It was not as dark outside as he'd hoped. In addition to the lights spilling from the Residence windows, colored spotlights in the landscaping were diffused by the fog to a gentle general illumination. Below the stone balustrade the slope was almost woods-like with old-growth bushes and trees. Stone-paved walkways zig-zagged down, with granite benches inviting lingerers. Still, the night was chilly enough to keep most people inside, which helped.

It was a highly romantic setting, to be wasted on him. Why am I doing this? What good was it to bait a hunger that could not feed? Just looking at her hurt. He moved closer anyway, more dizzy with her scent than with the wine and the dancing. Her skin was radiantly warm with the exercise; she'd light up a sniper-scope like a torch. Morbid thought. Sex and death seemed too close-connected, somewhere in the bottom of his brain. He was afraid. Everything I touch, I destroy. I will not touch her. He set his glass on the stone railing and shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. His left fingertips compulsively rotated the little flowers he'd secreted there.

"Lord Mark," she said, after a sip of wine, "you're almost a galactic. If you were married, and going to have children, would you want your wife to use a uterine replicator, or not?"

"Why would any couple not choose to use a replicator?" he asked, his head spinning with this sudden new tack in conversation.

"To, like, prove her love for him."

"Good God, how barbaric! Of course not. I'd think it would prove just the opposite, that he didn't love her." He paused. "That was a strictly theoretical question, wasn't it?"

"Sort of."

"I mean, you don't know anyone who's seriously having this debate—not your sisters or anything?" he asked in worry. Not you, surely? Some barbarian needed his head stuck in a bucket of ice water, if so. And held under for a good long time, like till he stopped wriggling.

"Oh, none of my sisters are married yet. Though it's not for lack of offers. But Mama and Da are holding out. It's a strategy," she confided.

"Oh?"

"Lady Cordelia encouraged them, after the second of us girls came along. There was a period soon after she immigrated here, when galactic medicine was really spreading out, and there was this pill you could take to choose the sex of your child. Everyone went crazy for boys, for a while. The ratio's evened up again lately. But my sisters and I are right in the middle of the girl-drought. Any man who won't agree in the marriage contract to let his wife use a uterine replicator is having a real hard time getting married, right now. The go-betweens won't even bother dealing for him." She giggled. "Lady Cordelia's told Mama if she plays the game well, every one of her grandchildren could be born with a Vor in front of their names."