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  "I am, yes."

  "Very good." He put his cup down and stood, slipping the paper away from her with his natural hand while the fingers of his prosthetic spelled out, rise! quick lift!

  Startled, she came to her feet. "Sir?"

  "Go quickly and pack. If I may—pack heavy, lest there is a dorm cleaning while you are away. I will meet you at the shuttle in an hour."

  "Sir, but—"

  "I had said that I thought first of you. Having done so, I sent the master mechanic my recommendation, forwarding your references from Hugglelans, which were available to me, as your adviser. He replied that he would have you, if you were interested. We have established that you are interested. And I should tell you that immediately in this instance means, according to Master Thelly, three days or a week ago."

  "But, I—"

  "You may send an introduction from the shuttle," he interrupted. "Or perhaps you've changed your mind, and that is why you stand here when your ship needs you?"

  "No, sir!" She cried, and bowed—respect to an instructor.

  Then, she ran.

  #

  Kara's personal effects, with those things that Theo had entrusted to her, were in the shuttle's modest holding area. She was in the pilot's chair, Pilot yos'Senchul sitting second. Once they had broken orbit, she had 'beamed a message to Master Mechanic Thelly, introducing herself and informing him that she was on her way to take up duty.

  She was doing the set-up for Codrescu approach when the master's reply arrived, telling her to find him in Sub-sector Blue Eleven's machine room after she'd been cleared through.

  "I'm going to have to hit the deck running," she commented, not unpleased by the prospect of getting right to work.

  "Union rates," her co-pilot murmured. "Be certain to keep track of your hours; Master Thelly is quite capable of working three shifts in four, and he expects his assistants to do as much."

  She shot a glance at him, but only saw the side of his face, calm as it usually was, his eyes on his screens.

  "That sounds like the voice of experience," she said. "Did you 'prentice with Master Thelly, Pilot?"

  "In fact, I did, some few years ago. He was at first. . .doubtful. . .regarding the utility to himself of a one-armed assistant. I was able to put those doubts to rest, and learned a good deal in Balance." He glanced at her.

  "You will find the master a thorough teacher."

  "Good," said Kara.

  The board pinged for her attention, then, and she gave it.

  #

  "This way, Pilot," yos'Senchul said, waving her into a dim side passage that was definitely not the route to the Station Master's office.

  "Master Thelly. . ." she began.

  "Master Thelly will still have work for you in half-an-hour," he said.

  Kara sighed and followed him, the peculiar taste of station air on her tongue. She had been to Codrescu Station a dozen times or more, and thought she knew its maze of corridors pretty well. This hall, so thin that she and Pilot yos'Senchul—both comfortably Liaden-sized—needed to proceed in single-file, wasn't at all familiar. It was a utility hall, she thought, noting the access panels set high and low. Well, perhaps it would soon become familiar.

  Ahead, their hall ended in another—and this one Kara did recall.

  "The Guild Office?" she asked.

  "Indeed," he answered. Before them was the door, and a guard beside it, sidearm holstered.

  "yos'Senchul and ven'Arith, to see the Guild Master," her companion said. "We are, I think, expected."

  "You're on the list, pilots," the guard confirmed, opening the door for them. "Straight ahead."

  #

  Guild Master Peltzer ran her card, made a noise strongly reminiscent of a snort, and nodded in her direction.

  "Be a couple minutes to review your files, Pilot. You wanna make yourself comfortable here? I got a feeling Pilot yos'Senchul wants to have a private word with me. Is that right, Orn Ald?"

  Pilot yos'Senchul inclined his head gravely. "You know me too well."

  "Just about well enough, I'm thinking. Step into my office. Pilot, please, take some rest."

  The two men stepped in to the Guild Master's inner office and the door closed. Kara, too energized to sit, or to be comfortable, walked quietly to the small green garden across from the intake desk, its tall fronds waving in the breeze from an air duct. An agreeable gurgle of running water came from somewhere in the depths of the tiny jungle.

  Kara knelt down and considered the greenery. There were, as she knew from previous visits, norbears living among the fronds—one quite old, and the other quite young. She would, she thought, like to have the attention of a norbear at the moment, though it would be rude to wake them, or to disturb their pretty habitat.

  She was about to rise again, when the fronds dipped more deeply than could be accounted for by the small breeze, and here came the elder norbear—rust colored and thin of fur—marching deliberately forward, through the fronds and out of the garden entirely, climbing familiarly onto Kara's knee.

  "Hevelin, good-day to you," she said, stroking his head gently. He burbled and pushed into her fingers, demanding a more vigorous scrubbling.

  Kara smiled and settled cross-legged to the floor, careful of the old norbear's balance, and rubbed his head with vigor. His pleased burbling seem to leach her restlessness, and she sighed, half-closing her eyes.

  An image came into her head, lazily, like a dream—an image she recognized as Pilot yos'Senchul. She recalled him entering the Guild Master's office, and the image faded, to be replaced by the impression of a pointed, pale face dominated by fierce dark eyes, framed by blow-away pale hair that Kara knew to be as soft and warm as feathers.

  "No," she murmured. "Theo's not with me, though I have her things. I'm here for a tenday tour, to assist Master Thelly."

  A man's round, red-cheeked face faded through Theo's, his eyes blue and sharp, the lines around them made by worry, laughter—or by both. Master Thelly, perhaps.

  She felt herself sinking into a languor; almost, she felt she could have a nap.

  Happily for her dignity, the door behind her opened at that moment. The languor fled, leaving behind a feeling of tingling alertness. She opened her eyes to look up, at Orn Ald yos'Senchul, and, further up, at Guild Master Peltzer.

  "Hevelin took the edge off, did he?" he said with a nod. "Worth a full night's sleep, one of Hevelin's purr-breaks. If you'll stand up, Pilot, we can get your little matter finished up and send you to the Station Master for registration."

  "Thank you," Kara said to Hevelin. "Would you like to go back to the garden?"

  It appeared that Hevelin did not. He clambered up her arm to her shoulder and grabbed onto her collar to steady himself.

  "I'd say that's plain," said Guild Master Peltzer, moving over to the intake desk. Kara came to her feet, careful of her passenger, and stepped up.

  "All right now. Pilot. This'll take a bit to propagate across the databases, so I'll just drop a note to the Station Master and to Master Thelly, letting them know the news." He tapped keys, and Kara, Hevelin humming in her ear, waited with what patience she could muster for someone to tell her the news.

  "Right, then. Here you are, Pilot." He held her license out in her general direction, while his other hand and his eyes were still on the computer.

  Kara took the card, Hevelin all but deafening her with his purr, and slipped it away into an inner pocket.

  "Sir?" she said. "May I –"

  He looked up, catching her gaze with his, and inclined his head formally.

  "Congratulations, Second Class pilot Kara ven'Arith."

  She stiffened. "Your pardon, Guild Master. I am, I believe, Candidate Second Class Pilot ven'Arith."

  He shook his head, his smile tight.

  "That's according to the so-called Pilots Guild of Eylot, which has no standing with the Interstellar Starship Pilots Guild. Eylot Guild can deny our licenses and our regs 'til they're short of air, but at the
end of the shift, they're a local independent piloting group. Anybody lifting with an Eylot Guild ticket is just another indie flyer, far as this Guild is concerned."

  Hevelin's purring hit an ecstatic crescendo.

  Kara looked closely at the Guild Master's grim face. She transferred her gaze to Pilot yos'Senchul, who inclined his head gravely, and murmured, "A signal achievement, Pilot. Well done."

  "You brought me here for this, didn't you?" she demanded.

  "In part," he allowed, with a slight smile. "I did also think of you first when the tenday tour came into my queue."

  Kara took a breath. "Pilot yos'Senchul," she began – and stopped as he held up his hand.

  "Please, honor me with the use of my given name, now that we are colleagues – and comrades."

  She frowned at him. Colleagues, yes, because they were now both certified by the same guild, though he was Master to her Second Class. Comrade, though...

  "Do you have work on-station? But your contract at the Academy—"

  "The present administration has placed conditions upon my continued employment which I cannot in conscience accept. Therefore, I have offered myself to Guild Master Peltzer, who believes he may be able to find a use for me."

  The Guild Master laughed.

  "More like sixteen uses for you!" he said. "I figure to whittle it down to three, after I talk with people."

  "The Academy's shuttle. . ." Kara protested, thinking of Cherpa in Berth Fourteen.

  "I will send the key down on the station shuttle. Whomever the Academy chooses to take it down may ride the jump seat on the supply wagon."

  "Details," pronounced the Guild Master, waving a bluff hand. "What the two of you need to do is get registered with the Station Master office. Soon's that's done, we can start getting some work out of you!"

  "Indeed," said Pilot yos'Senchul, with a slight, comradely bow. "After you, Kara."

  "Yes," she said, and turned to put Hevelin back among the greenery.

  #

  The Pilot handling her forms for the Station Master was called Fortch; his work blouse was that of a commercial transfer company. He looked her up and down before she announced herself, and then with a spark of interest when she did.

  "ven'Arith, eh? I gather you've been expected for a day or so. Forms have been waiting – fill and sign and. . ."

  Seeing her glance at his name and the Certified Pilot logo on his breast pocket, he nodded and tapped it with one finger.

  "Company gave me my uniform the day the newest rules came down,” he told her as he checked her work. "All I needed was the paper. But you know what's happening, and I do: they say I'm no pilot until I get their paper. Can't get their paper 'cause my father's brother was suspected of being on the wrong side twenty years ago. I get to do some tugwork here, they put me in the pool. I help out here on the slow days." He sighed, glancing at the form screen. "At least you'll get a chance to pick yours up."

  Kara nodded. Tugwork meant he was likely a third class, maybe an air pilot too – and that was hard. If his family went back for generations and was thought unreliable, he might never get work on-world.

  There was a small chirp and he started nervously; and out of the air the order "Send in the new one, Fortch! Master Thelly's in a snit to get her on the job!"

  The aide jerked his head at the inner door, and handed the forms back to her.

  "Luck. Hope to catch you around."

  #

  She'd worked overshift – not unusual, and becoming more usual as she double-timed herself – working two full shifts, then cramming a class into her so-called rec shift. The class she was currently embroiled in, remote repair, required not only coursework, but board time, not with a sim, but with an actual remote, out on Codrescu's skin. Time and necessity being what they were, she had to grab her practice sessions betwixt and between. The work shifts today had gone long, whereby she had been late to log into class, and so last to take the remote.

  The work had not been mere practice, but real work, resetting a trio of lock-anchors on Ten Rod Two, the arm that the Guild supply ship Zircon Sea was due to use. With the strangenesses attendant to Eylot's politics the Sea's technical and parts refills were much needed to make up for several quarters worth of back-orders, missing items, and out-and-out damaged-on-receipt goods. Given the state of supplies, she'd triple checked her work, and delayed herself more. . .

  And now, she was starving.

  At least there was an easy answer to that; very possibly the first easy answer she had been confronted with today.

  She turned down the hall to the Hub Caf, ran her station card under the reader and picked up a tray.

  Quickly, she onloaded soy soup, fresh salad, and a more-or-less fresh-baked roll, and a cup of lemon-water. She turned from the serving bar, expecting at this shift and hour to have her choice of tables – which wasn't. . .quite true.

  There was only one other diner in the Caf – a man in coveralls much like those she wore. Uncharacteristically, his shoulders were hunched, his arms crossed on the table before him, his attention wholly on the screen before him.

  Kara hesitated, took a breath and went forward. Comrades held duty to the well-being of each other; and even if they had not been comrades, she owed him the same sort of care he had shown for her.

  "Orn Ald? May I join you?"

  He looked up, and even in the dim lighting, she could see that his cheeks were wet.

  For a Liaden to so far forget melant'i as to weep in public – that was appalling. That Orn Ald yos'Senchul should do so could signal nothing less than a cataclysm.

  Kara clattered her tray to the table, staring at him.

  "What has happened?"

  For answer, he spun the screen.

  She recognized the Eylot Gazette, the Liaden community's social newspaper, open to the death notices.

  There was only one.

  Lef Nal vin'Eved Clan Selbry, of injuries sustained during Anlingdin Academy Graduate Re-orientation camp. Selbry Herself stands as the instrument of his will. Clan and kin grieve.

  Kara remembered him only vaguely – they had been in few classes together and he hadn't been a bowli ball player. He had, in fact, been rather frail, all the moreso for a certain single-mindedness that allowed him to discount every obstacle between himself and a goal. Lef Nal was, thought Kara, easily the sort of person who might fall off a cliff by reason of having momentarily forgotten about the effects of gravity.

  She raised her eyes to Orn Ald's ravaged face.

  He had, she saw in relief, used a napkin to dry his cheeks, but not even Liaden social training could hide the desolation in his eyes.

  "I have also had a private letter on the topic," he said quietly. "It would appear that Pilot vin'Eved has been reft from clan and kin as a result of what is termed a hazing. He and several others had been identified as lacking a proper reverence for the new political scenery, and so were placed in. . .special circumstances, in order to cow them. The others are injured, but will survive." He sighed, and spun the screen to face him again.

  "One save a year," he murmured, and she looked at him sharply.

  "What is that?"

  "Ah." He raised his eyes to hers, his mouth twisting. "When I was newcome to Anlingdin Academy, the elder instructor who was assigned as my mentor taught that we who teach must sometimes rescue our students – from themselves, from bad advice, from the expectations of kin, or of the world. She had it, as a point of philosophy—or perhaps of honor—that one save a year made all the rest worthwhile."

  Kara slid onto the stool across from him, pushing her tray with the cooling soup and wilting salad to one side.

  "You saved me," she said, very softly; and then, whispering, because even the thought was too terrible to bear.

  "Was it only us – the landed aliens – who were given conditional licenses, Orn Ald?"

  He shook his head. "A few less than half, by my count, were in your case, and in. . .Pilot vin'Eved's case. A handful of outworl
d students received conditional licenses, also, but they were merely required to certify that they would be leaving the planet after graduation."

  It was easier to breathe. She sighed, slipped off of the stool and bowed as one who was cognizant of debt.

  "Do not think of it," he murmured. "Our relative melant'i at the time placed one in the position of protector. Honor is fulfilled, on all sides, and Balance maintains." He shook his head, and said, in subdued Terran, "I advised him to go home and place it in the hands of his delm."

  And Lef Nal had decided that school matters were the student's to solve, and matters of one's license best resolved by the pilot.

  It was, Kara thought, precisely what she would have done.

  Indeed, it was precisely what she had decided to do, until Orn Ald yos'Senchul had whisked her off for a tenday tour, and showed her a way to gain her license without condition.

  When the fill-in assignment had come open, near the end of her tenday, she had contacted her mother and her delm, who had advised her, in their separate faces, to pursue opportunity at the station. Her mother had said that their own small yard was for the moment empty and thus closed, for want of business. Her delm had noted that all Menlark pilots were for the present pursuing hire contracts out-world, and that none were expected to return to Eylot in the foreseeable future.

  Failing an outworld piloting contract, Codrescu Station was, said her mother, the best place for her.

  She looked again to Orn Ald. As the one owed, it was his to assert what might be the cost, or if they resided in Balance. A comfort, certainly, but rather chilly. A comrade might offer more warmth.

  Kara inclined her head.

  "Forgive that I notice your distress. I merely do so that I may offer relief, if it is desired."

  His eyebrows rose, and she braced herself for a light comment regarding their relative ages. But, when it came his response was only a mannerly, "The offer is gently made. However, I fear I would bring little to the cause of comfort – and you are wanted in not too many hours at your duty."