“But a son is not a real person until he is twelve years old. Try hard to understand that, or none of the rest of this will make sense to you. Until he is twelve, he may as well not exist. He is cloistered with the women and the other children, and even his father rarely sees him. At least, in the more traditional households. There are some fathers who spend time with their children, but they are rare. When a boy turns twelve, there is a ceremony that marks his—well, actually marks the occasion of his coming into existence. He has legal rights. He can hold a position on his father’s estate, he can inherit if his father dies. He is officially a man.

“It is those years before manhood that are dicey ones for a boy. If his father does not approve of the way he is growing up—if his father dislikes his looks, for instance, or considers that he is not intelligent enough, not manly enough, to follow in his footsteps, he can have the boy put to death. If he—”

“Put to death! Murdered! You can’t possibly mean that!”

“Try to remember. Until he is twelve, the boy isn’t a person. He has no rights. He’s like—a dog, or a toy or—”

“You can’t be saying this. No one could believe this.”

Kit spread her hands. “In Inrhio, as I understand it, it’s fairly common for a woman to abort a child before it comes to full term.”

Nolan stared at her. “So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Isn’t it the same thing? Aborting a life before it becomes whatever you have determined is really an individual?”

“It’s not the same thing at all! One is a—a collection of cells so small you can’t see them unless you’re in a lab with special equipment, and the other is walking around talking, breathing, laughing, playing—”

“Frankly, I think both practices are equally abominable.”

“Then how can you talk so calmly? How can you defend something that you don’t believe in?”

“How can you attack something that you don’t understand?” she shot back.

He threw his hands in the air. “Fine! Finish your explanation! Nothing you say will make me view this as anything less than primitive and barbaric.”

“And both of those elements exist in the gulden lifestyle. But unless you know why those elements are in place, and how deeply they are woven into the collective gulden psyche, you will have no hope of changing the fabric of that society.”

“As if change were possible.”

“It’s possible. It’s happening. But slowly.”

“You can tell me about that later. Finish about the children.”