"Habitable-ish. Do I have an exciting career in terraforming ahead of me before I get bored and start whipping up my own planets from scratch?"

"If you find terraforming exciting, then yes, yes you certainly do."

"I said, I always wanted to terraform a planet, but nobody at home would let me at Mars. Or let me talk."

"...Er?"

"It's customary to summon demons incapable of talking except to agree to or refuse proposed deals. Kind of inconvenient. It's so we don't talk people out of their souls."

"I cannot, in fact, take your soul."

"Good to know. Why do people think you can take their souls?"

"Well, demons have this mythological presence in addition to the actual one, and for a long time only a handful of people knew we were real, so actual information was thin on the ground. We suffered for the comparison and since they don't let us talk we can't really correct 'em. Angels and fairies are nearly as dangerous - well, to the individual summoner, they can't destroy entire planets - and they don't get that kind of treatment."

"Entire planets...? Black holes?" he guesses.

"Right in one. I promise not to make a black hole on your planet."

"Thank you. Very kind. I would object if you did that, and so would a lot of other people. Granted not for very long."

"I know. I wasn't even slightly tempted."

"I suspected as much. You don't seem the black-holes type."

"Well, I have one at home. Personal gravity well."

"How... tidy," says Miles. "Here's a question: do you think you could make a wormhole? If you test it, please do so very far away from any jump route people actually need."

"I don't know. I can try it. I've been wondering the same thing."

"If you can pull it off, you may become Gregor's new favourite person."

"I assume this comes with all kinds of fun perks."

"Well, yes and no. Vor nepotism isn't like everyone else's. Do they have the phrase, 'the reward for a job well done is a bigger job', where you're from?"

"I've heard, 'don't pretty up your summoning products unless you want them knocking on your skull in the middle of a good dream'."

"I'm not sure it's quite the same thing, but it sounds close. The implication around here is, if you're good at something, expect to be called upon to do it. If you're good at something and you make that fact known to the people in charge of making other people do the thing, expect to be called upon to do it a lot. 'Person in charge of making other people do the thing' is a pretty good description of Gregor."

"Well, I don't mind, Hell is tacky and not exactly full of meaningful work."

"If you like meaningful work, I think you'll enjoy being Gregor's favourite person quite a lot."

"I like meaningful work! It is why I show up to summons. Unfortunately it is hard to say 'summoners, please, I like meaningful work, I will just terraform the entirety of Mars for you for a recent copy of the Extranet Crawler Report' when they won't let me talk."