“What was the Mat trying to do?”

He shrugged. “Motive is last thing to ask about. First, understand the message.”

“That was a message?”

“What else?” He did a little ritual, squeezing a lime slice along the thick shot-glass rim, to hold a line of salt he sprinkled. The tequila splashed in, another lime slice, then a bit of water from a hip vessel he carried. She had seen behavior like this in men who needed to get into a certain focused state, through repetition, in order to give their minds free play. Such ritual was a common, unremarked feature among SETI Library staff—but usually not with booze.

He noticed her scrutiny, smiled. “I drink to make other people more interesting.”

Despite herself, she laughed. “Sorry I’m so dull.”

“Too early to tell. Your SETI people, you maybe can have insights. Or that birdy alien, Fraq.”

“He’s pretty inscrutable.”

“Is a ‘he’? Was unsure.”

“Well, Fraq looks like a bird, and acts like a man.”

“Which means?”

“He blunders along, does what he wants.”

“Ha! You do not, librarian lady?”

She thought of backing off from this line of talk, but that was her usual response. My “librarian lady” instinct? So she replied, “I went with Fraq when we fell all the way from Earth orbit.”

He whistled, nodded. “Was story about that. Amazing. I did not believe.”

She shrugged. “I have my moments.”

“You are librarian inside, though?” He picked up his jigger of tequila and drank it straight down, his eyes never leaving hers.

She couldn’t let him get away with that, not after this morning. “Just as you pretend to be a man of simple tastes?”

He grinned. “Which for librarian means, I am, you say—complete vulgarian.”

She had to laugh, a liberating one from the belly. “Touché!”

So now it was out in the open, and she had to admit the truth to herself. He had the fatal charmer profile, for her: black hair, blue eyes, large hands, face thin but with a strong jaw. Ah, the troubles that profile had gotten her into! More times than she liked to think about, she had mistaken qualities of style and looks for elements of inner character. With predictable (by others, never her) results.

“Are you always this shy with strangers?” she needled him.

“Only librarians.”

Time to get back to work. “You said, as I recall, that we need to talk.”

Zuminski leaned back. “You did not act properly down there. I must say that, in report.”

“Your memos mean nothing to me. What counts is results—which we got today.”

“Results?” He seemed bemused by her presumption, fattening his lower lip, eyebrows arcing. “Here we are always, always maybeing, maybeing, maybeing.”

Use the same body-language style, then. Rachel jutted her chin forward, eyes flashing. “Always maybeing? Always uncertain what the Mat means? The important maybe got goddamn well answered—we got out alive.”

“You ignored your team.”

“I forced open those big elephant-ears that trapped us in there. With Fraq’s help. That seemed to me more important.”