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  “I know that.” He smiled as he looked at her, and she read the things he did not say aloud. She knew that he was thinking of the studies she had brought to him, the resources she had delivered. He was remembering the first conversation they had had—about this very topic. She had made an impassioned plea for the preservation of all higher alien species, and he had responded to her steadily, avidly, providing her with a level of intellectual debate that had fed her mission-starved mind.

  And then, he had dropped by the library the next day, seeking out her thoughts on an obscure journal article. And she had closed the library door, locking it from within….

  “I know that,” he said again, and for just a moment, she did not know if he was speaking about the Mardurans, or if he were affirming the memories that had brought a blush to her cheeks. “I know how much technology hangs on our getting alethium. I know that we have security issues, and technology problems. The morality is only one piece of the puzzle.” Bernard smiled and brightened his tone. “Speaking of which, how is your cataloging progressing?”

  “I haven’t finished yet.” At Bernard’s surprised glance, she said, “I have another three weeks! And I’ve been a little, er, distracted.”

  His quirked eyebrow made her belly clench, and she wished that she were not sitting in a company ship, surrounded by crude wildcatters and Jessup employees. His words were innocent enough: “I can’t imagine what would take you away from the joys of cataloging.”

  “It is interesting work,” she protested. “Just not as interesting as some other, um, responsibilities I’ve undertaken.”

  Again, his smile warmed her. His words, though, were more practical. “You’ll get the mining resources cataloged, though? Before Earthfall? I’ll be relying on them in my report.”

  “They’ll be done.”

  “I feel bad, asking you to neglect the other Marduran scrolls.”

  “That’s all part of my job-recognizing priorities.”

  “Priorities …” She heard all sorts of promises in the word. “I hope you plan to reward yourself when you’ve met all your priorities.”

  “I’ll reward myself,” Sarah said, and she could not keep a smile from twisting her lips. “Don’t you worry, I’ll reward myself.”

  Before Bernard could fashion a reply, the ship’s clock chimed. The scientist pushed back his chair and sighed apologetically. “I’ve got to go—meeting with the agency director by uplink.”

  “Go.” She waved him toward the door. Before he could step out of hearing range, though, she called out, “Bernard!” He turned back, his expressive face molded into a question. “I’ll have those reports tonight. The ones on superheated alethium.”

  He did not miss a beat. “I’ll stop by for them after my meeting. I appreciate all your hard work.”

  Sarah grinned to herself as she drank her tea.

  She should not have been surprised to see Joaquin waiting for her outside the library, his workcon jacked into the socket in the hall. He looked up from the display and grimaced. “Bernard doesn’t understand the importance of the decision we’re making.”

  “He understands. He just has broader priorities. You know we need the alethium. Space travel will shut down within a decade if we can’t find a new supply.”

  “He and I work for an agency that is supposed to protect alien species.”

  Sarah heard the frustration in his voice, and she tried to make her own words soothing. “The agency has to consider all the facts before it issues a decision.”

  “But some facts get considered more than others.” Joaquin’s bitterness sharpened. “You know the stories they tell about Venelia! And Portulan. Those native species weren’t anywhere near as primitive as the Class Two designations they received. The agency looked the other way.”

  “Bernard isn’t like that.”

  “You don’t know him, Sarah. Not like I do.”

  She thought about how she might respond to that. She thought about announcing just how well she knew the French scientist, but she settled for asking, “What are you going to do about it, then?”

  “Whatever I can.” Joaquin sighed. “I’ll finish my reports. I’ll stress the Mardurans’ evolved social structure. I’ll try to ignore the fact that the aliens I’m protecting have exoskeletons and multiple brains and eight multijointed legs. I’ll try not to feel like I’ve betrayed them, when the government classifies them as Class Two and specifies the bounty that Jessup will have to pay to exterminate them.”

  “Jessup isn’t the bad guy here!” she protested, thinking guiltily of her bonus. “The entire universe needs the alethium. And Jessup can’t do anything without the government’s approval.”

  “The same government that let the lacefish of Baranon die? The ones that declared the Aeopagii Class Three, two years after the last breeding pair choked to death on sulfuric waste?”

  Sarah’s frustration constricted her chest so that her heart pounded painfully. It’s 500,000 credits, she reminded herself. With that sort of bonus, she would never need to face a journey like this again. She—and Bernard—would not need to make hard decisions for a long, long time. “We have to consider all the facts.”

  “Tell that to the Mardurans.” Joaquin powered down his workcon, as if he did not trust Sarah to view the display field. He disappeared down the hall as Sarah keyed the pass-code into the library’s lock.

  Mechanically, she turned on her own machine and listened to the mail that had arrived while she ate. An announcement from Jessup central, reminding her with a smooth administrator’s voice that she needed to complete her investment portfolio before Earthfall, if she wanted the tax advantages to kick in for the current fiscal year. Half a dozen junk advertisements that had made it past the mail-guard programs. What was she going to do with green-and-maroon real K’lassan hair implants out here in space? And why would she ever be interested in pictures of nubile young Earth girls with horned Zarassian aliens?

  In the middle of the dross, Sarah found three actual assignments. One was overflow from Jessup’s main Earthside library—they must be understaffed again. She could track down the handful of universal patents later.

  The second assignment was from on-ship, from Jessup’s highest official on board. She listened to the terse note from the Vice President for Planetary Exploration twice, at first disbelieving her ears: Pull all certified statutes from all planets in Sector 127 concerning transport of life-forms off world. My daughter’s school project is due in three days, so time is of the essence.

  No “please.” No “if you have time.” No “if this does not interfere with your paid work on behalf of our mutual employer.” Sarah listened to the Vice President’s slick electronic signature and swore. She would have to do the project, but she would hold the results for a while, edge as close as she dared to the three-day deadline.

  She ran her fingers over her workcon’s surface, selecting the final piece of mail. “For a panel meeting tomorrow morning, please identify the three most profitable mining ventures, sector-wide, in the past year. Include corporate profiles of the companies that completed the ventures, as well as predictions of future market worth. We’ll have Morton Jessup himself on-line—I don’t want to look like an idiot.”

  Sarah swore again. They’ll have the President on-line, will they? That meant that the meeting had been planned for at least a week, likely for even longer. And they had just decided that they needed the statistics now? When was she supposed to enjoy some peace and quiet, some down time in her own quarters?

  Resisting the urge to toss her ’con across the room, Sarah forced herself to take a deep breath. There was plenty of time to do the work; she could finish before Bernard was out of his meeting. She settled her fingers on the command panel and began to pull up figures, to store away visual data. She had just finished listening to recent news articles when a trio of wildcatters sauntered in.

  “Great! The ’cons aren’t being used?”

  Sarah looked up, distracted. W
onderful. Each of the men held a large glass. Filled with dark liquid. Sloshing onto the floor. She could smell their unwashed bodies across the room. Nevertheless, she forced her voice into a vague semblance of civility. “They’re not in use, but I can’t help you load the games right now.”

  “That’s fine. We know what we’re doing.”

  They certainly did. Sarah knew these three; they had spent the better part of each day since leaving Marduran lounging in the library. She had cleaned up after them for weeks.

  Sighing, she waved toward the wall of gamecons and reminded herself: 500,000 credits. All of this would be worthwhile, once she was Earthside. She sank back into her research, tracking down facts and figures for the last-minute project.

  * * *

  “Die, you sarking spider!” The howl jerked Sarah back to the library. The wildcatters were shouting exuberantly, spilling their drinks and pounding each other on the back. With a single glance, Sarah could see that they had loaded a new module into the ’con, splicing in code to make the game’s generic aliens dead ringers for the Mardurans. Now, an eight-legged creature was splattered across the three-dimensional game space, its body dripping viscous blood. Sarah’s belly turned as she watched the miner’s game avatar tuck an old-fashioned gun into a shoulder holster.

  She wanted to yell at the wildcatters. She wanted to tell them that they were crude and revolting. She wanted to scream that it was no wonder they went from planet to planet, spending no more than a week Earthside with their supposed friends and loved ones.

  She swallowed her words, though. The miners were Jessup’s lifeblood. They kept the company profitable. They paid her salary. Would pay her bonus.

  Her ’con chimed, and she glanced at the display space. A red icon flashed repeatedly, and she reached toward it without thinking. “You have twenty days to complete Task Priority One—Cataloging. Twenty days to complete Task Priority One. Twenty days—”

  Sarah slammed off the reminder. Of course, she had twenty days. She had programmed the reminder herself. Bernard had understood the demands on her time. He had sympathized with her when she explained how much she had to accomplish before the ship returned to Earth. He had helped her to work out the strategy, setting priorities, keeping her sane as Jessup’s demands grew more and more insistent….

  Sarah tuned out the trio of gamers and forced herself to pay attention to the assignment in front of her. Finding the last of the news articles for the morning meeting proved simple enough. Predicting the future, though, was a little more challenging. She knew some useful resources, but none was directly on point. Nevertheless, she tracked down a handful of citations and loaded them into a compact audio file. She reviewed the results and organized them differently, knowing that her shipside companions would not have time to study her findings in detail before their conference.

  She sent the file with a deft flick of her wrist. Another project completed. Another patron served.

  Swallowing a yawn, Sarah started to power down her workcon. She would go back to her quarters, wait for Bernard there. They could talk about the day’s work, discuss the Marduran classification dilemma, before they moved on to other more entertaining diversions.

  Catching her breath against the distracting thought, Sarah wondered if Bernard ever betrayed a flash of inappropriate emotion to his scientific colleagues. He certainly had been cool enough at dinner. Smooth. Unflustered. Even in the face of Joaquin’s impassioned arguments.

  Sarah knew that—all flirtatious games aside—she could not have remained that impassive if she were still undecided about the Mardurans’ fate. She would have tested the xenoanthropologist, fought against her own instincts, struggled, battled, measured out possible conclusions.

  Had Bernard already made up his mind?

  Without thinking, Sarah flicked her fingers over her console. She managed databases all day long; it was child’s play to make her way through the mail system to Bernard’s files.

  What was she doing? She had no right to go into his messages! What would Bernard think if he ever found out that she was spying on him?

  Her fingers hovered over the icons. The more she thought, the more she realized that Bernard had seemed unusually self-possessed at dinner. He had made up his mind. He had decided how he would rate the Mardurans.

  She could just skim through his files. After all, Bernard would probably tell her, if she asked him directly. She didn’t need to sneak around. He would share his conclusions with her openly. And it wasn’t like she was going to tell anyone else. She would just know for herself.

  She would try to open his mail—if she could guess his password in three tries, she would read what was there. Read, but never comment.

  Sarah pulled her headset closer to her mouth and whispered her first guess—the name of a childhood dog he had mentioned a week before. As a librarian who constantly railed against violations of system security, Sarah knew that a shocking seventeen percent of ’con users set their passwords to pets’ names.

  The display shimmered, and the mail program adjusted to indicate a string of incoming mail messages. Bernard was in the seventeen percent. Sarah smiled grimly, almost regretting her decision. She was in the system now, though. She might as well see this through.

  Six unopened files, all directed to the government regulator. The K’lassan hair implants. The nubile young girls. An electronic paystub.

  Breathing quickly, Sarah turned her attention to the last three messages. Minutes from an agency meeting held Earthside that afternoon. An agenda for the current meeting—perhaps open on Bernard’s own ’con, even as Sarah eavesdropped. She felt a twinge of guilt.

  A message from Morton Jessup himself. Sarah triggered the icon to listen to this last communication, curious about what her employer’s president might have to say to the scientist who could determine his company’s fate.

  The file would not open.

  Sarah repeated the sequence, certain that she had brushed the panel too lightly in her rush, but it remained locked. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and adjusted her headset. What secret message would Morton Jessup have sent to Bernard? What would he have secured beyond Sarah’s ability to detect?

  Biting at the inside of her cheek, Sarah backed out of the mail program. After glancing at the gaming wildcatters, she hunched closer to her terminal and entered the system again. This time, though, she used her credentials as the records manager for the starship.

  As records manager, no file was locked to her. She was responsible for retaining all the ship’s files, even seemingly inconsequential mail.

  It took her only a few heartbeats to find her way back to Bernard’s message stream. Her palm hovered above the icon that would whisper Morton Jessup’s words to her. Did she want to know what he had said? Did she want to collect that much information? Did she want to be responsible for the knowledge?

  She was a librarian. Knowledge was her stock in trade.

  Sarah touched the icon.

  Jessup’s oily voice whispered through her headset. “One million transferred. Two million to follow, if Class Two sticks.” No closing. No electronic signature. None was necessary.

  Sarah listened to the words again. A third time.

  The Mardurans had no chance. Bernard had been purchased. Joaquin’s work was meaningless; all his protests would amount to nothing. The agency would declare the Mardurans expendable Class Two aliens.

  The wildcatters cheered across the room. Sarah looked up in time to see the gaming avatar pull up his trousers. A quivering spider-shape was curled about itself, all eight legs wrapped tight, as if it tried to seal itself from a wound.

  The men congratulated their colleague, pounding him on the back, bellowing approval. Sarah’s belly turned as the third player took his place at the gamecon. What horror would he devise? How would he torture the virtual Mardurans?

  Class Two—the status for companion animals. Preferred for continued existence, but expendable. Able to be forfeited in the f
ace of proven need. Able to be bought with cold, electronic credits.

  Sarah closed out of the communications package, making sure that she had left no trace of listening to Bernard’s files. The wildcatters hooted to each other, like excited animals in a cage. She ignored the sound.

  Bernard had been bribed. Three million credits, all told. Six times the bonus that Sarah would earn—that Sarah would earn through hard work. Bernard was doing nothing for that money, nothing but stepping aside.

  No, Sarah realized. That was not entirely true. He was doing something. He was creating a pretense of unbiased judgment. He was ordering up journal articles, scientific studies. He was making a show of reviewing options. He was pretending to consider all angles.

  All of a sudden, Sarah thought about the times Bernard had requested materials. He had asked in front of other scientists. In front of Jessup staff. In front of wildcatters. He had made a show of coming to the library, of returning research in the mess hall. He had made it clear to anyone who was paying attention that he was studying the Mardurans in painstaking detail.

  Sarah had thought that Bernard emphasized the materials so that no one would call into question their relationship. He had brandished files so that no one would accuse him of spending inappropriate time with the ship’s librarian. And all the time, he had been fending off other accusations. All the time, he had been shielding himself, hiding his three-million-credit bribe.

  All the time, he had been lying.

  Fingers shaking, she called up the catalog that he had pushed her to create, that he intended to rely on for his own work. With a pass of her palm, she found her first record. Alethium Mining on Marduran. She heard the mechanics recorded there, the alien knowledge preserved for Jessup to exploit. Bernard had urged her to enter every one of the mining records first; he had encouraged her to set aside the social science scrolls for later. He had been working for his three million even then.