So not much had changed….

After an afternoon briefing and intro to how she would work in the complex, Rachel was tired. Adjusting to 0.17 g somehow wore her out. Her apartment mate was a welcome antidote to the Nought. Small, bouncy, Catkejen was not the usual image of a Seeker Librarian. She lounged around in a revealing sarong, sipping a stimulant that was scarcely allowed in the Trainee Manual.

“Give ’em respect,” she said offhand, “but don’t buy into all their solemn dignity-of-our-station stuff. You’ll choke on it after a while.”

Rachel grinned with a skeptical twist. “And get slapped down.”

“I kinda think the Librarians like some back talk. Keeps ’em in fighting trim.”

Rachel sprawled a little herself, a relief from the ramrod-spine posture the Librarians kept. No one hunched over their work here, in the classic scholar’s pose. They kept upright, using the surround enviros, working in the screen envelopes. Cat handed her a flask of sweet something and she downed half of it. “Urk! What’s—”

“Hunnywanna. Mix of honey and marijuana molecules.”

“Oog… So, here’s how my Nought interview went—”

Ten minutes in, Cat said, “Doubt anything can stop interstellar weather. Some of my family’s Ganymede miners, and they’re boosting home fast.”

“Really? Brrrr! I’d hate to be buried in ice all my life, digging.”

“Don’t you buy that.” Catkejen waved a dismissive hand, extruding three tool-fingers to amplify the effect. “Robos do the grunt work. People there get out to prospect the outer moons a lot.”

“So your family’s wealthy? Hiding behind magneto-shields doesn’t seem worth it.”

“More clichés. Not every Ganny strikes it rich.”

The proton sleet at Ganymede was lethal, but the radiation-cured elements of the inner Jovian region had made many a fortune, too. “So you’re from the poor folks who had to send their brightest daughter off to Luna?”

“Another cliché.” Catkejen made a face. “I hope you have better luck finding something original in—what was it?”

“The Sagittarius Architecture.”

“Brrrrr! I heard it was a hydra.”

“Each time you approach it, you get a different mind?”

“If you can call it a mind. I hear it’s more like a talking body.”

Rachel had read and sensed a lot about the Sagittarius, but this was new. They all knew that the mind-body duality made no sense in dealing with alien consciousness, but how this played out was still mysterious. She frowned.

Catkejen poked her in the ribs. “Come on, no more deep thought today! Let’s go for a fly in the high-pressure dome.”

Reluctantly, Rachel went. But her attention still fidgeted over the issues. She thought about the challenge to come, even as she watched people swoop in long, serene glides over the fern-covered walls, under the deep amusement dome. In the ceiling were smart screens, showing fleecy skies on Earthside, against the persimmon sky.

She didn’t sleep well. The true challenge was coming up fast. She faced weeks of building her translator skills, before she could even get into a pod and make contact with alien minds.