Jole was a bit disoriented by that familiar Betan accent coming out of such an unfamiliar mouth, but he managed the handshake and suitable greetings. He tried not to let the accent sway him—he was here to make his own judgments…Or had he already decided, and all this going-through-the-motions was for what audience, exactly?
“Vicereine Vorkosigan said you would have questions, and that I was to answer them all. Would you care to start with a short tour?”
“Uh…yes, actually. Please. The only rep center I’ve ever been in wasn’t up and running yet.” That had been at a dedication ceremony in the Vorkosigan’s District capital of Hassadar, back on Barrayar, which then-Prime Minister Vorkosigan, and therefore his aide, had attended in public support of his wife’s manifold medical projects there.
Tan led him off to get suited up in some disposable paper garments, and then ushered him through the double doors at the end of the corridor. There, Jole found himself in a brightly lit clinical laboratory—busy lab benches cluttered with equipment under filtering vent hoods, a dozen absorbed techs bent over scanner stations. It reminded him a little of his tactics room, except that no one here seemed in the least bored. All the meticulously moving hands were smooth and gloved and steady.
The work stations on the first bench, featuring some especially rapt techs, were devoted to what Jole thought was the heart of the matter, fertilization. A couple of tightly temperature-controlled storage chambers held the culture dishes with early cell divisions. The lab stations on next bench over were devoted to what Dr. Tan dubbed quality control, gene scanning and repair. A second bank of warming cupboards continued the next stage of closely observed development, and then a last bench was devoted to implanting the ratified embryos and their placentas in the uterine replicators that would house them for the next nine months.
Through the next door, Tan relieved his guest of his crinkly paper overalls and hat, and guided him through a series of chambers devoted to the banks of replicators themselves, stacked five high. Panels of readouts monitored their progress. Pleasant music alternated with assorted natural sounds over speakers hidden somewhere. Individual jacks allowed soft, piped-in recordings of parental voices, speaking or reading. Jole found it creepily cheerful. Or cheerfully creepy, he wasn’t sure which. He reminded himself that all those arrayed containers held individual people’s—or couples’—most ardent hopes for the future. The next generation of Sergyarans. In fifteen years, all those disturbing biological blobs would be out on Kareenburg’s streets, wearing strange fashions, listening to annoying music, and disagreeing politically with their beleaguered parents. In twenty-five years, they’d be taking on tasks that he couldn’t presently imagine, though he guessed a few would be right back here working in this rep center, or its successor. Or offering up their own gametes for what the Vicereine dubbed the genetic lottery.
Could his own children be among them?
Why, yes, they could.
“Can conceptions—babies—ever get mixed up?” There were stories about such mishaps…Many of them passed along, Cordelia had pointed out, by people with irrational objections to the rep centers.
Dr. Tan smiled at him in a pained fashion. “Our techs are extremely conscientious, but to soothe the doubts of the, shall we say, biologically less educated, the genetics of any infant can be checked against that of its parents with a few cheek swabs and three minutes on the scanner at the time they take delivery. Or at any prior time, actually, amniocentesis being a trivial procedure with a replicator. The service is offered for free—or rather, included at no extra charge.” He added after a moment, “We get that question a lot, from you Barrayarans. The Vicereine once told me to point out that our error rate is provably statistically lower than that of the natural method, but the late Viceroy advised me that it might not be taken in good part.”
“I see,” said Jole. He tried to come up with a few more suitably technical questions that would redeem his Barrayaran IQ in this man’s eyes. Jole enjoyed Sergyar’s sprinkling of galactic immigrants, on the whole, but he had to admit that they could sometimes also be remarkably annoying. He managed not to blurt out his own history as a natural, un-gene-cleaned body birth, in attempted proof of what, he could not say.
The fact came up shortly, however, when Dr. Tan took him back out to another room off the reception area, and left him to get on with an unmanned station that took his medical history in exhaustive detail. Jole was able to speed up this tedious process by plugging in his military medical records, which, after checking over to remove anything still classified, he’d stored on his wristcom for the purpose last night. This program was used to dealing with the arcana of Barrayaran military records, fortunately—quite a few veterans from the base chose to muster out here, or to come back later. Had Cordelia supplied Aral’s? Yes, she must have, when she’d done her own. No one asked Jole for it, anyway, when Tan came back to rescue him.
“Any more questions? Are you ready for the next step?” Tan inquired jovially.
Jole searched his mouth with his tongue for an answer without finding one; in any case, Tan didn’t wait, but motioned his VIP visitor along after him. He dodged aside to pick up some objects Jole could not quite make out, then brought him to another closed, blank door, labeled Paternity Room, with a sliding slot bearing the words un/occupied. A magnetized flip label read Clean on one side and Do Not Disturb on the other, to which Tan flipped it.
“Here is your sample jar,” Tan announced, handing it across, “properly labeled as you see. The fluid inside will keep your semen alive and healthy until it can be processed. Check the label for accuracy, please.”
Jole squinted and found his name and numbers duly recorded on the side. “Right…correct, that is.”
“In the event of, so to speak, shyness, you will find a number of aids inside. I can also issue you a single-dose aphrodisiac nasal spray. We used to put them out in a basket, but they kept disappearing, so we had to go to rationing—my apologies.” Tan held out a small ampoule.
Somewhat hypnotized by now, Jole warily accepted it. Tan opened the door and ushered him inside.
“Take all the time you need. Come find me personally when you’re done,” Tan told him, his tones brightly encouraging. The door shut, leaving Jole alone in the quiet, dimly lit little room. He heard the slight scrape of the slot-label sliding to occupied.
The chamber contained a comfortable-looking armchair, a straight chair, and a narrow cot with a fitted sheet. A shelf offered a line-up of sex toys, most of which Jole had encountered less depressingly in other contexts, all with little paper ribbons around them proclaiming their sterilized state. The room also contained a holovid player—a quick check of the contents found a number of titles Jole recognized from barracks and shipboard life, plus a few that seemed highly unlikely to ever have played to that audience. Which made him wonder, just for a moment, what equivalents were passed around in the ISWA barracks, and if there were any of the women he dared to ask. Not Vorinnis, anyway. Maybe the colonel, if they ever got drunk enough together. The vid also offered an array of slide shows of beautiful young women, a few of beautiful young men, one of beautiful young herms, one of rather eye-grabbing beautiful young obese ladies, and others that became increasingly more otherly—this had been programmed by the galactic crew. A few more collections of images were downright repulsive, and a couple were simply incomprehensible, though Jole considered himself a traveled man. What none of them seemed, just at the moment, was arousing in any way. He shut the machine off.