Fledgling (44 page)

* * *

"Very well, Pilots, who will be first to demonstrate their ability?"

Inspector Vidige frowned impartially at all eight of them. The other six had been waiting for them in this exercise area—three girls and three boys, each wearing a green badge and a wary expression. Behind them was a sight both familiar and unfamiliar. It was, Theo thought tentatively, a dance machine. Unlike the machine she and Win Ton had beat, it was only one level high, hulking and dark, where the other had been brightly lit and colorful. Theo felt a thrill. Maybe this was like the machine Win Ton had learned on, at his school? Maybe—

"Come, come!" Inspector Vidige said sharply. "Modesty flies no ship, Pilots! But, I am previous." She turned to Theo and the other student who had been chosen from her class—Robit Josin, he'd told her during their quick march down the hall—and pointed at the machine. "Have the newest additions to our group used one of these devices?"

"I've used one like it," Theo said, and Robit nodded in agreement.

"Me, too. An arcade game."

"And how well did you score, on this arcade game?"

Robit shrugged. "I hit level thirty-two."

Inspector Vidige nodded and frowned at Theo.

"I—my friend and I danced through the overdrive level," she said. "My friend said it wasn't a true overdrive, though."

"Well, then. Do either of you wish to lead the group?"

Robit shrugged again. "If nobody else wants to go first, I'll break the ice," he said, and jerked his head at a thin girl with her blond hair pulled into a knot at the crown of her head. "Show me the controls, why not?"

"No reason," she answered and walked with him to the machine, the rest of the group trailing after, and Inspector Vidige behind them all.

"Now the rules," she said loudly, after the girl had finished showing Robit the on-switch and the selector buttons. "The pilot-at-dance may dance so long as he likes, until he makes a misstep. You may begin at any level you like and advance to any level you can. One misstep and you must dismount. The machine is set to enforce this. Am I understood, Pilot?"

"Yes, Pilot," Robit said.

"Begin at will."

Robit looked at the rest of the class, bit his lip and looked back to the controls. He looked nervous and Theo didn't blame him.

"Come along, Pilot! Surely you'd like a little exercise?" Inspector Vidige sounded mean, Theo thought, and she was
pushing
. A couple of the other students giggled, like they thought intimidation was funny.

Theo cleared her throat.

"Excuse me, Inspector Vidige," she said, stepping forward.

The blue-shirt frowned at her.

"Pilot Waitley. What is it?"

"I was just wondering if he wasn't going to pick a partner," Theo said. "I thought this was a team game."

Inspector Vidige was seen to sigh.

"What planet are you from, Pilot Waitley?"

Theo blinked. "Delgado."

The boy to her left sniggered, and the blond girl with the top-knot covered her face with her hand.

"Oh," somebody else further along the arc said, sotto-voce. "
Safety first
."

"No chit-chat!" snapped the blue-shirt. "Pilot Waitley. The responsibilities borne by a pilot in the commission of his duties, heavy as they sometimes may be, are borne by
him alone
. This is the reality of piloting and of pilots. Melchiza recognizes that the mating of skill and temperament that creates a pilot is rare, which is why we honor our pilots and grant them privilege beyond what is allowed ordinary citizens. To be a pilot is to be the final judge of weighty—by which I mean
life-and-death
—decisions.

"To return to the point of today's exercise—no, despite what you may have learned from your
friend
, this is not a team effort." She turned her head. "Pilot Josin, your colleagues are waiting."

"Yes, ma'am," Robit said, and kicked the start-switch.

Robit danced three levels before he made a mistake and the machine froze, knocking him off-balance. He staggered, recovered, and dismounted warily, but really, Theo thought angrily, he could've fallen on his head! There was no reason that the machine had to stop so hard—the silly
game
she and Win Ton had beat had just rocked to a gentle rest when the set was over. If a
game
could do it—

The blond girl mounted the machine next, spun the dial without hesitation and began to dance. She might've been good, but she didn't give herself any chance to warm up, so it looked like she was always half-a-beat behind the projected pattern. Eighteen moves in, she tried to recover the lag, got her feet tangled and jumped clear with a yell when the machine locked.

She'd barely landed when a tall boy with a shaved head, his right ear a-jingle with gold rings, stepped up for his turn. He turned the dials deliberately, and dropped back to the dance pad, his eyes half closed; his movements exact, but lazy. Theo thought of Bek—and then she thought of the man on the machine at the Arcade, dancing half-asleep, as if the challenge was too small to take seriously.

The boy with the earrings danced through four levels by Theo's count—and probably could've gone further, if he'd been paying attention.

He turned the stagger generated by the machine's abrupt stop into a somersault, landing light on his feet.

There was a hesitation then, as if the rest of the pilots were weighing whether they could beat the record so far.

Theo shook her head and walked forward.

* * *

Kamele rubbed her eyes and looked at the shelf again. Surely, the fifth book in the diary set she was studying had been right here on the shelf, next to the fourth, which she had just placed in the outgoing cart? She knew she was tired—they were all tired by now, but—no, she decided, she must have been mistaken. It must have been the fifth book in another set, even now under study by one of the other team members.

Sighing, she picked up the next on her list and took it back to the study station.

* * *

Unlike the dance machine aboard
Vashtara,
this machine
wanted
you to lose, Theo thought. It would throw in sneaky little half-steps, and change tempo when neither made sense. It also had a sensor for how hard you hit the pad, which she'd realized just in time to avoid getting tossed off about four moves in.

She'd started at level fifteen, so she'd have a chance to warm up, and now she was cooking, like Phobai said. While she wasn't particularly having fun, she wasn't mad anymore, either. Her legs were beginning to get tired though, and she scanned the control board, looking for the stop switch. The pattern switched into a fast jig, and she gave up her search to attend to that,
fuffing
her hair out her face.

What if there isn't a stop switch
? she wondered.
Do I have to flub a step to make it stop?

The idea of flubbing a step on purpose made her feel cranky all over again. The machine switched to the next level—her eighth, unless she'd lost count—with a series of movements that didn't go together
at all
. By the time she'd negotiated those, she was seriously considering flubbing that step. She was so sweaty, her hair was stuck to her face, and there was a stitch burning along her right side. Maybe, she thought, it wouldn't be so bad. It wasn't as if she hadn't done better than—

There was a flash of pale blue light, and a soft tone. The pattern-screen went blank and the machine . . . gently rocked to stop.

Theo wiped her forehead on her sleeve and looked out over the exercise area. The girl with the top-knot was shaking her head, and Robit's mouth was frankly hanging open. Inspector Vidige cleared her throat.

"Thank you, Pilot Waitley," she said. "That was most instructive."

* * *

Orkan Hafley was working at the carts, sorting the books the scholars had finished with onto the outgoing bin. Kamele watched as the Chair worked; she handled the volumes with respect, as any scholar would, making certain that they were arranged in short stacks, which were less likely to fall over, and using all of the shelves. When she finished with the outgoing shelf, she moved to the incoming shelf, straightening the tumbled volumes there, picking one up in her off-hand and continuing with her work. While Kamele watched, she stepped over to the outgoing cart and slipped the volume she had taken from the incoming into the back of a stack.

Kamele came to her feet so suddenly her chair tipped backward and clattered to the hard, white floor.

"How long has this been going on?" she cried.

Able jerked back in her seat, clearly disoriented. Crowley, showing commendable reflexes for a man of his years, leapt up, and caught Hafley's shoulder, effectively restraining her.

"You don't have permission to touch me!" Hafley snapped. Crowley ignored her, as he looked to Kamele.

"Treachery, Sub-Chair?" he asked quietly.

Kamele took a breath. "I fear so, Professor."

* * *

As it turned out, Inspector Vidige's Advance Class was Theo and Robit's new posting. They didn't have to change dorm rooms again—that was the good news. Theo still had math remediation—that was the bad news. That, and the fact that all of the other pilots in her class thought she'd deliberately shown up better at dance than they were, and she didn't have a chance to do any social engineering to smooth things over, because the Advance Class didn't sit by team; they sat solo.

It made for a long school-day, and, despite the extra load of math Inspector Vidige had off-loaded onto her datapad for her off-hours work, Theo was glad when the bell rang for the free period before supper.

"Hey, Safety First!"

Theo turned, frowning as the blond girl—Initha, her name was—swaggered forward, her thumbs hooked in her belt. Beside her came Fruma, skating a bowli ball from hand to hand, his eyes on Theo's face. The other members of the Advance Class, including Robit, were spreading out on either side of them.

"What do you want?" she asked Initha.

"Want to ask you a question," Fruma answered.

Theo looked to the right, and to the left. She stood at the center of ragged circle. Somehow, she didn't think that was good. She slipped the datapad into a pocket and shook out her hands.

"Ask it, then," she said.

"You know why there aren't any Delgadan pilots?" Initha, again.

"No, why?"

"Because," yelled Fruma, "it's too
dangerous
!"

He threw the bowli ball, and Theo jumped.

Melchiza
City of Treasures

"Well. There you are." Monit Appletorn all but dropped his cup of coffee on the table as he slumped into the chair across from Jen Sar Kiladi. There were dark circles under his eyes and a general air of weariness about him.

"Here I am," that gentleman agreed, "and well. I hope I find you the same?"

"Seems to me that I found you," Appletorn grumbled, ignoring the question; "though it wasn't necessarily easy. How do you do it?"

Jen Sar raised an eyebrow. "Do what?"

"Vanish." He raised his cup and drank deeply. "I walked past this table twice, knowing you must be here, and my eye slid by you."

"Ah." Jen Sar moved his shoulders. "I am a short man, and you, if I may venture, are a tired man. Have you had word from our friend?"

Appletorn shook his head. "I wish I had; it would be easier to sleep."

"You don't find suspense a tonic for a restful night?" Jen Sar raised his mug and sipped tea.

"Perhaps you do!" Appletorn snapped.

"At the least, I am comforted by the observation that we both remain as yet unassassinated."

Appletorn shook his head, finished off his coffee and put the empty cup none-too-gently on the table.

"How—" he began, and stopped.

Jen Sar tipped his head in polite inquiry. "Forgive me, you were about to say?"

The other man half-laughed. "I was about to ask how Kamele Waitley . . ." Again, he hesitated.

". . . tolerated me for so many years?" Jen Sar concluded, and smiled. "The only explanation can be that she is a great-hearted and patient lady."

Appletorn shook his head again and returned to the original topic, like a dog worrying at an old bone. "Do you think we will hear anything, or will they ignore us?"

"I admit that hope of contact is growing faint. If they do ignore us, we shall need to do something . . . dramatic."

"Taking your case directly to . . ." He glanced around them, but all the nearby tables were empty on this off-meal hour. ". . . directly to our friend—that wasn't dramatic?"

"It was necessary," Jen Sar said, worry sharpening his own voice. "Time becomes . . . an issue, as we discussed." He sighed. "This is what comes of giving one's opponent time for study."

"We could hardly have done otherwise," Appletorn protested.

Jen Sar sipped tea. They could, of course, have done very much otherwise, but threatening one of the high-level Chapelia was risky, to understate the case by a magnitude of ten, and likely would have gained them no more than they held now.

On the other hand, time
did
grow short. If Kamele arrived home bearing proof of tampering, as he had no doubt she would, she would become a target for the as-yet-nameless outworld agent.

Locating that agent and her compatriots on Delgado, counting them and rendering them powerless—he had taken that as his responsibility, only to find that he was not equal to the challenge.

An outworld agent would not be constrained by the mores of a Safe World. One such agent had already cost him—dearly.

It would not happen again.

* * *

"What reason do you have to sabotage the work of this research team?" Kamele demanded.

Orkan Hafley gave an amused shrug. "My dear Kamele, you're overwrought. A simple error—"

"Not quite so simple," Able interrupted, raising her datapad. "There are three volumes here which are marked as having been ordered in. When they did not arrive I put it down to the ineptness of our research assistant, and there are other things, after all, on my list to console me."