"Money is still useful for some things, I'd imagine. Feel entirely free to put me on the payroll as long as this doesn't come with an obligation to ignore potential opportunities to be a useful demon elsewhere in the galaxy should they turn up."

"I have no inherent objection to you being a useful demon elsewhere in the galaxy. Of course I'm particularly keen on you being a useful demon in my part of the galaxy, but you've done plenty of that already. If I put you on the payroll, it will mostly be an acknowledgment of your continued usefulness."

"I will be delighted to continue my usefulness." Wag.

"Have you got a shopping list written up so I can make myself a copy and look it over for complications now, or should I await it? Also, topsoil in quantity is easiest to do when I can see a lot of the ground at once, which means flying," he waves a wing, "under my own power, although I can do it a bit slower from the ground, or reasonably well over specific areas from mountaintops or whatever, or from particularly detailed plans from a lightflyer that doesn't give me such an all-around clear view."

"The shopping list is written up, yes. I brought a copy, but if you'd rather make your own in whatever format you prefer, feel free. I'm afraid it would be a very bad idea to let you fly around miscellaneous parts of Barrayar under your own power, but if you want a vehicle that gives you a clear view of the ground without giving the ground a clear view of you, I'm sure that can be arranged."

"I could make a one-way-glass-bottomed lightflyer, but I couldn't stare out the floor if I were piloting it myself, so I'd need company. What format's your copy in?"

"Sounds like fun."

Cam takes the data disc. "Yeah, I'm going to have to convert this to read it on my computer - local computers are all extremely unportable." He puts the disc down on the table and makes one that will go in his own device, and puts it in his device. "No obvious wrinkles except I need to know where you want everything put."

"I will come up with a place for you to put things while you're busy conjuring dirt and plants."

"Cool. Am I going to be able to keep the wings while I run around to all these places or are there easily alarmed people loitering in the relevant warehouses-and-suchlike?"

"I will make sure the warehouses don't contain any easily alarmed people when you visit them."

"That is very kind of you."

"I prefer to avoid alarming my subjects unnecessarily."

"When we do get around to experimenting with dismissing me, assuming you can retrieve me again after the fact, I would like to find and retain the least racist angel available for easy on-and-off with the extra bits. So I can go out in non-radioactive public with a minimum of blood and inconvenient discards."

"'Least racist angel'?"

"Angels and demons don't get along very well, as a group. But if you summon a hundred of them probably one angel who is willing to be my assistant in exchange for their own shopping list will turn up. I could use an angel assistant for more things than just wing removal, they're generally good for recycling, getting stuff out of the way, one could de-radiate Vorkosigan Vashnoi, etcetera."

Miles perks up. "Ooh, yes please."

"Vorkosigan Vashnoi is the most dramatic example, but it's not the only place that could use de-radiating."

"Ah, alas, angelic de-radiation powers are extremely specific, everything that is not Vorkosigan Vashnoi will just have to stay radioactive, sorry to disappoint."