Orthodoxy never likes competition, especially backed with the authority of messages from the stars. The Sigma Structure Symphony—she still disliked the title, without knowing why—had gone viral, spreading to all the worlds. The musical world loved it, but many others did not. The High Church–style religions—such as the Church of England, known as Episcopalian in the Americas—could take the competition. So could Revised Islam. Adroitly, these translated what they culled from the buffet of SETI messages into doctrines and terms they could live with.

The fundies, as Rachel thought of them, could not stand the Library’s findings: the myriad creation narratives, saviors, moral lessons and commandments, the envisioned heavens and hells (or, interestingly, places that blended the two—the only truly alien idea that emerged from the Faith Messages). They disliked the Sigma Structure Symphony not only because it was alien, but because it was too much like human work.

“They completely missed the point,” Catkejen said, peering over Rachel’s shoulder at some of the worse ecomms. “It’s like our baroque music because it comes from the same underlying math.”

“Yes, but nobody ever made music directly from math, they think. So it’s unnatural, see.” She had never understood the fundamentalists of any religion, with their heavy bets on the next world. Why not max your enjoyments in this world, as a hedge?

That thought made her pause. She was quite sure the Rachel of a month ago would not have felt that way. Would not have had the idea.

“Umm, look at those threats,” Catkejen said, scrolling through. “Not very original, though.”

“You’re a threat connoisseur?”

“Know your enemy. Here’s one who wants to toss you out an airlock for ‘rivaling the religious heights of J. S. Bach with alien music.’ I’d take that as a compliment, actually.”

Some came in as simple, badly spelled ecomms. The explicit ones Rachel sent to the usual security people, while Catkejen watched with aghast fascination. Rachel shrugged them off. Years before, she had developed the art of tossing these on sight, forgetting them, not letting them gimp her game. Others were plainly generic: bellowed from pulpits, mosques, temples, and churches. At least they were general, directed at the Library, not naming anyone but the Great Librarian, who was a figurehead anyway.

“You’ve got to be careful,” Catkejen said.

“Not really. I’m going out with Kane tonight. I doubt anyone will take him on.”

Cat laughed. “You do, though in a different way. More music?”

“Not a chance.” She needed a way to not see Masoul, mostly.

6.

VIVACE

Looked at abstractly, the human mind already did a lot of fast, deep processing. It made sense of Anglish’s idiosyncratic arrangements, rendered in horizontal lines, of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten Arabic numerals, and about eight punctuation marks—all without conscious effort. Other tongues were even more intricate. In the old days people had done that with sheets of bleached and flattened wood pulp!—and no real search functions or AI assists. The past had been a rough country. Rachel thought of this as she surveyed the interweaving sheets of mathematics the Sigma had yielded. They’d emerged only after weeks of concerted analysis, with a squad of math AIs to do the heavy lifting. Something made her think of P. T. Barnum. He had been a smart businessman at the beginning of the Age of Appetite who ran a circus—an old word for a commercial zoo, apparently. When crowds slowed the show, he posted a sign saying TO THE EGRESS. People short on vocabulary thought it was another animal and walked out the exit, which wouldn’t let them back in.