- Prologue

made sure she relaxed.

Lying in the top bunk, she smiled. Bek had been a good onagrata, even though they'd both gone into the First Pair knowing they'd each be going off in different directions.

Despite the tea or because of it, she'd slept deeply, if alone, and managed to get up and dress without waking Asu, whose schedule put her on late-day, and took herself to math class, adding a note to shop for tea on the joint to-do list.

Math drill done, and filed, Theo looked around. Others were still at work, which was something she was used to from the Wall, so she did some calculations in her head, trying to keep herself from remembering that there'd been a live pilot in that craft—somebody Chelly had known—trying to concentrate on the drill's final question, which to her mind had two mutually antagonistic answers. She'd chosen the simple one, of course.

Visualizing the other one—no, well, she probably shouldn't use the desk for that, not with others around her still working. She resorted then, like she had at the Wall, to her needle. She slipped it and a length of thread out of a cargo pocket, and bent to work, stretching out a point on the fabric here, and one there . . . and after all, since the fabric was malleable and penetrable she could consider that the needle might be the spaceship and the . . .

The sounds around her changed, which probably meant the rest of the class was finished with the drill. Theo glanced up. Peering at her from the next row was the instructor herself, Pilot Truffant.

'No, Trainee, please don't let me interrupt your work. I'm sure it must be fascinating.'

Theo felt her face warm, but she had, she thought, earned some sarcasm. After all, it wasn't very advertent to be discovered doing needlework in math class. The low laughter of her classmates didn't help.

She took a breath and answer the instructor calmly.

'Yes, Pilot.'

The instructor moved closer.

'Good, good. We'd hate for you to be bored, here at Anlingdin. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to explain why, in the face of your incoming scores, you find this a compelling way to follow up on a drill.'

'Yes, Pilot,' Theo said. 'I was thinking about the last question on the drill. The work here,' she raised the unfinished lacework, 'was helping me think.'

'Very good. The needle-and-haystack approach to space navigation, I take it?'

Theo looked at the instructor. She seemed more amused than taunting.

'I'm not familiar with the term,' Theo admitted, while some few in the class sputtered. 'But, on the drill, there was the answer I thought you wanted, and then there was the second answer. I needed—'

'Enough!'

But Theo had already stopped, obedient to Pilot Truffant's hand-talked stop.

'You intrigue, Waitley. Please hold your work a moment.'

The instructor turned to the larger class.

'The rest of you are done with the drill. How many were concerned about the 'second answer'?'

No one moved or spoke; the instructor glanced down at her handheld readout and said finally, 'This is excellent. All of you have the final answer right. I salute!'

She fit action to words, saluting in all directions, and then leaned toward Theo, face intent.

'The answer I expected is the one you gave,' she said quietly. 'Now, what does your needle say about the second answer?'

Theo looked down at her work, and then up at the instructor again, grimacing as she tried to put words to thoughts. There were more sounds around as several of the lab students from the other class drifted in, pushing a small materials cart.

'The easy answer,' she said after a moment—'that answer is missing a dimension somehow. That is, it is right as far as it goes, so I'm glad I have that. But we're—see, the string-contraction effect needs to be in here; it may be negligible on a clean-paper arithmetic run but we can't assume that's what we have and—'

The hand-talked sharp thought hold mouth hold came quickly, and then:

'Enough, Waitley, enough. You anticipate a lesson some days in the future. I hope you'll have time after the lab to discuss your cloth computer with me.'

'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.'

Six

Lunch Break

Anlingdin Piloting Academy

'You walk everywhere, don't you?'

'Did the soldiers threaten you?'

'Were you scared?'

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