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gone. He’d left a note, of course, if one could call five words a note. Not much after their years together.
    â€œYou must feel abandoned. Betrayed!” This from Lutha’s older sister, Yma, sector-famed, thespian absolute.
    The accuracy of this made Lutha blaze hotly as she denied it. “I do not! Leelson’s and my relationship lasted a long time. Neither of us is from a contractual culture, so why would I feel betrayed!” She said it as though she meant it. In fact, she did feel betrayed and abandoned, not that she could possibly admit it to Yma. How could he? She couldn’t have left Leelson! How could he have left her?
    Yma went on. “Perhaps not a contract, but still …”
    â€œBut still nothing, Yma. I had a child because I wanted a child.” That was partly true. She kept her lip from trembling with considerable effort. After the initial shock, she had wanted a child.
    â€œWell, of course you did, darling, but it was a genetic risk. With him.”
    â€œFastigat men father normal children on non-Fastigat women all the time!”
    Yma couldn’t leave it at that. “Well, there are no aberrations in your family line.”
    â€œYou don’t know that!” Lutha cried.
    â€œOh, yes I do and so do you. Even though we’ve nevermet them, we know all about Papa’s side of the family. They’re all totally ordinary, ordinary, ordinary!” To Yma, nothing could be worse.
    Lutha did indeed know a great deal about Papa’s family, and his many siblings and half siblings out on the frontier. Frontier worlds began with a colony ship, a few hundred crew members, and a hundred thousand human embryos. Thirteen or fourteen years later the original embryos were boys and girls who began procreating on their own, using the crèche equipment on the ship. A few decades, the colony might number in the millions! Twenty children per woman was not uncommon, virtually all of them crèche-born. In a homo-normed world, there were few impediments. No dangerous diseases, little danger from weather, no danger from plants or animals—in fact few plants and no animals at all.
    â€œMama Jibia does go on and on about the kinfolk,” Lutha admitted.
    â€œShe’s never said anything indicating they’re anything but boring. And Mama’s family, we know all about, both sides, four generations back. Her mother is Lucca Fineapple, and we’ve met her. Remember?”
    â€œThe religious grandma,” said Lutha with vague discomfort at the memory. “Who visited us on her way through the sector.”
    â€œExactly. You do remember! We thought her very strange! Well, women who depilate and tattoo their entire bodies
are
strange. But that’s simply attitudinal; biologically she’s quite all right. And Mama Jibia is always telling stories about Lucca’s mother—Nitha Bonetree, remember, the one who first ran away to the frontier?”
    â€œWhich is where Lucca was born, and Mama too. I guess I remember some of that. Mama Jibia always said we’d inherited our talents from Nitha’s line.”
    â€œIt isn’t the detail that matters in any case! The only thing that matters is there’s no problem in your family on either side back four generations. And Leelson should
not
have left you to provide the entire care for the boy, as though it were somehow your fault!”
    Lutha felt herself turning red, felt the tears surging, heard the anger in her words. “I had always intended to be responsible for my child. It was
my
choice.”
    Was it? Was it indeed? Then why couldn’t she remember making it! She asked me this and I laughed. I couldn’t remember either. It had just happened. One couldn’t really question it. Lutha said even Yma knew she’d gone too far. Wisely she let the matter drop.
    Lutha never mentioned to Yma the credit drafts regularly deposited to her account from Fastiga. Fastigats did