Among Librarians, TO THE EGRESS was the classic example of a linguistic deception that is not a lie. No false statements, just words and a pointing arrow. SETI AIs could lie by avoiding the truth, by misleading descriptions and associations, or by accepting a falsehood. But the truly canny ones deceived by knowing human frailties.

Something about the Sigma Structure smelled funny—to use an analog metaphor. The music was a wonderful discovery, and she had already received many congratulations for the concert. Everybody knew Masoul had just made it happen, while she had discovered the pathways from math to music. But something else was itching at her, and she could not focus on the distracting, irritating tingle.

Frustrated, she climbed out of her pod in midafternoon and went for a walk. Alone, into the rec dome. A place to breathe freely. It was the first time she had gone there since Ajima’s death.

She chose the grasslands zone, which was in spring now. She’d thought of asking Catkejen along, but her idea of roughing it was eating at outdoor cafés. Dotting the tallgrass plains beneath a sunny Earth-sky were deep blue lakes cloaked by Lunar-size towering green canopy trees. Grass! Rippling oceans of it, gleams of amber, emerald, and dashes of turquoise shivering on the crests of rustling waves, washing over the prairie. Somehow this all reminded her of her childhood. Her breath wreathed milky white around her in the chill, bright air, making her glad she wore the latest Lunar fashion—a centuries-old-style heavy ruffled skirt of wool with a yoke at the top, down to the ankles. The equally heavy long-sleeved blouse had a high collar draped like double-ply cotton—useful against the seeping Lunar cold. She was as covered as a woman could be short of chador, and somehow it gave the feeling of… safety. She needed that. She lay down in the tall, sweet grass and let its sighing waves ripple around her. Despite the Dome rules, she plucked a flower, then set out about the grasslands zone, feeling as if she were immersed in centuries past, on great empty plains that stretched on forever and promised much.

Something stirred in her mind… memories of the last few days she could not summon up as she walked the rippled grassland and beside the chilly lakes tossing with creamy froth. Veiled memories itched at her mind. The leafy lake trees vamp across a Bellini sky… and why am I thinking that? The itch.

Then the sky began to crawl.

She felt before she saw a flashing cometary trail scratch across the Dome’s dusky sky. A scratch of color. The flaring yellow line marked her passage as she walked on soft clouds of obliging grass. Stepping beneath the shining, crystalline, gathering night felt like… falling into the sky. She paused, and slowly spun, giddy, glad at the owls hooting to each other across the darkness, savoring the faint tang of woodsmoke from hearth fires, transfixed by the soft, clean beauty all around that came with each heartbeat, a wordless shout of praise—