"If I can't get home can I take some of the children? Since no one wants them anyway?"

“You could declare yourself as an independent creche and then only take in a few?”

"...if I were a creche would some of my children get killed?"

“... I don’t think the quotas would kick in if you only had two or three.”

"How does that work?"

“Where I worked it was mostly up to the people who worked there, which tests were used and how everything happened, and we were told that the government wouldn’t care unless we went under a quarter... selected... for several years in a row? And if you only had three kids that wouldn’t make sense.

Also you’re an alien so you can probably get an exemption and still raise a dozen kids if you want.”

"A quarter," chokes Nuta.

Koyumena winces. 

"What are you even - eugenics-doing toward -"

“I am not eugenics-doing anything, my society is aiming for - healthier and brighter and more creative and prosocial, and less male.“

"Sorry, in my language there's different talking-to-other-people words. Less 'male'? I noticed you have three -" She makes a gesture of inadequate vocabulary.

“- about half of all babies are born with, um, their parts on the outside and not on the inside, most people born with them become [tall purple flower women] and some people born with them become men? And whether you become a [tall purple flower woman] or a man is heritable, and men have a lot more children, so there’s selection to keep the ratio.”

"And you can tell when they're children?"

“... kind of? We know that there are more men born from, um, experimental no-kill creches, but the individual tests aren’t reliable.”

"Amentans have two sexes. Amentan men - I think are like your men? But don't have a lot more children, because it's half of each."

“Less neotenous - um, they’re stronger and taller and hairier, I mean - higher crime rate, less verbal and more mathematical?”

"...no, just, the parts on the outside."

“Huh.”

"And they can't feed babies with their -" Nuta gestures at her chest. "Unless they take medicine for it, and it can do other stuff you don't want, so they usually don't."

“... cool. What - does your society even look like, I’m realizing that I have no idea -“

"Look like?"

“How is it structured, I guess?”

"We have - 'castes', I don't know what you'd call them. People do the same sort of job as their parents. I'm an - 'orange', it's sort of a nickname for the caste because we have orange hair. Oranges take care of children and old people and sick people."

“... maybe someone in anthropology would know a word for that. You said that everyone took care of children?”

"Everyone takes care of their children. Oranges take care of children if the parents are working or the children need to learn things."