—and a man in a canoe appears, hovering three feet off the floor, next to the TV. That is, the canoe is hovering three feet off the floor, and the man is in it.

He glances around the room, then looks quizzically at Cam.

...this does not make Cam any less confused or any more able to talk/move/make things.

There is a nonlinguistic mental impression of the man in the canoe saying, I apologize for appearing here so abruptly. Is something wrong?

I think so but I couldn't tell you what I don't know what's going on.

I can't imagine that you know any less than I do; what can you tell me?

(The first not-quite-a-sentence comes packaged with a vague implication that this man may have just spent several years alone in a big empty room inventing his teleporting canoe.)

...I was somewhere else in the middle of something desperately important and then I was in this world which seems like a fucked up version of my birthplace two hundred years ago and now I can't do anything except apparently talk to you and move my eyes so I'm a little concerned that I am intended to talk to you by the people who prevented me from doing anything else.

I can see how that would seem plausible. It isn't true, but I'm not sure how to demonstrate that, except perhaps by trying to restore your ability to move... I would need to touch you in order to do that. May I?

Okay.

He climbs out of his hovering canoe and goes over and sits next to Cam on the couch and puts his hand over one of Cam's and closes his eyes.

All right: what is the nature of this strange winged person, and what is preventing him from moving?

The winged person is indestructible and when free can make arbitrary material objects. He is currently under the effect of a hostile psychic power which deigns to allow him to blink and breathe, though he doesn't actually need to do either.

...well.

The hostile psychic power originates from elsewhere, so Korovai can't inspect its source directly, and he feels like it would be imprudent to just delete it from existence in case it comes attached to a person who might object. So what if he just... very carefully pulls a partial copy of his own mental protections, just enough to shield the winged person from this kind of mental attack, and—

Before he puts it in place, it is prudent to ask: Do you know of any reason why someone might have concluded they need to imprison you?

I - could be very dangerous if I chose. But I didn't interact with anybody here before they did this thing.

I see. I'm going to try something, which should free you at least temporarily.

And he removes his hand from Cam's and settles the partial mental shield into place.

The demon stretches a wing, makes a puff of air. "Thank you," he says.

I'm sorry, I don't speak your language.

Oh. Sorry.

- he creates a little packet of papers, skims the writing on them, winces.

...Is this related to the desperately important thing you were in the middle of?

Yeah. They don't know where I went.

I see, he says.

There is a sense in which I was also unexpectedly transported away from something desperately important; I've spent the intervening time working on a way to return home. It's possible we might be able to help each other.

So this isn't where you were trying to go?

No. I have developed the ability to travel between worlds but not the ability to navigate except by retracing my path. And retracing my path is untested; this was my first jump.

Could you trace my path instead?

Not yet. I'm trying to develop in approximately that direction, but it's slow going.

I might be able to get home and then back where I was working but not via any action I can take and not for a few days.

Not via any action you can take...?

I can be summoned and dismissed. If I'm dismissed they can resummon me if they want.

He nods.

Do you want any help?

What can your magic do besides floating canoes and interdimensional transit?

In theory, there may not be any limitations on what it can accomplish. In practice, new capabilities are slow to develop, at least when approached with appropriate caution. What I have so far is something like a more comprehensive version of your imperviousness to significant harm, and this communication ability, and a few minor personal conveniences I developed in the course of working on everything else, and the floating canoe of interdimensional transit.

I was in the middle of resurrecting some people but even if I get back I can't do them all.

I can't think of a starting point for developing resurrection using taieli, but the magic of my home world is known to be capable of it, under conditions that last held sixteen centuries ago.

The entities I can't resurrect were magic incorporeal thingies.

I wouldn't expect that to make a difference to a god, but I've never personally met one and they're hard to come by. Still, if we found my world, I could look for one after I have everything else sorted out.

(The concept of 'god' comes across with oddly specific connotations, hints of an underlying magic system, and for some reason the implication that gods invariably have multiple personalities.)

I'm going to be really curious about your magic once I'm less concerned that somebody will at any moment come in and wonder why I'm not paralyzed any more.

We could leave. The flying canoe of interdimensional transit can also teleport within a single world, and it's much better at that since I was able to test it. I'd just need a destination.

This world is similar to where I'm from but - not close enough that I'd be confident about any guesses I could make about where would be safe - but it'd probably be safer than staying where they put me, I'm surprised they didn't have cameras on me such that they've already noticed. What about a destination do you need?

He sends an impression of the kind of targeting information he can work with. Approximate distance, approximate direction, and a clear image is best, but other kinds of location-specifying information will do in a pinch.

I think we're in the central time zone in the US based on the TV and the clock (that is this verticalish band of a country) and there may be some usually-deserted beach west or northwest - image, range of distances it might be depending on where in the time zone they are -

He returns to his canoe, which is still floating in midair, and puts his hands on it and gently pulls it apart lengthwise. The material—is that some kind of granite?—stretches implausibly until there is room for them both to sit in it comfortably. Then he gets in and motions for Cam to do the same.

Cam climbs awkwardly into the canoe.

Now the canoe is on a beach. Is it appropriately deserted?

Close enough, yeah. Thanks.

It was no trouble. If we're interrupted I think I can take us into space but my education in astrophysics was patchy, all my testing was done in a universe containing only one planet, and vacuum is mildly uncomfortable.

...I can solve all three of those problems, actually.

Oh?

I mean, I could also just get us into space without teleporting but I really don't know what to expect from the local magic - you at least they didn't pounce on as soon as you showed up -

I've noticed you can make things, and I assumed this included air but am mildly surprised about planets and even more surprised about 'an education in astrophysics', unless that happens to separately be your field of study...?

I mean I can make planets but it takes weeks, what I meant was this seems to be an Earth and I know what the other planets in the system should be. I know enough about astrophysics to use software that knows more about astrophysics competently.

...'Software' isn't quite coming through legibly, I don't think it's a concept I'm familiar with.

...Algorithms that take data about planets and my position and so on and tell me where to expect the moon or whatever to be?

I get the sense I'm still missing something but that's enough of a definition to be going on with, thank you.

He looks contemplatively down at his flying granite canoe.

I would like to find a way to keep in contact with you if you are unexpectedly retrieved, so that I can find you a god eventually.

Entitle a letter "letter to Cam". In this alphabet - He hands over a piece of paper.

And then you could make it? How would you reply?

That's harder, but it's possible you could summon me from wherever you were if I had enough warning to arrange to be home at the time; I'm not sure though because before I wound up in Arda summoning only ever took people to an Earth, not this one.

If your creation power allows you to receive messages at any distance, perhaps I should be trying to copy it.

...it does flashier stuff than correspondence and not in an entirely safe way.

What do you mean?

I would really like to be able to help you and vice-versa and I am not sure explaining in a responsible amount of detail is conducive to you wanting to do that.

He pauses.

...When you put it like that, it begins to sound as though I would be irresponsible not to ask for the full story.

Yeah, probably.

My magic allows the fairly easy destruction of entire planets.

So will mine, in a few decades when I'm in better practice with it.

And I destroyed a planet and it had fifty-five million people on it.

And now you have been interrupted in the process of restoring them?

Yes. And there's about a million I can't put back.

He seems remarkably calm for having just learned that the person he rescued from weird psychic jail killed fifty-five million people.

I see, he says. I apologize for asking you about this, but it would be irresponsible of me not to investigate, and you are the only person available to ask. Why did you destroy the planet?

It had fourteen gods on it and god number fifteen wanted them dead and made a deal with me that if I killed them for him he'd stop torturing people among other things. Couldn't warn anybody on it or they could've stopped me.

He looks... a little distant. Not particularly shocked or horrified.

And you had some means of enforcing the agreement?

Most of the species in that world can make binding oaths.

He is quiet for a moment.

Then he says: Sometimes there are no good choices. I understand that very well. I am not inclined to make this an obstacle to further cooperation between us.

A pause, and - In the spirit of fairness, if you want to know where I learned that lesson, I'll tell you.

Would it be irresponsible of me not to ask?

Not on anything like that scale, but the argument could be made.

If you don't mind, then.

He shrugs slightly.

In the world I come from, my father rules an empire spanning the only inhabited continent left on the planet. He is a disaster on every level both political and personal, and as his heir I have always considered it my job to wait until he dies and then clean up all his messes. He is disappointed in me for not sharing his interest in rape and torture, so for a few years he kept giving me slave girls for my birthday, to encourage me. The first one I successfully helped escape; the next one died escaping; the one after that, knowing escape was not an option, chose to kill herself rather than stay in my father's palace any longer; and when they put a suicide ward on the next one to stop her taking that route, she asked me to kill her. So I did.

That's considerably more defensible than holing a planetful of unsuspecting bystanders.

From some perspectives, yes. From others... Every one of the approximately eight hundred million people in Eianvar is my responsibility, and I am continually failing to uphold that responsibility, and in her case the failure was particularly acute.

...if that's how you prefer to look at it, I guess.

I wouldn't say that it's a matter of preference. Of all extant possible alternatives to my father continuing to mismanage the planet forever, I'm the only one that doesn't require yet another civil war. That makes cleaning up after him my responsibility regardless of how I feel about it.

The people the evil god was obliged to stop torturing weren't released, just - ended.

It seems plausible that many of them would have preferred it that way. And perhaps when I find you a god we can see about the ones who wouldn't have.

I can get - pre-torture versions of them, after I'm done populating the replacement planet.

He nods.

If you want to summon me after warning me you'll try so I can be available you draw this on the ground, sheet of paper, big enough for me to stand in, complete the circle after the writing.

He looks it over, carefully, once.

I still think that given the information we have available, copying your creation power looks like a surer method of establishing communication.

How would you do that?

Taieli, the magic I acquired after I was stranded away from home, is capable of copying things. Very exactly, if necessary, although precision and complexity both take time.

Huh. Well, it's a pretty nice power most of the time but in addition to physical danger it enables invasion of privacy same way it enables correspondence.

That sounds potentially useful for dealing with my father.

Oh?

It's not actually my father that's the tricky problem; there's no magic in the Fareine line. It's his... friend, Lady Reihar Nirue. She's a powerful mage. I know she is protected against some possible kinds of attack, but I don't know which ones and don't have a good way to find out. I suspect your powers wouldn't be able to tell me what her protections are, but they might help me make sure she's well away from any innocent bystanders when I start trying things.

Yes, you can conjure for surroundings. However, demon magic can't make things that are themselves magic.

What qualifies as magic by the relevant standard?

I'm not sure how it applies to things from arbitrary worlds, actually, but it's a gap that might impede you.

Noted. May I try copying your creation power, then?

Do you actually need permission?

Not intrinsically, but nevertheless I am not going to try copying your power without it. And I would need to use my touch-range sensory power again to inspect it to the necessary level of detail, and I am not going to do that without your permission either.

What are you likely to use it for besides correspondence?

Creation of things that need creating. For example, everyone in the world where I got taieli is dead because they ran out of stars. I don't plan to allow that in my world. And, as I said, spying on my father's court may turn out to be a useful endeavour.

Running out of stars takes a while under natural conditions. Your magic doesn't spy?

It could be encouraged to spy but not nearly so conveniently.

Encouraged?

One of the things taieli can do is start with something that does one thing and change it into something that does a slightly different thing. So, for example, I began with a boat and ended with a flying teleporting boat that can move between worlds. If I wanted something for spying, I could start with, for example, a lens, and end with a telescope that will look anywhere I choose regardless of direction or distance. But it takes a lot of time. I'm not sure exactly how much; I haven't been counting.

Are you actually sure that your father is even an ongoing problem if it's been long enough to lose track?

It is possible, but not likely, that something may have been done about him. But if that's so, then instead of going home to my father, I go home to a civil war or the aftermath of one, very possibly with Nirue on the throne. Hardly an improvement, and almost equally a situation that demands careful, well-informed handling.

What're you going to do with the place if you manage to take the throne?

Unfortunately I don't have my notes with me, but I have been studying the laws and customs of the empire since I was about eight, with an eye to disentangling all the stupid things my father has done to the tax code and reversing all the changes he made to keep a steady supply of disposable prisoners flowing into his dungeons and so forth. And I need to figure out something to do about the outlying territories he reconquered, because they've been taken and let go and taken and let go enough times that I'm not sure letting them go again is actually the right solution anymore.

Cam hands him his notes.

...he raises his eyebrows at the unfamiliar object, but takes it.

...does this form of telepathy have affordances for just sort of shoving how-to-computer at him.

It does!

...thank you, he says, and starts navigating the notes and adding them to his mental files. You're welcome to read them yourself if you're able to conveniently translate them out of my private shorthand.

I could try to crack it but I'm not a cryptanalyst. And I don't have the language either.

I could give you the language; it's possible to transfer those fairly easily using this form of communication. And I can summarize the notes for you; how much detail do you prefer?

...an overview but one that takes my level of context into account?

Then I'll start with the history, I think...

History of Eianvar in brief: There used to be two continents, north and south. The southern continent was destroyed sixteen hundred years ago in a war between gods, and to this day the southern coast of the northern continent is an uninhabitable wasteland full of terrifying sea monsters. The empire of Eianvar came through the destruction pretty well because it mostly spanned the northwest corner of the northern continent at the time, but there was still significant political instability and it ended up fracturing into multiple warring pieces which fought each other and conquered everyone else and then fought each other some more.

Then a century or so ago, Fareine Dekaral, heir to what everyone mostly agreed was the original throne of the empire, decided this nonsense needed to end. He reconquered the empire's scattered pieces, turned loose their most recent territory acquisitions with such reparations as he could spare, and set about restoring order as best he could. His best effort was pretty impressive. Then, after he died peacefully of old age, his son Orin succeeded him, and turned out to be a raging paranoid who systematically murdered all of his relatives until a distant cousin, Fareine Torvari, managed to kill him and take the throne.

Torvari decided that being emperor of all or most of the world was clearly a flawed strategy. He spent most of his reign carefully considering how best to limit the emperor's power so that future Orins would not get so far in the effort to have all their rivals assassinated. Disliking where this was going, and no doubt revelling in the irony, his son Siurek had him assassinated before he could start implementing this plan. There was a nasty civil war between supporters of Siurek and supporters of his dead father, at the end of which all of Torvari's supporters were also dead, and Siurek reconquered the outlying territories and retired to his palace to live in luxury, neglect the management of his empire, and entertain himself with the torture of political prisoners.

Into this mess comes Siurek's son, Fareine Korovai.

I was six when he had Grandfather killed, and eight when I decided it was my job to do something about it.

He's picked over the surviving remnants of his grandfather's plan for a transition to a more republican form of government, and that's his eventual goal for after he has everything else worked out to his satisfaction, but before he goes giving away power he had better make really sure it's not going to end in yet another civil war, and also fix these several hundred things that are wrong with the laws of the empire either as a historical legacy or because Fareine Siurek is incompetent. And given that he is now very thoroughly immortal, he genuinely doesn't know if giving away power is going to be the right solution anymore - it would be, without question, if Korovai might eventually die and leave the empire to another Fareine, there is ample evidence that the Fareine line produces wildly inconsistent results, but as it is, he needs to find out whether the empire is better off in his hands or under some other arrangement.

That's very responsible of you.

I don't tend to think of it that way, but thank you.

You're welcome.

You can try copying my thing assuming this won't affect my instance, I do need it.

I will not do anything that risks affecting your instance.

He holds out his hand, to establish contact for the touch-range sensory power.

Handclasp.

He inspects Cam's magical properties in as much detail as he can manage, which is quite a bit. How separable is the creation power from the rest? How feasibly could he give himself an exact copy of the creation power in all its particulars, and how much else would he have to bring along in order to be absolutely sure he got all relevant properties of the creation power part?

It comes apart pretty neatly, actually. It's very categorical, within its scope; the scope does not include magic objects or minds or antimatter or vacuum; it's got a long range for where things go and a longer range for where information can be copied from.

How remarkably convenient.

I can copy it easily without affecting you, he says. I don't know how long it will take exactly, but more than a few minutes, and it's delicate work; should we go somewhere more definitely deserted? Space perhaps?

Sure. Canoe or spaceship?

Canoe seems less likely to attract attention.

So Cam produces a computer that is fancier than Korovai's and figures out where to expect various space objects to be.

And now Cam and Korovai are in space.

...I just realized I forgot to ask your name. I apologize; I'm not used to talking to people.

I'm Cam. And Korovai's name was in the history.

He reflects for a second or two before he says, It is good to meet you. There's a sense that, while this is a rote courtesy in his culture, he took the time to decide whether it was true before saying it.

Then he clasps Cam's hand again and closes his eyes and does not visibly do anything for about half an hour.

...Cam holds his computer with his free hand to read, and makes air.

He lets go and opens his eyes.

How long did that take?

31 minutes.

Not too bad, then. It worked perfectly.

...he could start conjuring for indications of how his father handled his disappearance, but. For a moment he finds it difficult to clarify his priorities.

Be careful if you make things where you can't see them, you need to know e.g. anatomy to get something neatly distributed in a bloodstream or anything and you can wreck stuff by displacement or interpolation without meaning to.

Thank you, I'll remember that.

Thoughtful pause.

I could translate you one of the standard introductions if you gave me your language.

That sounds worthwhile. Would you like all the languages I speak or just Eivarne?

Is there any reason not to include the lot?

Language transfers take time, but I expect at most a few minutes each, and I only know ten, two of them fluently.

Go ahead and send them all if that's okay, then. I know a lot, they'll have company.

All right.

Eivarne first - clearly his native language. Satni, Avashin, and Northern and Eastern Hialene, all with clear relations to each other and Eivarne; he speaks those very well but not quite natively. Four more assorted languages that he's even less fluent in, three of them cousins of Satni while one is closer to Avashin.

And then Aiha, the language from which the word 'taieli' comes, which he speaks with perfect native fluency and which shares no discernible roots with any of the other nine.

"This is slightly but interestingly different from getting languages when summoned."

"Oh?"

"It happens over a period of time and I'm getting your vocabulary instead of a comparable but distinct one."

He nods. "The way you get languages when summoned seems very convenient."

"It really is."

"But language transfers in this style are nearly as convenient, so it would probably not be worthwhile to pursue your method."

"Especially since it comes bundled with the summons."

He nods. "Yes."

"Anything else I have that you need?"

"Your form of immortality is interesting but ultimately I think I prefer mine."

"I like mine a lot but don't like how it couldn't do anything about whoever attacked me."

"Yes. What I did to protect you was copy you just the relevant portion of mine. It's not as thoroughly attached as mine is, but I'd expect it to hold up against most things less emphatic than gods."

"Oh. Thank you very much."

He makes the least unhappy expression Cam has seen on his face thus far.

"You're welcome."

Cam starts translating an intro to being a demon.

Korovai thinks quietly to himself.

After a minute, he mentions, "My notes on constructing my immortality are in plain Aiha and I don't mind if you read them, if you're curious."

"- oh, thanks. This'd be for academic interest -?"

"If I'm able to return to the world I was last in, it would be possible for you to acquire taieli. You would need to spend nine days alone in the taieli monument while it evaluates you for suitability."

"Suitability?"

"Taieli has the potential to be as destructive as your creation power if not more, and in a much broader variety of ways, some of which can be easy mistakes to make. The monument is tasked with ensuring that only sufficiently responsible people become atailoran."

"What happens if it doesn't like me?"

"It declines to give you the magic and then ignores you unless you decide to try again, at which point it reevaluates you fairly."

"Okay, that's pretty tame."

"I approve of its creators' design sense, magically if not architecturally."

He sends an illustrative mental image of the architecture.

"...there's a certain poorly lit brutalism flair to it."

"In defense of the lighting scheme, I think it was developed under the assumption that there would be any other light in the universe."

"...I might take less than nine days to be dismissed and attempted-resummoned."

"...I am not sure what happens if someone tries to dismiss you while you are being evaluated by the monument, but possiblities include you staying in the monument."

"...then if they resummon me and I can't go... yeah this sounds like it might not work out I was only halfway through."

He nods.

"Maybe later?"

"If and when we find each other again."

"Yeah."

Another nod.

"It'll take nearly five days for them to get to my summoner though, so if you want help or more translations in that time - I would go back to that Earth and find useful things to do but there's the thing where they jumped me for no reason and I don't know why -"

"Yes, that was... unsettling. I would trust my immortality enough to go ask them about it if I anticipated any benefit from doing so, but I'm not sure I do."

"I know how to eradicate some diseases they probably have on an Earth during this year."

"...that's a worthwhile benefit."

Nod.

"Do you have recommendations? ...And may I have some relevant languages?"

"The language thing goes both ways? I didn't realize. Uh, recommendations for what? The place seems - substantially culturally different than the Earth I'm used to, recognizable but socially peculiar..."

"I come from what seems to be a vastly different cultural context and would probably benefit from even slightly wrong information. Yes, the language thing goes both ways."

"Here is a political globe of my Earth circa this year -" Globe! "Most of the rich countries are republics. Some countries are misleadingly named 'democratic republic' and are actually attempts at Communism, unfortunately executed. I'm from this one," tap, "and know less about the others which is inconvenient because disease priority one is endemic to this continent," tap. "If you can get the languages without getting anything else from my head, you're welcome to all of them, but a few of mine are not spoken on Earth and a couple are dead; your priorities are probably going to be English and then, hmmm..." He comes up with a priority list for another dozen.

"You would have to send the languages to me deliberately, and I would get only what you sent. It works like sending anything else, but takes longer and requires less focus on the details - I didn't need to explicitly remember my entire Eivarne vocabulary and so forth. A little like when you sent me how to operate this device."

"Okay. That's probably going to be easier to do without leakage for languages I got from summons - so you're going to speak a different dialect of English than I do but it'll be mutually intelligible -"

Push push push.

He waits patiently, then switches to the dialect of English that Cam gave him.

"Thank you. This will be very useful. What are all the problems you could solve there? Would I be able to solve them as easily with my copy of your power, or are some of them based in knowledge you have that I don't?"

"They are significantly based on that. I have medical and engineering training and I know how to use all the software that would help me keep track of what I was doing. I could probably direct you remotely for a lot of the low-hanging fruit though, since the power's pretty good at working from plans and labels."

Thoughtful nod.

"Do you recommend that I claim responsibility for rescuing you, or separately go and do useful things and wait for whatever interference might result, or do you not have enough information to predict which will be more effective?"

"Not enough information. I don't know why they grabbed me - there were uniforms but not ones I recognized - I only think I was in the United States because they put the TV on in English, it was warmer than I expect Canada" (globetap) "to be in November, and when the TV mentioned an airtime the clock on the wall indicated we were in the central time zone. So they might object to people with wings, or spontaneous appearances except they missed you for some reason, or - who knows."

"In that case I think I'll try the 'independently doing useful things' approach and see what comes of it, on the basis that I'm likely to get more useful things done faster than if I first stopped to talk about their habit of imprisoning unexpected interdimensional visitors."

"Entirely fair. Okay, so the diseases - there's one with an exclusively mosquito vector, you can wipe it out by making sterile male mosquitoes of the correct species over the relevant continent, but let me just - I'm going to see if this Earth has a Wikipedia." ...It does. "Oh joy! Okay... yep, malaria exists and is carried by the same bugs and is currently an African problem. So get some decent coverage of the continent -" He does some math, comes up with a figure for how many mosquitoes need to go where.

Korovai studies the relevant information and nods.

"And in the meantime I'll read Wikipedia and adjust plans for things other than that, as they may involve interacting with humans. Can you find me again if I've been drifting around in space and the Earth has moved and so on, should I go to Mars -?"

"I expect it to be easier to find you if you go to Mars. And I think I'll leave a copy of the flying canoe with you, in case something happens to the one I bring with me to Earth. I don't expect them to destroy it, but it's not as immortal as I am and it would be time-consuming to rebuild it from scratch."

"Sure. If you want to save me a trip, how about the top of Olympus Mons -" It is this very high mountain on Mars.

Here they are atop Olympus Mons.

Korovai duplicates his canoe. It takes about a minute, and involves the new canoe shimmering gradually into existence next to the old one.

"Nifty."

He makes his less-unhappy face again, and then gets in the duplicate canoe and goes to Earth to distribute mosquitoes.

(I expected my communication to work at these distances; was I correct? he sends.)

Seems so!

Convenient.

Mosquitoes ensue.

Cam does research.

Korovai distributes sterile male mosquitoes of the appropriate species to the appropriate locations in the appropriate numbers and wonders whether anyone is going to show up and bother him about it.

Apparently not!

Convenient!

What next?

The CDC still exists. Their HQ is here, image, and I have just unchiplocked a file entitled "Vaccine Formulae, Annotated", which if we're very lucky they'll run with on their own but just to be safe copy the following other organizations - place place place place, drop it in their mailboxes, for that last one you'll want the Chinese translation -

Will do.

He goes places. He drops files.

At the NIH somebody sees him. "The fuck?" she says. "Hey, you - what are you doing -?"

"Distributing information," says the oddly dressed man in the teleporting flying granite canoe. "I'll be back in just a moment."

He drops off the remaining files and then returns to the NIH about thirty seconds later.

She has made a little progress back into the building by then but turns around when he reappears, looking bewildered.

He shows Cam their interactions so far in case Cam has a better read on things like whether she seems like someone in a position of authority or not and perhaps a suggestion about what Korovai might say to her if she's not going to do anything but look at him like that.

She doesn't look obviously important but I can't make sense of how people dress here the way I expect to and I'm not great at it even to start out. Uh, the canoe is probably weird? They have some sort of magic but it may not involve floating rock canoes...

Hmm... of available options, a reasonable amount of honesty seems most straightforward.

"I apologize if I am behaving strangely," he says. "I have only recently arrived in this world."

"...huh?" says the NIH person.

...perhaps if he waits she will produce a more answerable question?

"...and... you're... distributing information?"

"Yes. It's useful information."

"...information... about...?"

He appears another copy in the air in front of her and keeps it afloat with ileyi. The little paper envelope with a CD in it is labelled Vaccine Formulae, Annotated.

"...is this some kind of, of green ink thing -"

...he has no idea what that means, does Cam have any idea what that means...?

...she thinks you're a crackpot, you can tell her no but it won't carry much weight, I'm not actually sure you should bother having this conversation...

He shrugs. He lets the extra CD drop. He teleports to a less populated location.

What next, then?

I have checked and they have a global warming problem, I'm gonna tell you where to go put ozone to patch the ozone layer...

Hither, yon, there too -

Ozone!

...annnnd I found the local magic system...

What is it?

Two kinds, psions and mages, collectively 'eclipsed'. The former does mental effects and divination and stuff, the latter does physical effects. We happened to land shortly before an eclipse of the sort during which many preteen children get their magic, which event apparently has the precognitives running around crazily; it's possible someone foresaw me unleashing enormous clouds of mosquitoes and read into that? The psions apparently bounce off you.

I would think that keeping you immobilized in a room without explanations of any kind would be a disproportionate response to clouds of mosquitoes.

Well, it's also possible they foresaw saying hello politely and then being told that I was a demon who'd destroyed a planet recently or something.

That... could have produced such a reaction, yes.

Ozone all wrapped up. Time for a new task?

Would he like to reverse some Saharan desertification?

Sounds useful. He'll do it.

Cam can keep this up for a while.

So can Korovai, particularly as he no longer needs to sleep.

Isn't that handy?

(Meanwhile, Cam can lightly terraform Mars. He cannot do a very complete job of it because he expects to vanish in a few days but he can do atmosphere and water and seed populations of some plants.)

No one else seems inclined to interrupt him. It is probably difficult to keep ahead of someone who can teleport, especially when they are apparently impervious to your future-sight, but even so he wonders why no one has made any creative attempts to contact him yet. At least not any successful ones. They might be trying things that just aren't getting anywhere.

Eventually:

...found the social weirdness, or at least a big chunk of it, but it doesn't seem likely to be all that relevant to what we're up to.

I have no particular interest in their social weirdness unless it seems likely to make them more comprehensible if they ever catch up to me.

They will expect you to have an extra genderlike thing. Not sure how to expect them to react to 'in my world we don't do that'.

Perhaps I can just avoid ever talking about it at all.

Yeah, they don't seem to be having any luck catching you.

There is a lot of plastic pollution floating in the sea and my world has a bacterium that works on that in the presence of an activating chemical so it doesn't eat anything plastic that is intentionally oceangoing -

Resumption of worldfixing.

There is something slightly satisfying about worldfixing. And it's an intrinsically worthwhile endeavour, and the practice will be useful if he encounters another Earth without Cam there to help.

When he's replenishing populations of very stupid prey species in depleted fisheries, somebody finally catches up to him.

"You're hard to find!" he says accusingly.

"Yes, that's true," says the man in the flying stone boat. "I apologize."

"Are you some kind of, what, combination mage-psion -"

"No. I came here from another world, where magic operates on entirely different principles."

"...and, pardon me for not being able to tell, probably it's because you're from another world, but dom or sub -?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Uh, dominant or submissive role...? An omniglot would be able to understand me, I guess you're not technically an omniglot..."

"The dialect of this language that I speak comes from a slightly different world with different social customs," he says. "It may be that the concept you're referring to does not exist there."

"Nah, like, even aliens would have to have it, it's basic, it's like, do you want to be the one giving instructions or the one taking them? Or one most of the time and the other Tuesdays, switches are fine, I don't judge."

"...That does not seem like a relevant distinction in the way you seem to mean it."

"Sure it is, I'm probably just not explaining it right - it's technically not what I came to talk to you about but it's going to bug me if - like, I'm a sub, that's why the collar, my dom gave it to me to show off I'm his -"

He goes still and doesn't say anything.

"- sorry, it's really not that important, what's your name I'm Terry -?"

Another couple of seconds, and then he unfreezes.

"Korovai."

"Okay, and have you been bopping around here and there all over the planet doing weird stuff while immune to psionics? My co-worker had to find you by looking for a blind spot, it was really hard."

"Yes," he says. "The things I have done have been helpful. If there are any whose purpose you are unsure of, I can explain what they were meant to accomplish."

"Why have you just been doing them without - asking?"

"It was not obvious who I should ask."

(Would Cam like to be brought up at this juncture...?

He means to send just the question and the purely-verbal conversational context, but it turns out to be impossible to fully erase all hint of the howling void of panic and horror that engulfed him at the thought of an entire society just going around interacting with each other like that all the time and being inclined to sort him into a category. On a rational level it's obvious that their society functions just fine; his emotional reaction is not relevant to the task at hand and he should therefore not allow it to affect anything he does.)

- I didn't realize that would be a, uh, button - you can bring me up, they don't seem to have space travel, I'll be fine -

I apologize for sending that. Feel free to disregard it.

Out loud, he adds with hardly a pause, "And the last time someone came here and tried to help in this way he was captured and imprisoned without explanation."

"...the one with wings?"

"Yes."

If they'll talk to me now I can take over, you don't have to have this conversation -

I am still functional and it is not yet clear whether they are willing to talk to you.

Okay, well, if you find out I'm up for switching places.

He sends acknowledgment and waits for Terry to speak.

"...so you and the guy with wings are some kind of interdimensional dogooders? I'm - sorry, trying to have six psychic conversations at once - uh - something about a planet -"

"'Interdimensional dogooders' would be a reasonable description."

"They figured out what the mosquitoes were for but there's something about a destroyed planet..."

"What, precisely, is there about a destroyed planet?"

"I don't know because these dang psions won't stop talking over each other but they're very concerned about it."

"The winged person is not currently on your planet but he's retrievable if they would like to talk to him."

"He escaped emergency custody earlier, they sure want to talk to him."

"I would feel more comfortable facilitating that if someone would clearly explain to me what he was in emergency custody for and what line of reasoning led to the specific parameters of the emergency custody."

(Well, rhetorically speaking he would. In more concrete literal terms he is not entirely sure he will ever feel comfortable again, but that's not relevant.)

"Uh, I think 'showing up and plaguing the entire continent of Africa with bugs, having destroyed a planet, with an eclipse incoming' is more than enough."

"I acknowledge that that is a reasonable perspective," he says. "I will bring him here."

He and his canoe go to Mars. Where can I find you...?

Right where you left me.

Here he is, right where he left Cam.

"Can you canoe me there without having to go yourself so you can - calm down or whatever you would be best served to do - or can I operate the canoe -"

"No, and no you can't. Thank you for your concern. It does you credit. Please get in the boat."

...Cam gets in the boat.

Now they are back where he left Terry. He waits for Cam to get out of the boat.

Out he gets.

And Korovai returns to Mars.

He means to find something to do, but in fact he just - sits. In his boat.

It's about six hours later when Cam says Okay, I think that went as well as could be expected.

How did it in fact go?

They've acknowledged they don't have standing to charge me with war crimes and have let me explain all the interventions so far and approved most of the rest of the list. I can run around doing it myself if you need a break, since they're not going to rearrest me.

Would it be more efficient to have both of us working at once?

Yes, and there's some things I can't get done inside of time remaining to likely dismissal-and-resummoning, but you seem very freaked out by their extra gender thing. I have explained that we are aliens who do not have the thing.

It has been the case since I was stranded out of reach of my world that I am not going to be okay until I am able to return and fix everything. I have chosen to handle this by not allowing my emotional state to affect my work, because that way more work gets done and on balance in the long run the benefit to everyone else is far, far greater than the cost to me. What interventions are left and how can I help?

...if you say so.

And here's a list.

Korovai is entirely capable of doing the things on the list.

You are planning to snap out of it when you get back? I feel like it might be awkward for your subjects if they caught an inkling and thought they were making your life harder by having ever been born. And don't say 'they will never find out'.

When I am back in my world and doing the best I can for my empire and there is no longer an ongoing crisis, I will begin to be able to be happy. If being happy turns out to be more difficult than expected... I don't know.

I'm doing a not being happy thing but it's - I'm not sure how to articulate why I think it's different from your thing but I think it is.

In what way...?

Don't know how to articulate it, but, like -

- I think you're dispositionally sad in a way underlying the ostensible reason and I just think it's appropriate to my situation to be sad?

...Do you somehow contend that it is not appropriate to my situation to be sad...?

I do not contend that, I just suspect you are also, situation aside, a sad sort of person?

I wouldn't know; it has been a very long time since I have been in the sort of situation to which sadness was not an appropriate response.

Pause.

I have in fact been happy before in my life, in case that was unclear. Multiple times since my grandfather's death, in fact.

Okay.

But it's very unlikely to happen again while I am still so far away from being able to uphold my responsibility to my empire, and I have to be able to keep working regardless or I will just continue being stranded and unhappy forever.

Can I ask what about this planet's weird thing bothers you?

The way they arrange themselves has - uncomfortable similarities to things I've seen in my father's court, where it is... not at all a harmless aspect of a healthily functioning society. In particular, if you asked Nirue I'm sure she'd say there's no fundamental difference between the way she 'has' my friend Ruava and the way the people of this world 'have' one another.

(Implications again - Ruava is or was his only friend, and was created and raised by Nirue entirely for the purpose of being her torture-plaything.)

...ah. Okay.

It's clear that that is not in fact what's going on here, but the associations still loom.

That's understandable.

Yes.

Anyway. Planet-helping. They're so helpful and the planet will be so helped.

Yep, that.

And they're closing in on the time when Cam said he might be summoned away—do you in fact know if they're going to try to dismiss and resummon you?

Their letters indicated that. They thought I might have been dismissed when I vanished in the first place and figured I probably hadn't when I didn't show up.

I don't expect my communication power to reach between worlds but I will write you letters describing my progress.

I'd appreciate that, although I don't check my mail very often when constantly resurrecting people.

Understandable. You will eventually be done constantly resurrecting people, however.

Yeah. Few more months.

I will keep an eye out particularly for anything that could be used as a means of generalized resurrection.

Thank you. Very much.

Apart from the obvious considerations inherent to the situation itself... I would like for you to one day be in a situation where it is appropriate to be happy.

I would like that too.

Good luck.

Thank y

And gone.

Well.

He finishes up all the work on the planet of the uncomfortable social customs. He writes Cam a letter describing everything he did and where he left off.

He gets in his flying canoe and takes it back to the monument, and adds a postscript indicating that he can backtrack successfully, and conscientiously checks for a reply although he's sure Cam is busy, and then he heads out again in a new direction.