“Ah.” Something in his voice made her cautious.

“You will not take part, of course.”

“Oh.” She could not prevent a flicker of disappointment from crossing her face.

“The Library does not permit any Librarian to profit from research. Or stand out from other Librarians.”

“Uh. Oh.” There had been something about that in her training, but she recalled little of it.

“I suspect you have not taken the long view of Library economics.”

“True enough.” Modesty was always best.

“When the Venetian merchant Marco Polo reached China, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, he saw many wonders—gunpowder and coal and eyeglasses and porcelain. What astonished him most, however, was a new invention, implemented by Kublai Khan, a grandson of the great conqueror Genghis—paper money.”

The Prefect paused for emphasis, eyes intent. “Marco Polo was right to be amazed, as we are by what we harvest from the Message Minds. The instruments of trade and finance are inventions, just as creations of art and discoveries of science are inventions—products of festering imagination. Paper money, backed by the authority of the state, was an astonishing innovation, one that reshaped the world. Arrival of alien technologies, lore, and art reshapes ours now, in the blare and sparkle of a debauch. The Minds know this.”

The Prefect sniffed, as if reluctant to give details. “I know,” was all Rachel could muster.

“Money is not the value for which goods are exchanged, but the value by which they are exchanged.”

“The means by which we swap one set of stuff for another set of stuff,” she managed. “Sure, economic systems evolve, with innovations, repetitions, failures, and dead ends. In finance, it involves busts and panics and crashes.”

The Prefect nodded. “In alien-driven finance and economics, we keep stepping on the same rakes, slapped in the face—to employ a physical metaphor. To allow Librarians to profit in any way from their work encourages vagrant turbulence we deplore.”

“So I get nothing from—”

“That management of ‘stuff’—ideas, inventions, and the like—is not our concern. We seek deeper knowledge. Plus art, delight, music, and the other sorts of… like.”

“I suppose the Library shows great profits, then?” Might as well poke him a bit, keeping her face as open and sincere as she could fake.

“Our upper echelons Earthside spend fortunes to protect us from political corruption. Plus, we must pay for our life support, computational costs, the lot. In our devoted field, difficulties, instead of irritating us as they do most, only increase our reliance on patience.”

So no reward for such as me… she thought, her heart doing a little floppy death. So do a humble bit, then.

“Sorry I’ve accomplished so little. I was distracted, some personal… uh, stuff… and I—”

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

She blinked, startled at the Prefect’s shift to a friendly tone. “I have been doing routine work, cataloging—”

“I know. Tomorrow you can begin work on the Andromeda Structure.”

“I thought that was—”