- Prologue

by Sharon Lee

  "Precocity has pitfalls, Theo Waitley," said Veradantha from beside her, "which I know myself from myself, and which I have agreed with Orn Ald we know for you."

  The old woman tapped the table twice and went on, speaking as much to the wall as to Theo or the flight instructor. Theo watched her face, drawn to the precise way Veradantha was moving, as if she were recalling and acting out something rather than merely talking.

  "You see, when unfettered, you walk as a pilot of experience does. With confidence. With power. With, let us say, the air of one infinitely able to cope."

  Theo sat straighter, trying to marshal her thoughts and words.

  Crack!

  She snapped to her feet, twisting up and out of the chair, turning toward the danger, hand up, muscles ready—

  yos'Senchul slapped his hand flat against the table again, all the while watching her.

  Veradantha continued as if nothing at all had happened.

  "And you react so quickly, as if you are threatened. Part of this is because you are fast, and you are strong, and you are young. Part, I do not know. It may be that your genes are at work, or your hormones are balanced in such a way. Perhaps you are, pardon me, frightened. As calm as you are dealing with your flying, as alert and accurate, you are not quite calm among quite ordinary circumstances."

  Her hand motion was barely perceptible, but yos'Senchul began speaking immediately.

  "This is why you are dangerous, Theo Waitley, because your presentation is often one of being prepared at all times to escalate discussion to disagreement, disagreement to confrontation."

  Theo stiffened. "But I don't mean to . . ."

  He held up his hand, wait signed as well as intimated.

  "Yes, that is a problem. You don't mean to be fast, but you do mean to walk as if you are infinite. This problem will need to be addressed quickly, because the course of your learning will put you on flight decks where people will misjudge you to be arrogant, to be pushing, to be trying to provoke. Why seem you to have this attitude . . . is something you will need to work on . . . have you an idea?"

  Theo sat back, eyes glancing here and there around the room as she searched her mind for an answer, overturning mental bookcases and tables, allowing the instructor to perhaps be right before . . .

  She sighed, eventually, and settled back into the chair, letting it support her back.

  "Delgado," she said with an air of finality. "Delgado is a bully. And on Melchiza, at the Transit School, they wanted pilots to be—strong."

  She sighed, and added, feeling the truth, "And that's how I think I should be."

  There was silence and then the small sound of Veradantha, chuckling.

  "Theo Waitley, I think perhaps you are correct. And so I agree, and say 'Delgado is a bully,' as is Melchiza. I ask you to know that so is Terra a bully to its children, and Liad, and Jankalim and Theopholis. And I will posit something more: the planets in their orbits are not the source of your discontent, but nonetheless you are correct. It is culture that is the bully, which is something many of the better pilots learn. As for Melchiza wanting you to be strong, that is, perhaps, an overstatement. But again you are precocious."

  yos'Senchul hooked an ankle around a chair leg and pulled it to him. He sat down, fingers moving—something to start now, something for next time—and went to voice.

  "What we can do, now, is to be sure you do not isolate yourself so much. People—are necessary; even enjoyable. Take the opportunity to be with others outside of class. Go to dance class, perhaps join the cultural diversity club."

  Theo sighed. "I haven't done real well with clubs, historically. That Delgado bully thing again. I mean, people thought it was strange that we lived in Father's house, instead of in the Wall. They thought it was strange that Kamele didn't . . . switch her onagrata at all. And, and I knew all along he was my father, but it was like it was supposed to be some special adult secret. Then, I got put in the class for misfits . . . and so I didn't fit. I'm not . . ."

  "Misfit?" said yos'Senchul experimentally. "Misfit. What a useful word."

  Theo looked hard into his face, but he was apparently serious, as he tried to form the word with his fingers at the same time.

  Veradantha tapped the table briefly for attention.

  "What we would like you to consider, Theo Waitley, is this idea. This semester is well in progress, and your schedules should not be altered yet again. Go to classes, take time for these clubs and activities."

  She paused, tapping on the desk quietly, nodding to herself before going on.

  "It is not that you need to be popular, but that you need to watch others, to learn to be less, let us say, strident. To be easy with other people. Speak with me again soon—I will send an appointment to you—and then we will craft for you a schedule allowing a less general curriculum. You will be wishing to take these courses: advanced trade language, the cultural diversity cluster, and . . ."

  Chaos, she was tired! Theo shook her head, and spoke before she meant to.

  "I am not ignorant. My father teaches cultural genetics, and he hosts students; I've been—"

  HOLD!

  yos'Senchul rose, and bowed very slightly, signing day of many parts, this over soon.

  He continued aloud, with a casual if I may signed toward Veradantha.

  "What we seek is to be certain you will be adequately prepared for the sophonts who are not prepared for you. Dance will help, as will more language training, and something—we shall discuss and refine these points, all of us when we have a day less busy around us—something so that you do not present as quite so busy, quite so much on the verge of taking action, at all times."

  Veradantha broke in then, with some energy.

  "We wish to also remove you from petty local politics as much as we may. Now some, like the excellent Mr. Frosher, they have the way of it. He will be an adequate pilot, I am sure, but he has a path in mind, one that involves administration, one that is also likely to be local. It is not surprising he came so close to the edge of things, and it is not entirely surprising that he has survived this error, and grown from it. Eventually he may grow to be a functionary of some merit.

  "But you—you—do not wish to study the tables of dead grandfathers, nor to be liable for not knowing them. This altercation with Wilsmyth is built partly of history you do not know, and assumptions he does not realize he carries. This is what we wish to minimize for you. And for the academy, too.

  "With your consent we shall construct for you an independent study option. I suggest a goal as an outworlds pilot. We may fine-tune as we proceed and details become clarified. You will need to study ships, but start tomorrow and not tonight. You will need some more languages—start tomorrow and not this night. We shall also see what we might find on-world for your off-time between semesters, unless you will wish to return to Delgado . . ."

  Theo saw the quirking of the mouth for what it was and managed a laugh and a quick sign abort that launch.

  Despite herself, she yawned.

  Preliminary accept, she signed. She stood and bowed to them both, the very best bow she could muster.

  "We have started tonight," she suggested. "We will start more tomorrow."

  SECOND LEAP

  Eighteen

  Diverse Cultures Celebration Team

  Anlingdin Piloting Academy

  DCCT was housed about as far away as it was possible to get from the rest of the campus and still be in the residential zone; that was her destination after her last scheduled class for the school week.

  Theo walked instead of taking the shuttle, sure that some of her classmates were letting the ease of a quick ride stifle their need to move. How they could expect to keep reaction time up while being sluggards was beyond her.

  She'd had defensive dance early, which was a good thing. She'd waked a moment before the timer went off, dreaming the ship-route math she'd studied the night before in prep for lab. That had been happening of late, the dreaming about classes,
especially math, like she'd finally cleared some cobwebs and gotten to work. The independent study was a good motivator, and she felt almost like she owed Wilsmyth thanks for the now-healed gash on the side of her head.

  Another reason she liked this particular walk, besides the fact that it was often deserted, was that it gave a good view of the planes on final approach to the airfield. A few days before she'd seen a really awkward turn-in and approach, while high and away between the field and the mountain a pair of soarplanes rode brilliant in the aqua sky. She had seen a couple of her landings on video and was really glad that none looked as nervous as that one, which had ended more in a series of bounces than a proper landing.

  That was the problem, of course—lots of people around the field also saw that landing—and later in the day there was talk of yet another of the local students being sent home before school end. It was eerie the way the school population seemed to be thinning out as the final grading period approached.

  Unexpectedly, she heard voices ahead of her where the path rounded a copse of lush red brambleberry. She stepped to the side of the path as a group of fast-moving DCCT members appeared, Kara in the lead.

  "Theo, just in time! But you're going the wrong way!"

  Kara stopped, bringing the whole team to a crowded halt, familiar faces and unfamiliar together.

  Theo signed blankly none there, pointing toward the dorm parapet rising above the trees in the distance.

  "Might be, but there's a ship coming in, and we're going to go down to see it."

  "There's always a ship coming in . . ." Theo pointed out as a Star King IV obligingly dropping down through the clouds toward the main landing strip.

  Theo's hand-sign was flip—overlooked obvious.

  "I mean a spaceship." Kara's hand adding new info just in.

  "The shuttle is still parked . . ."

  A shake of heads, and from the back, a voice she didn't recognize—

  "Spaceship. You know, interstellar. We got a call from the field, they thought we might want to see this."

  "Here? Where will it fit? What is it?"

  "Right. That's what we want to see . . . Come on down with us! DCCT is on the move!"

  The Seriously Official Recognized Name of the organization was the Diverse Cultures Celebration Team. Like almost all the other clubs on campus they managed to do something sometime that earned points or competed with other groups or that got them all out at one time cooking and eating foods that they'd never faced at their milk tables, so they got to call themselves a team.

  Some of the upperclassmen in the club were part of the DCCT dorm, which had odd floor names and was repainted every few weeks to celebrate this or that significant event in some culture somewhere. The club met there in a permanently assigned room which was certainly furnished in an amalgam one could call diverse, if not outright strange.

  Most of the campus just called them the Culture Club, and Theo was feeling oddly comfortable as its newest member. Maybe it had to do with the feeling that no one was actually in charge, except, maybe, sometimes, Kara. It might have had something to do with the tea selection, which was downright amazing. Or it might simply be that compared to the local students, she was as diverse as anybody else.

  Delgado, of course, was a world that celebrated education, cultural enlightenment, and diversity as could be. From experience, Theo knew that diversity stopped just outside Delgado's Wall, and if Anlingdin Academy was different she had little way of knowing.

  Theo's first visit to DCCT had been the day after her flight with her mentors, and she'd been pleased then to discover the tea, and almost as pleased to be involved in a discussion, by agreement limited to hand-talk, of the best morning foods. Anlingdin's musch meal was widely regarded as the boringest breakfast food in the galaxy, and she had been surprised to find herself both missing some foods from home, and interested enough in those described by others to get hungry.

  Theo'd seen a tall, underspoken fellow who was in her math class hand-wishing the school could make a decent maize button, and she burst out laughing.

  Button quick easy she signed confidently, if time breaks clear could make some for both of us, good choice.

  For some reason that launched the group into chuckles and ignited a flare of signs she wasn't clear on, and a few she was, but couldn't see how they'd got there . . .

  In the midst, Bova Yenkoa, a very pretty young man with a small beard, signaled time out, and addressed Theo in Trade, laughing and shaking his head.

  "Now see, that's a problem. On Finifter if an unmarried woman invites a man to breakfast at her house and doesn't mention that a mother or sister or someone else female is going to be there, that's an invitation for a bed-party."

  Theo waved her hand—incomplete information here query.

  "And similar on Grundig," Bova went on. "And on Grundig, once you make an offer, it stands until the next house-blessing. Got to be careful what you offer to whom there, I tell you!"

  More laughter ensued and some maybe not-quite-true stories about friends who had problems with such things, and by the time the stories had worn out, it was late and Theo was surprised at how relaxed she felt.

  The second time she'd visited, the ongoing argument in hand-talk was about ships, and about companies you didn't work for, and worlds that were too much trouble to visit so the pilots going there just stayed on ship for the duration. She'd been pleased and surprised to find Kara there—and then just pleased.

  She'd gone again, gotten more of the names down. She missed Kara by a few moments that time, but found others to talk to.

  It was at DCCT that she found the Book of Clans, supposedly a list of all the Liaden clans and their member Lines. A search on "Korval" had brought her the information that it was composed of two ascendant Lines—yos'Phelium and yos'Galan—and a subordinate Line—bel'Tarda. Clan business interests were given as shipbuilding, trade, piloting, and general commerce. The clan sigil, there at the top of the screen, was a dragon poised on half-furled wings above a tree in full leaf.

  "Tree-and-Dragon," she muttered, and brought up the search box. She typed in Moon-and-Rabbit without much hope, but the database obligingly loaded a page for Clan Ixin, ascendent Line ven'Deelin. Clan business interests were trade, manufacturing, and general commerce.

  Theo sat back. yos'Senchul had been testing her, then. She supposed it shouldn't surprise her—he was a teacher, after all. Theo, the child of two teachers, knew what that meant.

  "There you are!" Kara called, her footsteps brisk across the floor. "We're trying to get up a round of bowli ball. Are you in?"

  "Sure," Theo said, slowly.

  "What's that you have—the Book of Clans? Research?"

  "In a way." Theo turned in her chair and looked up into Kara's face. "I'm trying to figure out why my father would have wanted me to go to—the delm of a trade clan, if I was ever in really big trouble, and why there was a book about—"

  "Trade clan?" Kara peered past her to the screen. "Ixin is High House, you know. They'd—"

  "Not Ixin," Theo interrupted. "Korval."

  Kara blinked.

  "Korval?" she repeated. "Are you—of Korval?"

  Theo shook her head. "I'm a Waitley of Delgado, from a long line of scholars," she said. "My father, though, said that I should go to the Delm of Korval for really big problems—but only for really big problems. I thought it was a joke for—for a lot of reasons, but apparently, he meant it."

  "Well." Kara frowned slightly and hitched a hip up on the table holding the screen. "Korval is—beyond High House. It concerns itself with pilots and with ships, so its interests are . . . broader than the interests of, say, my clan. Most delms solve for the members of their clan. Korval is said to solve for pilotkind. Delm Korval—of course, you wouldn't want to take anything other than life or death to Delm Korval." She paused. "Your father was a scholar, you had said."

  "He is. But before that, he was a pilot."

  Kara's face cleared. "That
explains it, then. He was passing pilotlore. Perfectly reasonable—and good advice, too, though of the kind you hope never to use."

  "Oh." Theo thought about it, then shook her head. "There was a book—a book for littlies, Sam Tim's Ugly Day—and it was all about how you didn't take problems you could solve yourself to Delm Korval."

  "And very good advice that is, as well!" Kara had said warmly. "There are all sorts of books written about Korval, Theo. Are you in on the bowli ball game, or not?"

  The academy shuttle usually landed in a long, relatively flat trajectory from the north-northeast, with a one-hundred-sixty to one-hundred-eighty degree turn to do a final lineup for touchdown. Theo stared off in that direction while Kara, shoulder comfortably against hers, was on comm with someone who was observing from the control room.

  Rather than being right down strip-side for the landing they stood on the slight bluff overlooking the field, not wanting to crowd the operations crew and knowing that the ship coming in would take a few minutes to cool down once landed, anyway. Of ordinary traffic—a couple of Sky Kings circled to the west among scattered clouds, and a soarplane was well to the east, bright amidst a clearing sky.

  There was movement close by, and Kara leaned into her shoulder.

  "Ops says we're all looking the wrong way. The ship is coming straight on in—it isn't orbiting first."

  Theo turned, hands slinging straight run, power pilot double double. Kara grinned, sharing the news with the rest of the crew.

  "Freck says we gotta watch toward south. Expect a—"

  Karroom BOOM! The field shook, and Bova brought his long-glasses up to search the sky.

  Kara laughed, and finished, ". . . sonic boom."

  "Got em!" Bova yelled, pointing.

  Theo shaded her eyes, staring upward—and there it was, a hard, glittering point with a pulsating beacon that looked larger than the craft itself. It palpably dropped, occasional contrails wisping behind it.

  "This is a courier class ship, Team," said Bova. "Ought to be flashy, ought to be about the size of the shuttle or a smidge smaller, they say, closer to a packet boat for those of you from outworlds."