"I have lost my touch," Kamele said, casting a half-amused glance at her friend. "Honestly, Ella, you should have become a professional actor."
"And been disowned? No thank you. I like my comfort – now as much as then. Besides, hadn't my best friend already set aside childish pursuits to aim for a more realistic goal?"
Kamele sat down behind her desk and tapped her mumu on without looking at it. "With my mother's... strong encouragement."
"Mothers exist to guide their daughters," Ella murmured. "I'm quite content with the amateur troupe." She opened her eyes and squirmed into a more upright position.
"But enough of youthful reminisces! This evening you not only manipulated our honored colleagues of the EdHist Department into consensus, but you got Hafley into a corner, so that she had to back you or risk an open divide within the department, which she can ill afford. All of that, and you still insist that you've lost your touch?"
Kamele sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I was clumsy," she said. "If I didn't push them, I certainly drove them, and you're not the only one who saw the manipulation. Depend on it – Hafley saw what I was doing, and she'll find a way to make me rue it. Having me shoved in as sub-chair over her candidate – "
"And wouldn't Jon Fu have made a wonderful sub-chair?" Ella interrupted. "Yes, Chair. Of course, Chair!" Her voice had gone all wobbly and unctuous. "The wisdom of a thousand grandmothers could not teach us better than you do, Chair."
"Stop!" Kamele laughed. She raised a hand. "Stop – it's too perfect! His own mother would be deceived."
"Or she would pretend to be, so she could be rid of a bad job," Ella said darkly, then waved. "Hafley's light was fading even before Flandin's perfidy was discovered. The Directors won't be long in replacing her," she said, and grinned one of her wide, lunatic grins. "Kamele Waitley, EdHist Chair."
Kamele snorted. "Not likely."
"Nothing more likely, now that you're finally demonstrating the proper reverence for your career!" her friend retorted. "You'll see – and I expect my sabbatical to be quickly approved when you're made chair."
Kamele considered her. "Sabbatical? Isn't that out of sequence? In any case, it's my plan to name you sub-chair if your prescience is proven."
Ella shook her head in mock sorrow. "How many times do I have to tell you, love: First the sugar, then the rod."
"Yet you find hard work sweet."
"You know me too well," Ella said with a fond smile that slowly faded. "Speaking of hard work – how's Theo taking the... move?"
"She'll adjust," Kamele answered, surprised at the grimness of her own voice.
Ella laughed slightly. "Spoken like a loving and vigilant mother! And you?"
"I?"
"Don't be dense, darling."
Kamele glanced down and fiddled with her mumu for a moment. "I don't anticipate any problem readjusting to the Wall. I grew up a Mouse, after all."
"As we both did." Ella stood. "Well, you know where I am – not as high on the Quad as you, of course, Sub-Chair!"
She walked around the desk and bent down to give Kamele a quick kiss on the cheek. "I have rehearsal," she murmured. "You're not working tonight, I hope?"
Kamele shook her head. "Theo's home alone."
"Oh." Ella looked serious. "Well..."
"Ella..." Kamele said warningly.
Her friend raised her hands placatingly. "I know, I know! She's just a bit clumsy. It's a stage. She'll grow out of it." She sighed and lowered her hands. "If she doesn't do herself or someone else a serious injury beforehand."
"She'll be fine," Kamele said firmly.
Ella took refuge in a laugh, spun lightly on her toes and headed for the door.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Kamele."
The office door closed behind her and Kamele sank further into her chair, reaching up to rub her eyes.
Chaos and disorder, but she was tired! She'd crammed a week's worth of meeting prep into a working lunch and tea, and another week's worth of people-prep into odd moments before the meeting itself. She'd gotten what she wanted – what the department needed! – and the work ahead looked mountainous, indeed.
Among all the work that needed to be done, she had explicitly not needed Monit Appletorn importuning her in the break room this morning. Even if she had been disposed to consider him in the light of an onagrata, the timing and... boldness of his presentation would have given her pause.
Not that she considered Monit anything but a humorless, ambitious annoyance, or ever had. Kamele ran her hands into her hair, making the disorderly chaotic. Make that an egotistical, humorless, ambitious annoyance.
And then there was Theo. The child was nervy at the best of times, and she'd made it plain that the relocation had neither her approval or her support. Kamele sighed. Depend on it, had it been Jen Sar who had proposed they move to the Wall, Theo would have been brought over in a heartbeat, glowing with excitement and eager to help in any way she could.
Setting aside the fact that Jen Sar could charm wisdom from a Simple when he chose to, Theo adored him – a state of affairs that had previously seemed... benign. Surely, it was a good thing for a child to have a solid male role-model? Their remove to the Wall, however, suddenly threw Theo's attachment to her mother's onagrata into an awkward light. She had, Kamele admitted to herself, shirked her maternal duty. It was going to be bad enough after Theo's Gigneri –
"Which is borrowing trouble," Kamele said aloud. The earliest possible date for Theo's Gigneri was more than six months away. So much could happen in six months, when you were fourteen.
And when you were forty-four.
Her mumu chimed eight bells four. She'd told Theo she'd be home before ninebells. If she didn't leave soon, she'd break her word.
She reached for the mumu – and only then saw the Safety Office icon blinking ominously from the in box.
Her heart lurched. Gasping, she tapped the message open.
It was not, as she had foolishly feared, a note calling her to the infirmary or the hospital on her daughter's behalf – that was obvious from her first hasty scan.
Her second, calmer, reading revealed that the letter was a Parental Advisory. Theo had taken another fall on the belt between classes – and this time, she'd pulled someone down with her.
Kamele closed her eyes, recited the Delgado Senior Scholar's Pledge, and read the advisory a third time.
It would seem that Theo's victim was Lesset Grinmordi. Kamele grimaced; as thin as Theo's friend-loop was she could hardly afford to lose one; even a flutter-head like Lesset. Kamele sighed and looked back to her mumu. The report stressed that there had been no aggression involved, but was rather an accident, born of a lapse of judgment.
That much, Kamele thought, was a continuing positive point in her daughter's behavioral record. Whatever Theo was – odd, clumsy, brilliant, sullen – she wasn't aggressive.
The Safety Office recommended that Kamele review Theo's physical limitations with her again. It further recommended that the two of them contact the infirmary for an overview of the various medications – all perfectly safe! – that might be expected to alleviate those same physical limitations.
"Physical limitations," Kamele muttered. Jen Sar would have one of his mannerly fits if –
But Jen Sar, she recalled, around a gone feeling in her stomach, was out of the loop; the courtesies paid to the Housefather were no longer his due.
Which didn't make the prospect of reviewing Theo's physical limitations with her any more appealing. And she would see the university in ashes before she drugged her daughter to make her orderly – perfectly safe, or not.