Asu looked aggrieved.
"Well, have you seen Delm Korval? There is none!"
She straightened abruptly, fingers pressed to lips, as if just recalling that she spoke with one of her instructors.
yos'Senchul smiled lightly, his hand signaling a soothing this will clear.
"Indeed, this is not the first time that Korval has waited upon a delm—and it is true that yos'Galan never spoke against the reports. Be assured that there will again be a Delm Korval, and Sam Tim's lesson is 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?" Turley leaned on the counter in front of them, hands spreading apart in question.
The stuff was overwhelming, and the first five pieces of it, including two large packages requiring signatures and thumbprints both, were for Asu, who cooed over the return addresses, each from one of the stops on the pro scavage tour. Covered in customs stickers, postage marks and symbols, freight notes, and handling instructions, the collection massed more than Asu.
Theo nodded to herself with casual understanding: this was why Asu wanted her to come along—not out of a concern that Theo wasn't getting enough "fresh air," but to have help carrying it all! It was a shame, she thought, that most of her hangers-on had found other things more interesting than her over the last few days.
No, on second thought—it wasn't. All that company had made her twitchy and bad-tempered. She'd rather not have to deal with a crowd, even if it would have been useful to have more hands to push Asu's mail across campus.
"Two more," Turley called out.
Asu looked around, spied a community-use handcart across the room and darted off, leaving Theo to cope with whatever came across the counter next.
. . . which turned out to not be so bad.
Package number six was a white box bearing local postage only—for Chelly. It had the look of a box of candy or pastries. There was no return address and no sign-for; Theo took that in hand with a shrug, as Asu came back, pushing the cart ahead of her.
The clerk from the back tossed the last package over the wall.
"Heads up! That one needs special handling!"
It wasn't a big packet; slightly smaller than Chelly's box. Turley caught it casually, and glanced at the tear slip.
Asu reached for it, but Turley lifted it out of her range.
"Ahem, student. This object has traveled light-years to reach us, so I think it ought to go to the person it's for. Erkes, Suite 302, Theo Waitley."
He looked at Theo suspiciously, hamming it up for the line.
"Are you a pilot, Trainee? Or do I have to sign this for you from my lofty height?" He tapped the stylized delta wing on his collar for emphasis. "This, my friend, is pilot post."
He held the package out tantalizingly, as if daring Theo to take it.
From behind her came yos'Senchul's voice.
"If you please, Second Class Provisional Pilot Turley, it would honor me to sign for this package if you feel that Pilot Waitley's bona fides are lacking. In fact, I insist. I'm sure we all know the Terran refrain, 'Pilot post travels faster on the wings of a master.' "
Eight
Erkes Dormitory, Suite 302
Anlingdin Piloting Academy
It was Asu's turn to push.
Theo walked beside the cart, keeping a concerned eye on the wobbling stack of packages, especially the thin one in the pale-brown cargo wrap. The wrap was worn in spots—which was, Theo told herself, reasonable for something so well traveled. There was a stub of green stuck askew at the bottom left, which was her part of the school's tear slip; otherwise the package was innocent of the postage and customs forms that decorated every square centimeter of Asu's packages.
Her name and address were written on it in clear Trade block letters on the right, and again, in flowing Liaden cursive, on the left. The return address was in Trade, the sender's name also rendered in Liaden.
She might, she thought, as she grabbed onto the cart to help ease it over a particularly rough bit of sidewalk, have been guilty of over-bowing to Pilot yos'Senchul for his signature. Theo thought the instructor had been amused, though, and he had made her sign her name, too, beside his on the slip, then tore it off and handed it to Turley with a flourish.
Surprisingly, the mail clerk had bowed, and solemnly placed the slip into a small bin at the side of the counter. "Next outgoing pilot," he had said, then looked over Theo's head and called out, "All right! Who's next?"
"Scout Pilot Win Ton yo'Vala?" Asu said, as they and the cart hit smooth surface again.
She'd already said the same thing twice before, and it was getting hard to ignore her. You'd think, Theo said to herself, that a girl who'd just collected five packages with her name on them would be too busy wondering what was in them to pay attention to somebody else's mail.
Still, she'd better answer something; it was important to keep peace—more or less—with her roommates.
"Win Ton's a friend," she said, like she was telling a story about somebody else. "We played bowli ball on the liner when I went to Melchiza with my mother and her team." She felt her lips curve slightly upward. "We beat the dance machine, too. The arcade manager said we had the two highest scores she'd ever seen."
"And he remembers these adventures so kindly that he sends you a packet at school," Asu said, with a smug look that Theo didn't quite understand. "A good friend, indeed!"
"Well," Theo said cautiously, "he is a good friend. But it isn't like it cost him a lot to get this to me."
Asu's laugh was quick and sharp.
"Did it not? Are you sure?"
Theo frowned and looked again at the thin box with its notable lack of stickers and forms.
"The favors, you mean."
"Sometimes," Asu said, in that annoying too-old-for-school voice she used to explain obvious details to the kid, "favors are more expensive than cash. And he owes everyone who carried that package a favor." She sighed, stopped pushing, and spent a few seconds fussing with the brake before she looked up again.
"That's a good friend," she said and the smirk this time was unmistakable. "Here, it's your turn to push."
"I owe a favor, too, though, don't I?" Theo said when they'd changed places and gotten under way. Asu was eying her box again.
"What gives you—oh." The other girl frowned slightly. "yos'Senchul had you sign too, didn't he? Yes, I guess you do owe a favor, or will, as soon as that receipt gets back to your . . . friend."
Theo gritted her teeth and kept on pushing. "Why?"
"Well, it's clear yos'Senchul expects great things from you," Asu said, matter-of-factly. "There's a hole, Theo, bear left—good. All of the pilot teachers have, ever since you brought the Slipper down like that." She cast Theo a bland, over-the-shoulder look. "You really do need to get your math scores up, though."
"I know," Theo told her fervently.
"So," Asu said, with another glance at the top of the cart, "what do you think it is?"
You had to give her credit, Theo thought; Asu never gave up.
"It's probably just a note," she said, shaking damp strands of hair out of her face. But there wasn't any reason, was there, she asked herself, for Win Ton to send a note this way, incurring all those favors, when they'd been writing via the letter service just fine, her more than him—and her less than before she'd come to Anlingdin.
Asu's sigh could've blown a feather ten feet.
"No, it's probably not just a note," she said. "Pilot post is expensive, weren't you listening? Why would your . . . friend . . . pile up all those favors to send you a note when he could use a letter service far more cheaply?" She gave Theo a smile. "It's bothering you, isn't it? You can stop and open it now, if you'd like. I don't mind waiting."