Fledgling (10 page)

The silence from his side continued longer than she had expected. Her stomach had almost tied itself into a knot when he sighed.

"Theo," he said gently—no—
carefully
. "Please ask your mother if she will speak with me."

"Yes, sir." She diffidently looked to her mother. "Father . . . wonders if you'll talk to him."

For a second, she thought Kamele was going to refuse. Then she sighed sharply and thrust out a hand. Theo crossed the room and gave her the mumu.

"Jen Sar?" she began, in her briskest, coolest voice. "I—" She stopped. Closed her eyes. Coyster stood up, stretched—and jumped into her lap.

"Yes," Kamele said. "I am aware of your thesis that cats are symbiotic rather than parasitic. However, the fact remains that—" She stopped again, mouth tight. Coyster bumped his head against her free hand; she raised it absently and rubbed his ears. Theo held her breath.

"That's nonsense!" Kamele exclaimed. "There's nothing
strange
to her here! She has her Team, and her school work, and her—" Another sharp silence, while her fingers continued to rub Coyster's ears.

"Very well," Kamele said finally. "But
only
until the end of the term, are we—You're quite welcome, Jen Sar . . .  Yes, of course—and you, as well." She turned the mumu off, placed it on the table next to hers, and sat staring at the pair of them for a long moment. Theo kept as still as she could, hardly daring to breathe. Father had talked Kamele into letting Coyster stay, but that didn't mean that Theo couldn't talk her right out of it again by being a nidj.

Finally, Kamele looked up, and gave Theo a small smile.

"Professor Kiladi makes a strong case for the benefits of Coyster's continued residence here—at least until the end of the term," she said moderately. She picked Coyster up and put him gently on the floor, then rose, brushing cat fur off her coveralls.

"It's long past time for dinner," she said, and held out her hand. "Shall we see if the kaf will provide anything moderately edible?"

That was a peace offering. Theo smiled, reluctantly, and came forward to put her hand into Kamele's.

"All we can do," she said, "is try."

Teamplay: Scavage
Professor Stephen M. Richardson Secondary School
University of Delgado

"Four Team Three is the next to lowest ranked team in Fourth Form," Roni said, loudly, as they left their Ready Room for the first class of the day. "Why do you think that is, Theo?"

You know better than to answer that,
Theo told herself, and bit her lip. Roni wasn't just bad at consensus, sometimes it seemed like she was actively against it.

"I guess
you
never earned the Team a down," Kartor said, hotly. Theo blinked. Kartor never got into arguments.

" 'Course I have," Roni snapped. "But even
you
have to admit that five in one day is . . . exceptional."

Kartor's ears turned red. "What's that supposed to—"

"Casting blame is antisocial," Lesset spoke up. "We're a Team; we're supposed to help each other." She stared at Kartor, which was, Theo thought, trying to ignore the knot in her stomach, not fair.
Kartor
hadn't started the argument.

"Are we supposed to pretend that we don't know which member of our Team is pulling the rest of us down with her?" Roni rounded on Lesset, her chin and shoulders pushed forward. "We're supposed to practice intellectual honesty, aren't we?" She threw a nasty look over her shoulder at Theo. "And
advertency
."

Theo felt a rush of heat, and looked down to make sure of her footing as she mounted the belt.

"That's aggressive, Roni," Estan said sternly. Next to him Anj smiled absently and nodded.

"That's all right," said a cool, amused voice that Theo barely recognized as her own. "She's just peeved because, without me,
she'd
be the one who'd earned the most downs for the Team. Isn't that right, Roni?"

Kartor laughed, Lesset gasped, Estan looked stern, Anj kept on smiling.

Roni's face turned an interesting sort of purple-red color. Her lips parted. Theo watched her interestedly, wondering what she would say next.

But apparently Roni thought better of taking the argument further. She closed her mouth and faced front, shoulders stiff.

Theo took a shaky, secret breath, and looked around at the passing corridor, pretending she didn't see Estan frowning at her.

In spite of the acrimonious start, the rest of the day went smoothly for Four Team Three. 'Course, Theo admitted to herself, as they filed into study hall, that was mostly because their Team mates had been very careful to keep Theo and Roni as far away from each other as possible. Theo did her part by grabbing the study table at the very back of the room, and opened her school book with a feeling of relief tainted by the knowledge that the worst part of the day was still before her.

She'd just have to hang back at teamplay, she decided. Four Team Three couldn't afford any more downs—Roni was right about that. The best thing to do would be to let her teammates play while she concentrated on not bumping into anybody, or falling, or tripping over the cracks in the floor. . . . 

Theo sighed. For the millionth-and-twelfth time, she wished she wasn't so clumsy. In her head, she wasn't clumsy at all. In her head, she could see a pattern of how she and all the people and things in her vicinity
ought
to move, but when she tried to move like the pattern, she'd inevitably trip over a teammate, or pull them down, like she had done to Lesset yesterday. Teamplay was worse, even, than walking down the hall; and scavage was worst of all.

She sighed again as she remembered that she was supposed to have a "chat" with Marjene after teamplay. As her mentor, Marjene was committed to helping Theo negotiate and internalize the intricacies of social and intellectual interaction—that's what the Concierge said. Theo knew Marjene wanted to help make things easier for her, and she felt guilty—a little—for not liking her better and for not taking her advice more often.

Still, she thought, in an attempt to cheer herself up, after she lived through teamplay and her chat with Marjene, she could look forward to the delivery of her rug.

. . . which was good, she acknowledged, frowning at her 'book, but didn't quite make up for the fact that Kamele hadn't yet given her a decision about Oktavi evening. She
had
to see Father. The 'book's screen blurred, and Theo bit her lip, blinking hard—and blinked again, staring at the unfamiliar icon sitting in the bottom left corner of the screen.

It was a small, even a demure, icon, in official-looking dark green: a coiled Serpent of Knowledge,
Research
floating above it in precise green letters. Theo frowned. She was certain the green icon hadn't been on her screen yesterday, so it must've been downloaded from one of today's classes, but . . .  All their Sci work was done in Group Space, and Professor Wilit, their Social Engineering instructor, hadn't shared any links with the class today. Though Professor Wilit didn't always announce downloads or extra work assignments.

Well,
Theo thought,
it couldn't have gotten there by accident
. She must've just not noticed the download.

"Advertency," she muttered, remembering Roni's jibe. "As if."

She touched the green icon.

It unfolded, like a flower blooming, until the entire screen was limned in green, with a query box centered.

Name?
The floating green text asked.

A quiz, Theo thought, staring at the familiar layout. How in chaos had she missed
that
?

She keyed in her name. The center box faded as a new one glowed into being at center top.

Protocol
, the floating text said.
List primary line of inquiry.

Theo closed her eyes, thinking back to Social Engineering. She didn't remember Professor Wilit saying anything about a solo quiz, or an unscheduled paper. On the other hand, she discovered to her chagrin, she didn't remember much about any of the day's classes; it was like she'd been doing the work in her sleep.

She took a breath and brought her attention back to the screen.

Primary line of inquiry, for a Social Engineering solo? She chewed her lip. It
had
to be a Social Engineering solo, she decided. It was just like Professor Wilit. So. The little bit she remembered from today's class had to do with the mechanisms that societies put into place in order to enforce the goals of that society. She probably couldn't go wrong by initiating a line of inquiry into an enforcer protocol. The problem was narrowing the subject.

The Eyes don't watch everything,
she heard the bus whisperer's voice again.
Even we know that
.

Which was, now that she thought about it, kind of an . . . interesting . . . thing to know. Especially since
she
knew that the Eyes
did
watch everything. It was knowing that, as much as the Eyes themselves, that kept society safe.

Except . . . getting pushed wasn't exactly safe, was it? she asked herself, and reached for the keys.

Primary line of inquiry:
The Eyes, their purpose and their programmed watch cycles,
she typed, and paused . . . 

The box closed.

"I wasn't
finished,
" Theo muttered, tapping the screen where the box had been. It did not reappear, but a third one did, at the right margin.

Result Sought:
A graph or map,
Theo typed rapidly,
illustrating unwatched areas, with timetable
.

The box faded, and a fourth came into existence on the left.

Deadline?
it inquired, which gave her pause until she remembered that Professor Wilit never gave them deadlines for their work. She'd told them during their first class that she'd be doing a term-long study, and would share the results with them before the Interval. She'd said it would amuse them. Theo wasn't so sure—and, anyway, she liked to get her work done promptly. It wasn't like there was a lot of it, though if you listened to Lesset . . . 

ASAP
, Theo typed. The final box faded.

Accepted
, came the message, and Theo nodded, fingering open a notepad and beginning to tap in a preliminary source list. She wondered if anyone at the Safety Office would talk to her about the Eyes, and if she should ask Professor Wilit for a study-chit. Each student got three per grade-term, and she'd already used one of hers. If the Safeties wouldn't talk to her, even with the chit, then she'd have wasted it, and would have only one in reserve for the rest of the term.

Her mumu was suddenly warm, signaling receipt of a message. Theo pulled it out of the pocket in her coveralls and thumbed the window up; her stomach clenching when she saw the text was from Kamele. If she couldn't see Father on Oktavi . . .

Theo, you may keep your dinner engagement with Professor Kiladi
.

That was all.

Theo smiled and just sat there, holding her mumu and rereading that single line until the warning whistle sounded and it was time to pack up and go to teamplay.

They'd changed clothes and got to the practice floor ahead of time with Roni's, "Don't be slow, don't be late!" echoing through the corridor the whole way. Of course they weren't going to be late—everyone on the team was trying to be on their mettle with the last few sessions worth of setbacks and point-bleeds threatening to drop Four Team Three to the lowest in the school for the year, much less to the lowest ever in the team's history. Seventy-eight Four Team Threes had come before them, and only five had had lower scores at this point in the year.

Father had once threatened to write a column for
The Faq
in order to gain, so he said, a greater audience for what he called the
Fallacy of Infinite Comparability
. Kamele had given him one of those frowns that quivered at the edges, like she was covering up a laugh, and said that if he wanted to commit academic suicide over a triviality it was up to him.

Apparently he had decided that publishing the
Fallacy
wasn't quite worth academic suicide, because the column never appeared. Despite that, Theo knew he had a valid point—comparing their team to teams from so long ago was . . . meaningless, really, given tech advancements, alterations in teaching theory and four dozen other facts. She felt the weight of team history anyway, and it wasn't made any lighter by the fact that
she
was the one holding the rest of them down.

Theo escaped the girls' dressing room with more relief than usual.

Roni'd been walking around with her shirt half-on explaining in a loud voice to the female team members the importance of bringing the Team average up, starting right now; and some more time complaining that she'd have to buy another new set of blouses, and maybe new shoes, too, because she was growing so much.

"Every one of us has got to start acting mature!" she'd said sternly, veering between topics like a honeybumble between two nectar-filled blossoms. "We've got to take responsibility for our own actions and support the team properly!"

Theo had tried not to cringe under the barrage of "mature, growing-up, and act-adult," sentiments Roni'd thrown around—it sounded like she was just re-broadcasting the last things she'd heard from her mentor. Worse, Roni had
particularly
stared at Theo's chest when when she'd said, "growing up."

It wasn't until Theo arrived at the game court that she realized why Roni had been talking quite so loudly and importantly. Normally, Roni wasn't much for the active games like Scavage—she said they made her sweat too much—but this was her second turn as captain, and Roni liked to be in charge!

That's antisocial!
Theo told herself, and bent into her warm ups with a will, trying to focus on the Team, rather than the individuals.

As she warmed up, she heard the sounds of the balls being readied above the court; the slow clunks and chirps as they rode the ball-lift up to the ceiling feed tubes. Involuntarily, she looked up—but the launch bin wasn't open yet so she wasn't really trying to get a jump on the game.