Thousands of rings is not nothing.

"...What, exactly, do they want to talk to me about?"

"Your birthplace. Your plans. I think, I'm just the messenger."

Sigh. "Hmph. And I suppose they'll want the whole thing recorded, won't they? Governments would."

There are much less polite ways they could have caught up to him. The imperial government is a lot looser, more EU than US... But he's going to prepare something tonight, just in case. Time-release curse with the witchly artifacts in his room, probably.

"Oh, very well."

"Shall I make arrangements for you on the flight tomorrow morning or tonight's red-eye?"

"Morning. Even vampires need to sleep. And I need to lock up my stuff."

"You'll be expected at the airport tomorrow morning. Any other questions?"

"I will refuse to discuss certain things at my discretion. That's all you need to know."

The imperial agent leaves without another word.

Well then...

He closes up shop. He rigs an unpleasant little Hellstone to touch a certain magical mirror if he doesn't come disarm the little device with a 12 digit passcode within 72 hours and leaves it in his rented room. Shouldn't be relevant, they won't even know he's doing it, hopefully - so why is he?

Well, it's best to be prepared, anyway. He wears all the little protection doodads he has, too. He sleeps and goes to the airport.

A caralendar recognizes him and refunds him two rings for coming in under the amount of weight paid for in advance.

It's a much shorter flight than the one to another continent.

He frets and thinks about tactics the whole way.

They pass a dense forest and a bay and more land and then there is Mar Geru. The airport is on the bank of the river that runs through the middle of the city.

The same belul from before is waiting for him to disembark.

He has himself, some clothes, and a messenger bag.

"Let's get this over with, shall we?"

"Follow me."

The belul leads him through a city that looks vaguely European except that the architectural style is different, the aesthetics are different, the people are different, the available materials are different... but it does look vaguely European with the jettying four- and five-story buildings and setts-paved streets.

The belul leads him to a tall, imposing building, one that has been visible since before the rest of the city and has not stopped being visible since the flight landed. It isn't decorated in the same style as anything else. Everything else is designed to look comfortable, admittedly not to humans in particular but that is the goal. The government building is not. Things are too big in a way designed to make people feel undersized. The front doors stand open. Inside there's a room that seems to be functioning like the first government office he saw back in that little town in Meiu: people can get copies of the laws or of Hari is the Language of the Empire. But that's not where Nikolas will have his audience.

How very Imperial. Like the giant steel eagle in the SS's stages courtrooms. He is warded against command magic. He is significantly faster and stronger than they expect. He has a deadman's switch. He has half a dozen protections besides.

He is... Not unfazed. But more quietly anxious and defiant than subdued and nervous.

The belul leads him through a side door down a hallway cloaked in illusions and designed to confuse anyone who tries to walk down it. Is it actually a maze with as many branches as it looks like? If he tries to find out by touching the walls he'll find out the walls aren't where they look like they are. Their footsteps make no sound.

At the end of the maze is a tall dark room where an agerah perches on a dais above his head. Probably. Unless that's an illusion too.

He fingers the various little amulets and rings (finger ones, not money) and bracelets he's wearing.

"All this must have been expensive, hm?"

"Yeah, probably," says the belul on his way out.

"Leave your illusion there and step forward," says the agerah on the dais.

He does so. Refraining from even so much as an eye-roll, now that he's in the very eye of the Powers That Be. No sense being antagonistic.

"Where are you from?"

"Nation called America, planet called Earth. Different universe."

"How did you come to this universe?"

"That would be Milliways, the mysterious magical interdimensional bar. Which I have absolutely no control over."

"How long has Milliways existed?"

"Now how am I supposed to know that? I mean, the answer might as well be 'forever' or 'two seconds' or '9 billion years' and I wouldn't be able to tell. At least twenty six days and four hours, since that's when I got here, I suppose."

"The Hari Empire has had no immigrants for more than four hundred thirty-two years. Why, given the existence of Milliways, has that not happened before?"

"I would be entirely speculating if I answered that. Just so you know."

"Did Earth have immigrants from other universes before you left?"

"Quite possibly! They would not necessarily have made themselves obvious, as I have. And most of them who I suspected were too eager to set me on fire for me to want to ask."

"Have you ever heard of one nation using Milliways to invade another?"

"Nope." Wouldn't surprise him if it were doable, though. All sorts of crazy magic out there.

"If I had a list of every Earth nation and chose one at random how likely is it that the one I chose would have been at war in the last hundred forty-four years?"

"...Ninety-five-ish percent? Mostly there's nice stretches of peace in between, and those have gotten more common and longer in the last hundred years. And some of the recent ones are technically not 'war', strictly speaking."

"What sets apart the five-ish percent of Earth nations that have not been to war recently?"

"Being tiny and fortified, or remote and poor, and not worth the trouble to go invade or have the ability to do any invading. I think."

"If Earth were made aware of our existence, which nations would want to invade us?"

"...Gosh. That depends on a lotta factors. Really hard to guess. If it was easy to get here...? If I have to name names... Good old 'Merica might try something, mostly because of paranoia about you eventually invading them and outrage over slavery existing here. Russia, China, probably a lot of those unstable Middle Eastern states. Almost everyone would get pissed off if immigrants from their nations got executed or turned into slaves or something."

"What would you do if it were your first priority to deter those nations from invading us?"

"...I would share a lot of information about their militaries to you and help you build an imposing military of your own. Which is something I very much do not want to do, by the by."

"Why and how much don't you want to?"

"You'd have to credibly promise some pretty sweeping changes to a bunch of laws to get me to want to build the slave empire an army."

"Which laws and why?"

"You'd have to ban slavery. And not execute people nearly as much. And... You know what, I can make a full list later. Because Earth governments have this concept that seems to be really hard to explain to people called 'civil rights', where people in a state are legally protected from the state in various ways. And this other thing called 'morality' that maybe I should just write a book about it, Valanda sort of gets it now..."

"What would a nation you approve of do to someone who killed three people and demonstrated the ability to circumvent a limited binding against violence in order to commit their last two murders?"

"Triple murder? Yeah, that gets you imprisoned for life or executed, depending on the nation. Look, I'm not saying Earthly nations are perfect, far from it. And you guys even have elections occasionally which is pretty great... Slavery's the sticking point more than the executions, anyway, 'an American citizen was sold into slavery for vandalism' is possibly even worse than 'an American citizen was executed for vandalism'."

"How much would it reduce our odds of being invaded if all criminals who would otherwise be enslaved were executed instead?"

"I really can't predict that. Probably not that much!" God he's making them worse, this is so stressful. "Odds of invasion are astronomically low unless someone figures out reliable interworld transit, and if that does happen, there won't be an invasion the next day, they'll issue demands and negotiate on things and send diplomats and such."

"What would you do if that happened?"

"Really depends. Probably wait and see what happens. Maybe hide." Maybe bribe a few mages of all types to the U.S. Embassy.

"Did you speak to Valanda in Milliways before you immigrated?"

"Yep. And I decided that the laws here were something I, personally, would be willing to comply with and live under. I haven't been breaking 'em. Most Americans wouldn't've."

"Is that the only thing you and Valanda discussed?"

"It was not."

"What else did you two discuss in Milliways?"

"No comment."

"Do you know anything about Valanda's goals?"

"Far as I can tell, he basically wants to import morality and end slavery. I'm all for it, if he can do it without setting the world on fire."

"What would it mean to import morality?"

"I suppose trying to make people understand and believe in a moral code - a code of behavior that exists alongside of, does different things than, and has punishments less severe and absolute than, the code of law. Done right, and when there's laws also, a moral code means you can trust strangers with your life." Sigh.

"Can you give me an example of a moral code and associated punishments?"

"They vary... And are kind of extensive... The sin of pride is believing too highly of yourself, complimenting yourself, treating others as if they are lesser. Someone who is too prideful might be talked to and warned that they are breaking the moral code, or insulted about it, or others will sometimes avoid them, or trust them less, or exclude them from some community stuff. Also you're supposed to feel shame and be uncomfortable if you don't follow the code of morals."

"I can understand wanting a state free of annoying fools who overestimate themselves. And ending slavery, how do you think he plans to do that?"

"Oh, you can say things that aren't questions. Lovely. I'm pretty sure he plans on eventually getting a voting majority who wants it ended and waiting for the next election."

"He intends to put state laws to a vote directly?"

"I don't know what he intends since I'm not him, but I meant getting someone who wants slavery gone elected to the relevant position."

"And what would this hypothetical elected person who agrees with him do about a three-year-old human heat mage who boils his mother's brain by accident? Have him fined for murder and executed when it inevitably happens again to his next caretaker?"

"I am not this hypothetical elected person. But one can have command magic placed on them without being a slave, I would imagine? Children or the ill who are a danger could be forbidden from using certain kinds of magic but otherwise left free. I'm sure there would be many layers and complexities to a revised law to this effect and it wouldn't be something they unilaterally declared without thinking it through. Maybe they could implement it in a single small city for a year, see what problems pop up, and abandon it if they're too awful or change the details so it's less awful."

"And will these free people whose eyes haven't even opened yet be allowed to vote? And their mothers will have no responsibility to keep them from innocently clawing up someone's belongings?"

"In most nations, only people of the age of majority could vote - and children were not entirely free, for exactly the reasons you're pointing out. I was not a statesman and do not confidently know all the details, unfortunately. If parents had an obligation to free their child upon them reaching the age of majority unless they could prove to an impartial judge that the child is incapable of following the law - and also were penalized for making their child incapable of following the law deliberately or through clear negligence - that would be a big part of America's probable objection solved. Not all of it, but a big part."

"Did Valanda ask you to come because you also find slavery obnoxious in a moral way?"

"Probably, yeah. I think he also thought I would be useful and profitable, though."

"Did he tell you to read our laws first and to follow them after coming here?"

"Yep, very insistent about that. Made me repeat them out to him, too."

"Would you have been able to come here without his cooperation?"

"Door only opens to your own world. He had to open the door. Maybe could've threatened him into it. Or snuck in."

"Who can gain access to Milliways?"

"Anybody, if the door likes you. I do not know why the door likes or dislikes people."

"Do you need to be using a door to access Milliways?"

"Apparently not always, from what I've heard. But usually. Gonna ban doors, are you?"

"I have not yet decided to ban doors. When else might someone gain access, besides when using a door?"

"If trapped or imprisoned and they are the kind of person who gets Milliways doors, by dreaming. By being lost in the wilderness and wandering into Milliways' back yard. Very occasionally, stranger ways."

"Can people facilitate immigration if they find Milliways in dreams or the wilderness?"

"Hell if I know."

"How many people have you told about where you came from?"

"Maaaaybe a couple dozen?" He mentally tallies. "Yep, seventeen." These guys are a bit paranoid and he's getting nervous about still being here.

"Does someone given Milliways access need to take an action to enter it?"

"I think so. But if you use those slave bracelets on people to stop them from doing anything if they encounter Milliways, Milliways' Security will notice and probably object. Security is metaphysically guaranteed to be able to defeat anyone and anything in the area."

He's glad to throw that in his face. Try to control Milliways? Good luck.

"What counts as a door for the purpose of entering Milliways?"

"...A panel with a hinge you can open, I suppose?"

"Have you ever heard of a disease outbreak caused by different populations of the same species coming into contact through Milliways?"

"Nope."

How many questions does this guy have? Well, he'll only really start complaining if he gets threatening or keeps him for more than a couple hours.

"To the best of your knowledge has Valanda done business with other foreign entities in Milliways?"

...Nik laughs. "He'd be an idiot not to."

"Has he made any promises to foreign entities about how he intends to govern Ira Sani? For instance, agreeing to act morally?"

"I rather don't know. I'm not joined at the hip with the guy. I made my workshop miles out in the wilderness, for chrissakes."

"What information do you think I would most benefit from learning?"

"I'm not gonna do your speculating for you on something as open ended as that. Also I don't have a clear picture of whatever your goals may be beyond maintaining a stable sovereign government."

"How likely do you think it is that Har will cease to be a peaceful, stable, sovereign nation in the next twenty-four years?"

"...One, maybe two percent. Mostly because with Milliways in play, anything could happen. But I have no reason to fuck this place up and Valanda has a deep fear of fucking this place up from what I could tell. Slavery offends me, but not really on a personal level, because vampires have their squishy moral bits ripped out."

"What does it mean to have your squishy moral bits ripped out?"

"I no longer feel nearly as much shame when I do certain kinds of immoral acts! It's just intellectually offensive. I have professional standards, after all."

"...You don't feel embarrassed when you're obnoxious, so therefore you don't care as much when anyone else does things you find obnoxious for unfathomable human reasons?"

"Mmm, not quite. Most humans have a part of them that goes 'breaking the moral code is embarrassing and wrong' and feel embarassed and guilty if they do. I don't. Vampires are a much better cultural fit for Har than an average American, we're much more willing to murder, steal, rape, pillage, et cetera, if we can get away with it."

"Do you think you can get away with that here?"

"I do not. You've got freaking knowledge mages, which are anathema to any reasonable standard of privacy. It doesn't feel fair, I'm used to the assumption that if nobody can see me nobody can ever look at what I was doing, and unless I carry that trinket around everywhere that's no longer true and they can still tell where I went."

"And it's more salient to you that you can't get away with anything than that other people can't get away with anything they might want to do to you?"

"Not quite sure what you're asking? Being unable to disappear if I wanted to is what I dislike about knowledge mages, not being unable to get away with things. I suppose it is nice that I probably won't get attacked. Vampires probably care less about threats of violence than humans on average, though. It's not actually unfair, it just sort of feels that way. I guess not all my moral-related feelings got ripped out, eh?"

"Ah, yes, that's very understandable. Some people don't leave home much for that reason. Are you saying privacy is an aspect of morality?"

"For some people, yes. If I had to name the five most essential pieces of morality... Fairness and justice, kindness and caring, loyalty and honesty, respect and duty, and cleanliness or purity."

"Ah. Oh, that makes sense to me. Ways it's game-theoretically useful to predictably behave regardless of incentives, that also make life better for the people around you... cleanliness is an outlier but a lack of it hurts yourself and others. Humans have the same sort of emotional investment in all of them that you or I have in repaying what's done to us and bathing regularly?"

"Oh, Agerah have a revenge thing? Humans do too. Now you get it. Broadly, yes. The exact ways it's codified and which aspects are considered most important vary a lot from culture to culture. Cleanliness doesn't come up as much in places with good sanitation for example. There's actually research on it - most humans care about all these things a little bit, but how much they care about particular aspects depends fairly strongly on what their parents or friends or teachers told them they should care about when they were children."

"So you and Valanda want to teach our native humans to care about those things and that relates to slavery because... oh, because you want to be kind to the slaves?"

"Yes. Though freedom falls under 'fairness' a lot, too. A slave working and receiving nothing for it is offensive. Like being cheated out of your pay. I'm not sure if other species value what they're taught to value, but it'd surprise me if they don't at all."

"For criminals it's punishment for having hurt someone to start with. For children they usually receive food and shelter and education."

"Yeah, fair, but... I think this is hitting privacy. Because privacy is also tied to independence, the ability to prevent people from doing things to you, to control your own life and situation. That's less central than the ones I mentioned, but America cares about it a lot because of its history. I mentioned this for kids, the age of majority thing, but if criminal slaves had a term and would be freed at the end of it it'd offend that part of the moral code less."

"It's what we do with criminals we don't think can be part of society. It's not our first resort, we start with mild deterrents and help understanding and following the law, but for people who can't be stopped there isn't an amount of time after which we can just let them go."

"Yeah, I suppose..." Sigh. "Many of these nations have recidivism problems. It's just that saying 'slavery' is like throwing a lit torch on an unprotected building."

"Of course. As you try to convince people to value morals, is there any help you'd like?"

"I don't really know. I was never a people person. Maybe don't worry too much if Valanda brings more people through Milliways? It'll be very hard to build a moral society from scratch, but if he imports one, maybe it can grow. And you may have heard I am selling these calculating machines - people from Milliways will have new technology, new magic, which can be scary, but if they're screened enough so that they're not going to start a civil war, could also be very profitable."

"You expect Valanda to visit Milliways again? More than you expect anyone else to?"

"Either him or me. He's gotten doors at least twice, me six times - all from Earth, though. If you get it more than once, you're probably going to get it on a semi-regular basis. Probably. Everything about Milliways is so frustratingly uncertain."

"Ah, so Milliways doors are definitely not distributed randomly through the population. Hm. Well, that's all I need from you. Twenty-four rings to stay while I write a letter to Valanda, deliver it to him without letting it out of your illusion till it's in his possession and tell him to read it hidden?"

"I think who gets doors is based on some impenetrable concept of interestingness. And, deal. I was expecting to be here longer anyway."

He fetches his illusion amulet and takes out his tablet and starts reading the computer science textbook he had set down earlier.

He disappears into the shadows. The letter takes a while. It must be long or careful or both.

The letter, several pages sealed with wax, falls from a place nowhere near the dais.

Illusions upon illusions. These people do like their theatrics.

Back out he goes. He remembers his path to the millimeter.

That isn't necessary, the belul is waiting, but he probably walks faster than a belul anyway. Despite the fondest dreams of its builders the hallway is just the same on the way out as in.

Robotics and computers and a noise generator could fix that.

Maybe he won't mention it. This place reminds him of the Armory, the creepy bastards.

Out they go.

Outside the rest of Mar Geru is comfortable and pleasant and not at all designed by an edgelord to give people vertigo.

His guide who doesn't manage to do much guiding on the way out asks if he'd like a free flight back to Erasi.

"That was part of the deal, was it not? So, yes."

"Would you like to fly back today or tomorrow?"

"Right away, ASAP, all that jazz. I've got stuff to go sell." And a creepy Imperial Whatever to get far away from.

Soonest flight back is less comfortable and on a private airline but it's almost as free as the flight here.

Almost as free? He's not paying a ring. They promised free transit there and back, o helpful guide. He'll wait for the first one that is actually free.

It is actually free.

It does not end up costing negative rings.

Good enough.

He reads, he breathes easier even though he's not actually any kind of out of their power, he idly wonders what's in the letter. More information is generally better to have. But he probably can't break and re-seal it secretly with what he has.

...Maybe the imperial government, or some trading corporation, would buy ciphering machines, to make this sort of thing easier and faster. There's a thought. Any trading company worth its salt is probably spying on its competitors and secretly sending information between branches as best it can, merchants come up with all sorts of desperate schemes to squeeze a few extra dollars out of markets.

No one on the flight happens to turn to him and ask if he's selling ciphering machines.

Erasi is just as he left it.

He disarms his mini-apocalypse time bomb. He sells the last few calculators. He writes a few letters hinting at the idea of cryptography to some likely sounding companies. He books a flight back, some fifty thousand rings richer.

They've made progress while he's been gone. There's an entire working steam-powered robot doing logging.

Back at camp things look a lot more like they did when he left, just with more people.

...What???

That thing should have fallen over a dozen times by the look of it.

Milliways. Has to be. People from some kind of streampunk world? At least a few dozen by the looks of things. He'll need to go check 'em out.

He'll need to speed up his tech timetable to stay ahead of those people.

Valanda glances at him and is visibly glad to see him but then turns his attention back to the large spheres of various materials he's doing something magical to.

Since his mind is on 'steampunk' it's easy to make the connection. "Building an airship, are we?"

"We might be! We're still doing some tests. Know anything really light and really airtight?"

"There's aerogels and PVC... Treated cloth... I can probably come up with some options given a few hours."

"I'd pay for the shell for a functioning void balloon, if you can make something that works."

"Hmm, mostly it just needs to be big... Can you lock cloth into its current shape with defense magic?"

"Yep! But it's still permeable. Thinking of waxing it or something?"

"Or something. Also I've got a delivery for you. He was very insistent about hush-hush, keep it illused, your eyes only." He produces that letter, untampered with.

He backs away out of the illusion. "If I die today it's probably because the letter was a trap, someone avenge me if that happens, okay? Well, it's probably safe. Mind bringing it to my tent? I don't have an illusion on me right now."

"Sure. Functioning relations between the Imperial Whatever and the governor of my new home are probably in my best interest. Maybe I should teach you two crypto so you can send it in the clear and I don't have to do this again."

"It's from the imperial government? Wait, what's crypto? Come in if you want, that sounds useful, whatever it is."

"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."

"Work on what? How many rings?"

"Building blueprints. I'm planning on doing some stuff differently, like they did on Earth. I did the math, but... Hundred twenty for a solid hour going over 'em and discussing?"

"You could make it a hundred forty-four."

"Oh, very well, this is important to get right. I'd prefer to do it inside my anti-scry."

"That's fine."

"Let's get to it then."

He has two - one for a warehouse-style workshop, one for a downtown building that will be a ground level store with four floors of apartments and then a big loft penthouse for himself on top. He took care to make it pretty, copying some themes from mainland architecture. He's going to use titanium-reinforced concrete and have defense magic done to key parts. He did a destructive test on some earlier, here are the numbers. He's leaving more space than usual for an elevator - he's going to use technology to make one automatic, which is still in the design phase for now but will have triple redundancy.

He'd like advice on accessible apartment design, whenever the structural and maintenance problems are exhausted, he's designing from a very human perspective.

"I'd have a working model of the elevator design you want before trying to use it in a building. And be careful mixing warded and unwarded building materials, it's a perfectly good way of doing things but it can go wrong in ways things usually don't go wrong otherwise. It's interesting to see your human perspective, it'll probably be good for attracting humans to Ira Sani. Have you seen any housing designed for other species yet? Housing for essi and ereli isn't exactly a solved problem but for agerah and beluli you should look at what's already been tried."

"Haven't seen any agerah or beluli housing yet. I'll make sure to look into it. I have an idea for essi and other small species, which needs a bit more work. And my workshop will be my first building, the tower with the elevator will come later."

He takes notes. He has more questions. Wants to get his hour's worth.

Ahgari has book recommendations on relevant topics.

"...but someone read it outside on a beach in Anavel Sani nine years ago so if you get a knowledge mage and an illusion mage who know how to do these things to project it somewhere you can read over their shoulder, it was about two months after the summer solstice in the morning. And then Principles of Stable Construction is available at the libraries in Mar Geru and Elit City, for sure, and probably Thelm Ret and..."

"I have reference books of my own saved on my little tablet but I'll make sure to check those out if I get a chance. It's a constant low-level annoyance that I can't do the local magic, but at least I have vampire speed to make up for it."

"You and the void mages. There are people here who have experience with construction, you can hire them. What's your plan for the illusions on these places?"

"Pretty much total on my workshop, small areas total-except-if-you're-in-there. The store won't have many. Maybe some art. The apartments, still deciding."

"That all sounds right. The standard practice for apartments is two layers, one covering the whole building but allowing anything for anyone inside, one on each apartment blocking pastwatching and keeping people from spying on their neighbors. And soundproofing that lets sound into the apartments but not out. But you should read Privacy in the City by Sasai, it goes into more detail than I can right now."

"I'm accumulating a shopping list. I'll have to go back to the mainland sooner or later anyway, I suppose, to sell computers."

"I heard about that. You're a successful inventor or something like that, it's a good set of skills to apply to real estate, if you haven't thrown every element in the air together and gotten yourself killed you're a little less likely to come up with any great ideas for making an apartment unlivable."

"I know just enough about chemistry to know what not to fuck around with, yes. I did have something explode on me, but I knew that might happen and it was behind a wall at the time, because I take precautions."

"Walls aren't always good enough. What would you have done if instead you'd heard it might make a toxic gas?"

"Not mess with it yet. I don't have the right stuff to make a good fume hood quite yet. And depending on the gas it might make, not tried it at all ever. I'm never touching Florine, for example."

Ahgari laughs. "That makes two of us."

"I'd have to without mages. Computer manufacturers on Earth used it to clean their equipment to within an inch of its life. But structure and maybe void magic will be able to take care of that for me. And you can make some great stuff with it if you're careful enough."

"I'm sure you can if you know what you're doing. ...Please don't get overconfident and die."

"Not planning on it. Either messing with Florine or dying. I suppose we're done here, then?"

"Yeah, we're done, read what I told you before you ask me more questions that you could've answered for yourself."

"Asking an expert who's not afraid to tell me where I'm wrong is a fast way to get an idea where your path lies compared to bumbling around for hours. It was worth the rings to me. Bye, then."

Meanwhile someone is looking for Kenneth.

Kenneth is talking to anyone who'll talk back and doesn't seem to secretly hate him for being annoyingly very very slow at Hari and not having a huge vocabulary. Currently, that's an agerah with a hat on their head, about the different kinds of academic wear and the subtle messages therein, for example, wearing a neatly trimmed leather-elbowed tweed coat (elbows are demonstrated via mime), versus a fully leather coat. And then there's the colors...

"...It's not a law, but wearing a cap or color you didn't earn will make everyone laugh at you. Oh, hello, Mahan."

"Let me know when you two are done? There's the notes to give the Order of Mercy and I don't share a language with them..."

"Oh! Yes. Yes. That is important. I was just trying to learn... Uh. It was nice talking to you. Do you mind if I go now?" He asks the agerah.

"Find me if you're ever in the area again," she says.

"Trying to learn what?" Mahan asks.

"Learn Hari! I am bad. Talk to all people in Hari, no English, is good way to learn. Is called in English, total immersion. But we can go to New Dover, I translate."

"You're not too bad, you just started. Anyway, I've already talked to Siviar, we can fly there now if you're ready."

"Siviar is a force mage? And, sure."

"Yeah, one of the ones that work for Valanda. Come on."

Siviar is waiting near one of the half-finished buildings.

He follows. "You know... I always felt guilty about my study a little bit. Learn languages? Not be a doctor? Or a chemist?"

"They have some kind of law about studying where you're from?"

"No. Er... No law that you must study. But some skills help other people and some do not."

"It helps people to be able to communicate."

He shrugs. "We and the Americans cooperated. We shared a language already. I tried to get help to the Scandianavian states. I could speak their languages. My state did not want to help them. They did not want to help us. I was useless."

Sigh.

"Hello, Siviar."

Mahan shrugs.

"Hello, ready to fly?" asks Siviar.

"Yes. Also some people at New Dover might want to hire you."

"I can stay there long enough to ask them about that," says Siviar.

And then they are airborne.

It's kind of thrilling. And nauseating. And he can't distract himself talking and learning and talking and learning up here.

...None of this seems real from up here. Just one year ago he was learning German, doing an analysis on linguistic drift, so keenly concerned with words and patterns and the smell of old paper...

And then the frost, and the certain knowledge in his gut that he was doomed. Damned.

And then another wrenching shift. A new world. One where he... Might not have to hide his desires. Magic. 

He has been saved, whether or not it's a miracle, and called to make a new home in foreign lands. He has his life back from the cold. 

So why is he crying?

Who knows. Mahan gives him a worried look. A very brief one, and then looks back down at the trees.

"Have you ever thought you were going to die, Mahan?"

"No, never."

"I knew I was going to. And then I didn't."

Mahan doesn't have anything useful to say to that. He watches trees sadly.

Sad seems to be the order of the hour, yes. Kenneth is quiet the rest of the way there.

"Point me to who I'm supposed to give the notes to?" Mahan asks when they land.

"...Over here, see the tent with the red cross symbol, like this?" He gestures. "That means 'doctors' to us." He starts walking.

(Someone asks the force mage, in significantly more broken Hari, if he can dig square holes for buildings.)

Siviar can do that and starts negotiating the price.

Mahan heads for the tent and then stops outside. "What's your etiquette for walking in on people when they might be busy?"

"You hit the door, if we have doors. For the tents, you learn which are sleeping places and which are working places. Working places just go in. It will be different when we have buildings."

He pushes back the tent flaps and greets the doctors - they're all wearing the red cross on their clothes, anyway - inside. There isn't much furniture except a makeshift row of cribs holding a bunch of babies.

He talks to them in English for a moment, "----- Mahan -----, ------..."

And then, "Mahan, this is Doctor Christopher, Nurse Camden, and Nurse Emile. Nurse is... Not a doctor yet. Not enough learning. They're glad to meet you."

"I brought notes from a Milliways medical textbook. Had them shielded from knowledge mages before I took them out of Milliways, you're most of the people who have access to them right now." He offers a thick stack of pages of notes to Doctor Christopher.

Christopher takes them and pages through a little bit, noticing that they're all in Hari. He neatens them up and holds them, smiling at Mahan and chattering, sounding kind.

"I'll translate those for him later. They say, uh, they bless you... Which means they think God approves of what you're doing, sort of... And the Order of Mercy doesn't keep secrets that could help people. Do you mind that they don't want to keep things they learn from your notes secret? They also say that the... Not quite human man? An inventor who drinks blood? Gave them a medical book that's in English, do you want a copy?"

"They can do what they want with them, that's why I'm giving them the notes and not just letting them look. I wouldn't say no to a copy but I don't read English and if it's the one I think it is I've read half a Hari translation already."

"Maybe I could translate the rest for you when I knew a few more words. Right now, they want to talk about medicine and death mages, with me to translate. I don't mind. You want to?"

"Sure. Do they need a death mage now or just want to plan for the future?"

"...A few people are sick but we have - small thing killing medicine for them, and hot food and rest. So just planning right now I think."

"Well, I'm not far if you need me. I'm on the imperial payroll so there's a handful of things I do for free, by the way, if I ever charge you for rabies treatment you can complain to the government. I don't know what other planning you need to do."

They want to know all about local diseases and tell him about ones that might have followed along with them. They want to know what other species tend to suffer from, maybe they know something that can help. They want to know if he can kill specific parts of the human body, so that they can target cancerous cells.

"There are a lot more diseases than I can list from memory but the ones the imperial government worries about are rabies, white death, caralendar pox, distemper and this one that has dozens of regional names that I know of as Erasi fever. Besides rabies none of them make humans sick but we can carry a couple others and spread them. Humans here mostly get this one thing that makes your throat hurt but isn't very dangerous, but sometimes something another species has learns to get us too. I haven't had any practice treating cancer and you probably want to go to the mainland for a specialist if you need anything really delicate done to a cancer in an internal organ. What exciting new diseases do you think you've brought?"

They had rabies, they had a vaccine for it too. Do they do vaccines here?

The Flu, maybe. And something that is spread by sex and is painful and unpleasant but rarely deadly.

Could he kill a very very specific part of, say, a brain or a blood vessel or some other organ without surgery? With the help of a knowledge mage, perhaps. Sometimes insane people, or those who have seizures a lot, are a little bit diminished or forget some things but are otherwise fine after a tiny, malfunctioning brain piece is removed. If they can understand and consent, or if they're too far gone, if their families consent to the treatment, that is.

"I don't touch brains, I have one year of medical training and none of it covered doing things to brains. I mean to keep training but there are people who already know more than I do about that kind of thing. We don't have the thing you're talking about, no, but we do get immunity from exposure so it'd probably be useful if you'd like to teach us how you do that. We do have diseases that're similar to your flu and we can get things from sex, they're neither of them all that common but at least they won't be a shock when they start spreading here."

Well, they're hoping to cure their STDs before they start spreading here. It'd be irresponsible to do otherwise. And vaccines are extremely useful. They're going to want to recreate the rabies vaccine they had, and get samples of white death, caralendar pox, and Erasi fever to try and vaccinate against. People were working on one for distemper but it was a low priority before. It's definitely not low priority now, beluli are suffering daily from it, they presume.

"We can have someone make a trip to the mainland for samples, they have them but not here. Distemper's under control but in a way where we have to keep curing it over and over, it'd be nice if people could avoid getting it."

Do any of the other diseases he listed manage to kill people or permanently damage them on a regular basis? Those will be the top priority. Are any of them bacterial? They can manufacture penicillin and other such chemicals. Or just tell structure mages about it.

They'll probably send someone to a local medical school if those exist as soon as they can afford it. They'll probably study and verify what the otherworldly textbooks say and publish any of it that is useful at all, once they have a proper clinic built. (It's third on the list, after the church and the utilities building that are going up.) There's a lot to do. They're going to be able to help so many people, God willing, but carefully and patiently.

"So I'd say more than two-thirds of new cases of those get caught before they're more than a little cough or a bad day. When they don't it's usually because there's no death mage handy, which isn't common anywhere there's more than a couple dozen people, so when they don't get handled fast enough they still don't spread much. The diseases that death mages don't have under control are the ones that aren't infectious, vaccines'll be really great but we need precise, safe insulin dosing and early diabetes diagnosis lot more."

Oh! They know about diabetes, too, it's just that vaccines were on the mind. They hadn't learned to treat it themselves, but the notes he gave them have something about diabetes, they can verify and publish that when they're a little more established. Do they do blind clinical trials with placebos here, to verify that the effect of a drug is real and not people feeling better just because they got a pill?

"We do tests, like getting some people treated and some not, but I've never heard of lying to people about it before! That sounds like the kind of thing I didn't think you guys did!"

They explain the placebo effect! Giving someone a sugar pill and saying it's a pain killer makes them feel less pain. It's very very weird but it's real! They checked lots of times! There are ethical standards of when you do this sort of trial and you pay everyone involved, but it's important that medicine actually do something, forgetting about the placebo effect is how you get Chinese people feeding leaves that do nothing but taste bitter to each other for thousands of years.

"That's good to know, I'll use that if I ever do any studies. Oh, you know what, we shouldn't be assuming we're exactly the same kind of human as each other and the people who wrote these foreign books, it'd be good to check that. With blatant lies. For science."

For science! They could do some basic, common sense checks right now, asking him about the humans he knows and doing a physical examination. Entirely for science, and he is entirely free to refuse, of course.

"I can't tell if you mean that or you're flirting but it is a good idea."

Kenneth freezes.

"Please don't flirt with them? Or me? Right now?" He asks, trying to make it sound like he missed something in the translation, looking slightly terrified. "This place, these people... Is medical. Professional."

"Thanks, couldn't tell, it's hard to read foreigners. Like I said, I agree, it'd be a lot better to notice any differences now than to get called here when someone's sick and have it come up then."

Then they can give him a physical in this curtained-off section over here. Kenneth stays on the opposite side of it, translating through the wall.

Are Hari humans any different than Earthly ones? Is Mahan a perfectly normal and healthy young man?

Yup. He chatters about not-immediately-obvious ways human bodies he's familiar with work while they're at it and that's all the same too, though they might think otherwise if they're very unfamiliar with any humans who aren't from western Europe.

Regional differences are not unheard of. The doctors are pretty confident they're the same species and most of the research should transfer. Which is kind of weird, but Milliways is very weird, so...

"Isn't it! And I haven't heard of any agerah or beluli in the other worlds, just humans, it's so weird."

"We heard of half a dozen other species in Milliways, all similar to humans and caralendri than anyone else."

"Maybe humans are just the best kind of person and that's why all those gods I keep hearing about want to make some."

Kenneth tries to translate this diplomatically, but the doctors are starting to learn a few words of Hari.

"They say... You should come to church services. Once a week, starting in two days. And we'll teach you about the One True God." He looks kind of uncomfortable with this. "And the the holy book says humans are given domain over the Earth, but this is not the Earth, and it also says to love all people, and that means not just humans. And I think, uh, that we did what we came here for? Unless you want to talk to them more?"

"Yeah, I think we're done, you coming back with me?"

"Yes. They want me to keep learning Hari and get to know how things work here. If you can wait ten, fifteen minutes for me to talk to some people, that is."

"Sure, meet you outside."

Kenneth goes off to find some of his scientific compatriots and make a report and hand over a sheaf of notes and grab a mug of soup from the communal kitchen and then go back to find Mahan.

Their force mage transporter has been being paid to help dig a hole for what will become a church fit for a few hundred people. (They're being hopeful about attracting other faithful, and population growth.)

"I hope you don't mind if we get our ride back now."

Siviar should be close to done with that by now anyway.

Yeah, he already finished. The dirt is piled up a few dozen yards away. Thanks for your help, Siviar, here's your money!

Wheee.

Mahan spends the flight thinking about something.

Kenneth just admires the view, the wind, and tries to not think.

Mahan invites him to the nearest empty public place with an illusion on it as soon as they land. Happens to be the government tent, but Valanda's out right now.

"You want to talk about something secret-ish? Well, sure."

"Should I take them up on that invitation and go hear about their god?"

"...No easy answer to that. My feelings on Christianity are... Many. Why would you want to, why would you not want to?"

"I'm not in the habit of turning down an invitation to a lecture just because I don't know what it'll teach me. But you warned me they have ideas about me and you seem really scared of them and their ideas."

"I don't know that you'll learn anything you can use. It's... A way of thinking about yourself, your place in the world, and other people. It centers us. It teaches us morals. The teachings of God and the Church inspire me, even if they're not always something I totally agree with. And... Nathaniel, our priest, is one of the good ones. He really does love everyone, I think. I'm just skittish from meeting some of the bad ones. If they decide to hate you, you can leave, they won't do worse than ask you to leave. And maybe Father Nathaniel will steer them right. I'd say, talk to Nathaniel first and then decide if you want to see a church service." He's tense, clenched fist almost drawing blood.

"Oh, that's not so bad, not when I have somewhere else to go. Thanks! You guys are all really nice, you know that?"

"We try to be. I understand that 'morals' is kind of a new concept here. But if everyone is moral and nice, I think everyone will be better off. So hopefully we'll be a good example?" He smiles properly for the first time in a few hours.

"We'll find out!"

"We will." Kenneth is totally missing any signs of interest Mahan is expressing, probably. "...Do you know where I can find a place to sleep? Get that sorted so I'm not running around late at night looking. I have rings for a few days' stay here."

"Yeah, I think there's still space in one of the tents, if there's not then you can get a couple heat and illusion mages to make someplace warm and private for the night."

"I'll just... Go do that then." His eyes linger on Mahan a bit as he turns to leave. "See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'd love to."

He smiles again, and steps out, and goes to rent a place to sleep and study his notes on the Hari language and try to muddle through his feelings and sleep.

The next day someone goes looking for Nikolas.

She won't have to look far, considering he's also looking for her. "Next batch of whatsits are ready, you want to go help me figure out what's wrong with 'em this time?"

"Yep! And after that do you have some free time?"

"Well, probably not. Busy busy busy. I'm starting on a proper workshop soon, inventing and figuring out all sorts of things, proper computers are closer by the day, got to keep ahead of the New Dovites, you know."

"Oh, that's nice. Let's see your broken whatsits, I guess."

"You do remember you're getting paid, right? Well, let's be off, then."

He's come a long way since the first attempts at semiconductors. These are much more sophisticated and hardly anything is wrong with them at all. He tries to have her narrow down the exact step where things went a bit off. And there are other whatsits now, too - precision magnetic spinny disk things, various other little arcane arrangements of wire and metal and electricity. He has rapid-fire questions about all of it.

And she has answers. "They're better this time! If only your calculators would give you partial credit for trying!"

"You know, there's a funny story. Tiny problems in calculators that break the whole thing - even just one letter out of place can do it - are called 'bugs'. Because the first 'computer bug' to be called that was a literal insect that had gotten stuck on one of the relays and burnt to death and stuck it closed. Everything must be perfect for these to work. They're going to be very impressive, though. When I finally freaking get the manufacturing process working consistently. Who knew something that took thirty years the first time around is hard to replicate, even with all their books."

"You can do it! D'you need a death mage to keep bugs out?"

"Couldn't hurt, come to think of it. I'll find one later." Sigh. "Okay, so about the microphone, it should have..." He puts them both back to work.

Work work work. It's a little tedious.

And then he has a page of notes on what to try a little better next time. 

Little electronic bits and bobs and toys are scattered around the place, but he doesn't need to make something sellable, he has his capital for now, he wants to get to the point where he can make microprocessors that he can write programs for, and make little personal computers and arbitrary electronic gadgets with.

"Well, that's us done for today. I think you've earned a raise by now. From today on, one forty four an hour instead of one twenty."

"Of course I have."

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself. But you're not wrong. I'll have more for you to do tomorrow." He yawns. "Well, unless I work on my buildings tomorrow instead."

"Guess we'll see if you can make anything work by then."

"I'll get it eventually. G'night."

She leaves.

Not a lot happens for a couple of days.

Eventually Valanda goes to see New Dover.

It's a bit of a tent town right now. Their small tower of a water heater-pump-thing has gained two friends, one of which is powering a sawmill and the other is soon to be hooked up to a greenhouse, which looks mostly finished. The automaton plods around slowly, as with the whole past week, hauling trees from Valanda's logging area.

A few of the tents have gotten sturdy wooden framing with some of the fresh timber from the sawmill, and even a few windows, making them look almost like temporary buildings. A kitchen, a temporary church, a clinic, and a planning office. The neat array of tents each have pipes leading into them.

They've marked out plots of land with colored stakes set into the ground, and dug a couple of building foundations. One of the foundations even has the first timbers of a building frame going up already.

Katherine the botanist comes out of the near-complete greenhouse when he approaches. "Welcome, governor! I have learned a little Hari!"

"Hi, Katherine! Looks like everything's doing well. Do any of you need anything?"

"More money to pay more mages!" She laughs. "Maybe protecting some things? We are almost done making the greenhouse, in a few days I want you to un-defend my seeds and I can see which ones sprout. Tell other people they are welcome to visit if they want, too. Especially if they will talk to us so we can learn Hari, or do magic for us cheap!"

"Sure, I can let people know and come by again in a couple days. I'm impressed with what you've built so far, I think you've outpaced the rest of us."

"Thank you. We are very motivated, very organized, unified. Almost everyone works. We are doing something we did before, from books. And we have an automaton!"

"We're lucky to have you. Do you think your food stores will last till harvest? Have you gotten your living spaces hidden?"

"Probably. There's hunting, and greenhouse soon. Farm and harvest will take time. And yes, hidden now. We didn't think of it at first. We sent Kenneth to go find an illusion mage when Nik mentioned it. We're living like an army camp for now. Payin' folks in food and sleeping spots, unless you're sick or a kid. I think a girl named Mary went to live near your place instead? Something about cooking for people. She has some savings, and we'll find a place for her if she comes back, of course."

"Oh, I heard about that, but I haven't had a chance to try her food yet. I mean to!"

"If she can make things taste better to agerah and beluli that will show some skill. I wouldn't know where to start. But I'd bet it's possible."

"It might be! I can't wait to find out if your food is like Hylian food."

"Everything going okay on your end, governor? I'm worried. Sooner or later someone's going to do something stupid or forget the laws and customs are different... It's better than freezing to death, still..."

"I'm doing okay, yeah. What sort of incident are you worried about?"

"Probably something involving... Marriage and what comes after marriage. You people are so liberated about it."

"Yeah, you have your legal thing. If it's important to you, you can have a contract that covers just about anything, as long as there's consideration for both parties. You can enforceably agree that you won't have sex with other people and that you will cooperate in raising your kids, just have to make a permanent record of the agreement and be clear that it is a contract."

"There were marital agreements back home. A little more complicated than that. We've been warning people not to get involved with the locals unless they think about it a lot and explain marriage, that's more the kind of thing I would worry about, someone gets a girl pregnant and is terrified at not knowin' his kid, wants to marry her and raise the kid."

"Yeah, that could go badly, if the mother didn't want the father involved and they didn't come to an agreement beforehand and have different ideas of what should be default. I can try warning people on my end too. I'm a little worried that warning them too strongly will get in the way of people getting to know each other and make friends but there's probably a way to balance that."

"I'm just a botanist. My powers are botany, not honestly really difficult social conundrums. I can't throw topsoil at the problem of marriage expectations."

"They might find it hard to have kids to disagree about how to raise if they were buried in it. Well, I can try to figure something out, I guess. I have some ideas. Thank you for bringing up the problem."

"Just don't let it explode on you like some undergrad's chemistry experiment."

"I'll try. I might fail but I hope I can make everything work out."

"People do stupid things all the time. Warning them doesn't always stop that. Hopefully we'll be able to deal with whatever comes up. Because something will. I had better get back to work, but I can find Rogers or Christopher for you real quick if you like."

"If they have anything they need to talk to me about!"

"Christopher wanted to ask you how to send a letter in to the imperial government."

"There's two ways for him to do that. He can write the entire thing and send it by courier or he can go somewhere public, say something really distinctive before saying what he wants them to hear, then just send a date and a place and a turn of phrase. Any physical mail he sends could get delayed while they examine it for any traps or anything and then delayed some more while they get around to looking at it. We don't have imperial mail coverage yet but we probably will eventually, that'll make it a little more convenient to get it sent but not much faster."

She nods and writes this down. "He wants to tell them about a concept of medicine we know about. Probably going to ask for help developing vaccines - which can prevent people from getting sick at all."

"I can get that seen faster, but I suspect it'll just get forwarded to some medical organization and you can probably save time by asking Mahan who it'd get forwarded to and sending it there directly."

"Well, I'll tell him that, too."

A loud bell sounds from somewhere. "Oh, hey! It's lunch time! Want some, as long as you're here?"

"I would! How much will that cost?"

"We wouldn't complain if you defend some things for us, but we wouldn't charge you, guv. Come on, this way."

People talking happily and laughing are streaming towards a particular tent.

"Sure, I'll ward stuff after lunch."

Is it Hylian-style?

It's not quite Hylian-style! It's very much its own thing. Spiced beans, roasted and fried meat, salt and gravy, grilled fish, and fried starchy things, fruit jellies and butter on biscuits. Fruit and nuts are available but have had much less processing done to them.

"We really need to find some chickens," one guy complains, "I miss eggs! Guv, you know if chickens even exist around here?"

"Yeah, there's birds that lay eggs, you can probably find some around here... maybe not in winter, but I've gone egg-hunting before and gotten a meal from it. I like how you cook, this is great!"

"Egg-laying birds aren't chickens, though. Quail eggs are a rich folks' thing. And there's no dairy cows either... Well, there's always butter. And we'll have beer before summer's out, mark my words, someone will make an' sell it."

"Don't mind him," Katherine tells Valanda, "We're glad you like it! This is heavier fare than is perfectly healthy. We'll eat our fruits and veggies when we can actually grow 'em."

"There's cows, we raise them for meat but I know they make milk, otherwise their babies would starve. There's frozen fruit available now if you need it, vegetables are harder but you could make a trip to the mainland and harvest some wild ones."

"Maybe we will. Meanwhile, we'll make do. He's just griping. Right, Eric?"

"Uh, of course, ma'am. I think we all miss home, but the thing to do is to move forward and start again."

"So what did you want me to ward for you?"

The glass in the greenhouse roof. They might want it done to some building frames too, eventually, but aren't entirely sure how indestructible things play into a structure yet.

"Yeah, there's whole books on that, the safest thing is to ward them against fire and leave them alone otherwise but you can improve on that if you're careful and know what you're doing. If there's a chance you'll want to redo the greenhouse I can make it shatterproof but leave it so you can melt it down and remake it later if you don't like your first design."

"That shouldn't be necessary. Most of what we're building for now is copied straight out of architectural textbooks. This's almost an exact copy of Greenhouse Five from Cambridge, it'll serve fine."

"That's good, I hope they work as well here as they did there. What's Cambridge?"

"It is - was - a city with a famous and revered university nearby. I was referring to the university." Sigh. "It's where we got the seeds, remember? An old, proud institution, reduced to nothing. By weather. Isn't that the way of things though?"

"Oh, there. Yeah, it did seem like someplace I might've liked to see when it wasn't buried in snow. I'm sorry."

She nods pensively. "It's sad. But I can be sad, or I can roll up my sleeves and work and make a New Cambridge some day. So that's what I'm going to do."

"I can't wait to see it when you do."

"That's the spirit! I'd toast you if we had any booze!" She raises her glass of water.

"To the future!"

"And may we all prosper in it!"

As Valanda finishes protecting the glass sheets, they start raising the glass into place on the greenhouse's frame. Rows of planters and pipes are being installed at the far end. 

He's so proud of them.

He flies back and goes looking for Nikolas.

The inventor guy has been off in the wilderness somewhere for most of the past week, but he did hire a force mage to dig a large hole and tell them he'd be back by nightfall.

Valanda waits for nightfall.

Nik is looking more tired and ragged than usual. "Oh. Hello. No problem with my foundation prep, is there? I'll start the actual building t'morrow. Hopefully."

"No problems so far as I know, I was just wondering if I could ask you some things. If now's a bad time it can wait."

"I'm just tired. Most people I'd blow off at least until tomorrow, but for you, since you let me move in, happy to offer advice. Here, or back at your government tent?"

"Back at my tent if that's okay. How's ninety-six rings for probably less than half an hour of questions sound?"

"Oh, you're offering that much? Well, I won't turn it down. Shall I zip us over there smart quick?"

"Yeah, please do!"

Whoosh. 

"Here we are. How can my otherworldly insight help you today, good sir?"

"Come in if you'd like. So I have some experimental laws I'd like to try and since you've experienced a pretty different world I thought you might have some guesses about what's likely to happen if I do. First of all I was thinking of filming free classes like Hari is the Language of the Empire for other subjects and then requiring that anyone who owns a child educate them. I'm hoping if I try that I can point to a lower crime rate or a more useful adult population or something to convince other states to try something similar, but if it wouldn't work that way I don't want to have it be seen to fail..."

"Ah. Education is not something I have much experience with. But I think just making people make their kids watch videos isn't going to cause much actual learning. I feel uncomfortable advising you very much on this, I repeat, because I have never been and never intend to be a kids' schoolteacher. But kids need a teacher, not just books or videos. At least, human kids. Also, I'm not sure what a great testing system looks like, but I know a bad one looks like overuse and over-reliance on standardized tests. Resist the urge to rely on standardized tests too much. If your test score is all you care about, and if teachers get paid by how well students do on their tests, the incentives get all skewed and nobody learns as much. Also don't make everyone learn at the same pace... I'll probably be able to dig up a book on it which will be more helpful to you than I am, myself."

"Okay. So that's probably too complicated and expensive to mandate right now. I do still want to get more people more educated as children, though, any ideas how to reach kids whose parents don't just want them educated because they want them to do well in life?"

"Just make basic educational illusions free for certain things? Basic math and finance skills, reading and writing. But not requiring them. That will get non-zero numbers of people educated and is relatively cheap and unlikely to backfire. Maybe exempt people from the slave tax if their slaves are children who are receiving a proper education, but then you get into problems of standardization and verification again. Maybe include magic-work-applicable stuff to teach their kids, but only if they learn the rest of it first."

"Okay, I can make things available and then figure out the rest later. I'm still thinking about what I can ask of people who won't be glad to have a chance to help their kids. What kinds of things were illegal to do to children where you were from?"

"Making 'em work more than a little bit before they're 16, anything to do with sex they're really serious about that, hit 'em, never talk to 'em, not feed 'em right or give them medical care, not let them socialize with other children, not give them some kind of education, leave them alone around dangerous things like power tools or guns - I think 'not binding them against magic use before they know how to control it' would be this world's version of that... Hmm..."

"Well, no one has to be told not to let little kids do magic, it's not just themselves they hurt. Do any of those pay off in less criminal adults or smarter adults or anything? Or do they just benefit the kids?"

"And spelling that out as a separate law might just cause confusion. Poor nutrition as a child, lack of proper medical care, and being exposed to lead and other such bad things are well correlated to stupider and more criminal adults. Education is somewhat correlated to adults who commit less crime and earn more money - people from 'good' schools are noticeably different than those from 'bad' ones. But this is kind of confounded by other social conditions and while I would naively expect it to hold up it's not as proven. Same thing with socialization. I should probably dig up the actual studies, they might be on my library somewhere, or you can find 'em next time you get Milliways."

"Good, that'll make things a lot easier. I'm not sure how to make it illegal to damage kids and without creating bad incentives or leaving some people no legal choices. Maybe if I pay people for freeing them without any brain damage or anything within a year of them reaching the age of majority for their species? Do you think that'd work?"

"Possible. I think making the slave tax not apply to children who are being treated properly would be a good step. Possibly while also paying people for freeing capable, lawful people at majority. It's like paying people who free adult slaves, except in smaller, sooner chunks. It'd encourage them to start, getting a packet that says 'responsible child care tax refund!' every few months, and doesn't discourage childbearing in people who want to help their kids, that way."

"I think I can do something like that! How would you determine who should get the tax refund?"

"Yeah, that's the hard part. Knowledge magic to see if the kid's getting fed right and not being hurt on a regular basis? And if they have medical problems, documents showing that they're trying to treat it. You can ask the kid if their parents hit them and let them learn things but they'll have every reason to lie if they'll get in trouble for admitting that and costing the parents their refund, maybe a bad idea without lots more care in designing it. Checking that the kid watched the free videos you put out somewhere public at least a couple times? If the kid can pass relatively easy standardized tests? They're bad to overuse but maybe better than nothing."

"I haven't taken a lot of tests but maybe I can come up with one or find someone who knows how to do that. I don't want them to get in trouble for talking about what's happening. I could have someone check for bruises but they might want to refuse that for privacy reasons and I don't want to punish parents for not forcing their children to let people look at them. ...This is hard, are people where you're from really deterred by the law or just by their own morals?"

"It's very, very, very hard. You need books on statecraft, because fucking this up will make hundreds of people suffer and discredit the whole thing and I am not qualified for it, and yet I am possibly the best qualified. Which is scary. I will translate anything I have that I think will be useful on statecraft and laws for... Seventy two rings an hour and you providing the paper and ink. Just ask Mahan how fast I translate. Small groups of moral humans, two hundred or so, can function without laws enforced from above. Not so much bigger ones. Did you talk to the priest in New Dover about this?"

"Thanks, I hadn't thought of that yet. I'll talk to the priest and I'd like your books whenever you have time to translate them."

"So very busy. And Milliways - I can't just go and buy all the books ever from Bar, even my future tech has limits, and she charges me for those."

He sighs. "You have good intentions. And you're being thoughtful and careful. And it'll be hard to make things worse than doing nothing would. Still, the road to - fiery death place - is paved with good intentions."

"Where's the fiery death place we don't have a word for?"

"That's 'hell'. A lot of religions say that immoral people go there after death and get tortured. There's not always a way to tell whether any particular hell is real, but the idea has cultural inertia. In my world places called 'hell' existed but none of them appeared to collect dead humans."

"That sounds worse than what's happening here. Do you think the chance one is real is high enough that next time I find Milliways I should wait to get a door to a hell and take it over?"

"I think attempting to take over a Hell with anything less than the power of a god is a terrible idea that will get you killed."

"I can get a god to help if I can kill the other god she's busy fighting. Do you think finding a way to do that is a better use of my time than trying to introduce morality to Har?"

"I have no god damned idea. I just want to be out of the blast radius when you try it, okay?"

"Of course. What were the hells you're familiar with like?"

"Don't screw around with gods and hells. Really. I mean it. Maybe other worlds are nicer, but calling upon gods and interfering in hells is a very good way to doom yourself to a painful death on my earth. I don't want to have you die."

"Okay. I'll try not to do anything about any otherworldly hells while I'm responsible for Ira Sani."

Sigh. "...The rules of each hell are gonna be different, if you ever do go into one. I probably can't give you sound general advice except 'be cautious, everything wants to kill you probably, and not always in defendable ways'. Anything hellish is likely going to have mind-affecting magic, or soul-affecting magic."

"Okay. Is their mind-affecting magic likely to get past my ward and vervain? And what's soul, is that English?"