even if the odds are small." She shakes her head. "...We need to test this, figure out if the distance by which the spread happens is constant, or by what factors it might change. Which means a serious risk of it spreading further."

"We can do our best to screen for good candidates there," she points out, "We're already doing that, it's just more urgent now. As for moving south whenever it's spring, there's also the effects on us to consider. Swapping hemispheres like that so often - I'd expect at least some of us to start permaspringing. We're going to need to raise them somewhere more isolated than we originally thought, either way - somewhere out of the cities, at least. Even if the range is small, and we return to the city during late summer through winter, we can't keep them locked up somewhere for most of two seasons." 

Isteri really wishes she had a small bundle of comfort and joy in her arms. "Maybe a protectorate island or remote mountain district? I think I can rent a yatch or something for now and be out in the sea..."

"There aren't that many unborn twins around this much into summer. The upside is the low risk of spreading further this season. Downside is that if we want to test anything we will have to hurry up to do any test, or import. Or wait until southern spring and import."

"Do we have the influence to import mothers with twins? It would look very strange, wouldn't it? And, is there some estate out in the agricultural areas we could use while we wait, instead of a yacht? Taking probably six pregnant women, assuming we take the two purples who were exposed, out onto the open sea sounds like a disaster in the making." 

"We do have some influence, but it wouldn't be trivial to import mother with twins, not at this point. And it would look very strange, we would need to allege some twin specific experiment and likely need to negotiate around the international treaties by having them count as separate credits. I was specifically talking about myself and the triplets staying in the boat, I think we will have a place the time yours come along. And I was also thinking of avoiding places with underground tunnels where... Reds come and go." She fidgets uncomfortably.

"We checked, over and over, and there aren't Red twins, not any already born I mean. We really should re-do all our tests."

"If you think a few months on a boat won't bother you and Natanen and the triplets too much, that does sound like a good solution, in that case. It's definitely necessary to recheck, at this point," she agrees with an unsettled frown. "One could have gotten close enough, and we really can't be too careful about preventing Red Gemini. We'll have to make sure they account for that in the plans for the place we have built, as well."

"We can sail to the equator under the excuse that we want to hold babies while springing. We would have done that if this project of ours wasn't keeping us busy. We could see what robotic research facilities in other country do?"

"We don't want to look too much like a robotic research facilities, those were eventually found out, but I will make a note of it."

Hm, "I'm not sure what we have in the way of fertility drugs which could cause multiple pregnancies, but... If we can make arrangements for it, I'm sure Adon, Ibrae and Asara would be willing to take a trip long enough to spring if they got their own babies out of the deal. And other people already in the project, too - the less we have to screen people, the better, after all."

"I have researched some, it's not a really well funded subject, but there are things that are likely to work."

"They have been screened," Isteri reasons, "but it's pretty late in summer and I don't want to make hard promises for this year."

"Hm, and if we follow this plan we can wait until next spring to find out the exact range at which Gemini powers pass on," she points out. "So long as we all move before the other babies come. The range can't be that large, unless it's growing, in which case we could only buy so much time before it was out of our hands entirely."