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Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.
He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -
Cam on Barrayar
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from_scratch
thisvorlunatic
"Happily, you have circumvented that problem here. Let's see... what else should I be giving you a crash course in? Have any questions been weighing on your mind since you got here?"
from_scratch
"I'm sort of curious about the two and a half dialects I got when I landed but that's hardly urgent... I found artificial gravity consistently enough in fiction I skimmed to suspect it's a real and nonmagical thing, can you confirm...? And why do people freak out so much about mutations here?"
thisvorlunatic
"Yes, we have artificial gravity. And we freak out about mutations because..."
He looks away, sighs, thinks, looks back.
"Right, so in the Time of Isolation, there was a lot of mutation going on. We haven't untangled all the causes for certain, but radiation from abandoned power sources breaking down, concentration effects from starting with a population of fifty thousand, and general wear and tear from living on a half-terraformed planet are the main theories. People became very upset about it, superstitious purity concerns and all that, and with the technology available in those days, about the only response they had was to practice widespread infanticide on any baby who came out looking insufficiently healthy and babylike. It's still done in some places. We're trying to get rid of the custom, but it's slow going. It hasn't even been a full century since we made contact with the wider galaxy again."
He looks away, sighs, thinks, looks back.
"Right, so in the Time of Isolation, there was a lot of mutation going on. We haven't untangled all the causes for certain, but radiation from abandoned power sources breaking down, concentration effects from starting with a population of fifty thousand, and general wear and tear from living on a half-terraformed planet are the main theories. People became very upset about it, superstitious purity concerns and all that, and with the technology available in those days, about the only response they had was to practice widespread infanticide on any baby who came out looking insufficiently healthy and babylike. It's still done in some places. We're trying to get rid of the custom, but it's slow going. It hasn't even been a full century since we made contact with the wider galaxy again."
thisvorlunatic
"I'm not a genetic mutant, not that that stops people throwing rotten food at me if I walk down the wrong street. Anyway, I'm pretty well patched to begin with. If it weren't for the miracles of modern medicine they'd have to carry me around in a bucket."
from_scratch
"Okay," shrugs Cam. "Between you and your doctor and any angels you conjure up, just thought I'd mention."
thisvorlunatic
"Thanks for the tip, I suppose. What was that about two and a half dialects?"
from_scratch
"Oh, daeva get languages of our summoners. Prevents translation difficulties. I already had English, but it's changed some in the several hundred years since the year and universe in which I learned it. I eavesdropped enough to use this one when I was talking to Barrayarans but I also have," he switches, "this other one, pretty well complete in vocabulary, and," he switches again, "a smattering of this thing."
thisvorlunatic
"'This other one' is standard Betan English. 'This thing' is Vorkosigan District hill dialect. I am very likely to be the only person on the planet who speaks those three in that proportion."
from_scratch
"Oh. Huh. And have you been drawing demon-summoning circles in pink and green chalk in a local park?"
thisvorlunatic
"Uh... oh, hell, there was that bunch of half-finished chalk art, and I went and filled in all the lines," he recalls. "Yep. I'm your man, apparently."
from_scratch
"Okay. Do you feel the need to know how to be rid of me right at this moment? Assuming you can be rid of me, I don't know how many of the usual rules apply."
thisvorlunatic
"It would be handy, I suppose. I don't intend to be rid of you unless you want to be rid, or seem terribly likely to start dropping black holes on inhabited planets. But if I thought you were going to do that I wouldn't be taking you home to meet my mother."
from_scratch
"Well, in the interest of operating in good faith, all you have to do to shoo me is concentrate on wanting me shooed for about a minute solid."
from_scratch
"But not with too much intense focus, please, you don't even know how to get me back yet."
from_scratch
Cam hands him a piece of paper. "That'll do it. Finish the circle part last, put it on a horizontal surface in any material with space for me to stand in the middle."
thisvorlunatic
Paper. He is from 2159. Miles folds up the sheet and puts it in his pocket.
from_scratch
"That one doesn't have any bindings, you'll want to be more careful summoning random daeva."
thisvorlunatic
"I definitely don't intend to summon random daeva until you've explained how to do it safely."
from_scratch
"Which, fortunately, I have a comprehensive knowledge of how to do."
