“She survived,” Chen said primly.

“And no doubt helped her career.”

“You are so cynical.”

“Cynic is a term idealists use to describe realists.”

Chen took a deep breath and plainly decided to start over with their conversation. “I came to you for advice on handling him.”

“Get him drunk.”

Chen blinked again. “What?”

“He might tell you something inadvertently. The biochemists tell us his chemistry is enough like ours for alcohol to have a similar effect. He’s refused alcohol so far, but maybe you can trick him.”

Chen just stared. Her jaw slowly dropped, then shut. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“Cynic is a term idealists use—”

“I know, but what you said—it’s unethical!”

“Ethics are relative, especially with aliens. We don’t know his ethics, for example. Or even if he thinks in such categories that we consider obvious, such as ethics itself. We just know his rituals and symbolic acts. The motive behind him—that we don’t know at all.”

“But… to insert alcohol into his food—”

“Maybe better to say straight out, ‘Here, drink up—we primates use this as a ritual bonding ingredient.’ ”

“Oh… you could do that well. You’ve been through the Plunge, they respect you.”

Of course Rachel had already thought of that. She could see in Chen’s flicker of interest that the woman was always looking for her next shot of schadenfreude. Get Rachel to do some risky thing, laugh when it failed. Move up to replace her, maybe—Librarian Chen.

Now Chen got a look of pained indulgence on her face—cramped eyes, sour mouth twist, a thin frown.

Here comes a lecture, Rachel guessed.

“You do not seem to see the implications of simple facts. I am a specialist in Asian cultures, because most alien cultures—especially the Beacon societies—are, of course, many millennia older than human civilization. The longest-enduring Earthly civilizations—typically, Asian—evolved formal methods to lessen internal conflict, shore up hierarchy, and slow change. They revered social mannerisms, protocols, rituals. They used the leisurely consideration of new ideas. Older Beacon societies took these features as the very definition of a society worth engaging by electromagnetic signals.”

“So?” Orthodox Librarian thinking. It amused Rachel to be pontificated to. She could see that Chen was still processing the get-him-drunk advice. As she talked, running a tape as a friend had once said, her mind was working, She might even have some bright angles on this.

“Hence,” Chen went on, “the ornate procedures needed to even approach a wormhole. Fraq invoked these. Rituals to eliminate the uninitiated, I think—interlopers. Further, as with Beacon messages, having complex introductions, side comments, features that we Librarians found confounding. But presumably those play a social role, in organisms far different from any Earthly analogy. They are social mannerisms.”

Rachel frowned; Chen had done her homework. “So, sure, we can’t know what those side features mean, granted. But has it occurred to you that Fraq might be testing us with these ‘stunts’? They may not be idle matters.”

“Testing?” Plainly Chen had not thought of this. “Some sort of initiation?”