symphony

[isthisart]

The day of the party approaches. Linya learns a Barrayaran-original solo piano symphony, adds some flourishes of her own where the composer has marked that it may be played "freely", memorizes the whole thing, and arranges to be playing it on the grand piano when party guests file in on the day of. She smiles and nods at them and takes note of how they arrange themselves in the room; there are thirteen minutes in the piece unless she decides she needs an extra three (if there seem to be a lot of stragglers; if there isn't a good path to the people she wants to meet and around the people she wants to avoid) and takes the repeat at the end to prolong it.

She doesn't wind up taking the repeat; the end of the symphony without it has her playing the final chord when Lord Auditor Vorthys is nearer than anyone she's hoping to evade. She counts out the beats, holds for a moment longer, and then lifts her hands from the keyboard. She has decided that given her choice of titles she's going to address this particular guest as -

"Professor Vorthys."

Comments

[first_loyalty]

"I hope you work it out between you somehow," she says. "But - maybe I'm just too Barrayaran - if everyone's children were designed by geneticists, even if the parents don't have to be geneticists themselves, that still implies whoever, um, helps them out, would have some kind of goal in mind beyond 'produce a healthy child'. I like healthy children as much as the next woman. I don't think I'd like to - provide the material and the parenting for someone's design project. Unless you meant something I don't understand by 'the approximate haut-wife process'."

[isthisart]

"The approximate haut-wife process is - approximate, here. Certainly if I were operating a consultancy like that I'd take client goals into account. And... We may have different standards of 'health'. I do not feel a strong pull to select my children's eye color or their hormone balances or their metabolic tendencies; I'd do it anyway if I were unfettered by Barrayaran prejudice, because abdicating the decisions in question doesn't seem like an improvement and it just won't take me that much time since I absconded with plenty of genetics helper software on my pen, but I'll abandon that sort of quibbling over genetic details if Miles prefers without complaint. What worries me is that I will have a child who develops - allergies or headaches or arthritis or something. A child who is in pain because I did not argue thoroughly enough with their father, because I left them to the mercies of a process that is not intended to improve their quality of life."

[first_loyalty]

"...I see what you mean," Ekaterin says slowly. "And I don't quite disagree. But... I feel we would lose something, as a species, if random assembly wasn't an option anymore. Even if helpful geneticists were freely available to design children for inexpert couples, even if they - took client goals into account. I don't know what, but I do feel we'd lose something."

[isthisart]

"I am afraid I cannot help you articulate what it is you think would be lost," says Linya.

[first_loyalty]

"The option itself, if nothing else. I don't know."

[isthisart]

"Any competent geneticist with enough equipment to do nonrandom children can also do random assembly. With sufficiently well-engineered parents this probably isn't even harmful for the first or second generation on the levels that I mentioned as worrying me, although shuffling it enough would start to damage some of the more elaborate complexes after more than a couple iterations."

[first_loyalty]

"Well, what's the point of involving the geneticist just to do the random assembly? Other than getting the child checked over for all the sorts of things galactics ordinarily check for, but - I've heard that's mostly automated anyway."

[isthisart]

"It is, yes, takes about ten minutes if you have the right tools - my point is that even if there's for some reason no way to make a baby besides going through a geneticist, one who was responsive to client goals - which could include 'random assembly' - would be able to do that. So loss of the option would basically have to involve geneticists who were not responsive to client goals somewhere along the line, which was not the hypothetical we were working with."

[first_loyalty]

"Oh, that's - no - I was imagining it being outlawed or something," she says. "All children being produced by someone's deliberate design, whether by law or custom or I don't know what."

[isthisart]

"Oh. Well - I don't think that would be the worst of all possible social outcomes, but it isn't required in the hypothetical I was entertaining."

[first_loyalty]

"That... wouldn't be so bad, but I'd still rather people could do the - low-tech version of random assembly, even if hardly anybody ever chose to."

[isthisart]

"The appeal is completely lost on me... I don't want to take something from you and people who share your opinion that you want to have, but I find myself quite incapable of appreciating why it would be wanted."

[first_loyalty]

"Old-fashioned notions of romance? Not wanting to involve people outside one's marriage in the production of one's children? Independence? Sentiment? I don't want to sound like I have all the answers. I hardly have any."

[isthisart]

"Well, that's more answers than I was generating."

[first_loyalty]

She smiles.

[middlingalong]

It is at this moment that Ivan chooses to wander by. "Hullo," he says. "Lady Vorkosigan, and, I don't think I've had the pleasure?"

[isthisart]

"Lord Vorpatril, Madame Vorsoisson. And vice-versa."

[first_loyalty]

"...You can call me Ekaterin," says Ekaterin, mainly to Lady Vorkosigan although if this Lord Vorpatril person decides to include himself there isn't much she can politely do about it.

[isthisart]

"And you can call me Linyabel. Both of you can, for that matter."

[middlingalong]

"I'm going to be completely honest here, I had actually forgotten the last syllable of your name because Miles always drops it and I was too embarrassed to ask."

[first_loyalty]

...Ekaterin puts her hand up to cover her mouth.

[isthisart]

"I'm sure you could have asked Cordelia," laughs Linya.

[middlingalong]

"She'd have... replied in a perfectly civil and informative manner. Can't have that."

[first_loyalty]

This time, Ekaterin fails to repress the giggle.

[middlingalong]

"Anyway, feel free to drop the Lord Vorpatril, Ivan is fine."