"Hurt me? I do not understand. I am in the Guild when it occurs."
"But one of these women who will be dissolved may have been your mother. That one—she who carries her baby against her breast—she may indeed be your mother. And these—your sisters, and if they had received the training at the Father's schools in Washington that you received, they would have been as you are, articulate, able to comprehend—"
"Are you referring to these females?" the Son asked, puzzled.
"Don't you know the word mother?"
"It was not taught to us. It must be nonessential."
"But you do know about the birth of babies."
"Oh, yes, an entirely artificial process."
"The female who bears the baby in her womb nonetheless is its mother. It is her flesh and her blood that sustains it before its birth, and there is nothing artificial in that phase of it. Her blood has fed you. She has felt the pain and I think she must have felt some joy at your birth. Yes, despite your customs, despite the soulless processes the Father has enforced, or been driven to enforce, the word should mean something, it is not nonessential, and you can never aspire—"
"One moment, please!"
"—you can never aspire to emulate the men your fathers were, decades ago, unless—"