"Did you have any other questions? I'm happy to offer my perspective."

"I think my current question isn't really a question at all, more of a desire to see Barrayarans operating more often to understand how they work from day to day."

"Reasonable. See them operating in what sort of context?"

"I've met Count Vorkosigan and am accustomed to interacting with Barrayaran citizens on a professional level, but I lack a lot of perspective on how they act internally."

"Hmm. Should I be arranging a formal social event? Private introductions to potential friends? I'd offer to introduce you to Miles, since you seem to enjoy his sense of humour, but he's offplanet at the moment."

"Formal social events or private introductions are both fine." Head tilt. "I wouldn't mind being introduced to Miles, later."

"I think you'd get along."

"I don't think I've heard enough about him to accurately judge, but I do have a good record with your family so far."

At this, Cordelia smiles.

Callida smiles a little back.

"I'm very glad to have made a good impression. I hope I can be useful to you in your attempts to understand Barrayar."

"You have so far - thank you."

"You're very welcome."

Callida falls silent, wondering just how much of Sith culture she would actually like to talk about. Barrayar has an impression of Sith anyway, but she's the one with the most knowledge of how things actually work, and there's a number of intricacies besides 'murder sorcerers that kill each other and anyone convenient for power.' She mentioned to Aral the basics, but the specifics.... she would - still rather just not, really. Not without a reason.

So, clearly the thing to do is to change the subject before Cordelia could possibly ask about it.

"Has there been any progress in kolto creation since the last progress update?" Which was almost entirely, 'Yes we have your samples, and gosh they are fascinating.'

"Yes! Not very much of it, but I recommended the project to a few people I know and they've expressed enthusiasm and started giving estimates for when they'll be able to give estimates for whether they can duplicate it and how long it will take if so. Apparently we should know in a week whether it's likely to take more or less than six months."

"That's good to hear, and faster than I expected. I'd thought I'd be getting enthusiastic 'kolto is fascinating' reports for at least another two months before actual work could be done."

"I get the impression that bioengineering is a more thoroughly explored subject in my galaxy than yours. Which is fascinating in itself; I wonder why our separate societies evolved so differently."

"Hmm. Perhaps bioengineering is a more - unstable and daunting subject when you have as many species as my galaxy contains? It seems hard to sit down and study bioengineering when you turn a corner and there are six more species with different biochemistries."

"Plausible," says Cordelia. "Though we do have plenty of alien biochemistries to study; what we lack is nonhuman sapients in particular. I'll admit it does make something of a difference to the mindset."

Nod. "I also suspect the scale of the amount of alien biochemistries we are accustomed to is different - how many planets are in the jump network?"

"On the order of two hundred inhabited systems."

".... Yes, we have access to more planets. An accurate count of all of the known planets is difficult, because often someone will discover a planet and then not tell anyone, and go and build a civilization on it, but - it's in the thousands. Easily. All inhabited. Not counting space stations or uninhabitable planets."

"That... follows logically from the differences in method of interstellar transportation," she says. "And is fascinating. I used to work for Betan Astronomical Survey, going out and discovering new planets... I'm a little swept away by the concept of being able to do it so easily."

Callida smiles, a little. "If we figure out a way to transfer data between systems, I could send you dossiers about some of the discovered planets."

"That would be amazing. Thank you."