"It's time to get up!" the clock announced in a cheery sing-song.
Theo snuggled tighter into her pillow, getting a face full of fur in the process.
"It's time to get up!" the clock sang again, slightly louder this time.
Theo sneezed and opened her eyes, coming nose-to-nose with Coyster, who was propped up on the pillow like a miniature—and very furry—human.
"It's time to get up!" The clock was beginning to sound a little testy.
Theo sneezed again. Coyster put a paw on her nose and looked disapproving.
"Theo Waitley," the clock said sternly. "If you do not get up within the next thirty seconds, a note will be inserted into your file. Mark."
"Gah," Theo said comprehensively, and flipped the blanket back. The floor felt cold and creepy against her bare feet as she crossed to the desk and pressed her thumb against the clock's face.
"There," she muttered. "I'm up. Happy?"
The clock, duty done, didn't answer. Theo sighed hugely and wandered out to the 'fresher to wash her face.
A few minutes later, slightly more awake, she pulled out a pair of school coveralls. She dressed, hasty in the cool air, and touched the closet's interior mirror.
The dark surface flickered to life, and she sighed at what she saw. There were dark circles under her dark eyes, like she hadn't slept at all, and her face was even paler than usual. Her light yellow hair was wisping every-which-way, which was unfortunately just the same as always. When she was a littlie, she'd been convinced that she'd wake up one morning to find that her fluff had been shed, like duckling down, and she'd grown sleek, dark brown hair straight down to her shoulders.
She combed her fingers through the fly-away half-curls, trying to make them lie flat, which never worked, and didn't this morning. Grumbling, she tapped the mirror off and turned away.
Coyster was still lounging against the pillow, half-covered by the blanket, eyes slitted in satisfaction.
"Get up," Theo said. "I've gotta put the bed away."
He yawned, pink tongue lolling.
Theo hooked him under the belly and dropped him to the floor.
"If I can't sleep all day," she said, pulling the blanket straight. "You can't sleep all day."
Coyster stalked away, tail high, and jumped onto the desk. By the time the bed was put away, he was curled and sound asleep, like he'd been there for hours. Theo shook her head—then bit her lip.
Last night, she'd filled a disposable bowl with water and shredded some old hard copy from a school project she was done with into the cube's inverted top. Coyster had let her know that he would tolerate these primitive arrangements for a limited time only, so Theo had added proper cat bowls, a litter box, kibble, and a can of his favorite treats to her growing after-class shopping list. She felt bad about leaving him all day without anything to snack on, even though she knew he wouldn't take any harm from it. Father always left cat food and water out in bowls in the kitchen, for Coyster and Mandrin to graze at their leisure.
"If I have to get used to everything being new . . ." Theo let the sentence drift off, blinking a sudden blurriness away.
She was going to have to tell Kamele about Coyster, she thought, considering the slumbering furry form on her desk. She hoped her mother was in a less edgy mood this morning. A good night's sleep . . . Maybe Kamele had had a good night's sleep.
Yawning, she bent down to retrieve her school bag.
"I'm going to school," she told Coyster. An orange ear flickered and Theo grinned. Not so sound asleep, after all.
Bag over her shoulder, she slipped out of her room, closing the door firmly. She didn't want Kamele finding out about Coyster until she had a chance to explain the situation.
Chaos, she was tired! Which was, she acknowledged as she headed down the hallway toward the kitchen, entirely her own fault. She'd spent 'way too much time working out the pattern for the lace rose she wanted to make. By the time she'd given up and tucked her traveling kit away into her bag, it had been late. Not as late as general lights out—that was a note-in-your-file—but well beyond the Strongly Suggested bed time for juniors who hadn't yet had their Gigneri.
Yawning again, Theo dumped her bag on the meal bar and put her hand on the kitchen door. Tea, she thought, was definitely in order. Some of Father's strong black tea with the lemony after-note. She'd just put the kettle on and—
"What!" she stood, staring stupidly at the bland lines and blank screen of a standard kaf unit. There was nothing else in the alcove. No stove, no cabinets, no refrigerator, no tins of tea lined against the back of the counter . . .
"Good morning, Daughter." Kamele sounded as tired, or tireder, as Theo felt, so it probably wasn't the smartest thing she'd ever done to turn around and point at the poor kaf like it was disorderly or something, and demand, "Are we supposed to eat out of that?"
Kamele frowned.
"Don't roar at me, Theo."
She swallowed. "I'm sorry. I was just—expecting a kitchen."
Kamele's frown got deeper, and Theo felt her stomach clench.
"This is the kitchen that most people eat out of," she said sternly. "It amused Professor Kiladi to bypass the kaf and cook meals from base ingredients, and I saw no harm in allowing him to teach you something of the art, since you were interested. If I had foreseen that you would scorn plain, honest food out of the kaf—"
"I'm not," Theo interrupted. "Kamele, I'm sorry. I'm not—scorning—the kaf. It was just . . . a shock. I was looking forward to making a cup of tea, and—"
"The kaf will give you a cup of tea," her mother said, interrupting in her turn. "All you need to do is ask."
Tea from a kaf unit was not, in Theo's estimation, tea. It was a tepid, watery, tasteless beverage that happened, via some weird and as-yet-uncorrected universal typo, to be called tea. Real tea had body, and taste, and—
Her mumu thweeped the eighth of the hour.
"I suggest that you choose your breakfast quickly," Kamele said, and stalked past her to confront the kaf.
Two sharp jabs at the keypad, a flicker of lights across the face screen, a hiss when the dispenser door slid up. Kamele slid the tray out and carried it to the bar. Acrid steam rose from the extra large disposable cup.
Theo wondered if kaf coffee tasted any better than kaf tea, but it didn't seem like the time to ask. Instead, she stepped up to the machine, punched one button for juice and another for hot cereal, and very soon thereafter was sitting across from her mother at the bar.
Kamele was drinking the coffee, though not like she was enjoying it, and staring down into her bowl so intently that Theo knew she couldn't actually be seeing it or her cereal. She sighed and dug into her own breakfast. Father and Kamele were both prone to sudden fits of intense abstraction, when they would simply . . . step away from whatever it was they were doing to pursue a certain fascinating thought. Theo guessed it came of being a scholar and having so many interesting things to think about, and she had early learned not to interrupt a fit of abstraction with small talk.
The cereal wasn't too bad, though it was sweeter than she liked; the juice was room temperature and astringent. Theo ate quickly, keeping an increasingly worried eye on her mother, who continued to drink coffee and stare a hole into her cereal.
Theo cleared her throat.
"Early class this morning, Kamele?" she asked, trying to sound bright and interested—and hoping to bring her mother to a realization that her cereal was getting cold.
Her mother glanced up, her eyes soft and not really focused.
"Yes," she murmured. "I do have the early class this morning, Theo. Thank you for reminding me. I'd best be on my way." She slid off the stool, carried her untouched bowl and the half-empty cup to the disposal.
Well, Theo thought, that didn't work, did it?
Kamele bent to pick up her bag.
"Don't dawdle," she said, slinging it over her shoulder. "I'll be a little late this evening—there's a meeting. If it looks like it'll go long, I'll text you." She bent and brushed her lips against Theo's cheek.
"Learn well," she murmured, and was gone, moving quickly toward the receiving parlor, her footsteps sounding sticky against the slick floor. Theo heard the outer door chime and cycle.
This, she thought, finishing her cereal hurriedly, is not good. She sat back, reaching for the leg pocket where her mumu rode. She'd just text a quick message to Father, and ask him to—
Or, she thought, hand poised above the pocket, maybe not. For all she knew, Kamele wasn't speaking to Father, and would refuse anything he sent to her. She was certainly behaving like—Theo took a breath. Until somebody told her something, she couldn't dismiss the possibility that Kamele had—had released Father. There were signs, she thought carefully. Before last night, Kamele had always referred to Father as "Jen Sar." "Professor Kiladi," in all its stiff formalness—that was how a junior academic referred to a senior, not how a woman spoke of her onagrata.
Theo sighed. She hated not knowing what was going on. Maybe the best thing to do was wait for Oktavi's dinner with Father, and ask him again.
Maybe he'd even give her a better answer than "local custom."
Grumbling to herself, she stuffed the disposables into the receptacle, shut the door to the kitchen, and glanced at the readout set into the top of the table. Still plenty of time to meet Lesset before class, if the bus didn't run late.
"Bus!" she said out loud, and smacked fingertips against her forehead. She didn't have to catch the bus today. She lived inside the Wall now; school was just a belt ride away.
"Great," she muttered, and slung her pack over her shoulder. "So I'll be early."
* * *
She was at the Team's usual table in the Ready Room, working on the lace flower again, her tongue between her teeth as she tried to figure out how to make it 3D and all one piece, when Lesset wandered in—and stopped just inside the door, blinking.
"Theo! What're you doing here this early? Is something wrong?"
Theo frowned up at her. "If something was wrong, I'd be late, wouldn't I?"
"It would depend," her friend said reasonably, "on what was wrong."
"I guess." She sighed and reached for her pack. "Actually, something is wrong. Kamele moved out of Father's house. We're Mice now."
"You're living in the Wall? Really?" Lesset blinked, then grinned. "That's tenured!"
Theo eyed her sourly. "No, it's not." She bent to put her hook and thread away into her bag.
"Seriously tenured," Lesset insisted. "Where's your nest?"
"Quadeight Twobuild, right on the belt."
Lesset's grin went from wide to round. "Fact?"
"No, theory!" Theo snapped. "What'm I gonna do, make up the direction?"
"But that must be—it's gotta be. . . . Chaos!" Lesset sat suddenly, her pack bumping the table, and there she continued to sit, staring right through Kartor and Roni when they came in. Kartor flopped into the chair on Theo's right, his eyes pinned to the screen of his mumu. Roni dropped her bag on the table and went over to Team Two's table, just like she always did.
"Any time you're ready," Theo muttered, and Lesset turned to her, putting a quick hand on her arm.
"I'm sorry," she said, though she didn't sound particularly contrite. "It just came to me that you're living—you must be living in, you know—her apartment."
Theo sighed, and wished she hadn't put her handwork away. "Her who?"
Lesset frowned. "Don't you ever read The Faq?"
The Faculty-Administration Quarterly carried the daily university news—lists, mostly. Lists of people who were applying for grants. Lists of people who had gotten their grants. Lists of people going on sabbatical. Lists of people coming back from sabbatical. Changes of address.
Kamele said that once, in the long ago past, The Faq really had only been published once a quarter, but the level of news generated by such a large faculty and administration forced a more frequent publication schedule. She read it, and Father, too, though Theo thought they had different reading experiences. For instance, Kamele called it The Faq or, sometimes, The News.
Father called it The Scandal Sheet.
"I skim it sometimes," Theo said, and made a face. "Bor-ing."
Lesset sighed and shook her head. "Information is never boring," she said in a prim voice that made her sound exactly like her mother.
"Long lists of names are boring," Theo answered, then prodded. "You were going to tell me who her is."
"Well . . ." Lesset chewed her lip. "Professor Flandin—the sub-chair of the History of Ed—"
"Lesset, I know who Professor Flandin is! Kamele's in EdHist!"
"All right, don't roar at me! How'm I supposed to know what you know?"
"I'm sorry," Theo said, noticing that her shoulders had climbed up nearly to her ears. She relaxed them, deliberately, and looked at her friend. "So you think we're in Professor Flandin's apartment? Why? She go Topthree?"
"Topthree!" Lesset laughed and patted Theo's arm. "You really don't read The Faq, do you? Professor Flandin didn't get promoted. She got disbarred."
Having delivered this last in a penetrating whisper, Lesset folded her hands on her knee, and gave a single, solemn nod.
"Disbarred?" Theo frowned. Now she came to think about it, she'd heard something . . .
"Falsifying data," she said, suddenly remembering. She looked at Lesset. "She falsified cites in her last two pubs."
Lesset smiled. "You do pay attention sometimes! So, anyway, if Professor Waitley's been assigned—Quadeight's only two ramps down from Topthree!—been assigned to Professor Flandin's apartment, that must mean the dean approved her temp-posting to sub-head. That wasn't in The Faq yet!"
"Maybe they're waiting to make the announcement at the Faculty Meeting," Theo said, but she was thinking about Kamele—Temp Sub-Head!—and she hadn't said anything—not a word. That felt pretty bad, like Kamele didn't trust her. But, Theo thought, her spirits rising considerably, if the temp appointment was the reason Kamele had moved to the Wall, then that meant they could go home after the search was finished and the department had appointed someone permanent!
The knot in her stomach eased, and she looked up with a smile as the first whistle sounded.
"Time to go," Lesset said, as she and Theo rose and shouldered their packs.
Roni rushed over from Team Two's table, grabbed her pack, and marched off, calling, "Don't be late!" over her shoulder.
Kartor rose automatically, his attention still on his mumu.
Lesset sighed, her steps not as brisk as they might've been. "Professor Appletorn first thing is cruel and unusual."
"He's not so bad."
"He's not so bad to you," Lesset retorted. "He doesn't loathe you."
"He doesn't loathe you, either," Theo said reasonably. "He's a teacher. His job is to make sure you learn."
"I'm so tense in his class I don't think I'm learning anything," her friend said, as they moved out of the Ready Room. She shuddered.
That was serious, if true. Theo had noticed that Lesset wasn't at her best in Professor Appletorn's class, but if she was letting her tension get in the way of performance, that was bad. Theo sighed, worried.
Professor Appletorn taught Advertence, which was core. If Lesset didn't pass, she'd not only pull the Team average down, she'd have to repeat Fourth Form, and clear a higher achievement bar, to cancel out the note in her file.
She looked around, suddenly worried on another head—and spied Estan and Anj, the last two members of the Team, rushing toward them from the pass corridor from the belt station. There must've been another Crowded Condition on the Quad Six beltway. That had been happening a lot, lately.
"Maybe you should talk to your mentor," Theo said to Lesset, as they turned left down the hall. They were walking so slow now that lazy-moving Kartor was ahead of them, and she could hear Estan panting from behind.
"I did talk to my mentor." Lesset sighed gustily. "She said I was learning how to deal with adverse conditions."
"Oh." said Theo. She frowned. "Are you?"
"I don't think so," her friend said mournfully.