A surprised smile creased the Prefect’s face. That looked odd, as though it had been delivered to the wrong address.

He suppressed a laugh and then made a small sound, something like a sigh. “Very well. Report weekly.”

She blinked. “Um, many thanks.”

The Prefect turned away, waving a 3-D screen into view, where it hung in the air, awaiting use. An abrupt dismissal.

3.

After the interview she had expected some ceremonious welcome. The Prefect’s grave dignity implied such, but reality handed Rachel a swift descent. She went to a Chief Clerk and delivered a thumbprint, an optical eye read, and some DNA, then signed agreements in the old-fashioned way with the linked IDs in digital concert. The clerk who did this yawned, her tongue fidgeting among her teeth for some morsel left over from breakfast. The clerk nodded, head-wagged toward a side door—and Rachel was back in the main corridor, dismissed without a word. Again.

The Purser’s office was across the hall. She went into it and soon enough was back in the same hall. Everyone here seemed to think she, in the Purser’s words, “knew the drill,” but she didn’t. She had forgotten to study the curt notes her wrist yielded up, once she thought to tap it. That had always been a problem for her. She had gotten out of a small town in Louisiana by learning to focus on problems until she could solve them, sure. But that always meant she ignored the obvious in the rest of the world, including prompts sent to her by the Library staff. She sighed and got on with it.

Rachel smoothed her ornate, severely traditional Trainee shift as she left the Purser’s office, an old calming gesture she could not train away. The shift was pricey in the sense that she could not cover it with her ready cash. She simply signed for it to be taken from her monthly wage, and the Purser printed out hers in blue.

Now her big mouth had gotten her into a fix, and she could see no way out. Not short of going back in there and asking for the Prefect’s guidance, to find a simpler Message, something she could manage.

She stopped in midstride. To hell with that. No going back. She shook her head to cement her resolve.

Take a walk, she thought. Let your unconscious process all this.

She had come down from low Lunar orbit only the day before. The rotating funicular had brought her compartment gracefully into a snug magnetic catcher, zooming down in a box, in the obliging gravity. A week before she had been in Melbourne, Australia. The Councilors liked to keep a firm hold on who entered the Library’s labyrinths. They had put candidates through their final scholastic work in a bustling focal point beside foaming waves and tawny beaches. Those Trainee candidates who could resist the sunny temptations made it through. As a sheep-goat separator—a saying her mother used, from her old farming days—it worked well. Luna was a more solemn place, time-steeped and unchanging. Plus, it was basically a bunch of boxes with dry, cool air and tricky grav.