"Yeah, I'll take whoever wants to come, if that's not you it's not you. But you really will be better off if you go to Milliways and wait for someone else than if you stay here."

"I like the sound of that option. If it's real. Only have you and that lady's word for it so far..."

"If everyone else wants to go there'll be too many for one trip, I can bring someone else back to tell you about it on a second trip if I have to make one anyway."

"Maybe. Seems like you have some takers from what I hear, anyway."

Some other people want to know if their trades would be in demand. The ones that ask are: Farmers, blacksmiths, tailors, butchers, telegraph operators, machinists, printing press operators, coach drivers, steelworkers, or furniture makers.

"We have people farm and work metal, you may find it's more convenient than you're used to with our magic but it'll be pretty similar. There are human-shaped people who wear clothes but people might want to study Hari fashion before trying to break into the market, same for furniture. We don't have telegraphs or printing presses but I know an inventor who might want to talk to people with experience in those trades. Coach drivers will just have to do something new."

Coach drivers could drive coaches, if there are cars to be had and roads and people or things that need to go places.

But fine.

They're starting to separate out into 'want to go to Milliways and decide what to do from there' and 'no I'm staying here you can go off and have a damnfool adventure fine by me', split about seventy-thirty.

"I think that's a little more than we can take in one trip, who wants to be first?"

Most of the adult men volunteer to be first, and maybe a couple of them come report back. Nobody seems to find the distribution odd.

Of course they don't. Old enough to be reliable witnesses, unimportant enough to be expendable, caralendri are the same way, if Valanda stopped and really thought about it he might notice something weird about that but he doesn't. It'll make for a really cramped second trip, the group just skews so much toward children, but it would sound really suspicious to ask for more volunteers.

So, skyward.

They install heat cores in the survivors' boilers before leaving.

The airship is noticeably more sluggish, weighed down like this.

"I'm surprised so many wanna come see Milliways! I thought they'd all want to hunker down and stay put. Katherine's speech was pretty good."

"Thanks, Katherine!" And not to be translated: "Yeah, I'm a little surprised too, it looked like you'd gotten them pretty cozy. You do good work."

"Glad to hear it! It's been, you know, hard work. Lonely too. But for some people, if you can help, it's immoral to not. And that's why I'm gonna keep doing it after my little vacation."

"I'd wish for you to meet some helpful people on your vacation but I guess you have."

"Who knows who else I'll find? But even if I don't, just relaxing for a while, and eating real food, will be plenty nice."

"Good. I hope you get to do that."

When the airship arrives, the men go into Milliways in an orderly fashion. Yep, this sure is an interdimensional-or-something bar. They get to chatting with Liane and the scientists still hanging out here.

Valanda stretches and waits for them to decide who's going back to tell people. If they look like they'll be long he'll just borrow a book of children's stories with morals while he waits.

Children's moral stories are shorter, simpler, and usually have one fairly clear "moral of the story" you're supposed to learn at the end. Don't lie about wolves being near to get out of work or nobody will believe you when they're real and you'll get eaten. Sharing your toys with others can make you new friends. Don't be cruel to other people or they won't like you anymore. Working hard isn't fun, but makes your life easier if you make a habit out of it. Sometimes a person who seems scary and mean is just misunderstood, you should try to understand them and be kind anyway. If you admit to doing something immoral and repent and ask for forgiveness, you won't be tortured forever after you die.

That's really alarming! But it's probably a metaphor of some kind. He'll have to ask Liane about it later.

Looks like they'll be a while talking. He gets one of the books about homestead grants.

Homestead grants come in many shapes and sizes. This one is about the program America used. They offered heads of a household (men with a wife and at least one child) over the age of 21 a hundred and sixty acres of free land if they would travel there themselves, build a house, and 'improve' the land for five years - or only six months if they were willing to pay the equivalent of about 288 rings per acre.

But there were problems - a lot of the land ended up in the hands of speculators, and the people the program was meant for (poor urban families) didn't have enough money to start a farm, even on free land. They ended up planting a tree or two to technically 'improve' the land and then finding other work, not increasing the food supply with independent farmers like the government actually wanted. That, plus increasing mechanization of agriculture, meant that the Homestead Act was a mixed success at best.

Well, he's not counting on them for food, if they find other work that's great, it's not like he's giving them enough land to make much difference to Har's food supply anyway.

If they're not done talking yet he'll eavesdrop on them a little.

Several of the men are now drunk and mourning semi-quietly, while drinking more, in a corner. One of the teenage boys is talking to Liane, who looks like she's mostly just tolerating him.

Most of the rest are huddled with the scientists over a pile of sketches, the biggest of which is a church and garden they hope to build by combining several peoples' lots of land into one.

The cranky geologist notices him listening and waves him over and asks, "How much land would we be getting again, and where is it? What's the zoning rules? We may'd want to find a flat area with a stream away from any establishment and make our place there, 'pendin on how much infrastructure you already have and what it'll cost us to attach to it."

"We don't have much infrastructure yet. It wouldn't cost anything extra to include you in the first city but there's not much reason for you to prefer that except a shorter wait before there's plumbing and it'll be more convenient to be there if you want to fly to the mainland. I was thinking I'd let you pick the land you want from... Bar, does the map Nick made for me count as published enough to get a copy of it here?"

Since it is displayed publicly, yes.

And a copy of it appears a few seats over where there's clear space.

He goes and looks it over. "Come let me show you the place. So you wouldn't want to settle here or south of here, probably, there's a volcano and permafrost. And these areas are reserved for other uses. This place is going to be the city. So if you want anywhere around here" he points out a huge swathe of land "you can pick your favorite spot, I wasn't planning to tell you where to go. Near here will make it easier to buy imported food and we're not producing much yet, I had a greenhouse made but it's just proof of concept, it doesn't feed even the people I've got. There's hunting, though, you have to pay if you take the animals from these areas, but over here anything's fair game if you can kill it."