She'd already memorized and been tested on thirteen common forms for the class, and expected a quiz today on two more. Professor Chibs had never met a form he didn't like, nor a reporting protocol he didn't admire. If she was lucky it would be two more and not three, because she hadn't quite caught up with—
"We'll start," said Chibs in his twangy accent, "by requesting those of you who live by the syllabus or who are taking the class feed for catch-up to disconnect recording devices and save those pre-made form files for next class, when we'll return to boring you all with material that you'll only need to know if you graduate."
He chuckled at the startled looks, the same way he chuckled when gleefully pointing out some overlooked tick-box on a paper-filed support form.
"We have an object lesson to hand, and we shall use it. It comes to us in the shape of perhaps the most widely known pilot on the planet for the next two days, our own Theo Waitley."
It felt like the whole room turned to stare at her, tucked away as she was in the back corner. She sat up, and watched the professor warily.
"Oh no, you've all seen the news, I'm sure. Good landing, good landing, yes. Everyone knows what she did right, I'm sure. Now, with the pilot's leave, if you will listen to me closely rather than staring at Pilot Waitley, I'm going to tell you what was done wrong."
Pilot Waitley. There it was again.
The professor's hands flashed permission request pilot acknowledge so fast she almost had to assume it rather than read it.
Well, there. If she'd done something wrong she'd better know about it so she didn't have to depend on luck next time. She answered here for learning.
"Good, good," Professor Chibs said out loud, turning his back momentarily on the class before unleashing a large image of a Slipper to every desk top.
"Consider this," he said at volume as he turned back to peer at them, "your ship. You are a pilot, the ship is in your care. At what point does local traffic control, or local military for that matter, get to dictate what you do with it?"
Theo felt wrung out, if only from waiting for her errors to be told. Mostly, though, if she'd understood Professor Chibs correctly, the mistakes that had been made weren't exactly her mistakes. It was true that she'd failed to ask landing permission from the Mountain Commissioners, but that was arguably covered under the so-called Port In A Storm protocols.
Still, it was unnerving hearing her name used in terms of "Waitley's liability to pay for the ship if it were damaged" and, "In space, on a job run, Waitley must, and all of you must, take tactical news reports for your flight zones. That she wasn't informed of this is unfortunate, and that mistake is partially the school's curriculum and partially the fault of the equipment or lack of it on the Slipper. Your ship is your life."
He paused then, and an image of her Slipper, sitting on the mountain ridge, appeared. She wanted a copy of that—the Slipper looked beautiful!
"That's it then. No one signed for the ship, no one accepted legal or fiscal responsibility. No one offered, promised, or required a written return-to-ship. No one offered or promised hazard pay or indemnity. No one apologized—well, her instructor did, but none of the authorities on the scene. The debriefing was not done in a neutral location. On-site, the pilot demanded and received, through the intercession of another, more senior, pilot, a very basic securing of the ship, which was well done." Here he fell into hand talk for emphasis: listen listen listen.
"Do not undervalue detail, people. Do not undervalue info trails. Do not let the bureaucrats overwhelm you to the point that you, as a pilot, cannot fend for your ship. Do not forget that, on the whole, in a trouble spot, you first depend on your ship and yourself. You may listen to traffic control, but you must depend on pilot sense to survive."
Chib paused again, looked in her direction, and did a sort of half bow.
"Pilot Waitley, thank you."
Then he straightened, disappearing the Slipper from the desk tops, and raised his voice.
"Essay assignment due in ten days is entered into the log. I look forward to your analysis. Next class, back to the forms! Dismissed!"
Seven
Mail Room
Anlingdin Piloting Academy
"Do you see that?" Asu whispered fiercely to Theo as they took their place in line. "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 quietly hauled packages from the semi-pods that brought them directly out of the small transport sitting tubed to the building.
Not only that, for all that they were moving the packages rapidly out of the semi-pods, they didn't 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 mail handlers were making a minimum of noise, their 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—overall tan, was the object of her distraction.
That interesting twisting motion wasn't entirely a show-off, either, Theo saw. Instead, it looked like the handlers were making sure a read strip on each package was illuminated by a quick rainbow of light . . .
" 'Ware!" cried Blue Top over the bustle of the room, as the package she was in the process of moving took on an uncharacteristic wobble.
"Hah!"
The shorts and their inhabitant moved smoothly, the wobble was corralled, the read strip rainbowed, and the package passed on, no fuss, really, and nothing dropped or broken.
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—" Theo said.
Asu harrumphed.
"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. 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, conditions may be noticed without an official record being made. 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 probably overdone: obviously she'd been studying something, but yos'Senchul hadn't bowed any fancy bows, just a bow of acknowledgment and even a taste of "in this line together" with that motion of his hand . . .