He grimaced. “We will let the Sigma simmer. Your work on the music will be your triumph.”

“I hope it will earn well for the Library.”

“Today’s Earrthside music has all the variety of a jackhammer. Your work soars.” He allowed a worried frown to flit across his brow. “But you will need to… expel… this thing that’s within you.”

“I… yes.”

“It will take—”

Abruptly she saw Kane standing to the side. His face was a lesson in worry. Without a word she went to him. His warmth helped dispel the alien chill within. As his arms engulfed her, the shivering stopped.

Ignoring the Prefect, she kissed him. Hungrily.

PART 5 YTHRI

TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.

—AMBROSE BIERCE, THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, 1911

1.

Prefect Masoul said gravely, “I have been concealing from you much.”

“Much… what?” Rachel had hardly sat down before the Prefect lifted hands and shaped a steeple of fingers below his intent eyes. Much like a language-logics professor she recalled, getting ready for a bit of delicious, tangled grammar.

“Much you shall now come to know. But first… you seem troubled.” He gazed at her expectantly.

Rachel folded her hands so they would not reveal her tensions. The best tells and reads came from in-person sit-downs, she knew. She had avoided Masoul because he seemed good at figuring her out. But now maybe he could help.

“I am…” She hesitated, saw that was a clear tell itself, so rushed on: “—distracted. Had some personal… stuff… I—”

“You rested.” A casual wave. “We all must. Symphonies must gestate. Not that you need to make music again.”

Rachel sensed some evasiveness, a mask. Something hovering behind it, just out of sight.

She blinked, startled. “I had to get some distance from my bout of, well—”

A thin, sympathetic smile. “Discordance, shall we term it? You were affected by your delusions, true. But you did not commit suicide, as that unfortunate man did. And I do know of your… intimacy… with alien minds. A true talent, you have. Your discord was your price paid for our solution to the hydrogen wall catastrophe, as well. Such dislocations accumulate in the mind, I believe.”

She bowed her head to show modesty. She had deliberately not checked for news about the state of the outer solar system. “I gather that the hydrogen wall is still getting pushed back?”

“Yes, and you were voted a Worldly Award for your contribution.”

She kept her mouth firm but blinked in surprise. “I did not know that.”

“We were so informed in advance. So of course, in keeping with a Librarian’s code, we rejected it for you.”

“That…” Rachel struggled for the right words. “That’s like not taking any rewards for the economic impacts of what we discover, right?”