“Month? Come on, gal!” Eyes flaring, grin spreading, hands shooting out. “When I’m on my period, I just stand in the shower and watch blood run down my legs into the drain and imagine I am a warrior princess who is standing in the aftermath of a battle, where I murdered all my enemies. Ta-da!”

At the moment Rachel was mostly about cramp diarrhea. Her period was announcing itself, after a full yearlong pause to conserve eggs. Which meant… too irritable? Judgment impaired? Maybe stay away from the claustrophobic pod and the dwarf stars?

“You don’t want to be in the next culling, my friend.”

Rachel allowed herself a thin, uncertain smile. “Maybe they keep me on simply to serve as a warning to others.”

5.

The Library reception was taking place on the rampart walk above the Grand Plaza. The setting implied antiquity: vaulted and corbeled ceilings, columns sporting reverse flutings and crowned with a Corinthian elegance millennia old. All shaped from gray fired regolith. In a community that spent most of its time in small rooms with faintly oily air, taking advantage of views was essential for social functions. Crescent Earth was just a sliver, a comma, a single bright eyelash in the star-rich sky.

She looked for her Prefect Masoul, but he was not in the murmuring crowd. Probably feasting inside on Muscovy duck with pears and greens balsamic, she thought, succumbing to the Lunar cliché of fixating on food. The Library hierarchy emerged most visibly in what luxuries one could afford. Rumors proposed fragrant, exotic dishes none had ever seen, but thought they scented in the closed air of the Library. To the nose, there were seemingly few secrets. Whatever a Muscovy duck might be, keeping a roasted one a secret seemed impossible. Still, there were ever more rumors about the sealed and secured portions of the Library, where only Prefects or better-ranked Earthers could venture.

A mecha band played its typical klunketta-klunketta rhythm, and she found herself among some others of her station, buzzing with talk about Earthside matters. She joined the line for the stand-up banquet and ignored the chat-chat. Above, moon birds looking like paint-splattered sparrows banked and swirled. These had plenty of parrot genes, and others swooped in flocks of sharply elongated eagles; there was even a huge impossibility she called Moby Hawk. Moby squawky-spoke in rhymed couplets, no less.

Animal enhancers were ever-better.

There was sweet-smelling bread made from an unpronounceable root vegetable, thick molasses, something called Mobile hoppin’ John, and tart collard greens, plus rich butter from goat milk. She favored the usual pickup food of crickets, bugs, and odd crispy-fried creatures with obscure names, and the obligatory pricey pork and chicken. Proteins galore. Considering, she pitied the vegetarians; most went back Earthside soon enough.

She wandered, not spotting any friends, and into a circle discussing the deaths in the latest human cold-sleep method.

“… and they all died, within a two-year span,” a slim woman said mournfully. “I wish the news would stop inflicting such torture on us.”