"I guess if you medicate them about it they sure wouldn't!"

"I have heard it's contagious."

"What?"

"I don't really know what might be helpful to say here."

Carissa knows what she'd say here but she is pretending to be meek and suitable for Osirian slavery marriage.

"Some people will never be very interested in men no matter how much their surrounding society encourages it but for some it does depend, I think," Isavel says. "That said if your society strongly discouraged it and you turned up with it anyway then I don't think yours is likely to be very much the kind that goes away when you leave the army and there are girls around."

"...well."

"...maybe we can explain to Ibyabek that actually lots of people demonstrate nobility of character and heroism and great integrity while also being gay?" she suggests, but not very hopefully. 

"People can also demonstrate nobility of character and so on while they have the flu, it's not really going to affect matters."

"The flu...negatively affects them."

"I do not feel enormously benefited by my being, apparently, gay."

"I think I would find it annoying to be exclusively attracted to women because then you couldn't enjoy intimacy until you were married."

"I would find it annoying to be exclusively attracted to men because then you'd be risking getting pregnant every time you wanted to hook up with someone," Carissa says mostly because she's curious whether this is an acceptably Osirian opinion to have.

He seems totally undisturbed by it. "I guess it would also be inconvenient to be exclusively attracted to men because it'd complicate finding a wife but the attraction to men isn't the problem there, it's the lack of attraction to women, which sounds like the part your hospital doesn't have a fix for..."

"If they did they omitted it. It could be risky in some way, perhaps, and they would have tried it if I'd gotten married and then gone back a few years later."

"I guess." He looks very dubious. "Maybe Osirion would want the medicine as a criminal penalty for rapists? Assuming it to work on both attraction to men and attraction to women?"

"It's not a medicinal treatment." The world is ending again, he HATES it when the world is ending, he is TRYING to have a CONVERSATION.

"Oh? What kind of treatment is it?"

"That's -" he croaks. He tries to cough and can't quite inhale enough.

Isavel reaches out and touches him and does - something magic, it's not clear quite what, it feels like being abruptly soaked in a soothing sensation.

"- thank you?"

"I'm - sorry if it's not something you want to explain -"

"I prefer not to dwell on it."

"I am not sure this is on topic anyway. - you were explaining to Carissa the Osirian conception of fidelity -"