MeiWei had perfected the art of outward stillness. With her straight, black hair pulled back in a bun, high cheekbones, thin lips, and narrow, downturned eyes that always appeared to glower, she cut the picture of a stern headmistress. In reality, she was the second-ranking human on the CU and leader of the science team. Only the rapid darting of her pupils betrayed the fact she was not in a deep trance. Was she checking her tac feed? Stigel did not have the balls to ask her.

His report on the Janux floated above her desk, still on the opening synopsis. The silence stretched uncomfortably. Stigel sat stiffly in his chair, resisting the temptation to itch his crotch. Barely a week out of hiber, the dimensions of his cloned body still felt awkward, firm and angular with the odd bulge. None of his pants seemed to fit right.

Finally, MeiWei lowered her gaze to the report and scrolled briskly through to the end. Her pupils locked on him. Their stillness was unnerving. "Your report was very thorough." It was unclear whether it was a compliment. "Is this your first long jump?"

"Technically, my second. My first was to investigate a spiral supercontinent that was hypothesized to be an alien megastructure. It turned out to be a natural phenomenon caused by a mantle vortex. Still impressive in its own right. The geologists were over the moon. Not much need for an evolutionary xenologist, though. I was back in hiber inside three days."

"And now here you are in another star system trillions of miles away. Strange, isn't it? Waking up to find that whole new civilizations have been discovered while you slept."

"A career in evolutionary anthropology kind of prepared me for that," Stigel said. "I heard on the Earth feed today they just discovered the remains of a Mayan city buried under a landslide. It's been there all along, of course, one of the forgotten tribes. Just like these alien civilizations we're finding."

MeiWei inhaled in what was almost a yawn.

"What I find most strange," Stigel continued, feeling the need to say something more stimulating, "is how different the same culture can appear from a historical distance. At university I belonged to this group called Sent4Sent, which stands for Sentinels for Sentience. We fought for the rights of all higher order intelligences. From simians to cephalopods, the slogan went. It seems naïve now. Back then we had no way of even measuring basic qualia, much less quality of life. We assumed all big-brained creatures only wanted to live undisturbed in their natural habitat. As if cavemen wanted nothing more than to be left alone in their dank and smelly clefts in the rock. But then we discovered the Xedans, and that changed the whole way we thought about sentient autonomy."

"Alien cultures do have a way of recasting our own," MeiWei acknowledged. Her gaze narrowed. "What did you really want to talk about? You could have swished over the report instead of coming here in person."

Even with the neuro-modulatars, Stigel was sweating bullets. He had never felt at ease in the presence of authority. "I had an idea about how to interro-cycle the alien." He launched into the pitch he had so carefully rehearsed. Though he managed to get through to the end without omitting anything, it came off sounding flat and mechanical.

MeiWei's pupils twitched as she consulted the ship's data web. "It's unorthodox," she said at last, "but I don't see where it breaks any protocols. Therefore, I find no reason to object. Anything else?"

Stigel was caught off guard by her immediate consent. He felt cheated in a way; he had prepared a whole line of secondary arguments that were now rendered pointless. He stood and debated for a moment whether some parting formality was in order, but MeiWei's pupils were already twitching again, lost in her tac feed. "Nothing else."

Out in the hall, a delayed sense of triumph kicked in. If he was a more demonstrative person, he might have pumped a fist in the air or shouted out an obscenity.

Stigel could finally adjust his pants. Why did they feel so tight? Then he noticed the bulging crotch. He had an erection. Had MeiWei seen? Rather than feel ashamed, he felt a bit devilish, like he had pulled off a prank right under his superior's nose, even though it hadn't been a conscious decision. His penis really did seem to have a mind of its own sometimes.

Instead of suppressing it, he swished open Misuni's id in his tac. When the xeno-sociologist had propositioned him, he thought it was a joke, or maybe some kind of test. A member of such a distinguished group of galactic emissaries looking for quickie sex in the zero G chamber—what else could it be? But with so much testosterone coursing through the veins of his cloned body, the question Stigel found himself asking was, Why not find out?