"Will you see that? They're still throwing packages around like they don't care down here? Why doesn't the school just pay for a package system instead of using – children! -- like that to do the work?"

    The children Theo was seeing were all bigger than her, and a couple of them were worth watching as they hauled piled packages out of the semi-pods that brought them directly out of the small transport that sat tubed to the building. 

    Not only that, for all that they were moving the packages out of the semi-pods they did not seem to be harming anything.  As Father had pointed out to her on more than one occasion, the more noise you made, the more likely it was that you were using too much force.

    The noise these students were making was minimal, the motions precise and controlled. There was no spinning, no random flinging, no purposeful shoves. Rather each package was selected, tossed gently by the tall young woman in the blue work top or the muscular guy with the strange mostly bald-but-ponytail hairdo, and caught quietly, with an odd twisting motion...

    Asu's complaints were subdued at the moment, and Theo gathered that the young man on the left side of the receiving line, the one with the shorts and – one willingly imagined -- over-all tan,  was the object of her distraction. 

    That interesting  twisting motion wasn't entirely a show-off. Instead, Theo saw, it looked like the handlers were making sure a read-strip on each package was illuminated by a quick rainbow of light...

     "'ware" said the blue-top over the bustle of the room; and the package she was in the process of moving took on an uncharacteristic wobble.

    "Hah!"

    The shorts and their inhabitant moved smoothly, the wobble corralled, the read strip rainbowed, and the package passed on...

    Asu's exclamation followed another pair of transfers.

    "Security! The strips are passive, so they don't give off an ID to anyone with a listener. You can't just flash a frequency and hope to get a reading, and you can't get a type-count that way, and you --"

    "Next, please!"

    Next was not them, but they had to move up in  the slowly shortening line so the view of the workers was not as interesting.  The overhead apparatus was more visible now, though, with multiple light sources and small buttons that were probably actually cameras.

    "Guess it makes sense to keep it simple -- "

    Asu harumphed.

    "I guess it works, but it seems slow. The refids are fast and self-reporting, though, and these are slow and require people.  People are nosy. And people are expensive! And they create lines!"

    There was a gentle laugh from behind, which turned into the words "Economy is such a variable concept, do you know.  In some places, people work and expensive machines replaced thereby. Having people, you may notice things without having a record of it to follow on. With people, you may reward and advance individuals, and train leaders for practical direction, without using sims and psych tests, both of which have surprising margins of error."

    Even on a campus full of pilots and would-be pilots Theo was becoming unused to being surprised by the silent approach of anyone.  Flight Instructor yos'Senchul's voice was as smooth as his bow.

    "Pilots," he said bowing to Theo, and then to Asu.

    Asu's bow was instant, and overdone: obviously she'd been studying something, but yos'Senchul hadn't bowed any of the bows of Instructor to Student, or even anything highly Senior-to-Junior, just a bow of acknowledgment and even a taste of "in this line together" with that motion of his hand...

    Theo bowed as if acknowledging a remark from Captain Cho or Win Ton. 

    The pilot's hand flurry said is good, combined a nod that was almost a wink with a twitch in it.

    Asu was by now waving a polite hand forward, as if to offer her place to yos' Senchul.  He flipped his hand with a practiced equanimity.

    "Thank you, but no. This is my off-hour just as it is yours, and pilots, we ought practice standing in line together as well as orbiting harmoniously, since we do the first more often than the last, it often seems."

    "Erkes," Asu said with some asperity when they arrived at the head of the line, "Suite 302. Package pickup note."

    "Well, we're so glad you could make it. Any longer on all these and we'd have been charging you rent!"

    The rather pale snippy young man tossed a crumbled ball of paper or plastic over a short wall line with tables, calling out at the same time --

    "Hey, wake up! Bring out that Erkes cart will you?"

    "Any longer? We'd have been here sooner except we had a line in front of us, you know!"

    Theo admired Asu's restraint.   

    "They've been here hours, you know!  If you didn't sleep late you could have had this all out of here at breakfast!"

    Asu started to say something, but then choked the words into a really ugly face and a good seething hiss, apparently in deference to the trailing instructor.

    Her accent with her hands wasn't all that good yet, Theo saw, but still, the words thrown toward the floor were quite indignant, and included rude useless slow and maybe sunless.

    "Which Erkes pack?" came the firm voice from the back, and then "Will you recycle your own snack-pack, Turley? Not my fault you drew the line again. I think they're trying to tell you something!"

    Clanks and plastic squeals followed, and a thud.

    "That big one fell again!"

    "If they've dropped something of mine, I'm going to ... I'm going to ..."

    Asu's loss of words prompted Theo to fill in ...

    "Going to go to the Delm of Korval?"

    "Do what?" Asu turned her face from the passageway door to the store room, and squinted  down toward Theo with a wry expression, waving her hands at the same time.

     "How could he help? I mean that's silly. He's dead, anyway, even if he could."

    "He's dead? Hah!  You mean there is one? Or was one?"

    Asu shook her head sadly.

    "Yes there was one, of course there was. But he died. Very sad."

    "No, wait," Theo was saying, "I mean I thought he was a story, a myth!"

    A voice from behind the short wall interrupted their discussion and promised more delay.

    "This thing is tagged by you, Turley. I need your signature before I can move it!"

    "You got a go from me."

    "I need your signature or thumbprint!"

    Turley looked toward the line, which now had a few more people in it, said, "A moment more only, duty calls!" and hurried toward the back.

    Theo's and Asu traded glances and shrugs.

    Asu shook her head, continued.

    "Why would you think Korval was a myth? They've got ships everywhere."

    Asu sounded exasperated, so Theo continued in the same tone.

    "I thought The Delm of Korval was a myth because I saw him in a story book for kids!"

    "Ah..."

    That was yos'Senchul, obviously listening in with some interest. 
 
    "Well, that's where he was mentioned.  The book was called Sam Tim's Ugly Day, and it was by Meicha Maarilex. I found it at a Try and Trade when I was  very young, and made my father read it to me because Kamele got tired of reading me the same book every day – it had the story in Terran at the top of the page and in Trade at the bottom... and way in the back it was in Liaden.  That's how I started reading Trade and Terran together – even though the words weren't always exactly the same as Father read to me from the back."

    She sighed, knowing exactly where that books was, and knowing that with any luck at all Coyster would be sitting on the desk under the bookshelf, staring into the garden, or curled asleep on the bed or --

    "And this book was all about Delm Korval?  I think I have heard of the author but did not know she had written about Korval."

    The instructor's voice was low, but she'd managed to catch his words despite her own distraction.

    "No, but that's why it was interesting.  There was Sam Tim, you see, and his day was ugly to him.  He complained some. And nothing was going right, over and over, and he kept wanting something fixed.  Everyone in his family, and all his neighbors, and the storekeepers, they kept saying to him "And if we can't solve your problem, what will you do, take your problem to Delm Korval?"

    "Ah, an excellent question to ask someone suffering from the day without delight, Al'Kin Chernardi as one might put it."

    "But see, it was obvious that Sam Tim was always looking too high for his answer, that he ought to be able to solve stuff himself.  That, really, you only go to Delm Korval with really important problems.  And so then we started using that for us. If I was having problems with something, or complaining, he'd ask me 'So, is this problem worth taking to Delm Korval?' and that's what we agreed  I'd do when I left to come here: if i ever had a problem that was really big and really bad, I would take it to Delm Korval."

    "Truth," the Liaden said. "Done very carefully, I assume. One would wish not to be seen by Delm Korval over little things..."

    "But you say he's real! I thought he was like, you know, Mr. Winter who always lives over the mountain and brings the snow."

    "No, not so powerful and more powerful is Korval."

    Theo looked at him quizzically while Asu nodded as if he'd given a lecture, and blurted out breathlessly "If you think Korval's a myth you might as well think that Diamon Lines – and me too – are myths!"

    Asu thre her hands up in exasperation.

   "But Korval doesn't have a Delm right now.  He committed suicide!"

    "This news," said the instructor, leaning forward earnestly "of a suicide is not one I have heard. Might you share? Is it recent?"

    "You didn't know? Well, Delm Korval's life-wife was shot on Liad, right in front of him. I mean, she died, stepping in front of a bullet meant for him. And there, it was like he kept going a few days, and then turned everything over to staff, and left.  They say he took his wife's spaceship and just flew it right on into the sun!"

    "Ah," said the Liaden carefully. "They say this, do they?"

    Over a sudden clatter and squeaking, yos'Senchul hand-spoke a determined Attend me, leaning forward so they might both hear.

    "Of Korval in a ship lost to a sun I have not heard, and proof of such a course would be difficult, at best, given the physics of the thing.  Yet, it seems the most unlikely thing, given what they also say of Korval – and what Korval says of Korval.  'Korval is ships', Liadens say.  And even a Delm so distraught as to consider self-death, even such a Delm, being of Korval, I think would not and could not kill a ship to do it. Korval is ships, Korval is pilots."

    Asu looked aggrieved.

    "Well, have you seen Delm Korval?  There is none!"

    Asu straightened abruptly, as if she'd recalled that she was speaking with one of her instructors.

    The pilot smiled lightly, his hand signaling a soothing this will clear

    "Indeed, this is not the first time that Korval has waited on a Delm. Yet there will be a Delm Korval, and Sam Tim's lesson is still a good one to recall. Go to Korval Himself only in extremity!"

    "Do you guys want this stuff or should we just send it back now?"


   
    The stuff was overwhelming, and the first five pieces of it, including two large packages requiring signatures and thumbprints both, were for Asu, who nearly cooed over the return addresses, each from one of the stops on the pro tour. Swarmed with customs stickers, postage marks and symbols, freight notes, and handling instructions the collection was larger than Asu, and Theo nodded to herself with casual understanding: this was why Asu wanted her to come along – not to show off, but to have help carrying it all!

    "Two more", Turley called out when Asu had begun to rush off for a cart. 

    Package number six was a white box with local postage only – for Chelly.  It had the look of a shipment of candy.   There was no return address and no sign for; Theo took that in hand with a shrug and then the clerk from the back tossed one more thing forward.

    "Hey, that one needs a pilot to sign for it!"

    Turley casually caught it, glancing curiously at the tear-slip on it, and began handing it forward.

    Asu reached for it also with curiosity, but Turley looked at her with an air of superiority.

    "Ahem, cadet.  This object has traveled light years to reach here, so I think it ought to go to the person it's for. Erkes, Suite 302, Theo Waitley."

    Turley looked up at Theo suspiciously.

    "Are you a pilot, Cadet?  Or do I have to sign for this for you from my lofty heights? This, my friend, is pilot post."

    He held the package out tantalizingly, leaving Theo unsure...

    From behind came yos' Selchun's voice.

    "If you please, 4th Class Provisional Pilot Turley, it would honor me to sign for this package if you feel Pilot Waitely's bonafides are lacking. In fact, I insist. I'm sure we should all know the Terran refrain "Pilot post travels faster on the wings of a master."