The Library had evolved into a factory, producing minds distended out of all proportion—force-fed facts, as unlucky geese are force-fed corn. The succulent foie gras of such minds was then to be dined on by the Library, digesting alien 0s and 1s into a digital aesthete’s wisdom. A Librarian’s life, like the goose’s comfort, was certainly secondary.
Even the Prefect, and that Librarian constriction, she shrugged off; her ascetic trainers Earthside had been Dionysiac compared to him. But she was mature now, nearing fifty and the end of her obedient-student mode.
Instead of worrying, she worked through the latest stellar evolution theories, well buttressed by myriad data links and erudite commentaries. Astronomers loved their data-mountains, indeed.
A star lived very long if it had a tenth of a solar mass and so a tenth of its radius—a pigmy, glowering at its close-clustered children in sullen reds. So a planet in the thin habitable zone of a typical dwarf M star remained in that zone for a hundred billion years. In essence, such stars lasted so long, the length of habitability becomes more of a planetary than a stellar issue. If an intelligent species properly managed its environment, it could persist far longer than any around a Sol-like star, which would grow unstable after about ten billion years, and swell to fill a world’s sky, baking it. Any dwarf-star civilization might have begun billions of years before fish crawled up a beach on Earth and learned to breathe the rising oxygen in the air. Such societies had to manage their worlds or die out.
Pondering this, she booked pod time again.
She knew from her Artilect that the Prefect’s boss, the Nought Siloh, was checking on her work, so while her period lasted she actually spent time on the message inventory. She made little progress, even with the ever-helpful Seekers of Script. Picking tiny feelers of meaning from myriad messages— some seemingly simple, many blizzards of digital chaos—was like trying to hear a moth in a hurricane.
To the deep translation problem came also that many Messages were ancient, coding bronzed into memories of dead alien cultures, their beamed hails simple funeral pyres. Many could be solved by a lost wax method of digital abstraction, but that often yielded cries of despair in alien tongues. After a week of work she got a call to report for review.
The Nought named Siloh frowned, apparently its only expression. “Your performance lags. I suppose insights gathered from your inspection of planetary observations could augment your Message work, yes. But.” It stopped, eyeing her.
Noughts had intricate adjustments to offset their lack of sexual appetites and apparatus, both physical and mental. They had been developed in the 2330s to give them a rigorous objectivity in translating the Messages. Somehow this evolved into the 2400s to mean management of the Library itself.
“I assume your but implies that you hold doubts?” She managed a smile with this but the Nought’s frown did not budge.
“I solely wish to remind you that such interests are a diversion,” Siloh said, drawing out vowels, eyes lidded.
“Perhaps not. I have found some … curiosities.”
“You will find in working with your Artilect—the Transap one, I see, excellent choice—saying no more than you mean is essential.”
“I looked back at a classic case of direct exploration today, Luhman 16. An old flyby, 6.5 light years out, the nearest L-type dwarf. For a while the third-closest known star to Sol, after the Centauris and poor lonely Barnard’s star. Point is, it’s a binary and both stars had planets—a bonanza, but both held remnants of shattered cities, billions of years old.”
The Nought sniffed. “Of course.”
The obvious rebuff made her bear down. It was easier to act herself into a new way of thinking than to think her way into a new way of acting.
“There’s a pattern here. Dead civilizations around dwarf stars.”
“The universe is cruel to the unwise. You are ignoring your essential tasks. Does that seem wise?”
She made herself be systematic.
The dwarf stars were marvels, in their way. She had always been impressed by their efficiency at packing hydrogen, the stuff of flammable zeppelins, into such a small space; some were more than twice as dense as lead. The density of Sol was bubblegum by comparison.
Many of their planets were tide-locked, or nearly so. Some had a spin/orbit resonance like Mercury, which rotates three times every two orbits around Sol. Others were split worlds, with a twilight border rich in black and gray forests, with mostly minimal animal life. The best were those that spun lazily in the ruby furnace of their skies.
There were systems whose sun was but a tarnished penny above a world where three moons played at their races. Winds were whips, polishing continents to smooth mausoleums. Such hells of sand gave her itchy flashes as the centuries-old probe explored. She rejected these, and many stony rocks and super-Jovians that circled burning circles in the sky.
There were even worse. Some circles lose enough to their star that atmospheric temperatures exceed the boiling point of water. Clouds of unlikely mixtures of potassium chloride or zinc sulfide, lifted high into the atmosphere, yielding a flat, dull spectrum.
Yet even here brightly glowing plumes reminded her of an underwater scene with turquoise-tinted currents. Strange nebulous strands reached out, echoing starfish, giant beings aloft in an atmosphere that would have crushed a dinosaur. If anything lived there, she did not wish to know of it.
She had two more days to comply with the Prefect’s orders. But she couldn’t. She kept on mining the recon files, experiencing them whole-body.
In her mind swarmed filmy ideas. She slept restlessly, tossing in sweaty sheets—and alone; no social life seemed worth the lost moments. She skipped meals and snacked on garlic-flavored fried beetles.
Then back in the pod. The Prefect could have cut off her privileges, but no such order came.
Among the dwarf stars Earth had
