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Fledgling
...A Liaden Universe® Adventure
by
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
...the story of Theo Waitley and how she came to have a "kind of complicated" problem to lay before the delm of Korval.
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Chapter Eighteen
Like
everything else on the ship, the Arcade was too big and too ornate;
certainly it was too noisy. Theo followed Win Ton through the
sliding gates and was nearly overwhelmed by the racket. Such a
blast of sound and distracting lights would never have been allowed in
the Wall; it couldn't be either safe or secure to have so many things
going on at once!
On the other hand, with the norbear buzz still in
her head and the feeling she had, the will to dance so strong, the
noise seemed to echo and ...almost... satisfy some craving she hadn't
'til this minute known she'd had.
Win Ton had a plan, so she kept his shoulder close to hers as he sought whatever ....
He paused for a moment, and she thought he'd found
it ... but maybe he was watching the woman with the stupidly tiny
skirt walk by – as were half the people on deck it seemed like.
Pffft ... she didn't move half as well as Win Ton himself, or Cho...
but then his gaze traveled on. He nodded, sort of, like he was
pointing with his chin.
“There! Sweet mystery, you are about to get
your wish!” There was a note of something in his voice –
excitement? -- and she looked in the direction he'd pointed.
There was a trio of platforms, one barely
above floor level and swathed in a pulsing green light. The next
level, to its right and up a ramp, was bathed in a lurid red
light with a double pulse. The third was higher still, with a
blue-silver nimbus and dozen of smaller overhead highlights reflecting
off its glittering hardware.
The beat off the first platform was plain and simple, and on it were three adults, trying to do something...
There...
Win Ton leaned comfortably into Theo's shoulder,
murmuring; she needed to lean closer to his face to hear him, which was
not a problem.
“I said, Theo, that we need not start on the base
platform if you don't wish to. It only goes up to level nine.”
The three adults, Theo saw suddenly, were dancing --
sort of -- in a semi-coordinated kind of way, each following a pattern
that was projected in Tri-D in front of them. The image showed
them where to place their feet next, with hints for tempo and hand
location... and they weren't all that good at it. There were ...
scores they must be, at the top of the Tri-D, points for doing things
right. It looked like the three dancers were being
corrected quite a bit by the machine; it looked like they were on level
three. The man in the center ... he wasn't too bad, she decided,
watching him catch the beat and watching his hips move a bit
extravagantly...
“Have you danced these before?" Win Ton asked. "Do you see the scoring?”
She shook her head to indicate no. The guy in
the center had it now -- he was really moving with the beat...
“No," she finally said to Win Ton, "but I see how they work.”
“There's room on the next platform,” he said into her ear, “if you can give over gawking...”
The beat and the movement and the patterns on
the Tri-D were sort of mesmerizing, and watching people was good...but
she felt there'd been something else he thought was funny in that
phrase...
He offered his hand and she took it as they skirted
the dancers and arrived at the red-bathed platform. Here were two
younger dancers, on the first and third of the level's four dance
pads. The music was louder, and Theo saw Win Ton's free hand move
as if he was saying something to her...
“What?” she asked, leaning in, because ...
“I said,” he said conspiratorially close to her ear,
“this one goes up to level eighteen, but these tourists are hardly more
skilled than the first level people... up with you, she who dances, up!”
Theo tried to get give him a quieting glance, but he
was already on the ramp, heading for the third level, and there was
nothing she could do but follow him. There were two people
already on the left two pads....
The silver platform was more than head height above
the common floor, and a fair number of people were watching the two
dancers... but then people were doing and watching and walking to their
own needs all about, and the beat and the norbear buzz was still with
her, making her feet tap against the floor and the her fingers twitch
with the rhythm of the dance in progress.
The scores for both dancers were rising steadily,
the right one more rapidly than the left. Forcing herself to
concentrate, Theo watched them, noting that the right-hand dancer's
eyes were half-closed, as if he was barely watching the pattern while
his body wove from move to move. His partner, on the other hand,
was staring at the pattern hard, every motion deliberate.
Theo leaned close to Win Ton's shoulder.
“That's not very fair," she said into his ear. "The man on the
right is -- is a dancer, and the other one isn't!"
Win Ton made a hand motion again, and as she glanced
at him she found his face serious and interested. Again she had to lean
in, for not being able to hear him.
“Well,” he said carefully... “You may be
right. Still, the one on the left is making a good effort.
Effort should count for something, should it not?"
There was question there she didn't quite get... but
at that point the dancer on the right nearly fell, and shrugging,
laughed and pulled the one on the left away. Arm-in-arm, they
descended the ramp to the floor level, while the Tri-D screen flickered
back to the starting screen and the dance pads darkened.
“There," Win Ton said with satisfaction.
"We have it to ourselves, sweet mystery... please choose your
pad." He glanced at her with a smile. “First one to give up buys
lunch.”
“I'm really clumsy, you know!” Theo said seriously, taking the pad all the way on the left.
Win Ton smiled, bowed, and said, “Then I will pay for the dance since you will pay for lunch.”
He waved his key card in front of the panel, the lights came up, the beat started, and the pattern formed.
Theo put her foot forward. Silly challenge or not, she still wanted to dance.
*
They were both sweating, involved, unaware, sharing a moment of movement alone among many.
Kamele stood transfixed, watching along with dozens
of others as the dancers on the high platform laughed at each other,
Theo sticking her tongue out at something her partner said, her hand
in flippant motion to the beat that was gone, waiting for
the next round on the machine, entranced.
On the level below were four young men, dancing hard
... each had aspired to the higher level and had given up after a dance
or two; the pair on the top hardly noticed their arrival -- or their
departure.
“How much longer?” Kamele asked, faintly.
“They have finished level thirty-five,” Cho said,
“my apprentice and your daughter. The game has only one more to offer –
it is called 'The Overdrive Level.'”
Kamele shook her head extravagantly. “Overdrive? I must tell Ella about this!”
A woman, resplendent in a gold and red Arcade
uniform, paused at Kamele's side and smiled up at the two silver-limned
dancers. "They're the best we've had so far this trip," she said,
sounding for all the words like a fond mother. "Most people don't get
past level thirty." She nodded impartially at Kamele and Cho and
passed on into the crowd.
Kamele sputtered, looked at Cho...
“He's not just letting her keep up, is he?”
Cho laughed then.
“Kamele Waitley, as enchanting as your daughter may
be, I think young Win Ton has not the 'let her win' wit in his
head." She paused, apparently weighing the efforts the pair on
the high platform, then looked back, smiling.
"No," she said,
almost too softly to be heard under the whistles, claps and
encouragement shouted by the watchers on the arcade floor.
"Assuredly, he is not 'letting' her keep up."
*
“I almost got you on that last, Theo Waitley!”
She laughed and stuck her tongue out -- “Was I the
one who almost fell on his face because of a simple waltz step?”
“Admit it -- a trick move! And who on Liad
learns waltzes from Terra, I ask you? Again I say, a trick move.”
She moved her hand, mimicking the motion that he
seemed to use for the more ironic flavors of 'no'... “All right, and
what was that thing that made you laugh, if you please?”
Win Ton sputtered momentarily before dredging up a
decent answer for one quite so young, “It is a preliminary move, taught
in classes of... of marriage lore.”
She snorted, her hand still on the beat of the last round. “Oh, ho, and you've been married?”
He glanced to the far ceiling... “Nay, I was
not. But it was a near thing, and nearer still, if the Captain
had not accepted me as her apprentice. So, you see, I am doomed,
whichever foot I stand upon."
Theo laughed, and he used that as an excuse to move
to the board, fingers hovering above the selection for the next level.
“Are you ready, sweet mystery?”
“I am if you are,” she said, and found her hand picking up the beat, her foot moving in anticipation...
“Go!” he said, and smacked the start plate with his toe.
*
Theo wished she was wearing her dance outfit; as it
was she chaffing where her rolled up sleeves collected, and her socks
were bunching in her shoes.
But, really, she didn't have much time to think
about other things. She was aware – very aware – of Win Ton's moves
next to her, even though he wasn't really part of her pattern -- and
she could tell when he was even slightly out of step, which wasn't
often. Together, they'd torn through the first section of the
level, and then hit a complex series of moves seemingly a repeat of an
earlier pattern, as if the game-programmer was toying with them.
Surely they weren't going to ...
There! The tempo picked up again, and now the music
was going into something her dancing instructor called contrapuntal
dysrhythmia, with the point being that the dance moves were not in sync
with the music.
Theo laughed and dared a glance at Win Ton, who saw
her look and made a silly face. She laughed again, caught the
next footwork and saw that, too, was being silly.
And then she...
Almost fell over.
The music -- just stopped. A weird rumbling
noise shook the platform. Lights flashed. A buzzer went off. The Tri-D
screen flashed wildly, and glittery streamers fell from somewhere,
tangling in her hair, cluttering the dance pad, and drifting in the air
from the blowers.
She spun, careful of her footing among the fallen
streamers, and stared at Win Ton, who was stubbornly kicking at
the start plate.
“What happened?”
He flung his hands out, and gave her a grin.
“Alas, we have beaten the machine. There are no more levels to
dance.”
Theo fuffed hair out of her face.
“It can't be over. I still have dance left!”
Win Ton laughed again, and suddenly pointed over the edge of the platform....
“Oh no, I must have missed my lesson -- and you,
yours! There stand my captain and your mother, and I very much fear it
is going to go badly with for us.”
She fuffed her hair out of her face again, saw her
mother waving at her to come down. “Kick it again,” she
said to Win Ton. "Maybe it'll start if we both kick it!”
* *
"Chancellor?" Ella repeated, hoping she didn't look as utterly confounded as she felt.
"Possibly vice-chancellor," Jen Sar said, and gave
her one of his more whimsical smiles. "You understand, we are at
yet at the planning stages."
She took a breath and considered him
carefully. He returned her regard steadily, one eyebrow slightly
out of true, which was never a good sign, though it was certainly
better than the serious and reasonable expression. Fifteen years
association had taught Ella what she considered to be merely a prudent
respect for Jen Sar Kiladi when he was being reasonable.
"Am I drunk?" he asked interestedly. "Or merely deranged?"
"The question is, are you more deranged than usual,"
she told him. "You're too fastidious to get drunk."
"Now, how am I to take that?"
"Any way you like," she said cordially. "In
the meantime, let me be sure I've understood this simple question of
yours. Would I be willing to stand up as chancellor? Do I
have that correctly?"
"Indeed, that is most wonderfully correct."
Ella raised her cup and sipped cold all-nighter coffee.
"Of course I'm willing to stand up as chancellor --
or vice-chancellor," she said, humoring him. "It's my honor and
my duty to serve. Will it spoil the game to point out that I'm in
no way qualified to do so, if we were in need of either, which, unless
something dire has happened in the last few hours, we're not?"
The errant eyebrow rose slightly higher. "The future is uncertain," he commented mildly.
"So it is. And for some of us the present is overburdened with work. Jen Sar --"
"And you underestimate your qualifications," he
interrupted. "But, if you are willing to serve, should necessity
arise, we may deal with specifics later."
He shook his head. Perhaps he meant his smile
to be apologetic, Ella thought; it was poorly done enough that it might
even be genuine. For some value of genuine.
"What if I were to suggest that the search program
in that computer --" He leveled a finger at Theo's school book,
where it sat on the corner of her desk, screen still displaying that
disturbing list of cites. "Is under the control of several agents
deeply rooted inside the university, of whom the recently departed
Professor Flandin was the least and the least competent?"
Ella took another sip of dreadful coffee.
Kamele would had told him, she thought -- or not. Jen Sar
gathered information the way most people breathed.
"What do you know?"
He tipped his head.
"Not a great deal. I have guesses,
suppositions. The fact of the wire in Professor Flandin's
previous apartment is ...interesting, don't you think?"
"Interesting," she repeated, and sighed and made a
decision. "You'll have heard that the reason Kamele has gone
off-planet with the research team is because our archives have been --
compromised. When she brings the results of the search back,
whatever it is --"
"When she brings those results back," Jen Sar
interrupted, leaning forward slightly to catch her gaze on his.
"It must be the final proof, not the first. We must prepare the
way for her, so that necessary action may go forth as quickly and as
painlessly as possible."
* *
"We scarcely had a workout at all!" Win Ton said to
Cho sig'Radia across the table the four of them had claimed at
Breakfast All Year.
Kamele sipped her coffee, and tried to hide her
amusement. That the boy had had a workout was all too
obvious. Disregarding the fact that he and Theo were both still
sweat-dampened and in high color, they had between them consumed a
so-called "nuncheon plate" advertised to feed four, and made short work
of the follow-on sweets tray. Theo had eaten with a delicate
voracity that had frankly amazed, letting her friend do the talking,
except for a few early comments regarding norbears.
"Yet you advanced to the overdrive level," Cho
pointed out. "It seemed from the floor, young Win Ton, that you
and your partner ended the game in the top first percentile of players
--"
"It won't advance to the challenge level!" Win
Ton interrupted, and Theo paused with her third -- or possibly fourth
-- dessert halfway to her mouth to blink at him.
"I thought we were at the challenge level!" she exclaimed.
"No, sweet dancer -- a proper machine, such as the
one I am accustomed to from --" a quick glance at Cho -- "from
school, has several levels yet above where we found ourselves, and
allows for free form, and other variations." He sounded, Kamele
thought, genuinely aggrieved, and despite herself she chuckled.
Three pair of eyes came to rest on her face, which was -- disconcerting, but she had brought it on herself.
"I'm sorry," she said to Win Ton, who had probably
thought she was laughing at him. "I was reminded of -- of a dear friend
of mine who makes similar complaints about the equipment we have at
home." She sipped her coffee, marking how the boy's gaze never
faltered. "His answer is usually to ...correct...the poor
performance into something he finds more reasonable."
Win Ton's face grew thoughtful.
"I will ask my apprentice," Cho sig'Radia said, with
emphasis, "to recall that he is a guest and a passenger upon this
vessel."
He turned to her. "But, Captain --"
She raised a hand. "Spare the poor device, my
child; it is a game only, and never meant to withstand a full testing."
"But --"
"It wasn't a test," Theo interrupted.
"We were just trying to work off the -- the buzz from the
norbears!" She looked at Cho seriously. "And it was just
what we needed. Making lace wouldn't have done at all!"
There was a small silence during which, Kamele
strongly suspected, Cho sig'Radia struggled with her emotions.
"Ah," she said at last, inclining her head
courteously. "You must tell me more about his lace making, if you
would, Theo Waitley. I have, as you may understand, some interest
in strategies for bleeding excess energy."
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Base page created December 1, 2006 by Sharon Lee
Chapter updated June 18, 2007
technical revision posted June 18, 2007
Update March 15, 2008, Noon EDT
copyright © 2006-2007 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
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