"Yep, this is from the imperial government. They summoned me, paid me too, but I got the impression that the answer wouldn't have been 'fine, you do you' if I declined, because that's just how governments roll. Cryptography! A way of making information useless to everyone unless you know a secret number. I offered Dareni thousands of rings if she could break a simple cryptological cipher I did in my head, so you know she'd have tried pretty hard, and she hasn't managed it yet." He comes in.

"Dareni is one person and translation isn't her specialty. Have there been incidents of people breaking that kind of code where you're from?"

"Yeah, plenty. Usually by spending obscene amounts of computational power on it, or because someone screwed up and revealed the private key by accident. Illusions will always be the gold standard, I think. But crypto might work as an extra layer or for stuff it wouldn't be great to reveal but wouldn't be a disaster either. And you can send encrypted information around faster than physical letters under illusions."

"If you'd been the one sending this letter, what kind of code would you have used?"

"Ayy Eee Ess one twenty eight. You would need a functioning computer. You would need to have shared an agreed upon 128-letter-long secret code, which the computer uses in lots of complicated math to turn a comprehensible letter into total gibberish. There are literally hundreds of billions of different ways to guess how to turn it back into words, so it takes a lot of guessing to get it by sheer chance, and the way the math works is designed to resist forming patterns that can be analyzed and used to narrow down the possible guesses. Then you feed the gibberish and the secret code into your computer and it turns it back into something comprehensible again. This way is one of the best for secret communication between two parties. If anyone else gets the secret code they can read all the messages that were encrypted with that code, however."

"And you're working on computers to sell us, of course. Which reminds me, you might want to talk with the refugees I brought from Milliways, their world is uninhabitable now but they can make technology we didn't have here before them."

"I saw 'em on the way in. Frikking steampunk robot, how does that thing not fall over? I intend to find out."

"I don't know but I bet a steampunk robot with a computer would be useful somehow! Oh, you should know, it's not a good idea to argue with them about whether their god lives in every world, he's very important to them and they don't want to be told that he's not here unless he came through Milliways with them."

"Religious steampunk engineers, who you've allowed to immigrate. Lovely. What a multiverse it is. I think I'll postpone your airship balloon and go have a polite chat."

"You know where to find me if you need anything."

And he reads his letter.

Nikolas Roth goes off to talk to the New Dovites. They're being very, very industrious. They've already carefully marked out plots of land, built a water pump, started planning a sewer system, built a tent encampment with hot water and a sawmill, gone hunting for fresh meat, started on a greenhouse.

Their single automaton is full of really clever little tricks and, as with all such things, the key insight they use is so obvious in hindsight. It chops down trees industriously, working as hard as half a dozen men, around the clock, with no coal. Wonderful. The steampunk Christians can be the robotics experts, he decides, and he'll just focus on computing.

He manages to get them to mostly accept him - or at least not actively hate him - by talking to the priest and acting appropriately pious and respectful and patient. He gets a few muttered comments and glares which he placidly ignores.

They would love a calculator, they would love to become his supplier for machine parts and raw metal once they're slightly more established. He works out a deal to give them a low-interest loan (to build goodwill) and warns them about knowledge mages and how they should find an illusion mage. He gives the Order of Mercy the full text of the English copy of the medical textbook he has half-translated for Mahan, and a few chapters from other medical texts. Not much of it is redundant to these late 19th century doctors.

He doesn't ask them for blood at this point, he just hunts wild animals instead. Get them used to him being that charmingly sarcastic merchant-inventor, first.

He does some chemistry to a vat of goop and makes a little weaving machine and tries to make nice, light, impermeable fancy polymer cloth balloon which he can pump up with air, seal, and have Valanda solidify, but the project doesn't work out like he expected, so he goes back to messing around with semiconductor techniques, Dareni assisting, before long.

He finds Valanda again two days later, and asks, "How about we talk about me buying some land now? I have the money and it's about time I built a real proper permanent workshop."

Valanda, meanwhile, reads the imperial government's urging to be very careful that his immigrants can follow the law and offer to help him with his morality experiments on his faraway continent where the idea can be safely tried and discredited if it fails without hurting anything they care about. He's outside saying things like "...but the idea in the second paragraph of the third page, I think that's a great idea, I'll figure out how to implement it..." for their knowledge mages when Nikolas finds him.

"Sure! Where are you interested in?"

That sort of makes him curious, but prying isn't good for your reputation. "Dozen or two acres a few miles out of the city, and maybe a half-acre near the city center. I'd also want to know what building codes you have, if any, yet. Plumbing hookup for the city plot, not needed yet for the remote plot."

"So I'm mostly borrowing Meiu's because it's the closest match to this climate, whatever you're building in the city needs to be flame-resistant, magically or by making it out of stone doesn't matter, and..."

He can rattle off most of it from memory. Very little of it applies to the workshop miles away.

Okay, nice.

He'll probably hire a force mage to do the excavating, mix up concrete himself, buy lumber and steel beams from the Dovites, and assemble it mostly himself.

"And how much will the plots themselves set me back?"

He names a price. It's not exactly high. Lots of untouched wilderness and all.

The negotiations have taken place five feet away from his little trinket. He hands over the requested number of rings right that second.

"I'll mark out the land for the workshop and someone can come measure it if you don't trust me."

"I'll have someone do that even though I do. Anything else I can do for you?"

"Tell me when Ahgari is free? Annoying as he is, he knows his stuff, I'm gonna pay him to sarcastically criticize my blueprints."

"I think he'll probably be back in camp in a little while, if you have anything else that can be done here it's probably worth hanging around and waiting."

"There's usually magic to be done. I'll find a sun and structure mage to pass the time. Have a good day, guv."

"You too!"

Off he goes, to hire some mages and watch for Ahgari.

Ahgari comes back to camp looking pleased with himself.

"Hullo, Ahgari. You look happy. I've got some rings for you if you want to double-check some work, just in case I missed something."