by Sharon
"What is it?" Kamele asked, as ignorant of the meaning of the word as Theo was, and happily without the benefit of its use in context.
"I've still got the datapad with my math remedials!" She pulled it out of her pocket.
"We must return it," Kamele said briskly and looked around her. "There!" She pointed to a sign that said Shuttles and Private. "We'll give it to the shuttle captain; he can take it back to the Visitors' Center the next time he has a fare, and the Visitors' Center can send it back to the Transit School."
It certainly sounded like a good plan. Theo fell in beside Kamele.
The glitter and noise of the shopping district quickly disappeared. Also, the warmth. Theo was glad of her jacket and wished she'd brought an extra sweater. They passed a couple of people in coveralls with "Melchiza Station" stenciled on the breast, and a few pilots, leather jackets fastened close.
The corridor curved; and ahead of them were two more people. A male pilot, pulling luggage or last-minute stores, walking slowly with someone who was patently not a pilot. Her hair was slightly askew and she walked uncertainly, like she'd wandered into a change zone once and did not ever wish to repeat the experience.
The pilot had one hand around the woman's arm, urging her on. He wasn't wearing a leather jacket, but a fringed one, like—
Theo blinked.
Clyburn isn't a pilot! she thought, and looked again.
Gone were the mincing steps and swaying hips, traded in for a pilot's smooth stride.
"What are they doing here?" Kamele exclaimed, and rushed forward, her voice sharp.
"Orkan Hafley, there's a review board waiting for you on Delgado!"
Clyburn dropped Professor Hafley's arm and spun, pilot fast, green tag shining through the fringe. The expression on his face reminded Theo of Fruma, right before he had thrown the bowli ball at her.
"Go away, Kamele," he said, his hand going inside his jacket.
Theo jumped.
She landed between Clyburn and Kamele, her hands out in defensive mode, her feet set firm.
"Don't!" she snapped.
Clyburn blinked, his hand moved—
"Theo!" Kamele cried, putting a hand on her shoulder. Theo twisted, but her balance was destroyed—and Clyburn was running, and Professor Hafley with him, as best she could, suitcase clattering after.
"Stop!" Kamele cried.
Theo grabbed her arm. "Let them go!" she shouted.
Her mother turned and stared. "Let them go? Theo, Chair Hafley has committed an ethics violation that endangers the entire university. She must come up before the review—"
"He was going to—to throw something at you!" Theo interrupted. "He was going to hurt you!"
Kamele blinked. "Surely not," she said, but her voice was uncertain.
Theo sighed.
"Let's get back to the main hall," she said. "You need to talk to your team."
* * *
The child was admirably light of foot, and fleet, besides. Jen Sar followed at a distance, as an old man might, though he dared to pause only once, where the hall was straight for a length that gave him some hope of catching her again. He leaned lightly against the wall and reached into his pocket, bringing forth a silken handkerchief, which he touched to his temples and upper lip before letting it fall negligently to the floor in his haste to catch up his guide.
She kept scrupulously to the back halls and the service corridors. Possibly, the symbol-bearer had meant thereby to confuse him; possibly, it was the only route the child knew. In neither case did their direction elude him.
That their final destination must lie in the Administration Tower was certain; such a scheme as they had uncovered would need an administrator in it, and a librarian, too. He hardly thought it could be more than two, and then the secret would have to be sealed with fear as well as bribery.
His guide pushed the button to summon a lift, lenses glinting as she turned her head away.
Jen Sar sighed lightly. It would, of course, be most elegantly simple, to deliver him into the midst of the conspirators, and let them each make of the other what they might. The symbol-bearer being no fool, this was doubtless precisely her intention.
It would, he thought, be interesting to see how that played out.
Forty
Vashtara
Mauve Level
Stateroom
"Chaos driven nidjit," Theo muttered, bent over the datapad that hadn't gotten sent back to the Transit School, after all. She'd sent a message down to Pilot Arman via Melchiza Station's Public Comm, asking how she could return it.
The answer had arrived before she'd gotten back to the boarding lounge.
Consider it a gift, Pilot, with my compliments. Arman.
Which was great—or not, depending on the results of the most recent self-test.
"Why can't you figure this stuff out?" she asked herself, tapping the screen and glaring down at the latest troublesome set of equations.
Kamele, curled into the double-chair while she worked on the report about how the research team had managed to misplace Chair Hafley in transit, looked up, and murmured, "I'm sorry?"
Theo glanced up warily.
"Nothing, sorry. It's about this math."
"Math?" Kamele repeated. "You can't be doing math, again, can you?"
Theo pushed the datapad forward.
"Yes, I can. I'm behind."
Kamele rose.
"Let me see that. Why don't you go to the Atrium and ask them to give you one of those cheesecakes for us to share? The walk will sharpen you up!"
* * *
"Here," his guide said abruptly. She pressed the plate and turned away before the door was wholly open, walking back the way they had come.
Jen Sar watched her round the corner of the hallway, then stepped through the door and into a foyer. Turning quickly, he tapped the manual override, and eased the door along its track until it was almost closed.
"That must be the Chapelia!" a woman's voice said sharply from the room beyond. "Come in, come in! You're late!"
Jen Sar took a breath, renewed his grip on his cane and walked forward.
Tandra Skilings—the other name he had recognized on the Serpent's list—saw him first; her reaction a mixture of anger and disbelief.
"Kiladi, what are you doing here? Leave at once!"
"Alas," he said softly, bowing as the others turned to stare at him. "I come in the place of the symbol-bearer, who I deduce has . . . decided on the part of simplicity."
"Who is that?" a woman he did not recognize demanded. She wore a Director's coat, but she held herself more like a fighter than an academic. Her right hand was in the pocket of her jacket, a fact he observed with sorrow.
"I am Jen Sar Kiladi, Professor of Cultural Linguistics," he said gently. "And you are, perhaps, the off-world agent responsible for alteration of certain library records? I hope that you may be; I had particularly wished to make your acquaintance."
The false director looked to Skilings, then to Sub-Chancellor Kylin, standing stiff with alarm at her right hand. "We've made significant progress; we cannot allow our efforts to be nullified by one elderly professor."
She pulled her hand out of her pocket. As he had suspected, she held a gun.
* * *
"Theo, how did this happen?"
Kamele was standing when she returned, datapad in hand.
"I'm a nidj?" Theo asked, putting the dainty box with its pretty blue bow on the table.
Kamele shook her head. "I used my override for your school book," she said. "It reports that your math scores are higher than average for your learning group. So much higher, in fact, that it has placed you in an accelerated learning program. This—" She shook the datapad, "shows me a list of failed self-tests, multiple re-tests and produces a statement that the student requires remediation."
"I'm a nidj," Theo said.
"Theo . . ." Kamele said dangerously. "If you have any insight into why there's such a wide gap in the result
s reported by these two programs, I would very much like to hear it."
"I think it's because that—" she touched the datapad Kamele still held, "is piloting math. Pilot Arman said my scores were low—and tutor! She couldn't believe I'd never had any of this material. She said it was basic!" Theo smiled, mouth crooked. "At least I got to understand how Bek feels about math, in general. But, I had to catch up. It's just that it's being . . ." She frowned, looking down at the sculpted mauve carpeting. ". . . a challenge."
There was a small pause. "Your friend Win Ton told me that you relish a challenge."
"Well, I do. I guess. But I like to feel like I'm making some progress!"
"I see." Kamele put the datapad next to the school book and went over to the hospitality unit. Silently, she drew a cup of coffee and a cup of tea and brought them over to the table.
"Sit," she said, placing the cups.
Theo sat. Hospitality tea was pretty good. Not as good as fresh-made, but drinkable. She wondered, idly, if the university could afford to upgrade the kafs in the Wall to hospitality units . . .
Kamele finished decanting the cheesecake. She handed Theo a fork and took the other for herself.
"Eat," she said. "It seems to me you've earned this."
Theo needed no more encouragement to enjoy cheesecake. Kamele, though, wasn't eating.
Theo put her fork down and looked at Kamele, seeing her fingers twitch, almost as if there were something she needed to say in hand-talk, or as if, as if her fingers wanted shout out in song . . .
Kamele closed her eyes.
"Theo, I haven't been able to tell you . . . there hasn't really been enough time . . ."
Watching the hands again, hearing the nondirection in the voice, Theo realized what she did see: Kamele was nervous!
"Theo," Kamele started once more, moving both hands forward with a flick, like she was passing a ball so someone else could score . . . .
"I want to tell you how proud I am of you," and now her voice was strong, her hands calm. "This trip has been so busy, and I've been too much involved in the things I need to do. Necessity. I was concerned—many times—that you were in over your head, and that I was."
She paused for a sip of her coffee. Theo waited, wondering what this had to do with failing math.
"This trip, you haven't acted like the—the person Marjene claimed you were, full of accidents and immaturity. You haven't been avoiding social situations. You've made friends. You've studied, you've grown so much. And I need to tell you, that I'm so very proud. I'm so pleased that Jen Sar suggested you come with me. You . . ."
Theo sat up straight, cheesecake forgotten.
"Father what?"
Theo felt her hands demanding explain, even as the words tumbled out of her mouth.
"Are you telling me that Father wanted me to come with you? It was his idea?"
Kamele nodded; for some reason she seemed amused.
"I was going to leave you with him, since Ella was . . . overcommitted. And asking anyone else: with the complications of Marjene, and the hearing—I needed someone secure. And, well . . ."
Here Kamele paused, hands showing a touch of that hesitation again.
"He was right, Theo. I couldn't leave you on Delgado—it was too dangerous. He told me that what you needed was to spread your wings."
"He told me local custom demanded that I go with my mother!"
They stared at each other. Both began to laugh at the same moment.
"Theo, you know Jen Sar always plays both sides against the middle!"
Theo nodded, recalling times that he'd made her think something was her idea when surely it was his . . .
She felt her fingers flicker, and looked down, catching a repeated refrain: good plan, good plan, good plan.
Kamele moved, visibly relaxing, her hands moving briskly, as if she swept crumbs off a table, or finished with an idea. She glanced at the room's chronometer, and stretched.
"Maybe you'd better check with Phobai Murchinson about the times for bowli ball," she said. "You're pushing too hard, Theo. Relax. Tomorrow, the next day, too—take some lectures. Pick a couple, and I'll join you. Take a few days off from math."
Theo looked hard into Kamele's face.
"But the scores . . ."
Kamele looked back, hard, and held up her hand, first finger extended.
"One," she said sternly. "As a teacher and a scholar I have noticed that, sometimes, the best one can do is to not think about a knotty problem. Brains need rest and diversion. More often than not, when the scholar returns to her vexing problem, the solution is obvious. Two."
She tipped her head to one side, like Coyster considering the merits of a new toy.
"This is the last time I expect to do this," she said slowly. "I am invoking Parental Override. You're on holiday. Go—do something else! Dance, turn somersaults in the hallway, but no more math, not today and not tomorrow. You're on holiday!"
* * *
Jen Sar leapt sideways, rolling, meaning to get under the furniture and stay there until—
"Wait!" Kylin shouted, grabbing the outworlder's arm. "What are you—we can't kill Kiladi!"
"Certainly we can, and must," the woman snapped, wrenching herself free. "And if the Chapelia have withdrawn their support—"
"Why should they?" Skilings demanded. "The new order will be advantageous to them."
"The new order?" Ella ben Suzan asked loudly. "The new order where the university is in tatters and knowledge is suspect?"
They strode into the room, Ella, Monit Appletorn, Emeritus Professor Beltaire, Technician Singh and five Safeties, restraints adorning their belts.
"What is the meaning of this?" Skilings demanded. "Since when can colleagues not enjoy the company—"
"Matter of public safety," Appletorn interrupted. "Suspicion of intent to harm scholarship."
"And that," Professor Beltaire said in her voice that sounded like a breeze moving over yellowed paper, "is a weapon, Safeties. Please act according to your training."
"And Jen Sar," Ella added. "You can come out from beneath the couch, now."
Forty-One
Delgado
Theo stepped forward to grab Kamele's case off the conveyor belt, which she managed without bumping into the woman with the inefficient, jabbing gestures, and no sense of balance. That woman grabbed too soon, knocking her bag off the belt and dragging it against the direction of its rollers, missing running over Theo's feet by no effort of her own. Theo shook her head, scanning up the belt for her bag, wincing when the ambient sound system cycled from music to the "Welcome to Delgado" message. She'd hardly been in the terminal half an hour and she'd already had that announcement by heart. If she heard it much more—and it was, she thought glumly, certain that she would—maybe it would just fade into background noise.
Maybe.
Somebody was too close to her left shoulder. Theo shifted and turned her head, finding one of the numerous terminal "helpers" practically in her pocket. This one was not quite as old as Professor Crowley, and portly, the lavender smock with "helper" blazoned across the front stretched too tight over his paunch.
"Confused, dear?" he asked with a smile. He pointed at the exit ramp, off to the left. "Now that you have your baggage, you need to clear the area so that others can find theirs. Would you like me to help you?"
She spotted her case, far up still, riding down the almost exact center of the belt. Theo settled herself like she would for a menfri'at lunge.
"No, thank you," she said, keeping one eye on the target. "My mother asked me to get her case while I was getting mine." Because, she added grumpily, Kamele had to say "one last word" to Professor Crowley, like she was never going to see him again, or something.
"Your mother sent you to get two heavy cases all by yourself?" The helper, whose name, stitched in red on the left shoulder of his shirt, was "Hieri," demanded, sounding absolutely horrified. Theo blinked.
"They're not heavy," she said, mildly, as he
r bag crept closer down the crowded belt.
"But you're alone," he insisted.
Her case was almost within snatching distance. Theo rose slowly to the balls of her feet, leaned over and snagged the handle, safely clearing the shoulder of a man so intent on rescuing his own luggage that she doubted he even noticed she was there.
"Be careful!" Hieri yelled, but by that time Theo had put the bag down and had hit the button to telescope the handle. She hooked the two bags together with the magtether, turned—
And found her way blocked by the still-indignant Hieri. She stopped, her body dropping into the first, centering, menfri'at form before she had a chance to think.
Wait! she told herself, deliberately relaxing. He's only a busybody.
"I'm not alone," she said carefully. "My mother's in the terminal. I'm supposed to meet her at the Soybean on the first level—" she made a show of looking over his head to the local-time-and-weather display—"right now."
Hieri took a breath so deep his paunch shuddered. "I," he said firmly, "will escort you."
She stared at him, then shrugged. "If you want to, then you need to step back so I can get my bags rolling."
Grimly, he did just that, and Theo stepped out briskly, bags in tow, Hieri puffing at her side.
"Leaving a child alone in the terminal is not safety conscious!" he wheezed.
Theo looked at him. "Do you mean the terminal's not safe?"
He colored and shook his head violently. "No! No, that's not what I mean at all. What I mean is that children wander off, get distracted. A mother should always be with her child in this sort of crowded and—and unregulated situation!"
"Oh." Theo thought about that as they went down the ramp to the first level. It seemed like the sort of thing Marjene might say—was it only six Standard months ago? She glanced at the infoboard as they passed, noting the date—and noting it again. Six months, indeed!
"I'm not a child," she said to Hieri, which wasn't much of a fib, since tomorrow was her birthday.
Hieri peered at her as if he suspected her of playing an elaborate joke on him. "Have you had your Gigneri?" he asked.