he aimed at his helpless target, and he said one last time, 'I am looking for my wife.'
'Don't,' the librarian begged.
The weapon was pointed at the bound volumes. The smallest burst would vaporize untold pages.
'No,' Leon'rd moaned, desperately trying to alert the room's weapon suppression systems. But none was responding.
Again, he said, 'No.' 'I love her,' Pamir claimed.
'I understand.'
'Do you understand love?'
Leon'rd seemed offended. 'Of course I understand - '
'Or does it have to be something ugly and sick before you can appreciate, even a little bit, what it means to be in love.'
The J'Jal refused to speak.
'She's vanished,' Pamir muttered.
'And you think she has been here?'
'At least once, yes.'
The librarian was swiftly searching for a useful strategy. A general alarm was sounding, but the doors he had locked for good reasons suddenly refused to unlock. His staff and every other helping hand might as well have been on the far side of the ship. And if the gun discharged, it would take critical seconds to fill the room with enough nitrogen to stop the fire and enough narcotics to shove a furious human to the floor.
Leon'rd had no choice. 'Perhaps I can help you, yes.'
Pamir showed a thin, unpleasant grin. 'That's the attitude.'
'If you told me your wife's name - '
'She wouldn't use it,' he warned.
'Or show me a holo of her, perhaps.'
The angry husband shook his head. 'She's changed her appearance. At least once, maybe more times.'
'Of course.'
'And her gender, maybe.'
The librarian absorbed that complication. He had no intention of giving this stranger what he wanted, but if they could just draw this ugly business out for long enough… until a platoon of security troops could swoop in and take back their colleague…
'Here,' said Pamir, feeding him a minimal file.
'What is this?'
'Her boyfriend, from what I understand.'
Leon'rd stared at the image and the attached biography. The soft green eyes had barely read the name when they grew huge -a meaningful J'Jal expression-and with a sigh much like a human sigh, he admitted, 'I know this man.'
'Did you?'
Slowly, the implication of those words was absorbed.
'What do you mean? Is something wrong?'
'Yeah, my wife is missing. And this murdered piece of shit is the only one who can help me find her. Besides you, that is.'
Leon'rd asked for proof of the man's death.
'Proof?' Pamir laughed. 'Maybe I should call my boss and tell her that I found a deceased J'Jal, and you and I can let the law do its important and loud and very public work?'
A moment later, with a silent command, the librarian put an end to the general alert. There was no problem here, he lied; and with the slightest bow, he asked, 'May I trust you to keep this matter confidential, sir?' 'Do I look trustworthy?'
The J'Jal bristled but said nothing. Then he stared at shelves at the far end of the room, walking a straight line that took him to a slender volume that he withdrew and opened, elegant fingers beginning to flip through the thin plastic pages.
With a bully's abruptness, Pamir grabbed the prize. The cover was a soft wood stained blue to identify its subject as being a relative novice. The pages were plastic, thin but dense, with a running account of the dead man's progress. Over the course of the last century, the librarians had met with Sele'ium on numerous occasions, and they had recorded his uneven progress with this very difficult faith. Audio transcripts drawn from a private journal let him speak again, explaining his mind to himself and every interested party. 'My species is corrupt and tiny,' Sele'ium had confessed with a remarkably human voice. 'Every species is tiny and foul, and only together, joined in a perfect union, can we create a worthy society-a universe genuinely united.'
A few pages held holos - stark, honest images of religious devotion that most of the galaxy would look upon as abominations. Pamir barely lingered on any picture. He had a clear guess about what he was looking for, and it helped that only one of the J'Jal's wives was human.
The final pages were key. Pamir stared at the last image. Then with a low snort and a disgusted shake of the head, he announced, 'This must be her.'
'But it isn't,' said the librarian.
'No, it's got to be,' he persisted. 'A man should be able to recognize his own wife. Shouldn't he?'
Leon'rd showed the barest of grins. 'No. I know this woman rather well, and she is not-'
'Where's her book?' Pamir snapped.
'No,' the librarian said. 'Believe me, this is not somebody you know.'
'Prove it.'
Silence.
'What's her name?'
Leon'rd straightened, working hard to seem brave.
Then Pamir placed the plasma torch against a random shelf, allowing the tip of the barrel to heat up to where smoke rose as the red wood binding of a true believer began to smolder.
The woman's journal was stored in a different room, far deeper inside the library. Leon'rd called for it to be brought to them, and then he stood close while Pamir went through the pages, committing much of it to a memory nexus. At one point, he said, 'If you'd let me just borrow these things.'
The J'Jal face flushed, and a tight hateful voice replied, 'If you tried to take them, you would have to kill me.'
Pamir showed him a wink.
'A word for the not-so-wise?' he said. 'If I were you, I wouldn't give my enemies any easy ideas.'
VI How could one species prosper, growing in reach and wealth as well as in numbers, while a second species, blessed with the same strengths, exists for a hundred times longer and still doesn't matter to the galaxy?
Scholars and bigots had deliberated that question for ages.
The J'Jal evolved on a lush warm world, blue seas wrapped around green continents, the ground fat with metal ores and hydrocarbons, and a massive moon riding across the sky, helping keep the axis tilted just enough to invite mild seasons. Perhaps that wealth had been a bad thing. Born on a poorer world, humans had evolved to live in tiny, adaptable bands of twenty or so - everyone related to everyone, by blood or by marriage. But the early J'Jals moved in troops of a hundred or more which meant a society wrapped around a more tolerant politics. Harmony was a given. Conflicts were resolved quietly, if possible; nothing was more precious to the troop than its own venerable peace. And with natural life spans reaching three centuries, change was a slow, fitful business brought on by consensus, or when absolutely necessary, by surrendering your will to the elders.
But quirks of nature are only one explanation for the future. Many great species had developed patiently. Some of the most famous, like the Ritkers and harum-scarums, were still tradition-bound creatures. Even humans had that sorry capacity: The wisdom of dead Greeks and lost Hebrews was followed long after their words had value. But the J'Jal were much more passionate about ancestors and their left-behind thoughts. For them, the past was a treasure, and their early civilizations were hide-bound and enduring machines that would remember every wrong turn and every quiet success.
After a couple hundred thousand years of flint and iron, humans stepped into space, while it took the J'Jal millions of years to contrive reasons for that kind of adventure.
