"More than a dozen and less than a hundred, at any given time, with a replicator-to-operating-table turnaround of just over ten years. It's not likely that another week would make the difference, but it's possible. And it'd be more like another week and a half, adding in transit time; the Ariel is significantly faster than a commercial passenger ship."

"And if you are caught impersonating your brother, for instance because your brother is known to be elsewhere, known not to consort with demons, etcetera...?"

He shrugs.

"...right, so I favor asking nicely and non-impersonating-ly and throwing money at the Ariel. I will let you manage my finances while I'm outcompeting the hell out of the clone business and skim some off the top to pay yourself back."

"Suits me fine."

"What is your opinion on how much I should advertise and to whom about how I'm making the duplicates?"

"My instinct is to keep as much as possible as secret as possible, just because information once released cannot be recalled. And I'm sure I don't have to paint you a picture of what would happen if some Jacksonian got their hands on the notion that you are one of a number of summonable creatures and started trying to get more."

"Yeah. I mean, I generally favor knowledge of the summonability of the creatures, but it does need to be handled carefully... Also might want to wait until we know a few more things about how it interacts with alternate universe shenanigans. I could be a one-off. I suppose it's also possible that there has always been more than one mortal world attached to the concordant ones, no summoners show up as daeva because there have been none, and your non-summoners are appearing too far away from the other dead people in Limbo to have interacted with the clump we're aware of. Okay. So, secret process, even jargon would give too much away, secret secret secret."

"I find it somewhat less than likely that I am the first person in history to write the word 'demon' near a circle on a horizontal surface."

"Well, in my world it was known to only a few people for a long time and didn't become common knowledge till 2008. Maybe you skipped the 'become common knowledge' part."

He shrugs. "Maybe we'll find out. Do demons sleep?"

"Can. Can also stay up, especially with the help of coffee."

"I'm contemplating whether to go back to my own hotel room for the night or not, while we're waiting for the Ariel. We could go topside and wait in an orbital transfer station, but it would take a nibble out of the budget for no especially good cause. I don't want you wandering Escobar unattended, but I can't sleep in the presence of people."

"What might happen if I wander Escobar unattended?"

"Probably nothing. Potentially you do something that you don't know is going to be attention-getting until you do it, and end up with more attention than I want either of us to have."

"I think I can entertain myself wandering on public thoroughfares for eight hours drinking coffee without alarming anyone, but maybe I'm overestimating the universal commonality of human cultures. What counts as 'in the presence of', anyway?"

"Same room, or observable by."

"If you feel very strongly that I cannot entertain myself for eight hours wandering public thoroughfares without alarming anyone, recommend me some local books and I can sit in the bathroom for eight hours reading?"

"I don't like to risk it when there's another option. Sure, you can sit in the bathroom and read. Here." He calls up a list of books available for public access from a local library on the comconsole. "I have no idea what kind of books you like, besides the one."

"I read pretty omnivorously these days but have a longstanding soft spot for old Anglophone literature - old relative to my usual year, ancient relative to this one, I guess. But I was hoping for recommendations that would be more traveloguey and informative."

"I'm sure they have both. I have no personal recommendations that qualify as traveloguey, and if you were interested in old Anglophone literature in the twentieth to twenty-second centuries I expect you've already read Alice in Wonderland and Sherlock Holmes."

"Yeah. I guess I'll browse this thing here, unless you want to go to sleep right now in which case I'll just go over my terraforming notes or something."

"Browse away."

Cam browses. "I prefer to acquire my books in largish batches," he says, "so stop me whenever you want me to get out of your way for the night."

Mark shrugs and goes to play with the map cube.