There's one entity they can summon that'll definitely be able to supply them with air, but she knows what sorts of payments demons demand - sex if you're lucky, your soul if you're not. Normally she'd say that that makes them just plain not an option, but this isn't normally, this is weighing herself against her sister and her nephew and several dozen other people who are very shortly going to suffocate to death. And it'll have to be the first demon she summons, she doesn't have time to hold out for a trade that doesn't make her want to scream. More than that, she won't have time to negotiate until she happens to hit on what the demon wants; she'll have to let it talk if she expects to get anywhere in time to save the colony.

It's not an easy choice, in the sense of not having to agonize over it, but it doesn't take her very long to make it. She takes one of the circles back to her living quarters. Her hands shake as she scratches out large parts of the binding, including the gag (not the whole binding, she's stupid but she's not that stupid). 

It'll be fine. She'll scream in her head through the whole thing, and then when it's over she'll scream out loud into her pillows, assuming there's anything left of her to care, for as long as it takes her to stop feeling the need to scream. And her nephew and her sister and four dozen other people will go right on living their lives, and that's worth way more than anything there is of her.

She digs her fingernails into her palms in a desperate attempt to keep herself from crying. She does her best to imagine being someone competent and capable and decisive.

She summons a demon.

A demon appears! He is wearing dark-colored jeans and not wearing a shirt. He has a barbed tail that reaches a little past the knees, till he swishes it, and wings, all three in navy blue. "- ooh, you're letting me talk! Hello there!"

"Hi," she squeaks, because this is a less terrifying greeting than she was expecting, and also he's not wearing a shirt, and both of these things momentarily throw her off. "Uh, uh - this colony is running out of oxygen and we need more of it now. Can - can you make enough oxygen to support fifty people until they find and seal the leak. Please."

"Uh, I could do that but depending on how much of this binding is left -" He peers at the binding but the preprints have too much text to read at a glance. "- you probably want to say 'air' or maybe 'breathable air', and not 'oxygen', because pure oxygen is a heck of a fire hazard."

She looks at the floor. She is stupid stupid stupid, she should not be doing this, except for the thing where everyone is going to die.

"Can you make enough breathable air to support fifty people until they find the leak," she says, in a voice that is almost but not quite actually steady.

"I will also need permission to make coffee in case that takes a while, I think that's the only other thing you're missing if you don't want, like, a new arcology."

Her brain decides that it's just going to chant stupid stupid stupid in the background really fast, but it's repetitive enough that she can mostly ignore it. "Uh. You can make coffee. That's fine. Sorry." Aaa, can he somehow hurt someone with coffee? Probably, but she can't think right now about how to be specific enough to prevent that, and it seems really rude to deny someone coffee and oh frick she should not be talking to demons this is why you're supposed to gag them - "New arcology would be nice, but I don't have designs ready to go. I could maybe get them, but we - we have less than three hours of air left and it seemed best to take action, uh, before that."

"Yeah, I understand, we can negotiate a revision to the task later since you're in a hurry. Okay, air until leak is found - actually let's say found and fixed or obviated, I don't want you to discover it'll take a week to repair and freak out at me? I will make you breathable air until the leak is found and fixed, or obviated, and coffee beverages as necessary to support staying awake to perform this task, in exchange for -"

He's honestly being way more helpful than she expected. If it'd been someone else they could very easily have turned the colony into a bomb for shits and giggles, or just failed to actually solve the problem, but he's being decent on that end and so on the other end she'll just - she'll suck it up. Because it's important, and because she can do that. Because however terrible it is, she wants to be the sort of person who can handle terrible things when they are important.

It'll be fine, it'll be fine, stupid stupid stupid stupid but it'll be fine -

"- a book recommendation. Deal?"

"A - wait, what?"

"If you're not a reader I can take music or theater or, like, that loose thread on your sleeve, I'm not picky, people gotta breathe."

"Uh. I can - a book rec is fine, I just - uh, deal."

Well now her brain is like, doing something beyond internally screaming? She didn't actually know that there was anything beyond internally screaming. Maybe this is the part where she breaks down crying. She feels about five seconds away from crying, actually. She's gonna try her level best not to, though, that would look super dumb.

There is a pleasant breeze emanating from the demon's direction. It's even a nice temperature.

"- are you okay? It's gonna be all right, you have plenty of air now, you can call Earth and get a pickup if you don't want me to make you a shuttle or something."

"I'm OK," she says, very unconvincingly, and then she's crying silently and wiping her face and otherwise pretending that this is not happening. "I'm really fine. Really. Uh. Thank you. I'm just gonna, uh, sit on the floor for a minute. If that's OK."

"...yeah. I mean, of course," he says. He plops down on the floor in his circle, tail swishing just barely over the edge. Leans back with his hands braced against the floor.

"M'sorry," she says quietly, after a minute or so of trying to pull herself together. "I thought that was going to go worse."

"Could've. I don't know how much worse, I haven't read this whole thing." He gestures at the binding with its strikethroughs. "It's okay, I'm not gonna hurt you."

She nods solemnly. "I didn't think I'd be able to - to finish negotiating fast enough. With the gag and stuff. Might not've guessed anything you wanted in time." She laughs, quietly and a little hysterically. "I would not have guessed a book rec."

"They're fairly mainstream currency with demons, media recommendations, but I'm getting the impression you didn't recently graduate with an associate's degree in summoning."

"I did not. I uh. I shouldn't be doing this sort of thing at all, really, but. There were lives and stuff."

"Yes, I understand. It's a good thing you had an emergency kit, I'm glad that didn't get skipped along with whatever would've prevented the leak."

She nods. "It's not a very good colony. I didn't know it'd be quite as precarious as it is. But my sister and her son live here, so - um, sorry, let me know if I should, like, shut up at any point - "

"It's fine. Making air isn't very interesting and I don't think this lets me make a book or my computer or anything."

"Oh, sorry, uh - we might have some novels somewhere, I can see if I can find one for you? I think a lot of things got turned into air, there was an angel running around helping with that earlier. I should maybe tell people that there's more air now, if they haven't already noticed - I should probably tell them before they come looking for the explanation, actually - "

She doesn't really relish the thought of explaining the bindings situation. Or of people seeing a shirtless demon in her quarters. These seem like dumb things to think about at the moment, but she's pretty sure that she's a pretty dumb person, which is probably why she's thinking about them anyway.

"I'd appreciate a book if there's some left and yeah I bet folks would rather know."

"Right, yeah," she says, and walks across the room to a cabinet with a few objects she really didn't want to lose. There are some fairly beat-up science fiction books with highlights and margin notes in them - some are classics, but some are obscure enough or new enough that he hopefully hasn't already read them. She places the small pile in front of him. "Hopefully one of these is good. Thanks so much for, um, for being good about things. I'll come back after things are - after people don't think they're about to die."

And now that she feels like she has thoroughly embarrassed herself to death, on top of holding onto about as much anxiety and relief as it's possible for a person to hold onto at the same time, she goes to see what the situation is like in the rest of the colony.

"No problem," the demon says as she goes.

The instruments have registered the added air. Participants in the argument about angel efficiency are confused; the angel is outside on a rock run at the moment and hasn't heard yet. Everyone else is relieved.

She explains that she has summoned a demon to create more air until the leak is fixed. They have an agreement and the situation is under control, though the leak itself does still need to be fixed. She does her best to look very serious and competent while she's explaining this - hopefully she can project enough confidence to get everyone to mostly believe that the situation is, in fact, under control. She doesn't mention anything about the loosened binding, that seems like borrowing trouble that she really isn't prepared to deal with. 

"Can the demon fix the leak?" someone asks.

"Don't stick our necks out that far, the angel can do it, we just have to find it. How long did you - buy the demon for -"

"What does it want -"

"Until the leak is fixed," she repeats. "I don't want to ask for anything else right now, if the angel can do it, but the air is handled, it's OK." She feels sort of terrible about not answering that last question, but she doesn't want to invite more questions that she may or may not be up for fielding. She'll be sure to erase the possible stain on his honor after the rest of the situation is handled.

Efforts to find the leak are redoubled. Someone runs off to update the angel when he comes back with the latest sledful of rocks.

Kalia is most of the way calmed down by the time she returns to the room with the demon, though her brain is now silently yelling that she's a terrible, terrible person for letting there be ambiguity about what their friendly neighborhood demon wanted. But hey, nobody's going to suffocate to death and nobody's going to rape her, so all in all she's pretty sure she doesn't have very much to be upset about.

"Hi," she says, much more cheerfully than before. "Uh, sorry again for inconveniencing you like this. Or sorry for the first time, I don't remember if I actually got around to apologizing before."

"It's really all right. You know summonses are voluntary, right?"

"Yeah, I know that, I just, um - feel bad for making a mess and then relying on the kindness of strangers to fix it. It's rude. And flagrantly irresponsible. And rude."

"I assume you didn't cause the leak."

"Well, no. We collectively made a mess. We didn't have to be living in a dangerous and unsafe colony on Pluto." She frowns. "Though I suppose the others would've been here regardless of where I was, and maybe none of them would've thought to summon a demon."

"That's the spirit, I guess."

She smiles tentatively. " - oh, I haven't introduced myself, have I. That was rude, too. I'm Kalia Teller."

"Nice to meet you! I'm Cam."

"Hello, Cam. It's nice to meet you, too. I imagine it still would be if you weren't in the process of saving my life."

"I do try to be pleasant company, although I can't imagine we'd have met if you didn't need a demon really badly."

"We would not have. You're, uh, nicer than I was led to believe demons generally were. But I don't summon anyone. I do try not to do horrifically dangerous things that I'm entirely unqualified for."

"Many demons are really nice! But the really nice ones are less likely to take summonses."

She nods. "I suppose it's probably easier to be altruistic when people don't assume you're evil and insist on not letting you talk."

"Yes. Also if what you'd want to trade is, like, the chance to go to the real Bahamas, nobody's going to guess that. So a lot of demons only want to show up if they're in the mood for something a summoner will guess."

"...oh. Well. That's depressing."

"Yes."

She sighs. "Why do you take summons? If that's not, uh, an excessively personal thing to ask."

"I like helping people. There's nobody to help in Hell. Okay, that's not technically true, I could find something, but it would require skills I'm not otherwise interested in."

"Helping people's nice. Wish I were a lot better at it than I am." She nods at the pile of books. "Did you find anything interesting?"

"Yes, you've got good taste! I've read some of them but not this one." He waggles the book he's holding.

She blushes. "I'm glad you like them! Felt sort of dumb not tossing literally all available matter at the angel, but most of those were gifts."

"There's a lot of Pluto nobody needs for anything, I don't see why you'd have to give up all your books. And now here I am, so you're vindicated."

"We're very lucky you took the summons. I'll try not to let one success make me any more reckless."

"I don't advise recklessness with bindings in general if you can avoid it but gags are often going to do more harm than good, for whatever that's worth."

"I'll remember it! I, uh, probably will not be doing very much more summoning after all of this. Because it's dangerous. Though I guess it would be really nice if the people here could have a safer station and some extra equipment. I kind of want to just go back to Earth at this point, but it'd be good to improve the situation for Elysium first, now that I know someone who might be willing to do that. Only if it wouldn't be too much trouble for you, of course."

"Yeah, sure. I'll be better at coming up with station specs for it once I'm not simultaneously making air, but I'd be happy to do that and have the engineering quals for it."

"Gosh. That'd be really great, if you could do it. Later, of course. Um, I can come up with lots of book recs. I've read a lot of books."

"Sounds good."

There's a knock on the door. Kalia looks at the floor. "It's probably just my sister. Uh, I'm just gonna go talk to her outside for a second - I'm sorry to ask but it'd be helpful if you didn't say anything right now, just so she doesn't worry excessively - "

He makes a zipping gesture at his mouth.

"Thank you," she whispers earnestly, trying to make her gratitude as obvious as possible. There's another, more insistent knock on the door, and then Kalia gets up to open it.

Azalea Teller is not the sort of person who waits for permission (or for anything, actually) to hug her sister, especially when she's worried. "Kalia, baby, I was looking for the thing, they said you'd summoned a demon?" She glances at Cam. "Well. You summoned a demon. Got one that's easy on the eyes, anyway. - I'm sorry, that's not helpful, is it."

"It's really not," squeaks Kalia. "It's fine, though, nothing weird's happening, just can you please leave my room before I die of mortification?"

Azalea glares suspiciously at Cam.

Innocently making air and drinking coffee.

She allows her sister to push her out of the room, and shuts the door behind them both. 

"Kalia, baby, are you OK?"

"I'm fine. I'm totally fine. I was better before you showed up, though I suppose I appreciate the gesture in the abstract, though if you could never be this awkward again for the rest of my life then I would also super appreciate that. I will also be way better when you stop calling me 'baby'. Nothing bad is happening at all, I'm gonna give him a book recommendation for his trouble, which is really a beyond reasonable price for what could end up being several hours to a day or so of his time, so if you could just - not give him a hard time, and also, like, think, before you say any words, ever, that would be awesome."

"....you're very stressed for someone who's giving away a book rec."

She sighs heavily. "Azalea. I appreciate your concern. Nothing bad is happening, other than my imminent death of embarrassment. If it were, I wouldn't tell you right now because I really, really do not think that you would be particularly helpful. I would tell you afterward, though, so when I continue to insist that I gave him a book rec, you'll be able to be sure that that is in fact precisely what happened. Can you please leave me alone so that I can go dig my own grave and bury myself there for the next, like, six hours."

"You're incredibly bad at being reassuring," says Azalea, before kissing her forehead. "Sorry for embarrassing you in front of your extra-dimensional visitor. My room's open for crying and hot chocolate, if you need those at any point in the near future."

"I will try my best to accept this offer in the spirit with which it was intended."

Her sister leaves, and Kalia returns to the room Cam's in.

"She means well," says Kalia, very decisively.

"Having little idea of what this led her to do besides hug you, I can't comment."

"She's just, um, slightly confused about the terms of our agreement. I did tell her you wanted a book rec. I don't think she entirely believed me? She didn't freak out, she just seems - sad and not really sure what to do with that." She sighs. "I'll fix it later."

"If it would ever help for me to also tell her that I wanted a book rec, let me know."

She laughs weakly. "I don't think that would help right now. But I appreciate the offer."

"No problem."

"D'you want some food or something? Uh, I don't know if demons need food at all, but it might be a while before they find the leak still."

"I'm putting calories in my coffee. I do eat, most days, but I'm not going to get hungry like so. And we don't need to eat, we just get a little hungry and then not any hungrier than that."

"Oh, that's cool. Uh, I'm gonna make a sandwich or something for me, and if you want one too then you can have one?"

"I would feel bad about taking your food if you're on short rations or anything, I don't know what-all the angel airified..."

"A lot of stuff, but we're not in imminent danger of running out of food. I think they decided to go with the rocks plan before they got that far. It's not any real trouble, though, we're gonna be fine. If you feel bad you can replenish our food stores when you make the other spare equipment later."

"I would be happy to. All right, I'll take a sandwich unless you make it out of that kind of cheese with the bugs in it or something."

"No cheese with bugs," she promises, and gets to work in a tiny kitchenette in the other room. She feels significantly better about herself while doing something that's even a little bit arguably useful. 

The demon sips coffee and makes air and reads her book.

She completes her sandwiches, eats one, and serves the other. And then she takes one of the books from the pile and starts re-reading it, because this is immensely less stressful than trying to indefinitely make small talk with an exceptionally nice demon.

Then they will hang out in this strangely windy room eating sandwiches and reading books!

This is a pretty good way to be, in her opinion. She's not inclined to do much else until the the leak is found, unless that takes a really long time.

Someone turns up a leak, although it seems so small, not like it could really have caused all this trouble. That's probably the only one though, the odds that there are two are very low. Looks like a tiny meteorite impact.

And the angel's able to fix it without a problem?

Yup. He can put a rock near the crack to fill it in and there it is, all fixed.

She cheerfully informs Cam that the leak has been found and fixed, then hands him a piece of paper with several not-very-striked-out book titles and one circled one.

"Had to think about which one was best," she says. "They're all good, though."

"Thank you! And now we can negotiate a new task or you can send me back if you're done with me."

"New task would be good, if you're up for it. I'm not actually sure how to use the emergency circles to summon someone specific. Also not sure what the colony needs off the top of my head, though, other than food, so if I'm keeping you from anything then I'll understand if you need to go home now."

"I have no pressing engagements. I don't have your colony's shopping list but if you want to compile some requests I can fill 'em. I can also tell you how to do circles for someone specific, but you can't use an emergency preprint for that, you'd have to let me make it for you."

"It'd be good to know how. I'll want to check it to be sure it's right before I use it, though, and that'll take time, so if you could hold off disappearing while I see what the situation is, that'd be really great. Oh, and uh, if you can really make another station, are there resources you'd need in order to do that? The designing parts?"

"I need to be able to make my computer to work on, and conjure reference data as needed if I want something I don't already have on it."

She nods. "You can conjure your computer and any reference data you need to be able to make a station."

"...you don't want to make that conditional on my coughing up the station?"

"...if you then make the station," she says, frowning. "I don't know that there's a point to adding conditionals you tell me to add, it's not doing very much work as a safeguard, but maybe it's at least good for getting in the habit of thinking about things. Which is apparently not something I'm accustomed to doing."

"So, the point, mechanically speaking, of the task having two halves is that you can dismiss me if you've paid me but can't if I've done work you haven't paid for, and I can shake you down for whatever you agreed to give me if I've done my job and you haven't paid me. For this reason, it's best practice to pay your daeva before they do the task. In this particular case, since you've already paid me everything we've agreed on, it doesn't matter very much, but it's a good habit to be clear at all times on what you're exchanging and what you're allowing for what services, unless you have a more extended social relationship with a specific daeva. I guess if you don't plan to summon anybody ever again it doesn't matter much what habits you're in but I thought I'd mention."

"Thank you," she says, very quietly, while her brain decides whether it's worth it to bother screaming about her general incompetence for a bit. "I really appreciate it. The trying to develop good habits seems important."

"I am in fact qualified to teach a course on this but the full curriculum probably takes longer than you want to invest."

"Probably. Not that I have anything particularly better to do, though I don't know that I'd be any good at learning it."

"It's not one of those fields where you need to be able to think in twelve spatial dimensions. You mostly need to be thoughtful and attentive and not overextend your thoughtfulness and attentiveness."

"I've probably been thoughtful and attentive at some point. I don't know that the world should trust me to be both of them consistently. But, uh, I'd like to learn it, even if I don't think I'm a very good person to actually use it. I don't think ignorance is making me any safer. Um, not that you have to teach me or anything, that sounds like a lot to ask of you, just don't feel bad about the pointers?"

"I would be happy to teach you but I am unable to dispense valid certifications and also people might look at you funny."

"Oh! People already do that. I live in a weird incompetent misfit colony on Pluto."

"Surely the other incompetent misfits who... what's the philosophy here, increased extranet latency will result in people spending more time on non-extranet projects? Humans should live on the maximum number of rocks? - anyway surely anyone who'd look at you funny doesn't live close enough to look at you."

"They're looking at us in spirit. Everyone here already knows I just summoned a demon and spent the past several hours with him, and they further know that I'm a weird bookworm person who insists on collecting obscure useless knowledge I'll never be able to do anything with, so I'm not super worried about them staring. Except insofar as they might think I'm in some kind of danger. And except insofar as you care. Uh, if you care."

"Care if people look at you funny? I don't care if you don't."

"Then we collectively mostly do not care," she says cheerfully. "Uh, I might care a little. But I care way too much about everything, and if I don't do things because they're a tiny bit stressful, then I'll probably just never do anything, and that doesn't really sound like a fantastic way to live."

"Everything is stressful? Have you been evaluated for some kind of anxiety issue?"

"...y'know, I'm gonna add that to my list of reasons why I should probably not be on Pluto right now. But today has admittedly been, like, way more stressful than most of the other days of my life. Combined. So that's something."

"You're handling it well."

"Thanks! I'm trying. You're being very helpful."

"I'd ask for a good Davidson's rating, but I'm not on their list."

"Ah. I'd leave a stellar review if you were. Um, OK, you've received your payment for the air, so - does it work if we negotiate the terms of the other station deal now, and then I give you your payment for that, and then I can figure out what else this colony needs while you work on the station designs?"

"Technically unless this binding is weird in some way I have permission to make the stuff I need to design an arcology, and am tasked with making such an arcology. Although it has no other meaningful constraints on its parameters so if I wanted out I could hand you a snowglobe. We can renegotiate again as described just fine."

"I wouldn't actually be upset if you handed me a snowglobe, given everything. But uh, something that could comfortably and safely support at least fifty people would be nice. Do I need to give you another book rec for it?"

"Neither formally nor in what I'm going to hold out for, nope. Do you want to think about it while I design and make sure you like your wording and aren't going to be up all night in a week realizing you didn't specify that the plumbing has to be up to code?"

"If I decide to stress about the wording then I'm going to stress about the wording no matter what I do. I'm not an architect, and I'm not going to be able to think of everything. Comfortably and safely. If it turns out to be unusable for whatever reason, then Elysium's not worse off than when it only had the one structure. Unless you plop it down on top of us, I guess. Don't do that."

"I will make you a nice arcology."

"Thank you," she says, smiling. "I'll see what else we need."

"And get me data on, like, who needs how many bedrooms and stuff, I'm probably not going to wind up copying this floorplan any more than I'm going to copy your anti-leaking system."

"Will do! Soon as I get back."

She already knows everyone in the colony. Asking what the situation is and what everyone is in need of is a little time-consuming, especially when she's neglecting to mention her demonic assistance, but it's something she can mostly handle. She can also check the inventory of things they're supposed to have on hand, and see how many of those things they actually still have.

The angel has been at the linen closet and the perishables they get by fairy delivery every Tuesday, but the dry goods and stuff in cans are all still there.

She writes up a list. List-making gives her time to think about stuff, like the fact that if she were a maximally evil demon who wanted to wreak as much havoc as possible then she would probably get really good at appearing to be trustworthy, although she would probably give fewer safety pointers than Cam has been offering. But maybe if she'd been at it long enough, and she were immortal, she'd be more open to really long games that included establishing even higher levels of trust by giving out safety pointers to hilariously incompetent summoners. (Yes. This is exactly what she needs, more things to be anxious about. But it's important to be thinking about the possibility.)

Thinking about how she might still be being dumb and on the path to getting lots of people killed doesn't prevent her from cheerfully completing her list, which she then brings back to Cam.

He looks it over. "I can work with this. Do you want to look over my design before I put it up?"

"Sure. Oh, I wrote up a list of which people are families and how many living spaces with how many bedrooms it needs for them all. Plus a few extra spaces in case there are any more people later."

"Cool, let's see it."

She gives him her notes and looks over the existing design and makes comments about which people would probably benefit from changes to the layout.

He fiddles with it. The display projects into thin air from the side of his stick-shaped computer, and responds smoothly to his thoughts; the effect is almost like there was a prepared video of the design unfolding and he's just playing it.

She eventually declares that it looks like a pretty excellent place to live, apart from the being on Pluto (and assuming the safety equipment and plumbing and heating and other things all work as they should).

"I'm glad you like it. Where do you want it?"

"Oh, I can get you a map of the area immediately around Elysium, but it's mostly barren rock. As long as you put it a short walk away, we should be able to move between the structures pretty easily."

"Okay, any direction not too far. You want an airlocked tunnel?"

"It'd be really convenient, if it isn't any trouble!"

"Nah, computer aided design is good stuff." He adds a tunnel to his design.

"Looks great! ...I should probably at some point let everyone else know that we're - that you're building a new arcology for them."

She was mostly trying not to think about this part.

"Otherwise they would be surprised."

"Yes. I mean, uh, probably it'd be fine to just build the structure first, it's not like a free-standing structure does any particular harm to them if they don't want it, but it seems a little rude to connect the two without getting anyone's OK." Pause. "Can you maybe build the tunnel last?"

"No problem."

"Thank you," she says, more relieved than she probably should be. "Do you need anything else for it? I guess you don't need any equipment to breathe out there...?"

"I do not! In fact, I don't even need to breathe, although it's much more comfortable."

"Cool! I can show you the way out of the station then." And try not to sink into the floor while she does it, that part is also important.

He is perfectly quiet as he follows her along to the airlock. He waves at someone who stares at him a little too long, provoking some mutters.

Oh good. She feels really rude asking him not to say anything, but she also super doesn't want to have to explain the lack of a gag to people right this second. She should probably get over one or both of these things in the near future, but in the mean time this is a relief. 

"Thanks!" She tells him again, as they reach the airlock.

He swishes his tail at her. He steps into the airlock, waits for it to suck all the air back into the habitat, steps out onto Pluto.

She will wait for the construction to be done, then. Probably not just waiting, just waiting sounds unreasonably stressful, she'll probably just end up sitting here with a coolness-induced stomachache if she tries that. She's going to check the air levels again and ask whether everyone else is really sure there aren't any more leaks.

They're sure, but the angel is checking for them just in case!

Oh good! She wants to thank the angel, too, the angel's been incredibly helpful through all this.

The angel appreciates it.

The new habitat goes up and Cam reappears at the airlock.

She meets him there and lets him back into the station. She should... probably tell everyone about the thing. She'll just do that now, it's not actually going to get any easier if she puts it off. 

"Hey everyone! So, uh, I asked the demon if he could make us a new habitat, and it turns out the demon knows how to build whole arcologies, and he's built a second one for us that should have better safety systems in place. If anyone doesn't think it's likely to be safe, that's fine, I understand, I don't have the engineering expertise to confirm it all independently right now. But it's out there, and if everyone's OK with connecting the new habitat to this one, then it'd be good if we could build a tunnel between them."

Aaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa hopefully the inevitable questions won't be impossibly hard to answer. Aaaa.

"I think that's still safe if it doesn't mess with the airlock on our end..."

"We can just spacewalk it, why risk it?"

"Why risk going in at all, this one is fine now that the leak's fixed -"

"Can we look at the plans?"

"You don't know how to read an arcology blueprint."

"Yeah but it doesn't know that."

"It already made it!"

"You can look at the blueprints, I can get those in a minute. Maybe someone here knows what they're looking at better than I do. We could spacewalk over, but I don't think a tunnel is a risk, since that shouldn't mess with the Elysium airlock, and having the tunnel makes things easier. Not gonna ask anyone to go over if they think this is the safer station, but I'm not convinced everything's properly protected from micrometeorites on this end."

Nobody strenuously objects to the tunnel.

Excellent! She will return to her room so she can figure out how to get the blueprints to people. She'll get Cam on the way, and do her best to refrain from talking until they're somewhere where he can answer her without making a scene. 

She does give him an excited thumbs up on the way, though, because she can't not do that, c'mon.

He wags his tail.

And they reach her rooms. 

"So! They're divided on whether they want to go over right now, which is probably fair, it's not like I can independently check the quality of the safety equipment, but they are OK with the tunnel. Some of them would also appreciate it if they could see the plans for the place, can we give them those?"

"Yup. You want them on paper or should I email you them to forward?"

"Email should work fine. And then I can forward them to the others, and then I can see the place."

"Address?"

She gives him her email address. 

"Oh, that reminds me, in terms of contact ability stuff, I still don't have a way to summon you again. We should probably get that set up, especially if we're gonna be living in your arcology? Be good to be able to talk to the builder if anything comes up."

"Sure. Do you want me to duplicate this circle's binding or do you want to, uh, wait fourteen hours for a download from the Safe Summoning Authority and have me show you how to fill it in, or...?"

"....would it be really inconvenient to ask you to wait fourteen hours?"

"I will wait fourteen hours if you like. I could also just grab you the Safe Summoning Authority's files from here but it would not be unreasonable for you to look askance at that given the givens."

"I feel like I'm bad enough at this that I shouldn't throw any more caution to the wind unnecessarily. I appreciate the understanding. And I'm sorry for asking you to stay for so long, I hope I'm not making you miss anything important back home?"

"No, I had nothing on. I don't take summonses when I have an appointment, you never know when they wanna keep you for a week."

"That's good, then."

She starts the download process, then forwards the station plans to the rest of the colony.

Nobody finds, nor indeed is qualified to find, anything wrong with the plans.

This is to be expected. She's going to transport what's left of her stuff over as soon as Cam's made the tunnel. 

He makes the tunnel - walking down it in the process - as soon as he has the go-ahead.

She will follow him over when it's complete!

"Welcome! Do you want a tour?"

"Yes please!"

And he shows her around all the living quarters and common spaces of Elysium II. It's spacious and there is a little garden courtyard in the middle under bright lights in addition to hydroponics like the ones in the first version. Things that do not strictly need to be made out of wood and marble and abalone are made out of wood and marble and abalone anyway.

It's really pretty! She compliments most of the things they come across, at least until it occurs to her that maybe this is annoying (at which point she only compliments the things that are really nice, which is still a fair number of things). She thinks that everyone is really going to like living here, assuming they can be convinced that it isn't rigged to explode or anything. Her nephew's going to like the courtyard.

"I'm glad you like it."

"I really do! Thank you so much for making it. Uh. It's going to be several more hours before the download is done, do you need to - I guess given that you made the place you're probably capable of finding a place to sleep?"

"If nobody's going to mind me crashing in an apartment, sure can. You should know where to find me in case something comes up, walk with me?" He turns back toward the apartments.

She cheerfully follows him back.

He facetiously knocks on a door, then lets himself in. "I'll nap here. I'd sooner you didn't dismiss me in my sleep, I won't be able to tell the difference between that and you having died and I'd spend a while doing forensics on it."

Awww, that's - not actually sweeter than saving everyone's lives, it's not like she was actually in doubt about whether he cared at all about whether they lived or died, but she thinks it's kind of sweet all the same.

"I have no plans to dismiss you until after I know how to get you back."

"Thanks, Kalia." And strolls into the apartment and into a bedroom, onto which he plops.

"Goodnight, Cam." 

She goes back to her new room and unpacks her stuff. She makes an effort to sleep. She's not super good at sleeping when she's worrying that she might be making incredibly irresponsible decisions and playing into a demon's hand, but she makes an effort.

She makes waffles. Waffles are good when it's 4 AM and you can't sleep because your stomach keeps doing pointless backflips.

The waffles are griddy and crunchy and do not judge her for irresponsible demon summoning.

Good job, waffles. Their service is appreciated.

She reads her books and eats her waffles until the download comes through, then prints it out and goes to find Cam.

Asleep in bed with his wings splayed out on either side.

Ah. Reasonable. She'll just quietly leave and read a book in the next room until he wakes up on his own.

I'm up! What's news?

She immediately emails him back.

Download's done! I looked it over but I don't think I understand it all.

I can walk you through it if you want, assuming you trust me not to convince you that, I don't know, 'never re-order the words in this clause' and 'always work in English' actually means 'Latin has free word order, so actually...'

I think it's probably better to have the information than not. I'll be grateful for any help you can offer!

Not like she has to summon him again, even if she theoretically knows how.

You want to come here or should I come to you?

Oh, I'm already in the next room. Hope that's ok. Here's fine?

Out comes a demon.

She waves shyly.

"Good morning. Show me the SSA files?"

"Morning!"

She pulls up the files.

And Cam rummages around in them. "Okay, here's your chart on how to summon a specific demon. In my case, you can just use my name - do you want me to write it down for you so you spell it right?"

"Best not to guess," she says, nodding.

He writes out Campbell Mark Swan for her. "There you are. And you can use a preprint, and, let's see, does the SSA currently stand behind any gagless bindings for demons... they do not, let's find a generic..." He finds a generic, meant for fairies and angels but without a species filled in. "So you put 'demon' here, and my name there, and then you write that all out and double check it, or you get a light projector, I'd be happy to make you one that can take SSA files you've edited for specifics."

"Oh - yeah, that'd be helpful, thanks."

"I will do a light projector - do they have a recommend model - I'll make you a factory settings Spangle NW in exchange for no additional payment, deal?"

"Deal. Very kind of you."

He hands her a little device with a suction cup to hang it from the ceiling and a string with a button on the end to pull it high enough to allow daeva standing room, plus the remote control. "There you are. And the reset button is here if you are worried my computer is set to infect nearby Spangles NW with a binding-deleting virus or something and you want to wipe it when I leave."

"I do appreciate the accommodation of my no-doubt useless paranoia," she says cheerfully.

"My pleasure. Do you need anything else explained about the circle or anything?"

"I thiiink I understood it all. You're good at explaining things! So I think - oh, did you conjure the other stuff from the list? The things for the other colonists?"

"They're in the storage areas of this habitat! With nametags!"

"Nice! Then I think that's all I need. And many things I didn't strictly need, but which I appreciate nonetheless."

"I'm glad I was able to help you out. May the habitat serve you well."

"Thank you very much for your assistance."

And she focuses on dismissing him.

And after a minute of this attention,

he's gone.

"OK," she says to the empty air. "OK. You did it. You did it and you never have to do it again if you don't want to."

She gathers up her stuff, returns to her room, and very quietly screams into her pillows for a bit. She's pretty sure she shouldn't have to do this, but it does help with the off and on stomachache.

Once she's feeling mostly OK about herself again, she goes back through the tunnel to see if anybody's interested in joining her in Elysium II.

Some people are! Some people retrieve the objects from storage for people who prefer to continue living in Elysium I.

"The fuck did you pay it," mutters Azalea, when she sees the habitat. In ten hours she's letting her son play in the courtyard, though. He's delighted.

Kalia more or less returns to her normal routine - reads a lot (now including lots of reading about summoning and the responsible practice thereof), watches her nephew, cares for their plants, and does her best to be usefully busy. She kind of wants to go back to Earth - it was stupidly dangerous to follow Azhe here, no matter how miserable she was with her parents, and she should probably get that whole anxiety thing looked into, which is going to require access to a population of more than a few dozen people. But it's sort of ungrateful to ask someone to build you a habitat and then neglect to spend any time living there, so she figures she should stick around for at least a while. Besides, if anyone needs to contact Cam for any reason, she's pretty sure she's the only one who knows how.

She reviews her notes on Cam's summoning process to make sure she doesn't forget it. She resets the Spangle NW. She downloads the user manual in an attempt to figure out whether this actually makes it definitely entirely safe. 

She doesn't summon Cam again.

According to the Safe Summoning Authority, their circles are safe if you follow their guidelines on how to close the deal subsequently!

The habitat is flawless and reliable and lovely.

The Safe Summoning Authority seems to have kept the world from being destroyed so far, so if they and Cam agree on a thing's safety then probably the thing is safe. And she'd like to see Cam again - he was really really nice, and he was really good at explaining things, and he obviously knows a ton about summoning, and he did offer to teach her about it, and she wants to learn about it, so it's not like she doesn't have a valid reason.

She reads the Safe Summoning Authority's deal-closing guidelines, and reads about common or particularly disastrous mistakes people make, and writes one two three five eight drafts of how she'd word a request to tutor her, and -

- still doesn't summon Cam. 

She spends another month or so tutoring her nephew in reading and history and basic math, then takes a shuttle to Mars, where she works in a nursing home.

The nursing homes of Mars have angels in them, who work for money or trade goods of value in Heaven, and her place of work in particular is not far from the residence of a fairy who by way of employment participates in the functioning of the Martian power grid and by way of payment has adopted a human child, children being a negligibly available commodity in any daeva realm.

She stays on Mars for most of a year - gets to know the fairy a little and wave hello to the child when she leaves for work in the morning, gets to know the residents of her workplace, mourns them when they die. She reads a lot and writes a lot and works a lot. She isn't sure happy is the word for what she is, but she feels all right about herself. She occasionally considers summoning Cam, but she can never work up the nerve to, and eventually she considers it less and less frequently. It'd be weird after all this time. He's probably not as great as she remembers. They hung out for like a day most of a year ago and she's not even sure they're properly acquaintances. He could still be secretly evil, although his binding looks safe so if he is then the game he's playing is a very long one.

Her sister has a second child, and asks Kalia to come back to Elysium to help her look after the baby. (Turns out babies are a lot of work.)

She has nothing better to do - she never has anything particularly good to do, and a baby seems like an improvement on this front - so she heads back to Pluto and moves into her old room again.

There are a few more people there - Azalea isn't the only person who's had kids, and somebody's great-aunt thought Pluto sounded like a great place to retire to aged ninety, and somebody's dad is visiting, and there's a random drifter with a fairy fuckbuddy who carts him around to lots of miscellaneous colonies more or less ill-conceived. One of the kids somebody has had is three and perpetually seen with his stuffed wallaby.

New people are nice. She's not the colony's official teacher, but she assists in a moderately official capacity with the little ones, since she likes them all and people tend to believe her when she says she's good with kids. Her nephew has taken an interest in dismantling his toy trucks, though he is only sometimes able to put them back together again. Baby Suzanna is adorable, she is tiny and good and soft and perfect. 

One day, nobody in Elysium II can sleep because little Morris's wallaby has been lost. It is not in the laundry, the dresser, under any furniture, in his bed, in the toybox, in the refrigerator, or anywhere else his poor parents can think of, and Morris is only pausing to scream so he can inhale more air with which to scream, because it's two hours past his bedtime and Wolly is GONE, AAAAAAAH.

Oh nooooo.

She does try to solve the problem on her own. She checks the places she's seen Morris on the station recently; none of them contain a stuffed wallaby. She has no idea where Wolly could've gotten to.

And then she remembers that she knows how to summon a very nice demon, and that demons can conjure anything, and that she checked the bindings at least three times and couldn't fine anything wrong with them, and she's been looking for an excuse for almost a year.

It's overkill. It's not even a particularly good excuse. But unless she does something tremendously more stupid than summon him and ask for a particular stuffed wallaby, she doesn't think he can do anything much worse than laugh at her. 

She boots up the Spangle NW and summons one Campbell Mark Swan.

And lo, a demon, wearing the same jeans and nonshirt she saw him in before, with a violin in one hand and a bow in the other. "Kalia! I didn't think I was going to see you again. What can I do for you?"

" - oh, gosh, you remember. I didn't know if you'd remember, 'cause it's been so long and I figure you must take lots of summonses, and - "

There's a particularly distraught scream in the background.

" - uh, I'm sorry to bother you for this, but this kid Morris lost his stuffed wallaby, and he absolutely cannot sleep without it. And apparently neither can the rest of us."

"Of course I remember you, you let me talk! I will be honored to duplicate this wallaby for you. Need a token payment, it is what it is."

"Right. I will give you a list of ten books I read and enjoyed in the last year in exchange for one perfect duplicate of Morris Freeman's stuffed wallaby. Deal?"

"Deal." And he hands her a wallaby.

"Thanks! Uh - " She grabs her notebook, tears out a page with an already prepared list of books, and hands it to Cam. "I'll be right back, got a wallaby to deliver right now."

"Of course." Wag.

And she is off to complete her very important mission that is not at all an excuse for anything else she might be trying to accomplish. 

She tells Morris's parents she found Wolly in her apartment; her nephew must have found it lying around somewhere and forgotten to actually return it. She's so sorry for the mix-up.

The Freemans are much too tired to question this story. They shove the wallaby into Morris's face and stuff him into his bed and fling a blanket over him and stagger off to their own bed.

She returns to her rooms. 

"All better. That's twice you've saved us all," she says cheerfully.

"Toddlers: an existential threat."

"One should not underestimate the destructive power of a tiny human with a very loud voice. Azalea had a baby a couple months ago, and she's excellent, but she isn't great for anybody's sleep schedules. We can only handle so much more of that. You've done us a great service."

She manages to make it through this speech without laughing, but it looks like it's taking some effort.

"Anytime. Is that all you need made today?"

"Think so. I guess you probably need to get back to your violin practice?"

"I'm not leaving a tutor waiting, if you want to hear me meander through Ichranimin's Eighth, but that is what I was doing, how'd you guess."

"I wouldn't particularly mind hearing it," she says. "But I can send you back, yeah. Uh - is it a bother? In general? To summon you for things that aren't exactly life or death, I mean?"

"I can't tell anything about the situation from the summon," he says. "So I guess it's a little nerve-wracking, maybe you summoned me to invite me to a party or maybe I'll land surrounded by wreckage and medical emergencies, you know? Do I finish my shower or my conversation or my soup or do I answer right away? Maybe you could write me a letter a little ahead of time, half an hour would usually do it, if you're going to summon me but it's not an emergency."

"Oh," she says, like it had not actually occurred to her that this was a thing she could do. "That makes sense."

"Should I explain how demon mail labels work?"

"Yes. Yes you should."

"Demons who wish to correspond in this fashion, which is most of us, choose a unique string - mine is 'letter to Cam', they're mostly things like that unless someone starts spamming your label and then you go for something obscure like, I don't know, 'sofa apple elbow womprat Timbuktu ubiquitous' or a sentence you've put through translation a few times or a long number or something. We can conjure written works by title, and that means if anyone titles anything 'letter to Cam', it comes up the next time I check my mail."

"Oh. Cool. I'll - be sure to wait less than an entire year before the next time I contact you in any way, then."

"Of course, I have no way to reply."

"Yeah. I mean, I'd have to summon you. But uh, if it had occurred to me and I'd known what your string was then I would have at least, y'know, told you about how the colony was doing, possibly without feeling the need to incompetently triple-check the new binding you made beforehand. Probably. I suppose saying words at people is not my primary area of expertise."

"That would've been nice! Summoners don't usually keep in touch."

"Oh. Well. If it would be nice, then I can totally write sometimes."

"It would."

She smiles probably a little wider than is strictly justified.

"OK. Well. Thanks again. Have fun with violin practice."

And she dismisses him.

And he's gone, violin and all.

OK, see, that was only slightly stressful this time, and it all went fine, and he did not seem particularly annoyed at her at all. Part of her is still distantly protesting that he might be secretly evil - which, yes, OK, he probably could be secretly evil, and for that reason she should try not to do anything extraordinarily dumb, but it's probably not extraordinarily dumb to summon him. Probably.

The next day, she writes him a letter. She puts a fair bit of effort into making it not be obnoxiously verbose, she's really bad at not being obnoxiously verbose.

Letter to Cam

Hi Cam! Morris is feeling way better, he's really glad to have his wallaby back. Everyone else is really glad that Morris isn't crying. He's a really sweet kid, I'm glad he didn't have to lose his favorite toy.

I've been thinking about how you said you'd be happy to teach me more about summoning? I've been reading a little on my own, just out of general interest, but I bet I'd learn way more if I had someone to help me. I understand if you're busy now, I just thought I might as well ask. Planning to summon you in two hours, so we can talk about it then. I don't know what time that is for you, I have no idea how time zones work in Hell. If I'm late it means the baby is crying, not that anything more emergency-flavored is happening.

Sincerely, Kalia

The baby does, in fact, interrupt her plans. Cam is summoned in three hours and forty-three minutes.

He arrives promptly; his computer is clipped to a belt loop on his pants. "Hi there!"

"Hi! Sorry about the delay, Zana was very sad about the human condition for a bit. Is the offer to teach me about summoning still open? It's OK if it's not."

"Sure it is, I updated some old lecture notes and everything."

"Gosh. Do you like, teach classes on summoning theory in Hell? I suppose it makes sense to want to understand all the rules from the other side."

"I have taught summoning classes! It was a hundred fifty years ago, though, when experience with summoning was more of a rarity."

"Oooh. Fancy." (Occasionally she remembers that he's an immortal demon, and that it's actually really unreasonable to expect to know more about stuff than an immortal demon, when she's existed for like nineteen years in total.) "I wasn't super sure how to word a request for tutoring. Or if stuff that didn't involve conjuring necessarily had to be an exchange at all? Hopefully this is covered in the material."

"I will spend some number of hours tutoring you in exchange for whatever you feel like trading."

"This is a very vague deal but I have no idea how you could theoretically do massive harm to me with it. I accept."

"I guess in principle I could have an elaborate plan to drug you and make you suggestible so you'll feel like trading me some awful thing? But if I were going to do that I wouldn't need the step where I accept an open ended payment."

"Oh, if you're secretly evil then your plan is much more complicated than that. I think it'd have to involve wanting me to snap your bindings. If you wanted me to trade you something you could've gotten it the first time we met."

"A part of a good summoning curriculum is going to be about thinking like the kind of daeva bindings are designed to thwart, do you in fact wish to use me as an example case?"

"If you want. I can imagine circumstances under which this would be unproductively stressful, but I feel like the suspecting you might secretly be evil and successfully tricking me into helping you destroy the world ship has already sailed, so if we could bring it back into port that would be awesome." She frowns. "I dunno if that metaphor made any sense by the end, but yeah, go ahead."

"Okay, so if we assume I'm secretly evil, I've already - conspicuously! - passed up opportunities to do you harm, so that suggests my sinister plan is not about harming you. It doesn't necessarily have to be about getting you to snap my bindings; maybe I want you to recommend me to other people who are more vulnerable or closer to whatever evilly interests me. If there's an evil demon conspiracy, I'm just trying to elevate our general reputation so that over time people gradually get less cautious with demons until finally we have enough people in place to do some huge evil thing."

"Oooh. Be a lot of effort to put into something like that, given that I don't think incompetent weirdos on Pluto are particularly useful long-term investments, but you do have forever and seem to have very few chances to make full use of your persuasiveness."

"All true! That one guy who put out that book series about gagging demons has done a lot of harm to the evil cause."

"I do imagine that was his goal. Though it'll be super embarrassing if it turns out we've been wrong about the evil conspiracy and have in fact been shooting ourselves in the foot all this time."

"And finally we will achieve our real aim: fielding a demon team in the Olympic games."

She makes a token effort not to laugh; it predictably fails. "I mean, it would be sort of unfair. But I suppose this is the sort of evil plan I don't feel obliged to thwart at all costs." Her face goes somewhat more serious. "But it's not like there aren't daeva who really are planning terrible things."

"I guess we have more practice time but you could institute an age limit! It's not like human athletes can't get angel buffs no testing can reasonably catch... Anyway, yes, some demons are mean people who think it's fun to take a scared desperate human and offer them what they need in exchange for their soul."

"I see. What does losing your soul do, anyway? Not really a thing I was planning to empirically test."

"The reported effects vary widely. As you may imagine I have limited opportunities to talk to humans, you are actually the only summoner I've ever had who's let me talk."

" - gosh, ever?"

"Ever! I have terrible luck. Once I got summoned by a linguistics department studying demon languages and they didn't let me talk! They just had me point to the correct translations of things so they could verify that the demon they were allowing to talk wasn't fucking with them."

"Wow, that does sound frustrating. My condolences."

"Thank you."

Aww.

"Uh, so anyway, I probably don't know enough to keep asking useful questions for an entire hour, let alone two. If you had your heart set on giving your lecture you can totally do that."

"I don't know that I'd go as far as 'heart set' but I would be happy to. Is here good? At some point I'm going to want wall space to safely display circle examples."

"Oh, yeah, here works." She motions to an empty wall.

Cam doesn't put a circle up on the wall immediately; instead he makes a little computer peripheral that projects onto the wall and starts a slide show going. "What do you already know about daeva, first of all," he says, before moving beyond the title card.

Oh boy, probably nothing. "Uh, there are three kinds. Angels change matter into different matter, fairies move things around up to the speed of light, and demons make new stuff out of whole cloth. They all live in their own dimensions, but can be pulled to this one by a summoner. They're indestructible and therefore can't be killed, so if someone botches a summon and a hostile daeva goes rogue, you have to either get the summoner to dismiss them, or else kill the summoner if dismissal is for some reason impossible. You can't dismiss a daeva if they've done a task that you haven't paid for. All of them are really dangerous, which is why it's important to bind them properly, so there are limits on the sorts of things they can do. Uhh, people have probably been summoning them for a long time but it was only turned into a proper field of study around a century and a half ago. Um. Oh, they can't have children, which is why angels and fairies are willing to do lots of stuff for the chance to adopt human children. Martian power grid runs on adoptees. Possibly demons would too, if the masses were aware that there existed non-evil demons or if non-evil demons were more willing to take summonses. There appears to be dispute about the evilness quotient of demons in general, though the consensus position is that probably they are super evil." 

"Fairies only approach, not match, the speed of light," Cam corrects. "Otherwise that is all correct."

She notes this down in a notebook. "OK! I know slightly more than nothing." 

"It's a decent foundation! Okay, so this is the bare minimum of circle -" He advances the slide. "As you can see it is a circle reading 'I summon a fairy', you can't summon a daeva without specifying species but I'm sure you can complete the analogy to the other minimum circles. This will get you a totally unbound, loose fairy, whichever one picks up the summon. Random summonses are not distinct from each other in any way, except by timing - to the limited gradation of 'just a few seconds ago' versus 'longer than that'. Oh, and I guess if one is wearing legible clothing that will filter out circles with gags."

Notes notes notes. "So do random summonses just, like, go out to everyone of the relevant species, and it's first-come-first-served? Are you just constantly getting little notifications about all of the summonses anyone is doing anywhere?"

"Yes, but they're easy to ignore if you don't want to pay attention to them. Specific summonses are harder to ignore, but still not that bad -" He advances to the next slide; this circle says I summon the fairy Titania. "Titania is a real fairy who refuses to change her name or show up on demand! She has a bunch of circles like this but with some binding, out all the time, and she just ignores them. But -" Slide. Photo of the Ganymede circle array: hundreds and hundreds of them. "If there's enough of them, it's very hard not to take one. Still technically a voluntary action, but it's like scratching an itch, say. That's how the Ganymede Circling Police makes arrests when they want to catch a daeva and jail them."

"Gosh." Doesn't really have any follow-up questions to that slide, although she is now vaguely wondering exactly how long Titania has existed.

Slide. Circle with a binding. "This kind of circle was in vogue before summoning was a seriously studied field. The binding isn't very safe, but it'll do against an uncreative daeva - especially one who doesn't know very much science because it's 1462 and you can't play tricks with chemistry you don't understand - we have separate science from you guys, but they're not uncorrelated. Fairies are less affected by the march of progress, angels and demons much moreso. Here's this binding in non-circular form for easy reading..." Slide.

Notes notes notes. "I imagine secretly evil Cam has close to zero trouble circumventing this one, though."

"Secretly evil Cam with real Cam's knowledge of physics, bindings, etcetera, can, given this circle and even a perfectly negotiated task..." He advances the slideshow. There are a lot of options. "The ones marked in red are the ones where the summoner can die, the ones marked in blue are the ones where secretly evil Cam can put them in a coma and run moderately amok. Not very amok, this binding isn't nothing, but a little amok."

Thoughtful nodding and more note-taking. 

"So some savvier summoners, close to Revelation-time, were working on ones more like this," slide, this one has a lot more words in the circle, "which hedges out a lot of those contingencies, and there are even things that make negotiation itself better - no letting daeva misrepresent their skills, for instance, so you don't wind up giving an advance payment for something they aren't competent to follow through on, that's an important one - and things have gotten more and more complex and sophisticated," slide, slide, "till you wind up with very legalistic Safe Summoning Authority preprints," slide, "which are properly the gold standard for typical amateur daeva employers summoning randoms, but you might want to homebrew your own binding if you are summoning a non-random daeva or have a specialist need. For instance, here is the circle used for the typical Martian power grid fairy..." He slides along. "You'll notice this binding is about a third as long as what you used to summon me. This is, approximately, because they let Martian power fairies adopt children - they're screened on a personal basis and they aren't assumed to be about to snap. This binding will prevent a startled or emotional fairy from doing something in the heat of the moment that wouldn't permanently injure anyone back in Fairyland. It'll prevent them from evading authorities if there's some reason they're under suspicion. It'll stop them breaking arcologies, since that would be enough of a disaster that you don't want to even theoretically allow it just to give your long-term resident more flexibility, and it'll stop them from coercing their summoner by any but the most hilariously indirect means. But if a Martian power grid fairy wants to knock down their neighbor's house, take a joyride to Jupiter and back, accelerate their child to sixty miles an hour either recreationally or because there's an emergency, dig a giant hole in the surface of Mars? This binding allows that, because you don't need to cripple a nice person that far."

Notes notes - she should ask whether she's gonna get to keep the slideshow afterwards, but she doesn't super want to interrupt right now, and also the note-taking is good for remembering things even if she never looks at the notes again. (Though she will. Probably several times.) "So what all does the binding you set up prevent you from doing? I double checked it all but I don't know that I actually understood it all."

"This binding allows me basic freedom of movement but I have to attempt to stay within a half mile of you, it's very strict about not letting me mess with you physically in any way so please try not to have a medical emergency or I'll be stuck standing there yelling 'I went to medical school snap the binding' and looking very opportunistic, it lets me make things that are germane to the task we agreed on, which in this case is tutoring - so I can make circles and my computer and notes and references and such, but cannot present you spontaneously with a demonic turtle. I am specifically barred from making a long list of things even if they are germane, including but not limited to very hot and cold temperature ranges, anything inside any non-air non-vacuum medium or within the boundaries of a human body such as in someone's air-filled open mouth, anything more radioactive than a bunch of bananas, any matter that is itself or will when added where I put it tend to form a black hole, etcetera."

"Very thorough. Although it makes sense that limiting your ability to hurt people would also limit your ability to help in the wrong situation." Notes, notes, Cam went to medical school, notes.

"Yup! You can only bind actions, not intentions - if you give me the ability to perform a blood transfusion you also give me the ability to explode you with blood unless you get super complicated about exactly how much blood you expect to be the correct amount for a person to contain, and then you have problems if you want to let me treat children, and you can add more complications for that, but, etcetera. A medical demon circle looks like so -" Slide.

" - wow yeah I'm not gonna try taking notes on that one. General principle makes sense, though."

"I'm glad! So that's the overview on bindings, next is negotiations, do you want to ask any questions before I change topics?"

"I might think of some more later, but no, we can go on to negotiations now."

"So the thing you must be most certain to remember when negotiating is not to accidentally say anything even sort of like 'yes' or 'deal' or 'okay' or even 'mmhm' until you're actually ready to close the deal as described. Negotiation, like binding, runs on natural, even idiomatic, language, and that's terrible, because natural idiomatic language is weird and vague and words serve multiple purposes, and if you're working with a hostile daeva, they will take your 'mmhm' that means 'I understand' and they'll take it to mean 'mmhm' to mean 'go ahead', and there is no higher court to appeal to than 'whatever magic decides that word means with these speakers in this moment'. It does at least use your dialect - daeva get summoners' languages, including dialectical features, when summoned, although if we have preexisting instances of a mutually intelligible language we may use our own accents instead of adopting yours. But your dialect includes homophones and they can get you in trouble."

Notes notes do not say anything affirmative-sounding to possibly hostile daeva. "So it's also really hard to close some deals using language that can't be interpreted in different ways, right? Like - I don't know how you could've done something weird with a deal where you're supposed to create a perfect copy of Morris Freeman's stuffed wallaby, but the first time we met you told me not to ask for just oxygen because it's a fire hazard. I admittedly was not thinking about this when we were all a couple hours from suffocation, but I was thinking about, like - does 'air' guarantee that the mix of gases will contain any oxygen at all? Even 'breathable air' is, like - technically humans can breathe in any combination of gases, just most of them won't sustain us and some of them will poison us. I guess if I specified the specific mixture of gases I wanted, including the correct percentages...?"

"I think breathable air requires oxygen and no poison, in the sense that if I asked if you could breathe chlorine you could accurately reply 'no', but it does admittedly underspecify exact gas mix. If you wanted to be extra careful there, yeah, you'd specify percentages - and whether you meant percentage by mass or volume - and that I shouldn't start with one and then follow up with the others - or you'd have me copy a reference quantity of air, perhaps in a tank."

"Asking demons to copy existing materials seems generally safer, when you can manage it, though I honestly don't know if I could've gotten a tank. Luckily I will probably never have to summon a random demon in a time-sensitive life or death situation again. The language stuff is the part that freaks me out, apart from the thing where the other party is indestructible and capable of wreaking massive havoc if they get loose. I feel like I know just enough about communication to figure that a sufficiently determined hostile actor can interpret things wrong almost no matter what you do."

"It's not hopeless - you can't do, say, mental reservations, those don't work. But a lot of twistiness is fair game, yes."

Notes, notes, at least if Cam is secretly evil he's not the sort of secretly evil that gets her colony arbitrarily blown up. (Probably. Unless he's holding out for blowing up more things on Earth and will settle for the colony if he decides the other option is unlikely to come up, but that sounds unlikely even to her.) "So are there other simple best practices to keep in mind, in addition to not saying anything affirmative-sounding until you're happy with the terms of the deal as described?"

"You also need to bear in mind that you can never compel a daeva to continue. They can always just stop what they're doing in the middle. This is why you're not supposed to travel by bare fairy - a fairy transporting you and some air through space, or even the sky, can just quit at any moment. The shuttles they have that run across Earth on fairy power save fuel and can move a lot faster and smoother and quieter that way, but they can settle safely to the ground or water if the fairy disappears due to summoner mishap or if they just feel like dropping it; and if you have a fairy move a spaceship for you, you need the ability to make a distress signal and hold on long enough for someone to fetch you if the fairy flips you off at any point in your journey. You don't let a medical angel open you up if you don't trust them to close you, too, and you do it in a hospital if you can with human doctors handy. And this is why I mentioned that you could have chosen to specify that I had to make all the gases in the air mix at the same time, because otherwise I could have started with the requisite amount of hydrogen and then stopped. If you don't pay a daeva, their binding stretches to let them hound you for it and you can't get rid of them; there's nothing comparable the other way around."

Notes, notes, she is just going to write this one thing several times because it didn't occur to her and it seems actually extraordinarily important. "But you can't actually go home until the summoner dismisses you or dies, right, otherwise the GCP couldn't trap anyone? But you don't have to be working on a task at any given moment."

"Right. The only way you can be forced to send a daeva home is if you leave them an opening to kill you, which will happen eventually if you don't pay them something you agreed on but can't if you pay - or never agree on a payment. People have kept daeva in their circles, with no task and accordingly no way for the binding to slip, as zoo exhibits - this is now illegal, but I've met a demon who was in a zoo."

"Gosh. So the correct order of business is always have your backup daeva-just-wasn't-feeling-it plan in place, summon, agree on a task, pay for task immediately, and then expect that the daeva will do your thing eventually because eventually they're gonna want to convince you to let them go home." Frown. "Unless maybe you're in a life or death situation with someone you don't know, like - someone summoned a fairy during the leak thing, and they weren't gonna help us because we didn't have anything they wanted. But supposing we had, it'd've made sense in that situation not to pay them until they'd done whatever the specific task was, 'cause if we'd paid them immediately and they were kind of an asshole they could've just sat on the payment and waited for us to die. Being about to die does kind of mess with your options."

"The reasons to pay in advance are if you're not certain you'll be able to cough up sharpish once the task is done, or if the mere fact of being at risk of coercion for the payment would make it worse - the former is why you pay in advance if you're paying in art commissions, the latter's why one pays in advance if paying in sex. In situations where you'll definitely be able to produce the payment, such as a book recommendation or a physical object you have handy, there's much less benefit to paying in advance, and if the daeva actually wants the thing and doesn't care whether you get what you want particularly, they will be more likely to complete your task to get it than they will be to do the task because you paid them first."

Notes notes notes. "Makes sense."

"You can bind a daeva to let you pay in advance, if you're worried that otherwise they'll finish a very quick task and you'll have whatever problem you were hoping to avoid by paying in advance - that clause looks like this -" Slide.

Notes notes notes. Starting to feel like they've been going for a while, but she wants to at least make it through the first slideshow.

"A finished negotiation consists of either the summoner or daeva - for this purpose, either works in the exact same way, interchangeably - proposing a task and payment, in either order interchangeably, and the other party agreeing. It does not work to interrupt the other party with an agreement while they're describing task or payment unless they've actually stopped speaking, forgotten something, and remembered as you utter your agreement."

Nodding and continued note-taking.

"Questions?"

"Not off the top of my head. Possibly approaching the point where more immediate information will lead to worse retention."

"Okay! We can call it a day." Slideshow winks out.

"Oh! OK, cool. Classes are much less stressful when you can just say when you think your brain is done. Annnd - " she tears out another page of her notebook with a book title on it. "Payment is one book rec, which I am sure you desperately wanted."

"I was languishing without it, thank you." Wag.

Giggle. "So d'you wanna do this again... every other day? Ish? At least until we make it through all your slides? Or like if you have stuff happening we can schedule it around your things, I'm not in a hurry."

"I have plans for Tuesday and next Friday, other than that I'm free."

Notes. " - oh, I did have another question I forgot to ask about earlier?"

"Yes?"

"You said you've taught a course on summoning before, and the lecture you just gave at least implies that it was for human summoners and not for demons being summoned, if you're re-using materials. You also said you've never been summoned without a gag before. I'm sure there's some fourth piece of information that makes sense of the previous three, but I can't off the top of my head think what it could be?"

"I mean, I did rearrange and update the material for you, some of these circles weren't developed yet when I was teaching."

"I suppose it's possible that you're a very talented teacher who can write entire lecture - one that includes at least, what was that, a dozen pre-prepared examples of evil plans? - with three hours of prep time and not run into anything you haven't prepared for, in which case I want that skill after I learn how to summon people safely." She does not sound very convinced.

"I'm good at thinking of evil plans on the fly! You saw me do it the first time you summoned me and I was correcting you."

"This is not untrue! In my experience formal presentations are harder to come up with under time pressure than other things, but I guess that might not be true of everyone? Do you want me to drop this, 'cause I can drop this. You should say 'Kalia, drop this,' before you feel the need to lie, it's mean to lie to your students."

"If you want to look at my lecture notes you can, I have the slides labeled and some notes but I didn't write out everything in advance, I can see why you'd imagine that would take longer than I had."

"Nah, I'm good. I'm sure you taught a perfectly legitimate but very different course at the University of Hell and are just much better than me at revising things on the fly, and that you also have perfectly sensible reasons for not wanting to say this directly. M'sorry for being annoying about it."

There's the sound of a baby crying in the next room.

"Annnnd that's my cue to go. Wednesday's good?"

"Wednesday's good! Also Hell does not have a single University Thereof."

"I did figure there were too many of you for that. You should cover Hell social studies after summoning, though, that sounds fascinating too. See you Wednesday!"

And dismiss.

After a minute he is gone.

Classes become a regular part of Kalia's schedule. She has a lot of suggestions for things they should cover, it's almost like she has a goal of continuing classes in addition to a goal of mastering any particular material. Baby Zana becomes a bigger baby and then a very small child and then a child who is big enough to communicate in simple sentences.

Things are good.

Then pirates attack!!!!

They crash into the roofs of both arcologies with shield-piercing ship hulls, pour into the habitats with knives and clubs in hand because one doesn't use guns in a habitat protecting one from an airless environment, and set about incapacitating everyone, moving in packs from corridor to corridor. Someone hits an alarm; the lights and sirens blare accordingly.

Suzanna Teller is pretty sure that this is an emergency. She knows what to do in emergencies! You're supposed to get the emergency kit!

She very determinedly toddles off to find one of those. 

She manages to evade pirates till she gets ahold of an emergency kit! There are circles, rolled up and folded, for fairies and angels and demons.

Zana is pretty sure she wants a fairy, fairies could move the bad men very far away, but she can't actually read the labels and therefore has no idea which ones are which. She grabs a demon circle and completes it.

A moment later a demon appears. He is surprised that his summoner is a little child, but can't really comment on the situation, as he's gagged. He looks around for other adults, but the nearest adults are Zana's parents, who are busy being clubbed to death a couple rooms away for not being easily convinced to join the pirates' pressgang.

"You're not a fairy," says Zana, disappointedly. There's a scream somewhere on the station. "Bad things are happening," she tells the demon, very matter-of-factly.

...the demon waves his hands in what he hopes is a communicative fashion, looking wildly about.

Zana blinks at him uncomprehendingly.

Well this sure is absolutely awful.

Kalia has no idea where Zana is; she's supposed to be playing with Morris's younger brother but apparently she isn't at their house anymore, the station is getting ripped apart, and she doesn't have anything particularly weapon-shaped to work with.

Kalia summons Cam. Normal binding, she didn't have time to change it, they'll figure something out. 

It's not their scheduled time. He shows up instantly with a spoon dripping soup onto the floor in his hand; he takes in the alarm. "What do you need?"

"Hi there are pirates and they're killing people outside and I have no idea where Zana is do you have suggestions."

"- I think this doesn't let me do - uh - maybe I can - I can find her, but - uh - which binding is this, if it's the medical one I can knock everybody out and then wake you up -"

"It's the normal one - I'm sorry, I didn't have any others handy - "

"I can make you an emergency circle and you can resummon me, that would be faster than trying to work around this one, but you'd have to trust me on that -"

She takes about a second to think. There's a scream outside.

"Yeah, do it."

Cam makes her a circle and hands it over.

Someone starts breaking down her door.

"Shit," she whispers, barely more than a breath.

She can't turn a demon loose to save her own life, she can't, but if she gets killed then no one can resummon Cam and no one can find Azalea or Connor or Zana and they all die and Connor and Zana will be dead, and -

"Don't kill anyone," she says desperately, and then she snaps the binding.

"On it," he says, and he preempts the next door bash; the door falls out of its frame and the three pirates beyond fall to the floor, apparently uninjured. He walks rather than running from the room, wings and tail twitching for balance.

"Thank you," she says in a very small voice, and then follows Cam out the door. Heck if she's gonna wait for secondhand info on whether her niece and her nephew are already dead.

He looks over his shoulder when he hears her following, then continues. He checks a resident's pulse, finds it absent, moves on. More pirates fall before they can react to his approach; he steps over them, checks their victims, and keeps going, climbs a ladder he makes into their ship to knock out the ones who took prisoners and release the prisoners, climbs back down and finds another bunch. There's Azalea and her husband; no pulses. He doesn't spot Connor hiding.

And then there's Zana, knifed and already gone, herself beside a complete demon circle from the emergency kit. Cam checks her pulse, drops her hand, moves on toward the next habitat.

She follows him for most of this, even past Azalea and her husband. She pauses at Zana's body and drops to her knees. 

They're too late. They're too late and it has to be her fault. There has to have been something she could have done. She could have summoned Cam sooner, could've summoned Cam without a binding in the first place, could've kept a closer eye on Zana, could've convinced her mother not to raise her on Pluto where apparently random people can decide that they're going to be pirates and stab three-year-olds to death. She could've and she didn't and now it's too late.