Rachel said, “I hear some Trainees are planning a demonstration against these abrupt firings.”
Another of Catkejen’s patented eye-rolls. “I mentioned that rumor to my own Prefect. I got one of her rare laughs. She said, “Demonstrations never achieve anything—if they did, we wouldn’t allow them.””
“Ah. A word to the wise?”
“Look, my nun-like friend—you’ve got to get style here. Dig into the ramified SETI messages—thousands of ‘em, thick as bees—lurking back there in the vaults.” Catkejen let her exasperation out in darting phrases. “Learn the pleasure in dispute, in dialectic, in dazzle. Get some freelance dash, peacock strut, daring hypotheses, knockabout synthesis—and get laid.”
Rachel felt her face tighten, struggled to manage a smile. “I’m, you know, wrong time of the—”
“Month? Come on, gal!” Eyes flaring, grin spreading, hands shooting out.
“When I’m on my period, I just stand in the shower and watch blood run down my legs into the drain and imagine I am a warrior princess who is standing in the aftermath of a battle, where I murdered all my enemies.”
At the moment Rachel was mostly about cramp diarrhea. Which meant maybe stay away from the claustrophobic pod and the dwarf stars?
“You don’t want to be in the next culling, my friend.”
Rachel allowed herself a thin, uncertain smile. “Maybe they keep me on simply to serve as a warning to others.”
The Library reception was on the rampart walk above the main plaza. The setting implied antiquity: vaulted and corbelled ceilings, columns sporting reverse flutings and crowned with Corinthian elegance. In a community that spent most of its time in small rooms with faintly oily air, taking advantage of views was essential for social functions. Crescent Earth was just a sliver, a comma, a single eyelash in the star-rich sky.
She looked for the Prefect but he was not in the murmuring crowd. Probably feasting inside on Muscovy duck with pears and greens balsamico, she thought, succumbing to the Lunar cliché of fixating on food. The Library hierarchy emerged most visibly in what luxuries one could afford. Rumors proposed fragrant, exotic dishes none had ever seen, but thought they scented in the closed air of the Library. To the nose, there were seemingly few secrets. Whatever a Muscovy duck might be, keeping one a secret seemed impossible. Still, there were ever more rumors about the sealed and secured portions of the Library, where only Prefects or better could venture.
A mecha band played its typical klunketta-klunketta rhythm and she found herself among some other Trainees, buzzing with talk about Earthside matters. She joined the line for the stand-up banquet—in 0.18 g, not a problem. Above, moon birds looking like paint-splattered sparrows banked and swirled. These had plenty of parrot genes, and others swooped in flocks of sharply elongated eagles, and even a huge impossibility she called Moby Hawk.
There was sweet-smelling bread made from an unpronounceable root vegetable, molasses, something called hoppin’ john and tart collard greens, plus rich butter from goat’s milk. She favored the usual pickup food of crickets, bugs and odd crispy-fried creatures with Byzantine names, and the obligatory pork and chicken. Considering, she pitied the vegetarians; most went back Earthside soon enough.
She wandered, not spotting any friends, and into a circle discussing the deaths in the latest human cold-sleep method.
“… and they all died, within a two year span,” a slim woman said mournfully. “I wish they would stop inflicting such torture on us.”
Torture? Scan the news at your own risk, she thought.
She was a bit tired of the Lunar sophisticates’ habit, their narcissism of borrowed tragedy. It came from viewing from afar—or at least far enough— the perpetual disasters on overcrowded Earth. It struck her as inverted empathy—relate some tragedy from the news and express your sad-eyed care, and soon enough, other people’s suffering becomes about you. You convey with raised eyebrow or warped lips that you’re owed some measure of the deference and compassion that the victims are.
“They knew the risks going in.”
The thin woman frowned. “Well, I’m sure, but—”
“And chose to take them. Too bad it failed, but honestly—how likely is it that we mammals, whose sole hibernators are bears and the like, could take decades of cold sleep?”
“Well, they’ve been working on this for—what, a century?—and I think the scientists know what they’re doing.” The woman gave Rachel a sharp look that should have stuck several centimeters out of her back.
“Seems not. They all died?”
“Uh, yes. Twenty-five. Some made it for the six years mark, but none past eight.”
“How’d they die?”
“The connectomics scientists say their slowed metabolism just stopped. Wouldn’t restart.”
A light-haired brown man added with a smack of lips, “The report said when they opened the life chests, there was a distinct smell of porcini risotto. Armpits filled with fungus.”
A big laugh. This was enough to disband the group before Rachel got in too deep. But something in the issue tickled her mind. Did a century of trying cold-sleep mean it just wasn’t possible for complex animals, including aliens?
If so, no visitors, no crewed starships. Even if civilizations arose and persisted, they could only visit other stars robotically. Then all interstellar contacts were the province of artificial intelligences … A glimmering of an idea.
Maybe—
“I have noted that you are disobeying,” the Prefect said at her elbow.
“Oh! You startled me.” Somehow the Prefect’s bald head loomed large out here in the open. Or maybe it just reminds me of how many dead worlds I’ve seen.
“You are spending pod time on old reconnaissance. I will have to write a report.” Not a flicker of emotion. Write a report meant blocking her from becoming a Librarian, maybe forever.
“I have an idea I’m pursuing.” Not quite a lie.
A long, slow blink, as if thinking. “I give you three days to stop.”
The Prefect turned and walked away with the long lope those born on the moon made in a graceful sway.
At every stage of her life she’d been reasonable, dutiful. But now a vague intuition made her bat away the advice of her friends, and
