At least there's always Milliways.
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"Not if everyone wants to come along, but I don't think they will. If only a few people from each place wants to come, yes."

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"Guess we'll see how many trips I have to make, then."

Skyward?

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Skyward they go.

Katherine helps him load the fuel into the ship. It's a quieter trip, this time.

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Such interesting icy ruins.

"I could say things in Hari while we're flying. Might help with language learning."

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"We might not all need to learn it, if enough of us go. Adults don't learn languages nearly as well as children do, anyway."

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"That's true. I can get one-way magic translation to understand you and you can read the laws in Milliways and that'll cover a lot of it."

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"We'll pick up some of it sooner or later. I'm - going over my memory, for the seeds, right now, that's all."

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He avoids saying anything distracting.

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They can pilot to the frozen ruins of a university campus soon enough.

"Most of the buildings are already ransacked for anything useful, of course. Registrar might have some gold bullion, and if Bar takes that at face value... But that building is badly ruined. It'd take days for me to dig through it alone. The biology wing is there, the vault is in the basement."

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"Want me to try the registrar while you look for the seeds or help you with the seeds?"

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"Let's just go for the seeds. Digging for gold instead of preserving life sounds like one of those morality tales where greed gets you killed. Heh."

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If they're not going to be talking much while they look he'll ask Liane about those tales because he's never heard one.

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Finding the vault is easy. Katherine knows exactly where it is. Melting through all the accumulated ice and snow to get to it will take a bit longer.

"Uh... I could read one to you but they're mostly meant for children, to get them to think about morals and why a certain moral exists?"

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"Oh! I'll have to get a book of them when I get back to Milliways. I was thinking of introducing people to the concept with fiction, that's pretty popular with caralendri, good to know there already are stories like that."

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"Ooh, Milliways has touched a lot of worlds. Bar probably has books meant specifically for explaining morals to amoral people."

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"The books she recommended to me when I asked were a little dry and abstract and only interesting because I already cared about the subject. But maybe that's just because I wanted explanations and details and someone else would get a shorter version in rhyme with jokes."

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"It might also depend on what she thought you wanted? Or how you asked? I think she'd have given you something more - simple and childish like I'm thinking of - if you'd asked."

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"Guess I'll find out!"

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"Yep!" Liane goes quiet.

Melting through things continues. They can see the vault and the heat core is very powerful, but the cold is pervasive and ice takes a lot of heating up before it melts and steams.

"Can you put your magic on the seeds for me once we get in there? If they survive we'll all fare better in your little town."

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"Depends on what you mean. If we find them safe I can make sure they're not damaged by cold or heat in transit but there's nothing I can do to the seeds that would make the plants cold-tolerant after they start growing."

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"Yes, that's what I meant. So they don't get damaged any worse than they already have."

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"I can do that."

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"Excellent. The last of this should melt away in a minute or two..."

Melting ice and hefting the super-hot metal rod around.

Soon enough they crack the vault open. It seems... Fairly intact! Clean insides, neat rows of boxes with labels and ladders for climbing up. Katherine gets to work, finding an empty box and fetching up seeds.

This one seems alright... These probably won't be but it's worth trying... Oh dear look at that crack that's definitely dead... And so on.

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He wards seeds as they go and sorts the ones she thinks are worth bringing back from the ones she doesn't.

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There has to be at least five thousand backpack-sized boxes in here. She writes whole sections off and knows exactly what she's looking for in the other ones. A skilled botanist, or at least familiar with the archives.

It takes an hour and fifteen minutes and she fills two boxes with warded seed packets.

"These will be the crops for whoever settles with you." Sigh. "We're done here... Never again will bright-eyed young folk walk these halls studying soil samples or seed splices..."

She stares at the high stacks of boxes, frost now forming on them through the open vault door, sadly.

She turns away, stonefaced. "Onward, then."

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