"Oh," breathed the Commodore. "Oh, Cordelia, this is fighting dirty . . ." He started to swing around and head for the exit, but was brought up short by his wife's hand closing like a vise on his arm.

The Countess's gaze sharpened. In a voice Kareen had rarely heard her use before, she repeated, "Sit. Down ." It wasn't even her Countess Vorkosigan voice; it was something older, firmer, even more appallingly confident. It was her old Ship Captain's voice, Kareen realized; and her parents had both lived under military authority for decades.

Her parents sank as though folded.

"There." The Countess sat back with a satisfied smile on her lips.

A long silence followed. Kareen could hear the old-fashioned mechanical clock ticking on the wall in the antechamber next door. Mark gave her a beseeching stare, Do you know what the hell is going on here? She returned it in kind, No, don't you?

Her father rearranged the position of his swordstick three times, dropped it on the carpet, and finally scooted it back toward himself with the heel of his boot and left it there. She could see the muscle jump in his jaw as he gritted his teeth. Her mother crossed and uncrossed her legs, frowned, stared down the room out the glass doors, and then back at her hands twisting in her lap. They looked like nothing so much as two guilty teenagers caught . . . hm. Like two guilty teenagers caught screwing on the living room couch, actually. Clues seemed to float soundlessly down like feathers, in Kareen's mind, falling all around. You don't suppose . . .

"But Cordelia," Mama burst out suddenly, for all the world as though continuing aloud a conversation just now going on telepathically, "we want our children to do better than we did. To not make the same mistakes!"

Ooh. Ooh. Oooh! Check, and did she ever want the story behind this one . . . ! Her father had underestimated the Countess, Kareen realized. That hadn't taken any more than three minutes.

"Well, Drou," said Tante Cordelia reasonably, "it seems to me that you have your wish. Kareen has most certainly done better. Her choices and actions have been considered and rational in every way. And as far as I can tell, she hasn't made any mistakes at all."

Her father shook a finger at Mark, and sputtered, "That . . . that is a mistake."

Mark hunched, and wrapped his arms protectively around his belly. The Countess frowned faintly; the Commodore's jaw tightened.

The Countess said coolly, "We'll discuss Mark presently. Right now, allow me to draw your attention to how intelligent and informed your daughter is. Granted, she had not your disadvantage of trying to construct her life in the emotional isolation and chaos of a civil war. You both bought her a better, brighter chance than that, and I doubt you're sorry for it."

The Commodore shrugged grudging agreement. Mama sighed in something like negative nostalgia, not longing for the remembered past but relief at having escaped it.

"Just to pick one example not at random," the Countess went on, "Kareen, didn't you obtain your contraceptive implant before you began physical experimentation?"

Tante Cordelia was so bloody Betan . . . she just belted out things like that in casual conversation. Kareen and her chin rose to the challenge. "Of course," she said steadily. "And I had my hymen cut and did the programmed learning course the clinic gave on related anatomy and physiology issues, and Gran-tante Naismith bought me my first pair of earrings, and we went out for dessert."

Da rubbed his reddening face. Mama looked . . . envious.

"And I daresay," Tante Cordelia went on, "you wouldn't describe your first steps into claiming your adult sexuality as a mad secret scramble in the dark, full of confusion, fear and pain, either?"

Mama's negative-nostalgia look deepened. So did Mark's.

"Of course not!" Kareen drew the line at discussing those details with Mama and Da, although she was dying for a comfortable gossip with Tante Cordelia about it all. She'd been too shy to start with an actual man , so she'd hired a hermaphrodite Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapist whom Mark's counselor had recommended. The L.P.S.T. had explained to her kindly that hermaphrodites were extremely popular with young persons taking the introductory practical course for just that reason. It had all worked out really really well. Mark, anxiously hovering by his comconsole for her post-coital report, had been so pleased for her. Of course, his introduction to his own sexuality had included such ghastly trauma and tortures, it was only natural he be worried sick. She smiled reassuringly at him now. "If that's Barrayar, I'll take Beta!"

Tante Cordelia said thoughtfully, "It's not entirely that simple. Both societies seek to solve the same fundamental problem—to assure that all children arriving will be cared for. Betans make the choice to do it directly, technologically, by mandating a biochemical padlock on everyone's gonads. Sexual behavior seems open at the price of absolute social control on its reproductive consequences. Has it never crossed your mind to wonder how that is enforced? It should. Now, Beta can control one's ovaries; Barrayar, especially during the Time of Isolation, was forced to try to control the entire woman attached to them. Throw in Barrayar's need to increase its population to survive, at least as pressing as Beta's to limit its to the same end, and your peculiar gender-biased inheritance laws, and, well, here we all are."

"Scrambling in the dark," growled Kareen. "No thank you."

"We should never have sent her there. Withhim ," Da grumbled.

Tante Cordelia observed, "Kareen was committed to her student year on Beta before she ever met Mark. Who knows? If Mark hadn't been there to, ah, insulate her, she might have met a nice Betan and stayed with him."

"Or it," Kareen murmured. "Or her."

Da's lips tightened.

"These trips can be more one-way than you expect. I haven't seen my own mother face-to-face more than three times in the last thirty years. At least if she sticks with Mark, you may be certain Kareen will return to Barrayar frequently."

Mama appeared very struck by this. She eyed Mark in new speculation. He essayed a hopeful, helpful smile.

Da said, "I want Kareen to be safe. Well. Happy. Financially secure. Is that so wrong?"

Tante Cordelia's lips twisted up with sympathy. "Safe? Well? That's what I wanted for my boys, too. Didn't always get it, but here we are anyway. As for happiness . . . I don't think you can give that to anyone, if they don't have it in them. However, it's certainly possible to give un –happiness—as you are finding."

Da's frown deepened in a somewhat surly manner, quelling Kareen's impulse to loudly cheer on this line of reasoning. Better let the Baba handle this . . .

The Countess continued, "As for that last . . . hm. Has anyone discussed Mark's financial status with you? Kareen, or Mark . . . or Aral?"

Da shook his head. "I thought he was broke. I assumed the family made him an allowance, like any other Vor scion. And that he ran through it—like any other Vor scion."

"I'm not broke ," Mark objected strenuously. "It's a temporary cash-flow problem. When I budgeted for this period, I wasn't expecting to be starting up a new business in the middle of it."

"In other words, you're broke," said Da.

"Actually," Tante Cordelia said, "Mark is completely self-supporting. He made his first million on Jackson's Whole."

Da opened his mouth, but then shut it again. He gave his hostess a disbelieving stare. Kareen hoped it would not occur to him to inquire closely into Mark's method for winning this fortune.

"Mark has invested it in an interesting variety of more and less speculative enterprises," Tante Cordelia went on kindly. "The family backs him—I've just bought some shares in his butter bug scheme myself—and we'll always be here for emergencies, but Mark doesn't need an allowance."