The plane is on time.

And when she's back she can start producing materials.

Which he can turn into money and then into construction materials and equipment.

Good.

...are this world's governments likely to do more horrible preventable things like that soon?

"I mean, it went well for Olvala, there'll plausibly be copycats. There are more than two hundred countries, somebody somewhere thinking they have a clever idea is not rare."

"You can't save everybody."

"I know. It still hurts every time I'm reminded of it."

"Going public about magic might forestall some of that, no one wants to think about reds when there're exciting potential things happening."

"Do you think I should just do that now?"

" - maybe. In principle we should have warning about the next Olvala, they have to train the purples before they get rid of the reds, but there're going to be riots anywhere that even looks to be considering it."

Sigh. "My fear is that if it comes out it'll become obvious that we got the poles for a better reason than everyone else thought and they might not want to let reds go there."

"They almost certainly won't but you are magic and can insist. Or once the reds are there no one else'll want it."

"Which bet should I take, then?"

Sigh. "How long will it take you to build it and have them there?"

"Depends—will I have to figure out civil engineering on my own or can we hire someone to just tell me to put things in places?"

"I can hire someone for that."

"And what kind of things will we need to make things like the internet accessible there? Will I need to run cables under the ocean floor or is satellite internet good enough?"

" -oh, satellite's more than good enough."

"Then I suppose we can bring generators for electricity before we have anything set up there but we can later build wind power stations which should be good all year and solar power half of it... I can have the place livable in a couple of weeks starting from when I have all the materials there and someone who can give me blueprints to follow."

"Then let's get reds there first before we talk about magic."

Nod. "How are we going to transport them?"

"There aren't many, cargo helicopter might work."

"That works, then."

"I'll get it scheduled for a few weeks from now."