- Prologue

Theo received the pad, staring at it like she'd never seen one before. A route-following message for her? But—if it was so important it couldn't be sent to her mail drop, why not a pinbeam?

The Scout and the staffer left. Win Ton was making a painful motion with his hand, and this time she could read the signs: privacy query.

She shook her head, tucked the pad against her side so she could sign—a moment only—and touched hand to key plate.

URGENT for Pilot THEO WAITLEY Hugglelans Lines from KAMELE WAITLEY.

She sat, heavily, waiting for the rest of the message to resolve. From across the table, she heard heavy breathing.

The message was short and wrenching, with the unsaid as unsettling as the said.

Daughter Theo, I am sending this to Hugglelans and to your Guild, and apologize if multiple messages reach you, or if the cost seems exorbitant. I act as your mother in this, and not as an accountant.

Jen Sar has disappeared in midsemester, without notice to me or to the Administration, on his off day before mid-tests. The only clue I can gather is of a small and dilapidated spaceship long unflown, departing Delgado the same day, from an airfield within easy drive, flown by one of his description. His car, keys on seat, fishing gear in place, sat in an assigned spot there. The spaceship, so station informs me, is not in Delgado space.

Within a day of his departure, I discovered that the house on Leafydale Place, all possessions, and especially the cats, are gifts to me. I continue the tea run, with fading hopes. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

Kamele

Theo banged the pad on the table as if the message might be shaken into something other, and then grabbed it up again and reread it, the sense of it the same, the whole of it senseless. Father wouldn't just leave!

'Theo?'

Win Ton was standing quite near; she'd been so concentrated on Kamele's letter that she hadn't heard him move. He was doing his best not to look at the memo screen, so much so that she struggled against a laugh and lost to a resulting snarfing giggle.

'Theo, is there . . . a problem?'

He stood with a steadying hand on table, and she managed to strangle the giggle into words.

'Win Ton, my father's gone.'

His mottled face showed a change from intent interest to blandness back to some emotion she couldn't name, as if his illness betrayed his training.

Hand still braced against the table, he bowed a special bow, indicating respect for the elders, and said something in Liaden which she understood part of, and something else in Liaden, which got by her ear entirely. Within a heartbeat, he bowed again, murmuring in Terran, what must have been the translation: 'May you have all joy in the memory of your loved one.'

'No,' she burst out. 'He's not dead! He's gone. Missing! Run away from his classes in a beat-up spaceship and—his classes!'

Win Ton went through another set of changes, relief perhaps coming into his shoulders, while his eyebrows drew painfully together.

'And has he never before—'

'No, not ever not ever!'

Theo realized that she'd banged the memo pad onto the table again.

'Sorry,' she said, very low, and then took it to Liaden, with proper gravity, 'Forgive me if I offend in this moment of uncertainty.'

'No offense,' he murmured, inclining his head.

Theo closed her eyes momentarily. Inner calm, she told herself, deliberately relaxing tight muscles. She opened her eyes. Win Ton was still standing, braced against the table, his arm trembling with strain.

'Please,' she said, alarmed, 'sit. This—this is not your problem. I'm not sure it's my problem, except—'

Win Ton stood away from the table carefully, a soothing hand barely touching hers before he moved back to his chair.

'Your father, this is the Jen Sar Kiladi you spoke of?'

Theo nodded, staring again at the screen and Kamele's last, accusatory sentence. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

'Kamele thinks I must have known,' she said. 'He had a spaceship on world, and he never mentioned it.'

Win Ton's hands now soothed her from a distance, his fingers moved, maybe trying to form words. After a moment, he folded them together on the table.

She looked down at the pad again, trying to think clearly. What could she do, after all? Go to Delgado and stare at a car full of fishing poles? Witness an empty spot in a ship park she'd never known of?

'I repeat, Sweet Mystery.' The irony in his hoarse voice penetrated and brought her eyes to Win Ton's face.