Theo looked at him, seeing the tinge of pink along his cheeks. Her stomach tightened. Bek wanted her to go – as his partner? He'd said there were competitions. But he was being polite, giving her a hint, and hoping she'd ask him...
"I – " she cleared her throat. "I have to ask my mother," she admitted, feeling like a littlie, herself. She met Bek's eyes and felt her mouth twist into a half-smile. "I'm grounded for the rest of the 'mester, except for school and teamplay and... some appointments."
Bek smiled. "Tell her it's for extra cred."
"Is it?"
"Well – Professor Noni comes sometimes."
"I'll ask Kamele," Theo said, suddenly decisive. "If – if she okays it, I'd... I'd like you to come with me, Bek."
His smile got wider, and his cheeks got pinker. "I'd like that. A lot." He looked around. "My stop's coming up. Text me, Theo, Okay?"
"Okay," she agreed, her stomach still tight and her head feeling light. "G'night, Bek!"
" 'Night!" He swung off the belt and jogged down the ramp.
Theo looked down at her feet – and smiled.
Chapter Eighteen
University of Delgado
Faculty Residence Wall
Quadrant Eight, Building Two
Kamele had a meeting. Again.
Theo sighed. She was still feeling... sharp... from dance – and she wanted to talk to Kamele about the Saltation. Maybe it would be good for her to go, she thought. It would show the Safety Office that she was taking her responsibilities to society seriously. And if she and Bek won a competition, then wouldn't that show them that she was getting better?
She'd put the argument to Kamele that way. If she ever came home.
Theo shoved her mumu into its pocket, and danced a few suwello steps on her way down the hall. In the kitchen, she drew a soy cheese sandwich and a cup of juice from the kaf and carried them back to her room.
Coyster was curled up in the center of the rug, more or less, snoring with his tail over his nose. Theo grinned and sat down at her desk. She had a response paper to write for Advertence and some math problems to finish up.
After that, she thought, touching the keys lightly, she'd have another go at finding the turn-off code for her mumu. That project had gotten so frustrating that she'd put it aside, to "let it grow some leaves," as Father said. She realized now that she'd started with the wrong set of assumptions. She'd expected it to be easy – and maybe it was, once you figured out the trick. But figuring it out – that had to be hard. If it wasn't, then everybody would turn their mumus off, and the Simple at the gate wouldn't have been fooled at all.
There was another suspicious circumstance, Theo thought darkly. Even though they'd had several Oktavi dinners together since the Simple called her name, Father hadn't once asked her about her progress with her mumu, though he must've known she'd try to find out how to turn it off.
Of course, she hadn't mentioned it, either. She was going to figure it out herself, and not ask Father for help.
Not that he was likely to tell her.
"Solos first," she said aloud, scrolling through what she'd already written while she had a bite of her sandwich. Father would say that it was disrespectful of the food to concentrate on work while one ate.
On the other hand, she thought, going back to double-check a secondary cite, Father had probably never tasted soy cheese out of the kaf.
The cite checked. Good. Halfway through Social Engineering, she'd been struck with the conviction that she'd flubbed it – or misunderstood the content. She put the sandwich back on its plate and began to type.
She was sipping juice and rereading her response, tweaking words and patching sentences, when a flicker of green tickled her peripheral vision. Frowning, she looked down at the bottom left corner of the screen, and the dark green Serpent of Knowledge.
Chewing her lip, Theo considered the icon. None of the rest of the Team had gotten a mystery assignment; she'd asked. She'd even gone back through Professor Wilit's public class notes, and there was no mention of solo assignments made on the date the Serpent icon had first showed up on her screen.
All that being so, and after giving it some careful thought, Theo had deleted the icon.
And now it was back, pulsating gently while it waited for her attention.
Well, she thought, it could just wait, that was what. She had other things in queue before it.
Determinedly, she turned her attention back to her response paper, finished the editing and saved it before opening her math solos.
Despite Lesset's repeated claims during their commute between classes, the problems weren't hard. In fact, Theo thought, as she double-checked her work, they'd been kind of boring. Sighing, she closed her math space.
The Serpent icon was still there at the corner of the main screen. Waiting. Theo stuck her tongue out at it. Pulling her mumu from her pocket, she dropped to the rug next to Coyster, who stretched out of his curl, and relaxed bonelessly, licking his nose, all without opening his eyes.
Theo tapped her mumu on and called up the advanced diagnostic. The one thing she had figured out, before she'd gotten too angry to think, was how to circumvent the self-test program. Which hadn't been particularly easy to do. If she'd been even a little advertent, that would have told her that the rest of the problem was going to be tricky.
"The thing is," she told Coyster, "that the trigger has to be something simple – on and off. Because, if you're never on the grid, somebody'll notice. So it needs to be fast, so you can go off-line immediately in an emergency – and come back just as fast. Or faster."
Coyster yawned. Noisily.
"You just feel that way because you don't have a collar that tells everybody where you are all the time. Think if you were a dog."
Coyster opened one eye, glared at her pointedly, and closed it.
"Sorry." Theo turned her attention back to the mumu.
The key had to be in the advanced diagnostic, she told herself for the eighty-eighth time. She tapped the toolbox open and sat frowning at her choices:
ISOBIOS
Grid Calibration
Schedule
Unitize
Cloud Absorb
None of the sub-routines was helpfully labeled Turn-off ID emission. In fact, there was no mention of the ID-shouter at all, though every kid knew that their mother could track them through their mumu. You only had to be where you weren't supposed to be once, for that lesson to stick.
Frowning, Theo touched Schedule, even though she knew the list of sub-routines by heart. Schedule a self-test, schedule a backup, schedule a grid calibration. Grumbling to herself, she chose schedule a self-test and glared down at the next set of choices: diagnostic or complete?
"Chaos-driven, nidjit programs..." Theo muttered – and froze. She'd been through this screen dozens of times. Why was it only now that she wondered what exactly a complete self-test was?
Cautiously, she made her choice.
Her mumu emitted a strident, drawn-out beep. Coyster flicked an ear and put his paw over his nose. On the screen, words appeared, limned in orange.
This diagnostic will thoroughly test every resident system. Several functions may be unavailable or taken off-line during diagnosis. These include any function that requires syncing with the local Cloud or Grid. Voice messaging will remain unaffected.
Theo held her breath.
Do you wish to continue? Yes/No