Saltation

by Sharon Lee

  Normally lunch was a chance for Theo to think over math or math lab, and even to eat. Today she was having a hard time fitting the food in around fielding questions and watching the hands for words.

  The quarter chime sounded, barely discernible above the conversation buzz at table; in moments the group—all carefully nodding, saying, or signing their good-bye to Theo—was off in disparate directions.

  Theo heard or felt the presence of someone behind her, and turned to see—

  Asu.

  Her roomie sighed gently, and without asking pulled out a chair and sat heavily.

  "It won't last, you know." she said, waving at the empty chairs. "Once people figure out that you don't want to be friends, don't need to be friends, and can't do anything for them, they'll look for some other fast line."

  Theo raised empty hands and shrugged. "I don't know why . . ."

  Asu made a sound remarkably similar to one of Lesset's triumphant I-knew-it noises.

  "Have you seen the news, Theo? Do you know how many comm calls I've denied this morning? I mean—you survived!"

  Theo looked to the ceiling before hoisting the last of her drink and guzzling it. She was going to need to start walking soon . . .

  "I don't much follow the news, Asu. Not politics, not finance, not even sports."

  That last was a bit of a cut, and she was exaggerating, anyway.

  Asu wrinkled her nose.

  "Look, what's going on is the local newsies—and I mean planetary, not continental!—they've got these great long distance vids, even a satellite shot or two, of you throwing the Slipper around like it's an aerobat while the military chases public menace number one in your direction. Two expert commentators following the chase say there's no possible place for you to land and right there you calmly slot the thing in with a half wing-span to spare, just in time for the public menace to get obliterated, kabloom!"

  Asu's sound effects and hand motions brought stares; Theo blushed and looked away. When she looked back, Asu's full attention was on her face.

  "Look," Theo insisted, "all I did was land the Slipper. That's all. They told me they wanted the sky empty. That's what I did. This other stuff—" Theo found herself looking at the ceiling and its suspended model aircraft, moons, and spacecraft. "This other stuff isn't really about me."

  Asu sighed slightly.

  "I know—and I'm glad you know. It isn't your fault that Chelly's old bestguy and mentor was idiot enough to get shot down."

  Theo looked up, eyes wide, and shook her head.

  But Asu was nodding, with a certain amount of grimness.

  "Chelly told me this morning. They were bestboys till Hap left and then didn't ever even answer a bit of comm . . . left him flat."

  Theo grimaced. Just what they needed in close quarters, a senior with a problem love life come back to haunt him.

  Asu sighed. She looked tired for a moment, then shook herself into businesslike.

  "So," she said briskly. "I caught news reports for you; they're filed in your shared inbox, if you want them."

  "Thanks," Theo said, not certain if she did want them. Still, it had been nice of Asu.

  "You're welcome," Asu said, rising, with a shapeless flap of her hand. "I'll see you later, Theo. I've got to get to class."

  Theo had class, too, and ran most of the way.

  Commerce and Transport 111 was usually a dry, quiz-heavy class. Long-retired full-Terran cargo master Therny Chibs was the professor. Theo saw his lanky form just ahead and sped up to get to the door of the classroom before he did, squeezing by as he turned to address a question from a student who stood outside waiting.

  Theo found classmates making room for her as she hurried to the back of the lecture room, still a bit unsettled by how many of the people acted like they knew who she was. Not likely, given the size of the class.

  She'd already memorized and been tested on thirteen common forms for the class, and expected a quiz today on two more. Professor Chibs had never met a form he didn't like, nor a reporting protocol he didn't admire. If she was lucky it would be two more and not three, because she hadn't quite caught up with—

  "We'll start," said Chibs in his twangy accent, "by requesting those of you who live by the syllabus or who are taking the class feed for catch-up to disconnect recording devices and save those pre-made form files for next class, when we'll return to boring you all with material that you'll only need to know if you graduate."

  He chuckled at the startled looks, the same way he chuckled when gleefully pointing out some overlooked tick-box on a paper-filed support form.

  "We have an object lesson to hand, and we shall use it. It comes to us in the shape of perhaps the most widely known pilot on the planet for the next two days, our own Theo Waitley."

  It felt like the whole room turned to stare at her, tucked away as she was in the back corner. She sat up, and watched the professor warily.

  "Oh no, you've all seen the news, I'm sure. Good landing, good landing, yes. Everyone knows what she did right, I'm sure. Now, with the pilot's leave, if you will listen to me closely rather than staring at Pilot Waitley, I'm going to tell you what was done wrong."

  Pilot Waitley. There it was again.

  The professor's hands flashed permission request pilot acknowledge so fast she almost had to assume it rather than read it.

  Well, there. If she'd done something wrong she'd better know about it so she didn't have to depend on luck next time. She answered here for learning.

  "Good, good," Professor Chibs said out loud, turning his back momentarily on the class before unleashing a large image of a Slipper to every desk top.

  "Consider this," he said at volume as he turned back to peer at them, "your ship. You are a pilot, the ship is in your care. At what point does local traffic control, or local military for that matter, get to dictate what you do with it?"

  Theo felt wrung out, if only from waiting for her errors to be told. Mostly, though, if she'd understood Professor Chibs correctly, the mistakes that had been made weren't exactly her mistakes. It was true that she'd failed to ask landing permission from the Mountain Commissioners, but that was arguably covered under the so-called Port In A Storm protocols.

  Still, it was unnerving hearing her name used in terms of "Waitley's liability to pay for the ship if it were damaged" and, "In space, on a job run, Waitley must, and all of you must, take tactical news reports for your flight zones. That she wasn't informed of this is unfortunate, and that mistake is partially the school's curriculum and partially the fault of the equipment or lack of it on the Slipper. Your ship is your life."

  He paused then, and an image of her Slipper, sitting on the mountain ridge, appeared. She wanted a copy of that—the Slipper looked beautiful!

  "That's it then. No one signed for the ship, no one accepted legal or fiscal responsibility. No one offered, promised, or required a written return-to-ship. No one offered or promised hazard pay or indemnity. No one apologized—well, her instructor did, but none of the authorities on the scene. The debriefing was not done in a neutral location. On-site, the pilot demanded and received, through the intercession of another, more senior, pilot, a very basic securing of the ship, which was well done." Here he fell into hand talk for emphasis: listen listen listen.

  "Do not undervalue detail, people. Do not undervalue info trails. Do not let the bureaucrats overwhelm you to the point that you, as a pilot, cannot fend for your ship. Do not forget that, on the whole, in a trouble spot, you first depend on your ship and yourself. You may listen to traffic control, but you must depend on pilot sense to survive."

  Chib paused again, looked in her direction, and did a sort of half bow.

  "Pilot Waitley, thank you."

  Then he straightened, disappearing the Slipper from the desk tops, and raised his voice.

  "Essay assignment due in ten days is entered into the log. I look forward to your analysis. Next class, back to the forms! Dismissed!"

  Seven


  Mail Room

  Anlingdin Piloting Academy

  "Do you see that?" Asu whispered fiercely to Theo as they took their place in line. "They're still throwing packages around like they don't care down here! Why doesn't the school just pay for a package system instead of using children like that to do the work?"

  The children Theo was seeing were all bigger than her, and a couple of them were worth watching as they quietly hauled packages from the semi-pods that brought them directly out of the small transport sitting tubed to the building.

  Not only that, for all that they were moving the packages rapidly out of the semi-pods, they didn't seem to be harming anything. As Father had pointed out to her on more than one occasion, the more noise you made, the more likely it was that you were using too much force.

  The mail handlers were making a minimum of noise, their motions precise and controlled. There was no spinning, no random flinging, no purposeful shoves. Rather each package was selected, tossed gently by the tall young woman in the blue work top or the muscular guy with the strange mostly-bald-but-ponytail hairdo, and caught quietly, with an odd twisting motion . . .

  Asu's complaints were subdued at the moment, and Theo gathered that the young man on the left side of the receiving line, the one with the shorts and—one willingly imagined—overall tan, was the object of her distraction.

  That interesting twisting motion wasn't entirely a show-off, either, Theo saw. Instead, it looked like the handlers were making sure a read strip on each package was illuminated by a quick rainbow of light . . .

  " 'Ware!" cried Blue Top over the bustle of the room, as the package she was in the process of moving took on an uncharacteristic wobble.

  "Hah!"

  The shorts and their inhabitant moved smoothly, the wobble was corralled, the read strip rainbowed, and the package passed on, no fuss, really, and nothing dropped or broken.

  Asu's exclamation followed another pair of transfers.

  "Security! The strips are passive, so they don't give off an ID to anyone with a listener. You can't just flash a frequency and hope to get a reading, and you can't get a type count that way, and you—"

  "Next, please!"

  Next was not them, but they had to move up in the slowly shortening line so the view of the workers was not as interesting. The overhead apparatus was more visible now, though, with multiple light sources and small buttons that were probably actually cameras.

  "Guess it makes sense to keep it simple—" Theo said.

  Asu harrumphed.

  "I guess it works, but it seems slow. The refids are fast and self-reporting, though, and these are slow and require people. People are nosy. People are expensive! And they create lines!"

  There was a gentle laugh from behind, which turned into the words. "Economy is such a variable concept, do you know. In some places, people work and expensive machines replaced thereby. Having people, conditions may be noticed without an official record being made. With people, you may reward and advance individuals, and train leaders for practical direction, without using sims and psych tests, both of which have surprising margins of error."

  Even on a campus full of pilots and would-be pilots, Theo was becoming unused to being surprised by the silent approach of anyone. Flight Instructor yos'Senchul's voice was as smooth as his bow.

  "Pilots," he said bowing to Theo, and then to Asu.

  Asu's bow was instant, and probably overdone: obviously she'd been studying something, but yos'Senchul hadn't bowed any fancy bows, just a bow of acknowledgment and even a taste of "in this line together" with that motion of his hand . . .

  Theo bowed as if acknowledging a remark from Captain Cho or Win Ton.

  The pilot's hand flurry said is good, combined with a nod that was almost a wink.

  Asu was by now waving a polite hand forward, as if to offer her place to yos'Senchul. He flipped his hand with a practiced equanimity.

  "Thank you, but no. This is my off-hour just as it is yours, and as pilots, we ought practice standing in line together as well as orbiting harmoniously, since we need do the first more often than the last—or so it seems."

  "Erkes," Asu said with some asperity when they at last arrived at the head of the line, "Suite three-oh-two. Package pickup note."

  "Well, we're so glad you could make it! Any longer on all these and we'd have been charging you rent!"

  The rather pale young man on the counter tossed a crumbled ball of paper or plastic over a short wall lined with tables, calling out at the same time, "Hey, wake up back there! Bring out that Erkes mountain, will you?"

  "Any longer?" Asu demanded. "We'd have been here sooner except we had a line in front of us, you know!"

  Theo admired Asu's restraint.

  "They've been here for hours!" The counter guy answered. "If you didn't sleep late you could have had this out of here at breakfast!"

  Asu started to say something, but then choked the words into a really ugly face and a good seething hiss, apparently in deference to yos'Senchul, standing quietly behind them.

  Her accent with her hands wasn't all that good yet, Theo saw, but still, the words thrown toward the floor were quite indignant, and included rude, useless, slow, and maybe sunless.

  "Which Erkes package is that?" came a firm voice from the back, followed by, "Will you recycle your own snack pack, Turley? Not my fault you drew the line again. I think they're trying to tell you something!"

  Clanks and plastic squeals ensued, followed by a thud.

  "That big one fell again!"

  "If they've dropped something of mine, I'm going to . . . I'm going to . . ."

  Theo grinned and filled in, "Going to go to the Delm of Korval?" she asked, remembering how Father had challenged her as a child, leaning on her favorite book to help bring a sense of proportion to her young complaints.

  "Do what?" Asu turned, squinted down at Theo with a wry expression, waving her hands at the same time.

  Theo's fingers told Asu will repeat suggestion and she said out loud as seriously as she could muster, "Are you going to take this problem to the Delm of Korval?"

  "How could he help?" the other girl asked, apparently genuinely puzzled. "I mean, that's silly. He's dead, anyway, even if he could."

  "He's dead?" Theo stared at her, feeling her grin slide toward a gap. "You mean there is a Delm of Korval? Or—was?"

  Asu shook her head sadly.

  "Yes, there was one, of course there was. But he died. Very sad."

  "No, wait," Theo said. "I thought he was a story—a myth for littlies!"

  A voice from behind the short wall interrupted their discussion and promised more delay.

  "This thing is tagged by you, Turley. I need your signature before I can move it!"

  "You got a go from me," the counter guy called.

  "I need your signature or a thumbprint, not a verbal!"

  Turley sighed dramatically, looked at the line, which had grown considerably at yos'Senchul's back, and called out, "A moment more only, duty calls!" before hurrying toward the back.

  Asu shook her head, continued: "Why would you think Korval was a myth? They've got ships everywhere. They make Diamon Lines looks small!"

  Asu sounded exasperated, so Theo continued in the same tone. "I thought the Delm of Korval was a myth because I saw him in a storybook for kids!"

  "Ah . . ."

  That was yos'Senchul, who had obviously been listening in with some interest.

  Theo rounded on him.

  "Well, that's where I knew about him. The book was called Sam Tim's Ugly Day, and it was by Meicha Maarilex. I found it at a Try and Trade when I was a littlie, and made Father read it to me over and over—it had the story in Terran at the top of the page and in Trade at the bottom . . . and 'way in the back, it was written out in Liaden. That's how I started reading Trade and Terran together—even though the words weren't always exactly the same as Father read to me from the back."

  She sighed, knowing exactly where that book wa
s, and knowing that with any luck at all Coyster would be sitting on the desk under the bookshelf, staring up at the mobile, or curled asleep on the bed or . . .

  "And this book was all about Delm Korval? I think I have heard of the author but did not know she had written about Korval."

  The instructor's voice was low, but she'd managed to catch his words despite her own distraction.

  "No, but that's why it was interesting. There was Sam Tim, you see, and his day was ugly to him. He complained some. Nothing was going right, over and over, and he kept wanting it all fixed. Everyone in his family, and all his neighbors, and the storekeepers, they kept saying to him, 'And if we can't solve this for you, what will you do? Take your problem to Delm Korval?' "

  "Ah, an excellent question to ask someone suffering from the day without delight, Al'kin Chernard'i, as we have it in Liaden."

  Theo nodded, and looked back to Asu.

  "See, it was obvious that Sam Tim was always looking too high for his answer, that he ought to be able to solve some things for himself. That, really, you only go to Delm Korval with really important problems. So then we started using that for us. If I was having problems with something, or complaining, Father would ask me, 'So, is this problem worth taking to Delm Korval?' It was a joke."

  "Truth, also," yos'Senchul said. "One would wish not to be seen by Delm Korval over matters of little consequence."

  "But you say he's real! I thought he was like, you know, Mr. Winter who lives over the mountain and brings the snow."

  "No, not so powerful and more powerful too, that is Korval." yos'Senchul raised one hand, fingers curled slightly, as if weighing Korval's power. "A mighty clan, Korval, and very old. They are considered, perhaps, a bit odd, even dangerous, though none doubts their melant'i."

  Asu nodded as if he'd given a lecture, and blurted out breathlessly, "If you think Korval's a myth you might as well think that Diamon Lines—and me too—are myths!" She waved her hand, not hand-talk, just finger-junk, and went on quickly. "But, anyway, Clan Korval doesn't have a delm right now. He committed suicide!"

  "This news . . ." said the instructor, leaning forward earnestly. "Of a suicide I have heard. Might you share? Is it recent?"