...Weird. He didn't think he was that slow on the uptake.

...No binding. No witnesses.

What in the fuck is up with those stars that is not the Milky Way as he knows it. He conjures up his computer, double-checks.

Somebody made massive advances in space travel and nobody told him? He feels so left out. Especially since if they did it this fast it's got to be demonically terraformed. He could've helped, dammit.

...No binding, no witnesses.

He makes a very thin wire looped around the base of each wing and grits his teeth and pulls. He remembers to tape gauze to his back in time to save his jeans, reaches over his shoulder to see that he's all healed, towels off, and sets wings and bloody towel and gauze all in a pile in his circle. He flicks a little hot plasma at them and makes sure they've caught nicely and that the fire's not going to spread. He confounds the circle with an extra layer of chalk so no one can copy this dangerous stunt.

And it's a little chilly, so he shrugs on a brand-new long leather coat that will save him the necessity of being rid of his tail right away, and wanders off.

If he's smart about eavesdropping, he can learn the following things in fairly short order just from publicly overheard conversations:

This planet is called Barrayar, and its main language is one of the two dialects of English he picked up from his summoner. Minority languages include the dialect of Russian which his summoner spoke at a fairly superficial conversational level, plus a variant of French and a variant of Greek.

It is the year 2995 according to the 'standard' calendar, which seems to correspond to Earth's.

No one ever talks about daeva.

That's very interesting.

That's very interesting.

Cam operates under the assumption that he is stuck here at least for the rest of his summoner's natural life, because who knows where he's gotten to and whether summoning is still working like it has in Cam's memory in any respect. But that's not so bad. His parents will be kind of put out.

Cam learns what to-go coffee looks like around here and drinks lots of it rather than figure out a good place to sleep. He wanders, and listens (and trips, missing his wings). He gets rid of his computer and makes one that's the same inside but has a casing that looks more native-like (not a full computer, apparently for cryptographic reasons people don't just carry around full computers anymore; it looks like a calendar device). He makes himself a thing that looks like a lightflyer but handles like something he knows how to pilot and he goes out to uninhabited locations that need topsoil and adds it. He loiters in bookstores and reads things and only once has to counterfeit marks for an angry bookseller who wants him to buy something. He finds a food pantry and restocks them.

And after a few weeks, he determines that he doesn't want to be on this planet. He wants to be on the colony with the arcologies. But there's jump points in the way, and even if he makes his own spaceship - hell, even if he just makes air and flaps all the way there with a new set of wings - he doesn't know how to finesse the jump point. The implants for the jump pilots don't look like he can just sprout them in his own brain DIY style the way he did the implant that lets him manage his computer, they're too finicky and too big. And he doesn't know if he even has jump pilot potential, and also, there's five-dimensional physics involved, which, what, maybe he can learn that but he sure doesn't know it now and has no good angle for getting into jump pilot school.

So he needs to be conspicuous. In a nice, non-threatening way. While, ideally, no longer possessing a tail. That gets wired off and burnt too. (Ugh, he misses it and the wings, but this place is hell on extraneous extremities, the pop culture alone would be enough to make him nervous about that.)

And he picks something conspicuous and... Well, there's really nothing he can do that's totally non-threatening. He's a demon, an unbound demon, he's kind of threatening. But maybe he can do something friendly.

He spends a while with an art program on his unobtrusive little computer until he has a design he likes (some of it plagiarized from a past this world never had) and then that disgustingly ugly building gets a mosaic facade. It's very pretty, very abstract, the colors blend in with the neighborhood.

And then he sits in a face-obscuring hooded getup because he would like to be able to melt away without major cosmetic reconstruction if this goes south, on a bench on the street a few blocks away from the building.

One person stops in the street and gawps at the new facade. Then another one stops beside the first. Soon there is a gaggle.

A man in a uniform comes out the side door of the building, heading for the gawpers. He glances up at the building as he leaves, and does some staring himself. Then he darts back inside.

More men in uniforms come swarming out. They begin to go over the added material inch by inch with handheld scanning devices. Some of them use what seems to be levitation gear, while others are busy erecting scaffoldings. The gaggle is shooed away, and then shooed again when a new one forms, and so on.





And then, after about half an hour, someone strolls up to Cam from the direction opposite the building. This one is not wearing a uniform. Also, he's very short.

"Hullo there," he says. "Don't suppose you saw who gave Cockroach Central the new paint job."