- Prologue

dreaming about classes, especially math, like she'd finally cleared some cobwebs and gotten to work. The independent study was a good motivator, and she felt almost like she owed Wilsmyth thanks for the now-healed gash on the side of her head.

Another reason she liked this particular walk, besides the fact that it was often deserted, was that it gave a good view of the planes on final approach to the airfield. A few days before she'd seen a really awkward turn-in and approach, while high and away between the field and the mountain a pair of soarplanes rode brilliant in the aqua sky. She had seen a couple of her landings on video and was really glad that none looked as nervous as that one, which had ended more in a series of bounces than a proper landing.

That was the problem, of course—lots of people around the field also saw that landing—and later in the day there was talk of yet another of the local students being sent home before school end. It was eerie the way the school population seemed to be thinning out as the final grading period approached.

Unexpectedly, she heard voices ahead of her where the path rounded a copse of lush red brambleberry. She stepped to the side of the path as a group of fast-moving DCCT members appeared, Kara in the lead.

'Theo, just in time! But you're going the wrong way!'

Kara stopped, bringing the whole team to a crowded halt, familiar faces and unfamiliar together.

Theo signed blankly none there, pointing toward the dorm parapet rising above the trees in the distance.

'Might be, but there's a ship coming in, and we're going to go down to see it.'

'There's always a ship coming in . . .' Theo pointed out as a Star King IV obligingly dropping down through the clouds toward the main landing strip.

Theo's hand-sign was flip—overlooked obvious.

'I mean a spaceship.' Kara's hand adding new info just in.

'The shuttle is still parked . . .'

A shake of heads, and from the back, a voice she didn't recognize—

'Spaceship. You know, interstellar. We got a call from the field, they thought we might want to see this.'

'Here? Where will it fit? What is it?'

'Right. That's what we want to see . . .  Come on down with us! DCCT is on the move!'

The Seriously Official Recognized Name of the organization was the Diverse Cultures Celebration Team. Like almost all the other clubs on campus they managed to do something sometime that earned points or competed with other groups or that got them all out at one time cooking and eating foods that they'd never faced at their milk tables, so they got to call themselves a team.

Some of the upperclassmen in the club were part of the DCCT dorm, which had odd floor names and was repainted every few weeks to celebrate this or that significant event in some culture somewhere. The club met there in a permanently assigned room which was certainly furnished in an amalgam one could call diverse, if not outright strange.

Most of the campus just called them the Culture Club, and Theo was feeling oddly comfortable as its newest member. Maybe it had to do with the feeling that no one was actually in charge, except, maybe, sometimes, Kara. It might have had something to do with the tea selection, which was downright amazing. Or it might simply be that compared to the local students, she was as diverse as anybody else.

Delgado, of course, was a world that celebrated education, cultural enlightenment, and diversity as could be. From experience, Theo knew that diversity stopped just outside Delgado's Wall, and if Anlingdin Academy was different she had little way of knowing.

Theo's first visit to DCCT had been the day after her flight with her mentors, and she'd been pleased then to discover the tea, and almost as pleased to be involved in a discussion, by agreement limited to hand-talk, of the best morning foods. Anlingdin's musch meal was widely regarded as the boringest breakfast food in the galaxy, and she had been surprised to find herself both missing some foods from home, and interested enough in those described by others to get hungry.

Theo'd seen a tall, underspoken fellow who was in her math class hand-wishing the school could make a decent maize button, and she burst out laughing.

Button quick easy she signed confidently, if time breaks clear could make some for both of us, good choice.

For some reason that launched the group into chuckles and ignited a flare of signs she wasn't clear on, and a few she was, but couldn't see how they'd got there . . .

In the midst, Bova Yenkoa, a very pretty young man with a small beard, signaled time out, and addressed Theo in Trade, laughing and shaking his head.

'Now see, that's a problem. On Finifter if an unmarried woman invites a man to breakfast at her house and doesn't mention that a mother or sister or someone else female is going to be there, that's an invitation for a bed- party.'

Theo waved her hand—incomplete information here query.

'And similar on Grundig,' Bova went on. 'And on Grundig, once you make an offer, it stands until the next house-blessing. Got to be careful what you offer to whom there, I tell you!'

More laughter ensued and some maybe not-quite-true stories about friends who had problems with such things, and by the time the stories had worn out, it was late and Theo was surprised at how relaxed she felt.

The second time she'd visited, the ongoing argument in hand-talk was about ships, and about companies you didn't work for, and worlds that were too much trouble to visit so the pilots going there just stayed on ship for the duration. She'd been pleased and surprised to find Kara there—and then just pleased.

She'd gone again, gotten more of the names down. She missed Kara by a few moments that time, but found others to talk to.