Rachel nodded. The Prefect had told her that, plus more, but she hesitated to just blurt it all out. This was happening too damn fast. “We know nothing about them, beyond a bio. They call themselves Ythri and have a funny chirping way of speaking—Anglish, no less! Their ship is sending big data-dump info that’s getting processed. They want to ‘visit’ the ancient Mind they sent out, we do know that. Why, I dunno.”

“And to see you?!”

“More dunno.” Rachel was pacing, chewing her lip. “I’m kinda… scared.”

“So now ‘Intellects vast and unsympathetic regarded us with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us,’ huh?”

“What?”

Cat gave a shifty sideways grin. “Opening of the first great alien invasion novel.”

Rachel nodded abstractedly. “I grew up wanting to work on Messages, meet Minds. It was the only way to encounter aliens. But now—real ones, minds plus bodies! It’s thrilling…. Frightening, too.”

Cat did a handstand to flex her back, then shoved up, arcing high enough to touch their ceiling with her feet. She pivoted on the descent, like a cat—landed, and cast a sardonic look. “Look, the Prefects and Noughts see us all as two breeds—workhorses and show ponies. They’re ‘sheltering’ you from fame so you don’t take off for Earthside fortune. They won’t be able to do that if these aliens want you in particular. Your face will be everywhere.”

“What was that recruitment joke? Becoming a Librarian for the money and the fame is like becoming a Trappist monk for the kinky sex and hard drugs.”

“Too true—but not for you. Distraction beats abstraction, every time. So let’s go ingest some long-chain hydroxyls.”

“Uh, maybe—”

“Means, let’s hit the bars. Lose the geegaw guys and miner-boy frazzlements.”

As Rachel changed clothes the walls read her mood, responding by projecting a soothing, sparkling white beach lapped by blue-green waves. A rare sight Earthside, now.

By the time they got to the lower-level clubs, Rachel felt thirty meters tall with lightning in her hair and a crown of shimmering frost. So… she immersed herself in guys.

Under pressure, she had moved to a new mode. Cat directed them to a body-shop bar, where the bodies of the Proteans were more important than talk, clothes, anything. Proteans chose their body form as a matter of fashion and choice, always a giveaway of their inner selves. Characters abounded, with fast-change genders the latest fad. Some nominal women were trying out big pecs and scowls, apparently aping the peculiarly male conviction that silence conveyed one’s feelings better than anything else.

One woman had big curves but, thanks apparently to hard daily workouts to keep her Earth grav sturdiness, her nudity looked like a slick condom full of restless walnuts. With Cat as wingwoman, Rachel parried men’s approaches, tossing off flirty taunts as her mood took over.

Cat’s smart sheath dress clung to her lithe body, wrapped close around her neck, and anchored at amber bracelets on her wrists. Her right showed bare skin colored like chardonnay as the dress polarized, giving quick glances of flesh. The silky sheen had variable opacity and hue she could tune with the bracelets.