Fledgling

by Sharon

  "Theo Waitley," she said.

  Pilot Arman extended a hand. "I will take care of it," he said coolly. "Theo Waitley has been transferred into my class. If you should receive any other administrative orders regarding her, please send them to me. Thank you, Instructor."

  "Sir," she whispered, and fled.

  Theo stood where she was, unwilling to relax, uncertain what she should do next. This man was Security, but—who was he? She didn't doubt his claim of being a pilot; in fact, he was more . . . blatantly so than any other pilot she knew. His stance was not only ready, it was aggressive.

  "Do I disquiet you, Pilot Waitley?" Her new instructor had broken the security seal on the message, glanced at it briefly, refolded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

  "Pilot Waitley?" he said. "There is a question in play."

  "Yes, sir," she said, and forced herself to meet those very blue eyes. "You look like you're ready to begin dancing."

  "I see. With whom have you been dancing, Pilot?"

  Theo cleared her throat. "Friends from the Vashtara. I'm not a pilot, sir."

  "Plainly, you have not gone far in your coursework, however, we Melchizans value pilots, even those just beginning flight, and we accord them the respect which is their due. You have been transferred to the pilots' section at Instructor Tathery's request. I have reviewed the classroom record of your dance and agree that you do not belong among . . . shall we say the passengers? Your performance in mathematics is low, but not unreasonably so. You will be assigned a tutor and remedial work." He took a breath, and . . . relaxed in a move very nearly a dance in itself. Abruptly, he was only a man in a blue shirt, preparing to walk on.

  Theo felt her muscles loosen, like she had somehow internalized the pattern of relaxation she had just seen. She took a step back and shook her hands, fingers pointing loosely at the floor, releasing the energy she had drawn.

  "Very good." Pilot Arman smiled, coolly, and nodded toward the door. "Come with me, please, Pilot."

  They walked down the empty corridor briskly, but without haste. Pilot Arman wasn't interested in talking to her, and Theo was just as happy to pursue her own thoughts.

  Captain Cho had tried to warn her, she thought. This is what came of learning pilot lore: people just naturally assumed you were a pilot, even if all you knew were a couple dance moves, or a couple words in hand-talk.

  "Step over here for a moment, if you please, Pilot. This will interest you, I think." Instructor Arman said suddenly, guiding her to an observation window like the one into Instructor Tathery's classroom. Theo sighed. That classroom was already starting to feel far away and long ago.

  "Tell me what you see, please."

  Pilot Arman's voice brought her thoughts back to the present. She looked through the window. Two long rows of students sat at their computers, their faces soft and very nearly expressionless. It took Theo a moment to realize that they were working, and not all of them napping at their screens; their movements were deliberate and slow.

  "I see a classroom full of . . . students," Theo said. She was cold, her stomach tight. She cleared her throat. "I think the teacher needs to call an exercise break; they look pretty sleepy."

  "Yes, they do, don't they? That is, for your information, the Parole Class, where those students who have been deemed disruptive or, as we say here, dangerous, are kept. Of course, they are sedated; we have limited staff here, and cannot afford an incident among the children of our visitors."

  She swallowed and looked up at him. "Why are you showing me this?"

  He smiled his cool smile, and put his fingers against his shirt pocket. The paper inside crackled slightly.

  "This is a student transfer memorandum. Theo Waitley was, it says, incorrectly placed and must be moved immediately to the Parole Class."

  Theo shook her head. "I'm not dangerous," she said, but her voice sounded breathless.

  Pilot-Instructor Arman laughed. "Of course you are dangerous, Pilot."

  Her shoulders were tense. If she ran, she thought, where would she go? She was fast, but there were cameras . . .

  "I'm not going in there," she heard someone say, flat and hard.

  "Be at ease, Pilot. You are not going in there. The bookkeeping for this rests safely in my hand. This display is for your interest and information only. Please, walk with me again; you'll be eager to meet the other pilots."

  Carefully, she turned and walked with him, keeping an extra arm's length between them.

  "The sedation," she said, after they had gone a few steps in silence. "Is it perfectly safe?"

  "Sedation that you administer is always perfectly safe, Pilot," her new instructor said calmly. Three steps further along, he spoke again.

  "We have a thing that we say, Pilot, in such circumstances as you find yourself. It is . . . advice, and also an expression of . . . comradeship."

  "What . . ." Theo cleared her throat. "What is it?"

  "Watch your back."

  Thirty-Five

  Efraim Agricultural Zone

  The house was simple to the point of dullness. Each room they passed through was the twin of the room they had just quit, identical down to the grain of the floor.

  At the fifth room, their guide paused and turned to them, black lenses flashing briefly.

  "The study of simplicity is not lightly undertaken, nor easily put aside," she stated, which was right out of the Book of Plain Thought.

  Still, Jen Sar thought, critically, she might have done worse. Had he not himself been engaged in the study of simplicity for many years? Granted, in his case, he thought of the study more in the light of self-defense, but surely the basic thesis was sound.

  "One wishes to continue," he said, meeting the opaque glance calmly.

  "One's purpose is constant," Appletorn added, which made for oddly comforting hearing.

  The Chapelia turned, her robes whispering to the floor, and walked on.

  * * *

  "What is this, Pilot Waitley?" Instructor Arman demanded.

  Theo sighed. She'd come into class in the middle of Practical Repair—and a good thing, too.

  According to Jeren, who was lead on the project, the team's repair project was styled a janci-wagon; he promised to let her ride it, once they had it working again. Since Theo was the smallest, she got to do the close-in, under-carriage work, while Jeren, who was considerably larger, but knew what needed done, watched on the remote and guided her through the steps. She'd just identified the crushed bus link, and was getting her guide splice into position to chomp in a new one. If she had to leave it now, she'd lose whole minutes of nasty, tight fiddling . . .

  "Pilot?" The pilot-instructor sounded . . . irritated.

  "Theo . . ." Jeren breathed.

  Right. Grumbling to herself, she twisted and peered out from beneath the low-lift. Pilot Arman stood some dozen steps away, and he was holding . . .

  "A bowli ball," she answered, and suddenly frowned, slamming the hatch to as she rolled out from under the lift and came to her feet. "My bowli ball. That was in my luggage!"

  Pilot Arman looked down his beaked nose at her, blue eyes mocking.

  "And that is where it was found, in your luggage. Everything that enters this wing is inspected by Security. The potential risk to pilots, if we did not, is unacceptable."

  Theo took a breath, trying to cool the anger tingling at her fingertips and along her nerves.

  "You know that a bowli ball's no risk to pilots," she said, and held out her hand. "It's mine. Give it back."

  "Yet you would have had me believe earlier that you are no pilot," he said, holding the ball—her gift from Win Ton!—negligently in his hand, like it was someone else's dishes that he was carrying to the disposal.

  Her eyes stung, and she swallowed. It would be worse, she thought, to cry in front of this man than to lose her temper. Though it wouldn't be smart to lose her temper, either.

  "That's my bowli ball," she said again, her voice sounding clipped, like Kamel
e's did when she was trying not to lose her temper. "It was given to me by—by a good friend, and I—I'd like it back. Please."

  Pilot Arman tipped his head to one side, as if considering whether she'd asked politely enough.

  "I understand," he said at last. "Catch."

  He threw the ball, hard, straight at the floor. It twisted, gyros screaming, reversed itself, and shot to the left. Theo jumped, got a hand on it, and spun, cuddling the ball against her side. She hit the floor lightly, spinning, and came to rest in one of Phobai's favorite menfri'at positions, facing Pilot Arman.

  He smiled at her and raised his hands, fingers flicking careful, no threat, stand down at her, the signs as hard as pebbles.

  "I see that the bowli ball is, indeed, yours, Pilot."

  Theo took a breath, though she didn't relax. "It is, and I intend to keep it," she said flatly.

  "Of course," he answered, as if it had never been in doubt. "You carry it by right; you know that it is not a toy. That is well. Now." He held out his hand. "Your badge, if you please."

  He wore the blue shirt, and he was her instructor.

  Win-win, thought Theo, around a chill of dread. She stepped forward, detached the pink badge, and held it out to him.

  He received it with a slight nod, and slipped it away into his shirt pocket.

  "This," he said, producing a green badge like Jeren wore, "will identify you to all as a pilot. As with the other, you will wear it at all times, and surrender it only to Security, to myself, or to a senior pilot. Am I clear?"

  Theo nodded, and pressed the new badge into place. "Yes, sir."

  "Excellent. You may resume your work."

  * * *

  The sixth room was not a precise duplicate of all the other rooms they had passed through previously, nor was the person behind the desk indistinguishable from every other Chapelia he had ever beheld. Startlingly, her face was free of bindings, showing velvet brown skin stretched tight over strong bones. The black lenses lay to hand, on the desk by her mumu. Her eyes were pale blue, rich as silver against that dark skin.

  She shook her head as he and Appletorn crossed the threshold, the door closed behind them by their soft-footed guide.

  "The University of Delgado sends us a brace of men," she said, and her voice was the voice of all Chapelia, sexless and atonal.

  "Indeed, no," Jen Sar told her, approaching the desk nearly. "We came on our own judgment."

  "Is that meant to reassure me?"

  "Is reassurance simple?" Appletorn asked, coming to stand beside Jen Sar.

  "One who is truly simple requires no reassurances," Jen Sar answered, "for to doubt is to embrace complexity."

  "Neither of you is simple," the Chapelia behind the desk stated. "Nor have you come seeking a rare simplicity."

  Jen Sar lifted an eyebrow. "You might have turned us away at the door," he pointed out, "if our reasons were inadequate."

  "Your reason was directly out of the Second Book." She frowned. "Of course, I must see you, or compromise the simplicity of the doorkeeper."

  "Ah," said Jen Sar, who had indeed chosen his response for just that reason.

  Her frown deepened. "State your case, simply."

  "Indeed, indeed." He bowed, palm pushing his cane firmly against the floor. "We come to ask a simple question: Are the Chapelia involved with the Serpent AI which has infected scholarship within the Wall?"

  Silence for the space of three heartbeats.

  "That is no simple question," she said.

  "It's a very simple question," Appletorn said, surprisingly. "Complexity arises in the answer. I have another question, simpler than that which my colleague poses."

  She opened her silver eyes wide. "Ask this very simple question, then."

  "Gladly," Appletorn said. "Are the Chapelia willing to starve?"

  * * *

  "Here we are, Scholars, the Beltaire archive."

  Kamele looked about the thin, dank hallway which marked the end of their several descents. Three elevators, the third one an express with but this one destination, so the Research Team was informed. Kamele felt certain that they were in the original treasure house, buried far below the planet's surface.

  At the far end of the hall was a door. Director Pikelmin used her key-card and pushed it open, standing courteously aside to allow the scholars to precede her.

  A broad-shouldered man in the blue shirt of Security stood behind the counter to the immediate left of the doorway. The rest of the walls were lined with stasis cabinets, their doors opaqued in defense of even the low, UV-free lighting.

  "Director," the man behind the counter said as she came forward.

  "Solmin. These are the scholars from Delgado invited by Professor Dochayn. Scholars, this is Solmin, Professor Dochayn's aide. You may place yourselves wholly into his hands."

  What choice do we have? Kamele thought, having made our choice.

  "Solmin," she said, stepping forward, since Hafley did not. "I am Kamele Waitley, these are Professor Orkan Hafley, Farancy Able, and Vaughn Crowley. We are sorry to have missed Professor Dochayn, and will do our best not to disrupt your schedule."

  "In fact," Crowley took up. "You will find us quite self-sufficient. A tour of the archive should suffice us; we are all experienced researchers. I wager that you'll hardly know we're here."

  Solmin exchanged a glance with Director Pikelmin.

  "Scholars," she said, flashing the bright smile that Kamele was beginning to distrust, "we stand now within the archives. In order to minimize any potential damage to the records, some of which are quite fragile, we ask that researchers submit a list of those volumes that they wish to study. Again, in order to minimize damage to the archive, we stipulate that each book may only be drawn once, for a period of no more than three intervals. Once a book has been examined and returned to the archive, it may not be drawn again. I am sure you understand our position. Such records are priceless and we are sworn to protect them as best as we are able."

  "Of course." Kamele looked to her team. Crowley was calm; Able serious. Hafley was smiling to herself, as if at a particularly amusing private joke.

  "As it happens," Crowley said, reaching inside his jacket. "I have here a list prepared by Professor Beltaire herself." He placed a standard data-key and a sheet of hard copy on the counter.

  "Professor Beltaire has been very busy on research team's behalf," Director Pikelmin observed. "I wonder that she did not come herself."

  "Professor Beltaire felt that her years precluded such a long journey," Able said glibly.

  "I see," the director said. She glanced at the hard copy list, and then back to the assembled professors. "And yet Professor Beltaire is some years younger, is she not, than . . . Professor Crowley?"

  Crowley shrugged. "It is not my business to inquire into the ages of my colleagues," he commented. "Speaking for myself, I'm afraid that it pleased all of my teachers and mentors to note that I was somewhat young for my age."

  Director Pikelmin took a breath, her shoulders rising, and Kamele stepped forward, drawing the other woman's eyes.

  "Since we have so little time available to us," she said. "I wonder if we might be shown to our quarters and to the study room while Research Assistant Solmin begins to pull the texts listed. The research team would like to get down to work at once."

  Director Pikelmin pressed her lips together, then abruptly nodded. "As you say, Professor, time is short. Solmin, the professors are your primary concern while they are with us. Professors, please follow me. You'll find us everything to hand. The dormitory is just a step down the hall, and scarcely more from the study area."

  * * *

  "Starve? The Wall consumes; it produces nothing."

  "In fact, the scholars of the Wall produce much that is of use to the world and the Chapelia. For instance, crop-plants that have been optimized for growing conditions on Delgado. Our numbers, which are a source of insult to the Chapelia, insure that Delgado remains on several important trade and
passenger ship lines. We produce, also, an ideal of scholarly integrity that is unparalleled throughout the galaxy. The phrase, 'as sound as a Scholar of Delgado' has currency on a dozen worlds, and the assurance that not only Delgadan scholars, but their research is sound drives students to seek us, which in turn drives the prosperity of the entire world."

  "Interesting." The woman behind the desk turned her cool silver eyes to her other petitioner.

  "Have you anything to add to this litany of virtue?"

  Jen Sar smiled. "In fact, my colleague has been both precise and comprehensive. It is only left me to mention that, should it begin to seem simple that two male scholars be made to vanish—an aerial map of this house and attendant satellite images, as well as certain pictures of yourself, will be published widely if we do not return to our associate within the wall by the first bell of the new day."

  "Pictures of myself?"

  "I assume so, though I will grant that the image quality is poor. The person you are meeting with was wearing a disruption field. While this did confuse the image, it also caused the station's cameras to take note of her more closely, and therefore tag the records." He bowed, not quite ironically. "Once again, we are shown the value of simplicity. Had your contact merely taken her chances with the surveillance devices, she would not have called attention to herself, nor to you."

  "This is fabrication."

  "Alas, it is not, though I admit you have no reason to believe me. My theory, which is complex, is that you were approached by an agent from off-world, who purposed to show you a way to attain that simplicity which the Chapelia hold as ideal. The Chapelia, after all, had once sought to destroy the university and burn the library in their quest to turn complexity aside. They did not succeed, but I allow it to be a simple solution. This new solution—do not burn the library, but make the information it contains suspect. The result will be the same, in time. Students will fail of arriving, scholars will leave in search of funds and opportunity for research elsewhere, the university will dwindle. Perhaps it will even fail. Simplicity returns, and the Chapelia are strong once more."