“Oog. Wanna sleep.”

“You said to get you up early.”

“I’d like to throw up, but our apartment is too small.”

“Time to become an adult.”

“Catkejen, I like how you got me home, but—”

“Catty. Told you to call me Catty.”

“But Catty is an insult. Means gossipy. Mean.”

“Not if you’re a friend.”

“You can do eggs Benedict?”

“For a friend, sure. Another bite out of my paycheck.”

The eggs helped. So did the faux bacon, crispy. Rachel said, “That expression last night, Ruby…”

“ ‘Hound dog’? I had to look it up. Turns out it’s from your area, the South. Means a man who sniffs around or sleeps around.”

“You think she researched me, thought she was using my lingo?”

“Ruby’s a Hound so she’s quick to find terms to suit her personality—brusque and badass. Her fave come-on trick is to show how she can lick her own elbow.”

“Oog.” Rachel slurped up more coffee to clear the fog.

Catkejen went to Rachel’s tiny closet and took out her business suit. “This will do. But give your hair a fluff and no makeup at all. Noughts see that as pretension, the sort of thing they were invented to avoid.”

As Rachel got dressed she made herself look on the bright side, forced optimism, “Hey, I made some friends just last night.”

“True, but. Now you have to look bright, smart, but humble. Word is, the Nought you’re meeting is looking for Trainees who can do more than string math analysis into spiderwebs.”

“Word is?”

“More like a mood reading. Look, I got some subspeak done at the party while you were gabbing it up.”

“Slinging the slang, as I think you said. Not that I was doing a lot of thinking.”

“Subspeak is mostly rumor, but there’s, shall we call it, pricey gossip available, for them that knows.”

“What price?” Rachel asked.

“I might have to sleep with somebody, is all.”

“Might?”

“Okay, must. But at a time and place of my choosing.”

“Info, gossip… for… me?”

“Hey, roomies gotta stick together.”

“Not with Ruby, I trust?”

“Now, that damn near verges on insult.”

“Hard to know, around here. You really are Loonies.”

“At times, sure—when that’s useful,” Catkejen said. “Your Nought today is the big one, Siloh. I’ve heard him issue pronouncements to us mere Seekers. Imposing. Sometimes when hearing Siloh, I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.”

“Okay, I’ll try to suppress my humorous side.”

“You’re more ironic than the laugh-out-loud type, most of the time. And speaking of time, you’re getting late, m’dear.”

2.

Earth was a slim crescent now. Rachel paused, not knowing why, and looked at the sharp, clear image—screen-amped and entirely phony, since she was several hundred meters below the regolith. They’re back there, where we all came from. So we’re out here, closer to the big ancient galaxy, in a dumb way of seeing it. An outpost, where humanity heard and struggled to fathom the voices from the Great Galactic Past, as she thought of it. Us against the galaxy! as trite kid drama put it. With our noses against the glass—because space was cold, radioactive, and always trying to kill us.