"Apparently. What kind of schedule are we on here?"

"What kind of schedule would you like?"

"My understanding is that getting all the way to Komarr takes a while, so whenever's convenient for my escorts, I suppose, I'm excited about the project but I've waited this long. In the meantime I can give somebody a crash course on generic summoning in case you want more than one demon's worth of magic done. I'll help you pay the fairies and angels if you like."

"I'll take the crash course," volunteers Miles. "Since I'm already in line for the uncertain side effects."

"And we can start seeing how, exactly, it works to have daeva summoned here, since as far as I know that's unprecedented, and I'd like to be sure that you can dismiss and resummon me before I go off to the middle of nowhere to attempt to make wormholes."

"...If I can't dismiss you, I want to find that out before I summon anybody else; but if I can't resummon you, I want to find that out after you do whatever you're going to do to Komarr," says Miles.

"I could look through my old notes and see if there's any daeva I can specify for you who wouldn't object to the change of scenery? But yeah, reasonable point."

"By all means, look through your old notes."

Cam pulls out his disguised computer and starts poking around on it. "Here's hoping there's overlap between that set and the set I'd trust unbound, because being stuck here indefinitely bound would kind of suck..."

"Yeah, sounds like it."

"Eh, bindings aren't that bad, you can make them nice and loose even, but there's being attached to a particular task for a couple of months for a big project and then there's years and years where you can't just - do things." He gets to where he was going in his notes. "And - nope, there's no crossreference. Sorry. So I guess get the essentials out of me and then I'm guinea-pig for resummonability."

"Looks like a plan," Miles agrees.

"I admit," says Gregor, "I'm curious about why exactly you're so excited at the prospect of terraforming a planet."

"Okay, picture this, I'm twenty-two, I have successfully publicized the existence of daeva after finding dusty old manuals for summoning in an abandoned house, and somebody with economic incentives to be pissed off at everybody knowing daeva exist figures out who exactly screwed up his business model and shoots me in the head. I wake up in Hell with magic powers and no way to get back home and on track with my plans for doing exciting things unless people summon me, and since I was a demon, nobody would even let me talk when summoned beyond 'yes, summoner' and 'no, summoner'. I spend the next hundred and fifty years catching up on my reading, waiting for my parents to die so I can send them letters, and wishing to no end that somebody would summon me and let me bloody well -" This is an interesting dialect of English, isn't it - "do something more sophisticated and worthwhile and scaled up than the highlights of 'confirm translations of things into demonic languages' and 'build them a house' and 'demonic booty call'. I'm a demon, my material needs are absolutely taken care of for all eternity to a standard that arbitrarily privileged mortals could envy, and much as I like reading and flying and reading and flying and reading and flying and reading - that's vacation. I have had a century and a half of nearly unbroken vacation and I'm sick of it. Let me terraform your planets please."

"I will be very happy to let you terraform my planets."

"Yay!" Wag wag.

Miles, having less self-control than his emperor, cracks up.

Cam grins at him.

"And if we run out of planets for me to terraform I can make 'em from scratch. That'll take longer, though."

"...I'm intrigued," says Gregor. "How long, exactly?"

"For an Earth-sized planet? Probably months. Longer if you want it completely flora'd up instead of with just seed populations. Longer if you need anything smarter than bugs running around on it, demons can do live stuff but aren't so good with brains."

"Hmm," says Gregor. "Well, I probably have many better uses for your time than generating planets from scratch, at least if it takes that long. But I'll keep it in mind for later."

"Sure. I'm immortal, I can wait on getting around to that until after I have solved all of the other problems that there are."