Fledgling

by Sharon

  "What did you say?" she asked eventually, her cheek snuggled against his shoulder. "Before you . . . kissed me?"

  Jen Sar sighed lightly, ruffling her hair.

  "A Liaden—expression of joy," he murmured, sounding . . . chagrined.

  Kamele laughed, and reached for him again.

  Seventeen

  Leisure and Recreation Studies: Practical Dance

  Professor Stephen M. Richardson Secondary School

  University of Delgado

  Dance was . . . unexpectedly interesting.

  She'd had to swap out of the multi-Team free study session, which meant having to do more of her solo work after school, but, Theo acknowledged, that wasn't exactly a burden, since she was grounded, anyway.

  But dance . . . it was like math, and lace making, and scavage, all together; and it was almost like the patterns she saw in her head. Better even than that, she thought as she stripped out of her Team coveralls and pulled on the clingy leggings and stretchy sleeveless shirt, once everybody in the class had the pattern down, they all did what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it, and nobody got hurt, or fell, or bumped into anybody else.

  Not even her. Theo Waitley, the clumsiest kid in Fourth Form.

  She grabbed the bit of lace out of her bag, slammed the locker and headed for the dance floor. Bek was already there, propped up on an elbow and doing lazy leg lifts. She dropped cross-legged to the floor next to him.

  "Hey, Theo." He gave her a friendly nod, like he always did. Bek had been in class since the beginning of the term, and he was good; one demo was all he ever needed to pick up a dance move. She wouldn't have blamed him for being annoyed that Professor Noni had teamed him with the new kid. Instead, he actually seemed happy to have her as a partner.

  "What've you got there?" he asked, sitting up in a boneless move that reminded her of Father.

  "This?" She held the lacy web outstretched on her fingertips. "It's a dance."

  "Really." He leaned forward, gray eyes slightly narrowed as he traced the connections. "I'm not sure I see—oh! It's the new suwello module we started last time! I can see the wave . . ." He extended a careful finger and traced the line. "And here's where we all spin out into a circle . . ." Bek sat back, grinning, and running his fingers through his heavy yellow hair. "That's pretty smart. How'd you think of it?"

  "Well . . ." Theo bit her lip. "I make lace for a—for something to do with my hands. And I was thinking about how dancing was like math and like making lace, so I—what's wrong?"

  Bek was staring at her. "Dance is like math," he repeated, and shook his head. "What an idea!"

  "But it is!" Theo said, surprised, and then looked at him closely. "You're joking, aren't you?"

  "No, I'm not joking," he assured her. "Dance is an escape from math!"

  "But you're so good at it! Dance, I mean."

  "That's because," Bek said patiently, "dance is nothing like math." He put his hand over his heart. "Two repeats and four remedials in Fractal Trigonometry. I'm not wrong about this, Theo."

  "What is it, then?" she demanded. "If it's not math?"

  Bek looked surprised. "A conversation," he said, reasonably. "What else?"

  "A—"

  "Well, well!" Professor Noni's high and somewhat unpleasant voice cut across Theo's response. "I don't know whether to be delighted or horrified to hear that the argument between theory and art continues unabated. The heat death of the universe will doubtless find them arguing still." She clapped her hands. "Everyone up! Stretches! Sequence Five!"

  * * *

  "Ms. Waitley, stand forward, if you please," Professor Noni said. "I need your assistance in a demonstration."

  Theo blinked. Professor Noni always called on Bek and on Lida—the class's lead students—to assist during demos. To call on the newest student—I've only had eight classes! Theo thought, her fingers tightening on the bit of lace.

  "Go on, Theo. You'll do great." Bek leaned over and worked the lace free. "I'll hold this for you."

  "I am waiting, Ms. Waitley."

  "Yes, ma'am!" Theo took a deep breath and stepped forward. She met Professor Noni's eyes and consciously straightened her shoulders.

  The dance professor's lips bent in one of her chilly smiles. "A good stance from which to begin almost anything," she said. "Now, Ms. Waitley, what I want you to do is . . . answer me."

  Theo blinked. "Answer you, ma'am?"

  "Precisely. Dance, as Mr. Tehruda has expressed it, might be seen as a conversation. I will make a 'statement' and you will answer me, whereupon I will reply, and so on, until our conversation is by mutual agreement, completed." She inclined her head.

  "Or, to put it another way; I will propose a equation, you will refine it, and we will collaborate until we have achieved agreement. Now. Attend me."

  Theo watched worriedly as Professor Noni moved her left foot forward, back-extending her right leg, and raised her right arm until it was a straight line from her shoulder, hand bent at a right angle, fingers pointing toward the ceiling. And that was a completely familiar move; nothing other than the opening move in Stretch Sequence Three. Theo relaxed into the second move in the sequence, dropping back on the right leg, stretching the left in front, bringing her left arm up to join the right.

  Professor Noni moved into the third phrase, Theo answered with the fourth, and Professor Noni responded, a little more quickly. The room and the small noises made by her classmates as they watched faded from Theo's attention, as she concentrated on the moves—statement, answer, statement, response. At some point they left the familiar stretches; at some point, they sped up. Theo barely noticed, her mind's eye filled with the pattern they made as it would become, while her body responded to the pattern as it was now.

  They moved, describing circles and squares; they approached, retreated, sidestepped, and the conversation went on, and on . . .

  Professor Noni spun on a toe and lunged. Theo leapt, spinning—and suddenly the pattern in her head and the pattern of the dance diverged. All during the dance they had maintained a distance of between six and eight steps, and now—

  Now, they were going to be too far apart!

  Theo twisted, lunging in an attempt to mend the error, while the pattern in her head shattered and flew apart. Professor Noni skipped to one side, spun lightly and came to rest, feet flat and hands folded. Theo staggered and went down hard on one knee.

  "Enough!" The dance instructor raised her hand. She was, Theo saw, breathing hard, and visibly sweating. Now that she was noticing, she was sweaty, too, and taking deep breaths.

  "Tell me, Ms. Waitley—why did you correct your statement?"

  "I'd . . . miscalculated," Theo gasped. "We'd been dancing at the same distance, and suddenly we were going to be farther apart . . ."

  "I see. And yet it is . . . a natural human interaction—to come together, to part, to meet again." Professor Noni paused, then nodded. "Despite that last . . . miscalculation—I am impressed, Ms. Waitley. A very interesting conversation, indeed!"

  The second bell on the session sounded then, startlingly loud. The professor looked out at the rest of the class, sitting so still they hardly seemed to be breathing. Bek's grin was so wide Theo thought his face must hurt.

  "We break for an eighth," Professor Noni said. "Be ready to dance the suwello when you return, students."

  * * *

  Dancing the suwello really woke you up, Theo thought, as she finished sealing her coveralls. She felt—she felt like she was—like she was smooth; like all her muscles were moving in sync. And that was an . . . interesting thought. She paused with her dance clothes in her hand, staring down into the depths of her bag, thinking.

  Did her muscles usually feel like they weren't working together? No, she decided after a moment; mostly she felt like she was . . . stiff, and so afraid of tripping somebody else up, that—

  "'Bye, Theo!" Lida called, interrupting her ruminations.

  She looked up as the old
er girl and her two friends moved past on their way to the door.

  "'Bye," she said, giving the three of them a nod and a smile. "Looking forward to next time."

  Jinny—the tallest—grinned. "Me, too! The suwello sure does sharpen you up!"

  The three of them laughed and hurried by. Theo blinked at the dance clothes still in her hand, quickly stuffed them in her bag, sealed it, and headed for the exit, moving quick and smooth.

  Bek was lounging against the wall across from the dressing room. Theo grinned. When he wasn't dancing, Bek looked lazy and boneless, like an especially spoiled cat. Like a cat, though, once he started to move, it was was with precision and strength.

  Like now. He straightened out his lean and swung in beside her, matching steps like they'd practiced the whole thing.

  "Hey, Theo, where do you go now?"

  "Home," she said, feeling a little of the spring drop out of her step. "Over in Quad Eight."

  "Mind if I come with you part of the way? I've got a tutorial over in Merton."

  She looked at him from beneath her lashes. "Fractal Trig?"

  "Oh, no!" Bek said cheerfully. "I'm out of Fractal Trig. My mentor got me a 'change into Consumer Math. I started mid-mester, so I've got to do the make-ups, that's all."

  They came to the belt station and went up the ramp, walking light and quick, and stepped onto the belt still in sync, without even the breath of a boggle. Theo sighed in pure pleasure.

  "You going to the Saltation on Venta?"

  "To what?"

  Bek blinked. "The Saltation. Started I don't know how long ago. All us dancers get together and—dance. There's freeform, and competitions, and—you'd like it, Theo."

  She looked at him doubtfully.

  "I don't know," she said slowly. "I wouldn't know anybody, and I'm not really a dancer—I mean, I just started, and I don't know any of the dances, really."

  "You're a natural!" he told her, eyes sparkling. "And today—Professor Noni was testing you—you know that, don't you? And she said she was impressed. I don't think I've ever heard her say that to anybody before."

  "But you—"

  "I've been taking dance whenever I had a free-study since I was a littlie," Bek interrupted. "But you, you just came in cold, and picked up the moves really fast. You're already better than Jinny, and she's been taking dance as long as I have!"

  Theo laughed.

  "What's funny?"

  "You are—no, I am!" She shook her head, and laughed again. "Bek, I've got at least a thousand notes in my file saying that I'm physically challenged. I bump into people and trip over things that aren't there."

  "Really?" He shrugged. "Looks like dance is just what you need, then." He took a breath. "So," he said, speaking a little too quick; "I'll be going to the Saltation."

  Theo looked at him, seeing the tinge of pink along his cheeks. Her stomach tightened. Bek wanted her to go—as his partner? He'd said there were competitions. But he was being polite, giving her a hint, and hoping she'd ask him . . .

  "I—" she cleared her throat. "I have to ask my mother," she admitted, feeling like a littlie, herself. She met Bek's eyes and felt her mouth twist into a half-smile. "I'm grounded for the rest of the 'mester, except for school and teamplay and . . . some appointments."

  Bek smiled. "Tell her it's for extra cred."

  "Is it?"

  "Well—Professor Noni comes sometimes."

  "I'll ask Kamele," Theo said, suddenly decisive. "If—if she okays it, I'd . . . I'd like you to come with me, Bek."

  His smile got wider, and his cheeks got pinker. "I'd like that. A lot." He looked around. "My stop's coming up. Text me, Theo, Okay?"

  "Okay," she agreed, her stomach still tight and her head feeling light. "G'night, Bek!"

  "'Night!" He swung off the belt and jogged down the ramp.

  Theo looked down at her feet—and smiled.

  Eighteen

  University of Delgado

  Faculty Residence Wall

  Quadrant Eight, Building Two

  Kamele had a meeting. Again.

  Theo sighed. She was still feeling . . . sharp . . . from dance—and she wanted to talk to Kamele about the Saltation. Maybe it would be good for her to go, she thought. It would show the Safety Office that she was taking her responsibilities to society seriously. And if she and Bek won a competition, then wouldn't that show them that she was getting better?

  She'd put the argument to Kamele that way. If she ever came home.

  Theo shoved her mumu into its pocket, and danced a few suwello steps on her way down the hall. In the kitchen, she drew a soy cheese sandwich and a cup of juice from the kaf and carried them back to her room.

  Coyster was curled up in the center of the rug, more or less, snoring with his tail over his nose. Theo grinned and sat down at her desk. She had a response paper to write for Advertence and some math problems to finish up.

  After that, she thought, touching the keys lightly, she'd have another go at finding the turn-off code for her mumu. That project had gotten so frustrating that she'd put it aside, to "let it grow some leaves," as Father said. She realized now that she'd started with the wrong set of assumptions. She'd expected it to be easy—and maybe it was, once you figured out the trick. But figuring it out—that had to be hard. If it wasn't, then everybody would turn their mumus off, and the Simple at the gate wouldn't have been fooled at all.

  There was another suspicious circumstance, Theo thought darkly. Even though they'd had several Oktavi dinners together since the Simple called her name, Father hadn't once asked her about her progress with her mumu, though he must've known she'd try to find out how to turn it off.

  Of course, she hadn't mentioned it, either. She was going to figure it out herself, and not ask Father for help.

  Not that he was likely to tell her.

  "Solos first," she said aloud, scrolling through what she'd already written while she had a bite of her sandwich. Father would say that it was disrespectful of the food to concentrate on work while one ate.

  On the other hand, she thought, going back to double-check a secondary cite, Father had probably never tasted soy cheese out of the kaf.

  The cite checked. Good. Halfway through Social Engineering, she'd been struck with the conviction that she'd flubbed it—or misunderstood the content. She put the sandwich back on its plate and began to type.

  She was sipping juice and rereading her response, tweaking words and patching sentences, when a flicker of green tickled her peripheral vision. Frowning, she looked down at the bottom left corner of the screen, and the dark green Serpent of Knowledge.

  Chewing her lip, Theo considered the icon. None of the rest of the Team had gotten a mystery assignment; she'd asked. She'd even gone back through Professor Wilit's public class notes, and there was no mention of solo assignments made on the date the Serpent icon had first showed up on her screen.

  All that being so, and after giving it some careful thought, Theo had deleted the icon.

  And now it was back, pulsating gently while it waited for her attention.

  Well, she thought, it could just wait, that was what. She had other things in queue before it.

  Determinedly, she turned her attention back to her response paper, finished the editing and saved it before opening her math solos.

  Despite Lesset's repeated claims during their commute between classes, the problems weren't hard. In fact, Theo thought, as she double-checked her work, they'd been kind of boring. Sighing, she closed her math space.

  The Serpent icon was still there at the corner of the main screen. Waiting. Theo stuck her tongue out at it. Pulling her mumu from her pocket, she dropped to the rug next to Coyster, who stretched out of his curl, and relaxed bonelessly, licking his nose, all without opening his eyes.

  Theo tapped her mumu on and called up the advanced diagnostic. The one thing she had figured out, before she'd gotten too angry to think, was how to circumvent the self-test program. Which hadn't been particul
arly easy to do. If she'd been even a little advertent, that would have told her that the rest of the problem was going to be tricky.

  "The thing is," she told Coyster, "that the trigger has to be something simple—on and off. Because, if you're never on the grid, somebody'll notice. So it needs to be fast, so you can go off-line immediately in an emergency—and come back just as fast. Or faster."

  Coyster yawned. Noisily.

  "You just feel that way because you don't have a collar that tells everybody where you are all the time. Think if you were a dog."

  Coyster opened one eye, glared at her pointedly, and closed it.

  "Sorry." Theo turned her attention back to the mumu.

  The key had to be in the advanced diagnostic, she told herself for the eighty-eighth time. She tapped the toolbox open and sat frowning at her choices:

  ISOBIOS

  Grid Calibration

  Schedule

  Unitize

  Cloud Absorb

  None of the sub-routines was helpfully labeled Turn-off ID emission. In fact, there was no mention of the ID-shouter at all, though every kid knew that their mother could track them through their mumu. You only had to be where you weren't supposed to be once, for that lesson to stick.

  Frowning, Theo touched Schedule, even though she knew the list of sub-routines by heart. Schedule a self-test, schedule a backup, schedule a grid calibration. Grumbling to herself, she chose schedule a self-test and glared down at the next set of choices: diagnostic or complete?

  "Chaos-driven, nidjit programs . . ." Theo muttered—and froze. She'd been through this screen dozens of times. Why was it only now that she wondered what exactly a complete self-test was?

  Cautiously, she made her choice.

  Her mumu emitted a strident, drawn-out beep. Coyster flicked an ear and put his paw over his nose. On the screen, words appeared, limned in orange.

  This diagnostic will thoroughly test every resident system. Several functions may be unavailable or taken off-line during diagnosis. These include any function that requires syncing with the local Cloud or Grid. Voice messaging will remain unaffected.