"Penguin. Big old flightless bird, about yea high - I have the meat and blubber and skin, actually, frozen nicely, probably going to sell it. There are some wolverines - lone hunters, smaller than most people - I didn't go after one of those because there's not many of them, but plenty of penguins."

He goes over the other notable dangers - landslides, unstable ice and permafrost in places, the extremes of weather that are reasonably likely, the phenomenon of exploding trees - usually just kills the tree but it could kill you if you're undefended and unlucky.

"I'll make sure to warn people about the trees. I guess maybe we'll want to handle forests differently than they do at home. How familiar are you with the kinds of things you found?"

"I'm not extremely familiar with the arctic, but I spent a couple of years in Alaska and Ontario hunting down magic and there are a lot of similarities to what's around here. Exploding trees are only a danger in deep winter."

"Good to know. Oh, I heard you have a medical textbook you want copied, any book-copying can happen at my expense if I can have the copies, I could really use a library for people to study from without having to go back to the mainland."

"I was offering that as a favor to Mahan. I won't be held liable for the absolute accuracy of everything in my library. And if you're going to make a library you can have 'em but I want a contract that says you won't sell the copies without giving me some."

"I don't mean this as a threat but does that mean you don't want any further copying after you die? And what if I sell to someone who resells the copy? And what about renting them?"

"If I die I don't care what happens to the books after that, but I don't plan on doing so. Renting them out I want the same percentage cut as selling them. Let's say fifteen percent. Isn't there a law that can forbid copying? Then again I imported most of these, didn't write 'em. If you want to sell access to a library with these books in it, I'll want... One ring per year per copy per book. That's pretty low, I think. And this can all expire in ten years so it's not hanging over you forever. Oh, and I don't care about resellers, only when you sell them."

"Ten years sounds a lot better than forever for making sure everyone has an incentive to be nice instead of try to kill you. Some states have laws about copying things that aren't published, and this is one of them, but not about things that are. One ring per year each works. I could end up selling copies for different prices depending on if I'm the one covering the cost of copying, seems unfair that if I pay an illusion mage or spend my time hand-copying a book I should have to pay more than if I just sell someone the chance to look at it and they make a copy. And I'm worried you might end up feeling cheated if someone just pays to read and then walks out with a copy without telling me, I wouldn't know to pay you for that."

"Isn't murder illegal? Oh, right, there's no concept of 'copy rights' here. In America there are laws about copying published things, so the person who published them can make money off them and people are encouraged to write and publish more things. Hmm..."

"Of course, doesn't mean it never happens, sometimes people don't realize they'll get caught. So in ten years of having 'copy rights' on these books, how much would you expect to make?"

"Inventions like printing presses and the internet made it incredibly easy to copy things on a large scale and that's about when copyright laws got put in. I'd expect to make... A lot. Especially if some of them get really popular. Accounting for the different market, I really have no idea how much a publisher would expect to make over ten years here."

"I'm not sure either. Back in Thelm Ret the library... might have made more than 3456 rings a year from reading fees, probably not much more? I'm not very confident of that. What fraction of that do you think sounds fair?"

"That's not much at all... You could earn more renting the space to live in than using it as a library. You know what, how about I just charge you per-hour for access to the tablet while you copy things out the first time? Seems simpler, and you can choose what kind of books you want and do whatever you want with them, not my problem anymore."

"Sure, how much per hour?"

"Eh, twenty, but I get to forbid certain books. Some of the science we've discovered can be used to do nasty, nasty stuff and we probably don't want knowledge of it going hither and yon."

If no sun mage has ever killed themselves making plutonium, he'll eat his hat. But it's not a trivial leap from there to bombs and he'd rather keep that whole category secret if he can help it.

"Twenty's fine, do you want to list the books I can read or the ones I can't?"

"I'll do a thing that makes it only list ones I want you to be able to copy, hide the rest. Most non-fiction books have tables of contents at the front to give you an idea what they're about, helpfully enough."

Pause.

"...Oh, damn. My books are all in English."

"At some point I can maybe get someone to translate, knowledge magic can do that. I think. I'm not sure if it works for writing." Sigh. "I might be able to pay for translated versions but you have other things to do right now."

"I bet it works. Though translating is more of a skill than just literally copying words with new meanings, you get crappy nonsensical translations that way. I could do better. Maybe later. Oh well, it was a good idea until we realized it was impossible."

"It really was. Maybe if we find Milliways, we can do it in there. Well, what now?"

"Unless you want me to plan a building for you or show sun and structure mages concrete, I go build a calculator."

"I'll probably regret not asking for that right now but go work on your calculator for now and tell me if you think of anything else you could do."

"Right. Quick question. Why do you use imperatives so much?"

"Just to be clear those aren't orders as your governor, you can retire to a quiet life as a penguin farmer if you want, you don't have to make a calculator."

"Figured as much. But phrasing it in ways that they might be inflames the red hot Texan blood running through my veins with the spirit of liberty and rebellion." He says this completely deadpan and heads for the door.

"Anyway, see ya."