"I suggested he claim that morphing left him feeling vaguely out of sorts. It's - later Antren was debating whether to hole all the planets in reach of the door just to delay the relevant worlds a little - it's this mindset where it's not even coherent to ask 'is that worth it' - I would have had a much easier job arriving at a sincere intention to give them all delightfully nice lives if they'd just been a tiny bit more strategic about being the most horrible thing in the world."

"Poor new Bell."

"How's she taking to being a demon -"

"Hasn't put on wings yet, just wants the impermeability. She is on a zero stress diet and Ambela is singing to her a lot."

"The chip Elves were a horror show - Yeerks tried letting them sing, to see if it'd help with the die-of-being-imprisoned thing, and it was more distracting than tortured screaming, if communicative of about the same thing - they vary but none of them made it more than eight days - I'm so so so glad they couldn't get you."

"Me too." Pause. "So I told Trelane I'd do my best to make her glad she helped, what do you suppose is a good way to prompt the publication of book three of the Pegasus Cycle."

"I haven't the faintest, what are the barriers to publication -"

"Publishing company wants the movie rights and author is under contract to keep it chiplocked till they say otherwise but she thinks they'll butcher a movie so she's trying to get out of the contract but can't and the penalty for breach would cede them the rights anyway."

"She can presumably send a copy to another chiplocked computer without releasing it entirely -"

"Technically yes legally not unless they're her editor."

"Can she hire a new editor?"

"Not unless they work for the company."

"How much money would we need to throw at the situation -"

"To get a demon serving a murder sentence employed by Tor? I'm not sure it's a money problem."

"No, I mean, to get the publishing rights."

"A lot."

"Are there perchance universes where the first two books of the Pegasus Cycle match and the third one has been published, Bar -"

No, although there are several where the first book is very similar all other universes have substantially different second volumes.

Sigh. 

"Maybe alternate universe versions would satisfy her."

"More reading material, at least, while she waits on the dispute resolution. - if the author wanted out of the contract why not unchiplock the book when someone took hostages over it, I assume a court wouldn't hold her responsible for a breach under those circumstances -"

"Oh, no, that was before the dispute."

"She just couldn't wait six months for publication?"

"Well, before the dispute got bad enough that the author would've taken the excuse, anyway, apparently it was a little disputed."

"When exactly did we get in the business of bending over backwards to give terrible people nice things? Bar, can we have all the Pegasus Cycles in English you've got?"