by Sharon Lee
Er Thom felt a jolt. Daav tutor him at piloting? Now, there was turnabout! He felt a glare building, then remembered that Master ven’Ducci held his license hostage and subsided, eyes stinging. Happily, neither his brother nor his mother seemed to have noticed his near display.
“Oh?” Petrella said, with the ironic courtesy that characterized so much of her discourse with her son. “Last I had heard, you held a second class provisional.”
“I now hold a first class provisional,” Daav said, with a remarkable lack of preening. “Of course, one requires flight time.”
“Which one gains,” Er Thom murmured, suddenly enlightened, “by sitting second board to Scout pilots in trade for transport.”
Petrella frowned down at him. “Master ven’Ducci has spoken to me,” she began,
“Master ven’Ducci,” Daav interrupted, against best health, “is an idiot. Come, aunt! Who ties a second class to a dummy board?”
Both of her eyebrows rose and Er Thom held his breath, waiting for one of her blistering scolds to fall upon Daav’s heedless head.
“So, we agree again,” Petrella murmured, and there was something less of irony and somewhat more of courtesy in her voice. “You will be pleased to learn then, both of you, that Master ven’Ducci has been Instructed to use the Captain’s Shuttle for future piloting lessons, beginning tomorrow. I will see to it that your schedules coincide for that lesson, and then—we shall see.” She fixed Daav in her eye. “If I hear aught of mayhem from the master pilot, you will find yourself early indeed for first class, young Daav. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?”
Respectfully, he inclined his head, but Er Thom saw his eyes dancing in mischief. “Aunt, you do.”
“It is well,” she sighed. “Apply to the first mate for quarters and ship-garb—your brother will show you the way. Your work schedule will be on your screen tomorrow at first hour; pray do not be tardy.” Her gaze shifted. “My son…”
Er Thom raised his face to hers.
“Mother?”
Her lips bent once more in her slight smile, and she reached into her belt, withdrawing a flat rectangle. Er Thom’s hand leapt out, fingers questing, and his mother’s smile, strangely, deepened.
“Not a pilot,” she murmured, perhaps to herself. “What nonsense.” She put the license into his hand and inclined her head.
“Be worthy of it, child of Korval.”
* * *
HE SAT SECOND board to Daav, Master ven’Ducci a poised, silent presence in the jump-seat at their backs.
“Systems check,” Daav murmured, hands moving with precision across his board. Er Thom followed his brother’s lead, hands steady and careful, waking that portion of the piloting board which was the responsibility of the co-pilot. Screens lit, toggles glowed, maincomp beeped. The comm unit likewise beeped as information began to flow in from Dutiful Passage. Er Thom fielded the data, translated it, replied and received yet more data.
“The ship wishes us gone, brother,” he said, scarcely noting that he spoke. “We are cleared to leave immediately, if that is the pilot’s pleasure.”
“Nothing more,” Daav answered, and threw him a grin. “We have a course, I see, locked to navcomp,”
Er Thom looked—a two hour run?—then his brother’s voice drew him back to his immediate duty.
“Pray request Dutiful Passage to open the bay door.”
Er Thom flipped the toggle that opened the voice line. “Captain’s Shuttle ready for departure. Request bay door open.”
“Bay door open,” affirmed the cool voice of the pilot on duty at the starship’s main board. “Good lift, pilots.”
Screen One showed the bay door iris; Daav laughed, slapped the toggle, and the shuttle rolled free.
* * *
“MUCH IMPROVED,” Master ven’Ducci said, nearly three hours later, as they stood once again in the bay corridor. He bowed, very slightly. “I am encouraged, Pilot yos’Galan.”
Er Thom returned the bow. The lift had been a fine and bewildering thing. The simulations he had been flying were meticulously crafted, but live flight—live flight was different He was still a-tingle with energy, his thoughts as sharp as fabled clutch crystal, standing tall in an exhilaration that persisted despite the full knowledge of having several times bungled his board.
“You will both attend me here tomorrow at the same hour,” the master pilot said, and with another slight bow strode away down the hall. Er Thom stared after him, frowning.
“Trouble, darling?” Daav was fair glittering himself, black eyes wide in his narrow face.
Er Thom drew a deliberate breath, trying to quiet the exuberant pounding of his heart. “Say, rather, puzzlement. I botched things rather badly at the phase-change and yet he makes no mention of it. Had I made an error one-twelfth as grievous on the practice board, he would not have held shy of apprizing me, never fear it! Yet, today, with three ham-witted errors to my tally, he is ‘much encouraged’!”
“Perhaps he means to see if you repeat the errors tomorrow?”
“Repeat them tomorrow?” Er Thom stared. “I should never had made them today! I’ve been working phase equations in my head since Master Robir showed us the forms, when we were eight.”
“Learning curve,” Daav said, linking his arm in Er Thom’s and beginning to stroll down the hall in the master pilot’s wake. “I tremble to tell you how badly I’ve bungled my math at piloting, we were training on sling landings, you see, and I transposed my vectors.”
Er Thom laughed. “Tell me you came in upside down!”
“But of course I came in upside down,” Daav said amiably. “And hung upside down in the sling, like seven sorts of fool, while Master dea’Cort used my situation to lesson the rest of the class on the need to thoroughly check one’s equations.” He sighed and looked briefly mournful, then dropped Er Thom’s arm with a grin.
“Enough telling tales out of piloting class!” he said gaily. “It will no doubt astonish you to learn that I am ravenous. If we hurry, I can wheedle an apple out of the cook before reporting to the cargo master for duty, catch me.”
He was gone, running full speed down the hall.
Er Thom bit back a newly acquired curse and hurtled after.
* * *
IT WAS WELL into Fourth Shift and both of them should have been long abed. Instead, they were in the control room at the heart of the Passage. Er Thom was sitting first board. There was no second. Daav was leaving for school on the morrow. He sat, hands folded on his lap, in what would have been the jump-seat in a smaller ship—a passenger on this, their last flight together.
Er Thom’s hands moved across the board with swift surety, no wasted motion, no false moves. His face was intent and his shoulders just a bit rigid, but that was expectable, the sim he was flying being somewhat in advance of his skill level.
The screen flashed a familiar pattern—Daav’s own particular nemesis, as it happened—and he leaned forward, watching as Er Thom adroitly—one might say, casually—fed in the proper course for an avoid, and the simultaneous adjustment to ship’s pressure. Quietly, Daav sighed, leaned back in his chair—and jerked forward the next moment as the screen flared and Er Thom’s elegant choreography degenerated into a near random slap at the Jump button, which was entirely wrong and too late besides.
Using the exercise he had been taught by the scouts, Daav released the tension in his muscles, then put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“A good run, darling. Don’t repine.”
Er Thom looked up, blue eyes flashing a frustration of his own ineptitude that Daav understood all too well.
“It can’t quite be a good run, can it,” he snapped, “when the ship is destroyed around one?”
“Well—no,” Daav admitted. “On the other face, you flew further than I have yet to fly.”
“Truly?” Er Thom looked so startled that Daav laughed.
“Yes, truly, you lout! Remember me, the ten-thumbed junior brother?”
“All too well, thank you!” Er Thom replied with a gratifying flash of brotherly scorn. He sobered almost immediately. “You have changed, you know. Even in so short a time. I—do you find it at all… odd or, or… lonely, to, to—” He floundered.
“Do I find it disquieting to be away from all that was usual in my life, and made to stand singleton before the world, when I have no memory but of being half of the whole we two made between us?” Daav said in a serious and quite adult voice. Er Thom took a breath and met bleak black eyes straightly.
“Yes,” said Daav, “I do.”
“So do I,” Er Thom murmured, relieved, in an odd way, that at least this much had not changed—that he found his brother and himself at one on this matter of importance to them both. “One’s… mother… assures one that these feelings will pass. Do you think—”
The door to the control room opened and Petrella yos’Galan strode within.
“Of course I would find you both here,” she snapped, but Er Thom thought her face was—not entirely—displeased.
“Good shift, Aunt Petrella,” Daav said politely. “Er Thom has just been having a run at the general-flight masters sim.”
Petrella’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, indeed? And how did he fare, I wonder?”
“Poorly enough.” Er Thom spun his chair to face her. “My ship was destroyed two-point-eight minutes into the flight.”
Astonishingly, his mother grinned. “No, do you say so? Well I recall that dicey bit of action! Forty-four times, I lost my ship exactly there. The forty-fifth—well, say I survived another minute.”
“And I,” Daav said mournfully, “am doomed to forever lose my wings at two-point-three.”
“There?” Er Thom turned to stare at him. “But that was a mere nothing!"
“So you say!”
“No, but, Daav, all one need do—”
His brother raised a hand. “Yes, yes, I saw you. Perhaps my wretched fingers will have learned their lesson, now I’ve seen it can be done.” He looked up to Petrella, a wry grin on his face. “Fifty-two times.”
She smiled back. “I will hear that you’ve mastered the whole tape soon enough.”
Daav inclined his head. “Your certainty gives me courage. Aunt Petrella.”
“Now, that, neither of you lacks.” She paused, her sharp blue eyes flashing from Er Thom back to Daav. “We raise Venture within the hour, nephew, and tomorrow is the appointed day of your departure. Exert yourself to comfort one who was ever acknowledged as the timid twin: Are your arrangements in order and satisfactory to yourself? Better—would your mother my sister express her satisfaction with your arrangements?”
Daav raised his hand. “She and I discussed the scheme in detail before I had her aye. Scout Academy provided a list of pilots who might be receptive to allowing a first class provisional to gain flight time as their second—a list Mother studied with some interest before declaring that it would do.”
“So.” Petrella inclined her head, and glanced again to Er Thom.
“I wonder, my son, if you might not do the captain the honor of ferrying scout candidate yos’Phelium to the planet surface tomorrow. I would expect you to stay by him until he has satisfactorily made his contacts, attend to the few small errands you will find listed on your duty screen, and return the Captain’s Shuttle to the ship.”
Er Thom’s breath caught.
“I’m to pilot the Captain’s Shuttle alone? Mother—”
She tipped her head, and he thought he detected the beginning of a twinkle in her stern blue eyes.
“Surely that is a task well within the skill of a second class pilot?”
He smiled. “Yes, captain. It is.”
“Good, that is settled, then.” She turned. At the door, she looked over her shoulder at them. “The hour has perhaps escaped your notice, pilots. I mention—as elder kin and as a master pilot—that flight is much more enjoyable when one is awake at the board.” She inclined her head—“Sleep well”—and was gone.
* * *
DAAV WALKED UP to the duty counter, which looked for all the worlds like any counter in any hiring hall one cared to name. Had Er Thom not read the sign as he followed Daav into this place, he would have supposed himself in an office of the Pilot’s Guild, rather than the sector headquarters of the Liaden Scouts.
The man behind the counter glanced up from his book, and registered Daav with one quick Scout glance. The glance lingered a moment on Er Thom, as if the Scout found the appearance into his hall of a halfling in Trader clothes somewhat puzzling.
Daav laid his license on the counter. “One seeks Scout Rod Ern pel’Arot.”
“So?” The Scout appeared amused. “If one is so ill-advised as to seek Scout pel’Arot on Trilsday, then one must be prepared to seek him at the Spinning Wheel.”
Daav inclined his head. “I shall do so. May one inquire the direction of the Spinning Wheel?”
The scout’s amusement was almost palpable.
“Down on the blue median, handy to Terraport.” He moved his shoulders and picked his book up.
“I am informed,” Daav said, which his brother considered nothing more nor less than prevarication, pocketed his license and turned away, Er Thom trailing a respectful two paces behind.
Back on the walkway, Daav paused, face thoughtful. Er Thom looked up the street, down the street, but spied nothing remotely resembling either a blue median or a Terraport.
“Singularly unhelpful, that duty clerk,” he grumbled. His brother looked at him, surprise on his sharp-featured face.
“No, do you say so?” He, too, looked up and down the busy thoroughfare. “Now, I think he told us everything we needed to know, if only we apply—ah.” He moved forward, stepping off the curb, angling through traffic as if the rushing groundcars were mere figments. Er Thom gasped, then ran after, eyes on his brother’s narrow, space-leathered back.
He caught up on the far side of the street, where Daav had paused before a public display-map of Venture Port and near environs.
“Down on the blue median,” Daav murmured, “and handy to Terraport.” He frowned at the flat display, then reached out and pushed the power-up button.
The display flickered and rolled; colors flashed; flat shapes expanded into three dimensions. The bright pictographs of written Trade appeared last, putting names to this or that building or wayfare.
Daav laughed.
“Here we are,” he said, leaning forward and laying his hand wide over a block limned in electric blue. “The blue median, or I’ll eat my leathers.”
Er Thom leaned forward, squinting at the pictograph identifying a red-lined block just the north of Daav’s blue. “Terran Mercantile Association,” he read, and Daav laughed again.
“Terraport.” He turned his grin on Er Thom. “Now, what was so difficult about that?”
“He might have said ‘near the Terran Trade Hall,’” Er Thom pointed out, struggling to keep his lips straight and his face serious.
“Well,” said Daav, with a final, calculating stare at the map, “he might have done so. But then he would not have been a scout.” He moved his shoulders, and sent a diffident black glance to Er Thom. “You have errands to complete for Aunt Petrella, I know, and the blue median does look to be somewhat off your course, shall we part here?”
Er Thom stared. “I am charged foremost with seeing you safely to the end of your arrangements. You heard her say it.” He paused, as another, unwelcome thought intruded. He bit his lip. “Unless you do not wish me with you…"
Daav blinked. “What nonsense is this? of course I want you by me!” He leaned forward, catching Er Thom’s arm in a brother’s warm grip. “Why else did I come all the way from Liad to see you?”
“Ah.” Er Thom glanced aside, blinking, then looked back to his brother and smiled. “Why are we arguing with each other on a public street, then? Let us locate Scout pel’Arot and get you berthed.”
“Very well.” Daav glanced ’round, then pointed toward the east. “T
his way, I believe.”
* * *
THE SPINNING WHEEL was found to be at the end of a short side-way off the main thoroughfare, just half-a-block from the Terran Trade Hall. The Trade pictograph on the corner street sign read “Blueway cul-de-sac 12.” Below that, a board bearing the hand-painted Terran words “Avenue of Dreams” had been nailed to the post. Daav slipped down the slender way, Er Thom at his side.
A thick-shouldered Terran male sat on a stool beside the door to the casino, watching them with interest. He waved his hand as they approached the door.
“Hold it.”
As one, they checked, exchanging a glance. It was Daav who moved a step toward the doorman and inclined his head—proper, as it was Daav’s errand they were come upon.
“Yes?” he said.
The man frowned and jerked his thumb at the casino’s door. “This here’s a gambling hall. No kids allowed, by order of the portmaster.”
“I understand,” Daav said in his slow, careful Terran. “May one know the local definition of ‘kid’?’
“Huh.” The doorkeeper showed his teeth. It was perhaps, Er Thom thought, a smile. “A ‘kid’ is somebody who don’t hold a license or a guild-card.” The teeth showed again. “So, maybe you got a pilot’s license?”
“Indeed.” Daav went forward another step, reaching into his pocket. Er Thom moved, too, and put a hand on his brother’s arm, halting him just outside the range of the man’s Terran-long reach.
The doorkeeper saw the gesture, and laughed—a rusty sound no more cordial than his smile. “Your buddy thinks I’m a chicken-hawk.”
“But of course you are no such thing,” Daav answered calmly and held his license up for the man to see.
The hostile humor faded from the doorkeeper’s face. “First class pilot? How old are you?”
Daav lifted an eyebrow, his face set in haughty lines that reminded Er Thom forcibly of their mother. “Is my age significant? As you see, I hold a valid license. The portmaster’s word is met.”
