O livro é Xadrez com um Dragão por David Gerrold. Em outra questão relacionada com o dragão alguém vinculou o ISFDB e eu usei isso para ... Cada Novela com o Dragão no título entre 1980 e 1999 ... Não o caminho mais rápido para obter a resposta, mas funcionou.
Um excerto de uma revisão da Goodreads:
... Mankind has hit the galactic scene and discovered everyone is smarter than us. There is an immense "library" full of neat information, which you have to pay for. So we used it. A lot. Now we're in crazy debt. We might have to sell ourselves as food to the Ki!, an insectoid race.
We're some of the only mammals in the galaxy. Mammals have a rep for being stupid. We've reinforced this stereotype by not understanding a key use of the library- most species use it to blackmail each other in a complex series of strategic moves. That is the "chess" of the title.
One of my favorite sci-fi books. Humanity's new "friends," the delightfully untrustworthy "rats," are my favorite.