“Librarian Rachel Cohen?” the woman asked formally in a flat tone.

“Sit,” Rachel said, spotting the Seekers of Script emblem on the woman’s shoulder. Library staff, fine, but—She could barely look away from those eyes. She halfway expected a nictitating membrane to close across them, so cold was the woman’s gaze.

“I’m Henjai Chen,” she said, settling deeply into a guest chair. Here on Earth the visiting Loonies got red carpet and mahogany paneling throughout. The Library furniture on Luna was flimsy stuff, hard and heat-molded from regolith, but in Lunar gravity that mattered little. She and Chen got deep-cushioned seats.

Chen seemed to become the focus of the room merely by sitting down, carefully folding her skirt under her delicious legs. In a jolt Rachel realized that, for the first time in her life, she hated this woman on sight. Her nostrils flared as if she had caught a foul scent.

“I wanted to confer with you about the aliens,” Chen said in an arch tone, no discernible accent. “The Prefect Stiles suggests I should work with Fraq now.”

“Better you than me,” Rachel said.

Chen’s already large eyes widened. “But he has made you famous!”

“Distracting me from my Library work, yes. But that was just recently, when he gave away that the Ythri wanted me to go Earthside.”

“Prefect Stiles appreciates that you have given yourself to the cause—”

“By risking my neck, falling a hundred kilometers from the top of Earth’s atmosphere. All to extract from Fraq a bunch of social protocols, signals, and manners, to use in approaching a wormhole. Whose location Fraq won’t tell us.”

Chen said primly, “I hope that is where I come in.”

“And go out, probably.”

“What do—oh, I see. You think Fraq’s plans are dangerous.”

Rachel sighed. Concerning the Ythri, passions ran high. Earthside was aflame with talk; everyone had six opinions; the political stakes were stratospheric. Ugh. “How long have you been with the Library?”

“Four years. Why?”

Long enough to get bored doing endlessly repetitive searches as a Seeker of Script, then. To look for a fast track upstairs. So Rachel said, “You seem an ambitious sort,” which she thought was a polite way of saying, You’re looking for a quick leg up. Just spreading your legs for the Prefect wouldn’t work—or maybe you tried that already?

“I want to get ahead, just like most people.”

“Showboating with Fraq may just be a fast route to the grave.”

“Caution is advisable, yes,” Chen said guardedly, her swanlike neck curling as she looked discreetly around Rachel’s office.

For personal effects? That was why Rachel didn’t display any; too easy to read lots into. Her southern American origin probably didn’t help. Or, Rachel realized, maybe she was getting just a tad cynical. She nodded.

Chen said brightly, “Still, that can just be timidity, a fault. As the Bard said, ‘When I became a man, I put away childish things.’ I try to live by that.”

“The Bible, not the Bard. And risking your neck—as, I admit, I did—is not smart. Fraq isn’t to be trusted.”