Math 376 was a relief so far, even with a drill. Eight students and an instructor stand-in were here already; soon they'd be joined by a lab assistant and the lab section from Math 366, all students who weren't taking an atmospheric component in their training, and maybe even by the instructor himself.

The drill had helped settle her surprisingly quickly; this time it didn't involve any of the head-spinning dual-reality arithmetic in which numbers had to be solved for both real and imaginary components at the same time they were solved for string expansion and entropy resistance.

She still wasn't sure enough to wanted to risk her life on her computations, but just to be busy without having Chelly's quiet grief hanging over her head was good, not to mention being free of Asu's sulky nattering about her confiscated Checksec. Asu's paranoia hadn't been helped by Chelly keeping his secret until the second cup of tea --

"What kind of a senior are you if you don't keep us informed? Especially when one of our own... well, no, just because he'd slept in our pod doesn't make him ours, really, but Theo's ours and you didn't even tell me and she sleeps right over my head?"

"Chain of command," he'd said quietly. "You always have to remember chain of command, Asu. Suppose I'd told you everything and then they'd come for your Checksec instead of the other way around? You might have been in big trouble. And no, I think it good that you didn't know Burn Barather's name until just now: again, think what it would look like if I'd have said something earlier and then you'd gone talking to those youngsters you've been coaching in bowli ball? The whole of Erkes could be under a cloud then. Now the news is out."

Asu'd fumed and fretted; it had taken Theo explaining her view of the whole thing.

"I think he was trying to lose them," she'd said, understanding something of the wind shear problems right there. " I think he knew the mountain from when he was at the academy and was figuring he could break away, gain time – for whatever he was trying to do."

She hadn't explained that one of the planes had strafed the falling pieces, nor that she'd noticed that none of the military guys who'd landed with the copter had their sidearms on peace-bond. She'd stood when they landed, identified herself, and then had to listen...

"She's got guts and the goods, bringing that thing in here with no auxiliary" one had said, and then another "Right convenient it could have been, too, for Barather, heh? Drop himself off here, then glide off with a cutie while we're looking for his body?"

"You run the gonsarned thermal then. There's nothing here but her and a cold ship. All pure."

Volunteer nothing to an official, she'd heard Father say then, as he had several times when listening to her retelling of her time on Melchiza, and commenting on the team's reaction to the missing team member. When you're in their power, bureaucrats can be more dangerous than a loaded gun. A gun hits what you aim it at. Bureaucrats are another story.

She'd been quiet, then, and startled when the copter pilot asked if she'd like a turn at the controls once they'd left Slipper 14 and the mountains well behind. She'd been watching – what else was there for her to do? -- and taking in the whole process, but --

"No sir. I mean yessir. But I don't have any power hours at all and probably I shouldn't."

"Hah, that's great! No hours at all and they made you land that feather up there?

Someone's in need of pilot refresh if you ask me!"

There were chuckles from a couple of the others in the machine, and the pilot himself flashed a quick top landing, making sure she'd caught it before going into a monologue on the good and bad points of hovering vehicles...

But that would have been too much to tell Asu, and they'd told Theo not to talk about the questions they asked: had she known Burn Barather, had she been told to fly to the mountain, why had she selected that spot, why had she hidden in the rocks – which of course she had not, really. They'd gone on and on and on about what how long had she been on world and did she have any opinions on the coming elections and would she call someone who died stupidly a hero just because he died and ... they were amused, somewhat, that the only drink she accepted was that from the water fountain.

So she'd hoped Asu would give over on that topic and Chelly – well, he'd helped, actually. He'd had some idea of what she'd been through – apparently he'd had his time with the authorities when the security team came through.

"Asu, I didn't give them your Checksec, they turned it off the moment they saw it and said it was a potential violation of the privacy regs."

"Violation? What's wrong with active protection? Everyone knows you have to take care of yourself! What about my privacy?"

That, it turned out, had been the rub.

Chelly's voice was low and firm while he was talking about it, and he lost some of the blotchiness that looked like it might have come from tears.

"Your Checksec's a pro model, Asu. It not only blocks within a perimeter, but it probes any signals it finds and records them. The thing is, it kept trying to connect so it could report somewhere..."

Asu's face turned a strange color then, and both her face and neck darkened; her mouth opened as if she were going to say something, but it took several jaw movements and some hand motion as well before she could articulate anything more understandable than "Oh no...."

Finally:

"I didn't even think! That's the Checksec Reisbrot gave me – she's head of security for Diamon. You don't think it was trying to report, do you?"

Chelly's glance may have struck the ceiling before Theo's, but as they looked down at Asu they both shrugged.

Chelly's shrug had turned into a slow hand to the side of his face.

"Could have been calling in, what do i know. I do know that they came in here and swept the place three times, then ran off and did the rest of Erkes. Barather's time here – I guess they had to check everything, since he'd been senior when I got here."

"Same room as us? Right here? In our beds?" Asu's eyes widened.

Chelly hand-talked Yes, right, right, yes.

"I'll need to get some smutch in then. Bad luck to sleep in a dead man's bed, you know..."

It was then that the exhaustion really hit Theo, and she'd wished, very much that she'd had a certain Scout pilot to ... talk to. Or something.

Despite the tea or because of it, she'd sleep deeply, if alone though, and managed to wake and dress without waking Asu, whose schedule put her on late-days.

So, the drill was done, and if not easy, it was over and done on the desk's built in keypad. Others were still at work, which was something she was used to from the Wall, after all, so she worked on in her head, trying to work her mind out of thinking that there'd been a live pilot in that craft, trying to concentrate on the drill's final question, which to her mind had two mutually antagonistic answers. She 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 needles, sketching out a point on the fabric here, and one there ...and after all, since the fabric was malleable and penetrable she could consider that left needle might be the spaceship and the ....

Sounds around her quieting, Theo glanced up. Peering at her from the next row was the instructor herself, Pilot Truffant.

"No, cadet, please don't let me interrupt you work. I'm sure it must be fascinating..."

"Yes, pilot."

Theo felt the blush begin but let it come: after all it wasn't very advertent to be discovered doing needlework in math class. The low laughter didn't help.

The instructor strode closer.

"Good, good. 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. I was concerned about the last question on the drill and was thinking over it. The work here," she pointed to the embedded needle, "was helping me think."

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

A glance at her face showed the teacher to be somewhat amused rather than taunting.

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

"Stop!"

Theo had stopped, for the instructor's hand-talked stop had beaten the word out of her mouth.

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

The instructor flipped her hand, glancing at a display.

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

No one moved or spoke; the instructor glanced down at her read out and said finally "This is good. 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. 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 the lab students from the other class drifted in, along with Wilsmyth 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 handtalked 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."

* *

"You do manage, don't you?"

Theo'd counted the room and seen the odd number of students, and she'd also seen that the drill took two – and only two – people to work. Wilsmyth's visage was hardly what she was hoping for: but there, hope pays few bills, as she'd heard any number of times from Jen Sar.

"Manage?"

Wilsmyth dropped his mumu with an audible clunk before sitting down with an overloud sigh.

"Yah. Manage. You came here all attitudinal and flying ID from Melchiza, then you end up being the only noncombatant witness to the first open action against the local reevo's in the last twenty years. And you're still all attitudinal, I wager."

"We're clones, you and me." She kept her voice even, and was pleased to fell no flare of color.

He nodded, perhaps acknowledging a minor hit, and then glanced to his mumu and whatever information it shared with him.

"So, since I'm odd man out, I get to keep your scores honest today, and it looks like them folks from Melchiza ought to be pleased, since you're bringing your numbers up. Now me, I had this lab two years ago and had to repeat it twice, so let's see if we can get you through in under four tries, shall we?"

Launch now was her handtalk answer, and for some reason it made him laugh.

* *

For all that he had a bad time with her existence, Wilsmyth was a pretty good lab partner; even if he wasn't interested in her grades exactly, he seemed really involved with the numbers and the math and the underlying thought of it all, and really wanted them to make sense.

Things were moving right along, with Wilsmyth giving her a series of minor pointers when Pilot Truffant appeared, accompanied by a security type, walking up behind the lab assistant.

Theo's first glance had taken in his stance and attitude ... and her second measured him as one of the military officers she'd spoken to the day before, today wearing what passed for street clothes here, including a dark-striped jacket and shoes slowly changing color from dark green to dark blue and back again. He was standing oddly, and then his glance crossed hers. He nodded, minutely, and flashed a series of discreet hand-signs: secret silent confidential.

Copy. And what else should she say? Yesterday he'd been wearing a huge sidearm and today, given his lean, he might still be wearing the same gun today, jammed under the civilian coat.

"Wilsmyth, I'm going to be taking over with Waitely for now; this good fellow here needs to speak with you, if you'll give him your time."

Wilsmyth was no dummy but his face was a little too easy to read right then: Theo saw the frown of interrupted concentration go first blank and then into a tense, willful cheerfulness not matched by his body.

Chelly'd been telling her right then: anyone in the school who'd ever had anything to do with Burn Barather was getting talked to...

"Now, Waitely, 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."

OR you may send a check or money order (in US funds only) to:

If you would like to donate to the Saltation project as a gift (or in someone else's name) please log directly into Paypal and use the paypal "send money" or direct payment method to make a donation to fledglingATkorval.com (where The Usual replaces AT).

When you do, please use Saltation Gift as the email subject. Please note the name and reasonable contact/ID information in the "Note (optional)" field so that we'll be able to identify the intended recipient in the event that $25 is accumulated in their name and they become eligible for a trade edition of Saltation, should one be produced.

Gift subscriptions can also be made by check or money order (in US funds only) through the mail to: