Nod. "- How many children does your species have when you have birth control?"

"Wizard birthrate's below replacement."

She shakes her head. "My word."

"Mind we're only fertile from what you'd call age four to age seven or eight."

"But you can be more closely spaced, right? And even if we only had that long we'd still have at least three apiece."

"We can be more closely spaced - it's enough time to have fifteen if you're Catholic or really set on it - but it's vanishingly rare to want so many and for every family that wants four there are people who aren't really the type for children, or infertile, or apparently maybe some of them are secret homosexuals but that was news to me, or who found love late in life and only had time for one, or who lost a few pregnancies before they had one and decide not to put themselves through that again..."

"...we may lose pregnancies less, the bad luck it would require to lose several..."

"I mean, it's misfortune to lose three or four in a row but not outlandish misfortune."

"Wow."

"Even if you fixed that, though, I think most people just don't want kids that badly. Maybe we want them all the time about as much as you want them when it's not spring."

"We still plan around expecting spring, but I suppose that might do it..."

"Maybe after a few thousand years of access to birth control we'll have gotten all selected for the intense desire for children."

"There are so few Amentans who don't - on balance, let alone unconflictedly - and to the best of my knowledge it has been like that since well before the invention."

"Huh. Well, now you've lots of worlds to settle."

"I know! I thought we'd have to stop at two but credits are dirt cheap now!"

"My alt-father is very smug."

"He deserves to be."

"Of course he does!!!"

"Are you going to have children?"

"When we're home and not occupied with exciting interdimensional magic shenanigans, probably. Would've waited a few Earth years even if there hadn't been all the excitement and now it's going to be tempted to step up the interfering back home once we can get back home. If the place hasn't all been conquered by the person who attacked us."

Nod. "I refused to even think about it when they would have had to be red."

"Yeah, no way. Why do reds have kids - would you get in trouble otherwise -"

"They might but it's never come up. Biyan's reds committed mass suicide and it has never been that an entire population just refused to have more - we just want them."

"That strong, huh?"

"In spring, yes. There's an aftermarket, for child credits, because every now and then someone decides they really shouldn't and then they can't stand it and buy one marked up."