Saltation (6 page)

"Now, Waitley," said Pilot Truffant, "the drill's fine and so is your lab. You just finish that up on your time this evening. I wanted to tell you that I looked at your flight profile from yesterday. You made some wide-awake choices there, some challenging choices. I think that flight'll be flown a few times in the next semester or two, in sim and for real. While I could have done it in your five minutes I'm not sure there's more than a dozen on campus who could have matched it, all things considered."

Truffant cleared the lab stuff away cheerfully, and then insisted:

"Really, I'd like you to show me that other solution you were working on. I've banned an abacus, an antique slide-stick, three kinds of subvocal calculators, and a pet norbear from class in the past. Now I wonder if I have to ban needles and string."

"You walk everywhere, don't you?"

"Did the soldiers threaten you?"

"Were you scared?"

"How did you get the Slipper to
do
that?"

"Are you sleeping with anyone?"

The girl who asked that got poked in the ribs by the young man next to her. That sparked some laughter and ribaldry which gave Theo a chance to catch her breath and take a sip without looking like she wasn't paying attention.

If any of the questions surprised her more than any others she couldn't say; the good news was that a couple of the crowd were kind enough to use recognizable hand-talk, and that gave her something to concentrate on, besides trying to eat.

They'd walked her in to the lunch room like she was leader of the pack, but partly it might have been to make sure no one else joined them.

All of them were from the math lab; all had been at the school longer than she had and they all wanted to be close to her, where before they barely acknowledged her.

She managed to answer some questions.

"I wasn't scared," she said after another sip of whatever soft drink someone brought her, "because I was just too busy." Here she interjected with her hands, pointing toward the could-be instrument panel and signing
updown, north, wind speed, drift, drift, updown, clock
.

"The order came and I had to find a way to get the ship out of the air, and the mountain was nearest . . . 

"Afterwards,
then
I was shaky and wanted to dance!"

For some reason that prompted laughter, and she grabbed a bite as people quieted and then looked as the youngster—she recognized him as one of the Erkes local students—blurted into the silence, "You always walk so fast and . . ."

She agreed, nodding in his direction. "I do. I like to walk, but there's not really enough time to just take a hike, and I'm usually a little late . . ."

Again, some laughter and smiles, and the pair staring back and forth at each other with furtive hand-talk that looked like
Later alone ask
and an assent and . . . 

"But the Slipper was great," she said, getting back to another question, "except I'd never landed in that kind of a head wind before. I really had to trick her down with a sideslip . . ."

Here Theo demonstrated with a hand motion and a swing of the shoulders and then a dual slide of hands toward the tabletop. Then she laughed, doubling the attention on her.

"The only time I worried about the soldiers is when I made them hold the Slipper and one didn't understand so good about paying attention. He let the starboard wing loose before I got the tiedowns set and it almost clipped his nose."

"You made the soldiers help?"

Theo snickered.

"Did I have a choice? You think I'm going to let a school Slipper fall off a mountain if I can help it? They insisted I was going with them, and right away, but the rotor pilot, he told them I was right, the ship needed to be tied down else it might run into his machine at liftoff. So yes, the soldiers helped."

The other hand-talkers, not the hormone addicts, were more readable:
saw flight well done
came her way and
bowli ball after?

That sounded good, but she really wasn't going to have time.
Not today,
she managed and,
thank you.

Normally lunch was a chance for Theo to think over math or math lab, and even to eat. Today she was having a hard time fitting the food in around fielding questions and watching the hands for words.

The quarter chime sounded, barely discernible above the conversation buzz at table; in moments the group—all carefully nodding, saying, or signing their good-bye to Theo—was off in disparate directions.

Theo heard or felt the presence of someone behind her, and turned to see—

Asu.

Her roomie sighed gently, and without asking pulled out a chair and sat heavily.

"It won't last, you know." she said, waving at the empty chairs. "Once people figure out that you don't want to be friends, don't need to be friends, and can't do anything for them, they'll look for some other fast line."

Theo raised empty hands and shrugged. "I don't know why . . ."

Asu made a sound remarkably similar to one of Lesset's triumphant I-knew-it noises.

"Have you seen the news, Theo? Do you know how many comm calls I've denied this morning? I mean—you survived!"

Theo looked to the ceiling before hoisting the last of her drink and guzzling it. She was going to need to start walking soon . . . 

"I don't much follow the news, Asu. Not politics, not finance, not even sports."

That last was a bit of a cut, and she was exaggerating, anyway.

Asu wrinkled her nose.

"Look, what's going on is the local newsies—and I mean planetary, not continental!—they've got these great long distance vids, even a satellite shot or two, of you throwing the Slipper around like it's an aerobat while the military chases public menace number one in your direction. Two expert commentators following the chase say there's no possible place for you to land and right there you calmly slot the thing in with a half wing-span to spare, just in time for the public menace to get obliterated, kabloom!"

Asu's sound effects and hand motions brought stares; Theo blushed and looked away. When she looked back, Asu's full attention was on her face.

"Look," Theo insisted, "all I did was land the Slipper. That's
all
. They told me they wanted the sky empty. That's what I did. This other stuff—" Theo found herself looking at the ceiling and its suspended model aircraft, moons, and spacecraft. "This other stuff isn't really about me."

Asu sighed slightly.

"I know—and I'm glad you know. It isn't your fault that Chelly's old bestguy and mentor was idiot enough to get shot down."

Theo looked up, eyes wide, and shook her head.

But Asu was nodding, with a certain amount of grimness.

"Chelly told me this morning. They were bestboys till Hap left and then didn't ever even answer a bit of comm . . . left him flat."

Theo grimaced. Just what they needed in close quarters, a senior with a problem love life come back to haunt him.

Asu sighed. She looked tired for a moment, then shook herself into businesslike.

"So," she said briskly. "I caught news reports for you; they're filed in your shared inbox, if you want them."

"Thanks," Theo said, not certain if she did want them. Still, it had been nice of Asu.

"You're welcome," Asu said, rising, with a shapeless flap of her hand. "I'll see you later, Theo. I've got to get to class."

Theo had class, too, and ran most of the way.

Commerce and Transport 111 was usually a dry, quiz-heavy class. Long-retired full-Terran cargo master Therny Chibs was the professor. Theo saw his lanky form just ahead and sped up to get to the door of the classroom before he did, squeezing by as he turned to address a question from a student who stood outside waiting.

Theo found classmates making room for her as she hurried to the back of the lecture room, still a bit unsettled by how many of the people acted like they knew who she was. Not likely, given the size of the class.

She'd already memorized and been tested on thirteen common forms for the class, and expected a quiz today on two more. Professor Chibs had never met a form he didn't like, nor a reporting protocol he didn't admire. If she was lucky it would be two more and not three, because she hadn't quite caught up with—

"We'll start," said Chibs in his twangy accent, "by requesting those of you who live by the syllabus or who are taking the class feed for catch-up to disconnect recording devices and save those pre-made form files for next class, when we'll return to boring you all with material that you'll only need to know if you graduate."

He chuckled at the startled looks, the same way he chuckled when gleefully pointing out some overlooked tick-box on a paper-filed support form.

"We have an object lesson to hand, and we shall use it. It comes to us in the shape of perhaps the most widely known pilot on the planet for the next two days, our own Theo Waitley."

It felt like the whole room turned to stare at her, tucked away as she was in the back corner. She sat up, and watched the professor warily.

"Oh no, you've all seen the news, I'm sure. Good landing, good landing, yes. Everyone knows what she did right, I'm sure. Now, with the pilot's leave, if you will listen to
me
closely rather than staring at Pilot Waitley, I'm going to tell you what was done wrong."

Pilot Waitley
. There it was again.

The professor's hands flashed
permission request pilot acknowledge
so fast she almost had to assume it rather than read it.

Well, there. If she'd done something wrong she'd better know about it so she didn't have to depend on luck next time. She answered
here for learning.

"Good, good," Professor Chibs said out loud, turning his back momentarily on the class before unleashing a large image of a Slipper to every desk top.

"Consider this," he said at volume as he turned back to peer at them, "your ship. You are a pilot, the ship is in your care. At what point does local traffic control, or local military for that matter, get to dictate what you do with it?"

Theo felt wrung out, if only from waiting for her errors to be told. Mostly, though, if she'd understood Professor Chibs correctly, the mistakes that had been made weren't exactly
her
mistakes. It was true that she'd failed to ask landing permission from the Mountain Commissioners, but that was arguably covered under the so-called Port In A Storm protocols.

Still, it was unnerving hearing her name used in terms of "Waitley's liability to pay for the ship if it were damaged" and, "In space, on a job run, Waitley must, and all of you must, take tactical news reports for your flight zones. That she wasn't informed of this is unfortunate, and that mistake is partially the school's curriculum and partially the fault of the equipment or lack of it on the Slipper. Your ship is your life."

He paused then, and an image of her Slipper, sitting on the mountain ridge, appeared. She wanted a copy of that—the Slipper looked beautiful!

"That's it then. No one signed for the ship, no one accepted legal or fiscal responsibility. No one offered, promised, or required a written return-to-ship. No one offered or promised hazard pay or indemnity. No one apologized—well, her instructor did, but none of the authorities on the scene. The debriefing was not done in a neutral location. On-site, the pilot demanded and received, through the intercession of another, more senior, pilot, a very basic securing of the ship, which was well done." Here he fell into hand talk for emphasis:
listen listen listen.

"Do not undervalue detail, people. Do not undervalue info trails. Do not let the bureaucrats overwhelm you to the point that you, as a pilot, cannot fend for your ship. Do not forget that, on the whole, in a trouble spot, you first depend on your ship and yourself. You may listen to traffic control, but you must depend on pilot sense to survive."

Chib paused again, looked in her direction, and did a sort of half bow.

"Pilot Waitley, thank you."

Then he straightened, disappearing the Slipper from the desk tops, and raised his voice.

"Essay assignment due in ten days is entered into the log. I look forward to your analysis. Next class, back to the forms! Dismissed!"

"Do you see that?" Asu whispered fiercely to Theo as they took their place in line. "They're still throwing packages around like they don't care down here! Why doesn't the school just pay for a package system instead of using children like that to do the work?"

The
children
Theo was seeing were all bigger than her, and a couple of them were worth watching as they quietly hauled packages from the semi-pods that brought them directly out of the small transport sitting tubed to the building.

Not only that, for all that they were moving the packages rapidly out of the semi-pods, they didn't seem to be harming anything. As Father had pointed out to her on more than one occasion, the more noise you made, the more likely it was that you were using too much force.

The mail handlers were making a minimum of noise, their motions precise and controlled. There was no spinning, no random flinging, no purposeful shoves. Rather each package was selected, tossed gently by the tall young woman in the blue work top or the muscular guy with the strange mostly-bald-but-ponytail hairdo, and caught quietly, with an odd twisting motion . . . 

Asu's complaints were subdued at the moment, and Theo gathered that the young man on the left side of the receiving line, the one with the shorts and—one willingly imagined—overall tan, was the object of her distraction.

That interesting twisting motion wasn't entirely a show-off, either, Theo saw. Instead, it looked like the handlers were making sure a read strip on each package was illuminated by a quick rainbow of light . . . 

" 'Ware!" cried Blue Top over the bustle of the room, as the package she was in the process of moving took on an uncharacteristic wobble.