After lunch one afternoon she lay with her feet up on a sofa in a shaded patio between the house and its back garden—gestating assiduously—and reflected upon the assorted reproductive customs of Barrayar versus Beta Colony. Gestation in uterine replicators, artifical wombs, seemed unknown here. On Beta Colony replicators were the most popular choice by three to one, but a large minority stood by claimed psycho-social advantages to the old-fashioned natural method. Cordelia had never been able to detect any difference between vitro and vivo babies, certainly not by the time they reached adulthood at twenty-two. Her brother had been vivo, herself vitro; her brother's co-parent had chosen vivo for both her children, and bragged about it rather a lot.

Cordelia had always assumed that when her turn came, she'd have her own kid cooked up in a replicator bank at the start of a Survey mission, to be ready and waiting for her arms upon her return. If she returned—there was always that possible catch, exploring the blind unknown. And assuming, also, that she could nail down an interested co-parent with whom to pool, willing and able to pass the physical, psychological, and economic tests and take the course to qualify for a parent's license.

Aral was going to be a suberb co-parent, she was certain. If he ever touched down again, from his new high place. Surely the first rush must be over soon. It was a long fall from that high place, with nowhere to land. Aral was her safe haven, if he fell first . . . she wrenched her meditations firmly into more positive channels.

Now, family size; that was the real, secret, wicked fascination of Barrayar. There were no legal limits here, no certificates to be earned, no third-child variances to be scrimped for; no rules, in fact, at all. She'd seen a woman on the street with not three but four children in tow, and no one had even stared. Cordelia had upped her own imagined brood from two to three, and felt deliciously sinful, till she'd met a woman with ten. Four, maybe? Six? Vorkosigan could afford it. Cordelia wriggled her toes and cuddled into the cushions, afloat on an atavistic cloud of genetic greed.

Barrayar's economy was wide open now, Aral said, despite the losses of the recent war. No wounds had touched the surface of the planet this time. The terraforming of the second continent opened new frontiers every day, and when the new planet Sergyar was cleared for colonization, the effect would triple. Labor was short everywhere, wages rising. Barrayar perceived itself to be severely underpopulated. Vorkosigan called the economic situation his gift from the gods, politically. So did Cordelia, for more personal, secret reasons; herds of little Vorkosigans. . . .

She could have a daughter. Not just one, but two—sisters! Cordelia had never had a sister. Captain Vorpatril's wife had two, she'd said.