Read Saltation for Free Online Page B

vehicles . . . 
    But that would have been too much to tell Asu, and they'd told Theo not to talk about the questions they asked: had she known Hap Harney, had she been told to fly to the mountain, why had she selected that spot, why had she hidden in the rocks—which of course she hadn't, really. They'd gone on and on and on about how long had she been on-world and did she have any opinions on the coming elections and would she call someone who died stupidly a hero just because he'd died and . . . they were amused, somewhat, that the only drink she accepted was from the water fountain.
    So she'd hoped Asu would give over on that topic and Chelly—well, he'd helped, actually. He'd had some idea of what she'd been through—apparently he'd had his time with the authorities when the security team came through.
    "Asu, I didn't give them your Checksec, they turned it off the moment they saw it and said it was a potential violation of the privacy regs."
    "Violation? What's wrong with active protection? Everyone knows you have to take care of yourself! What about my privacy?"
    That, it turned out, had been the rub.
    Chelly's voice was low and firm while he was talking about it, and he lost some of the blotchiness that looked like it might have come from tears.
    "Your Checksec's a pro model, Asu. It not only blocks within a perimeter, but it probes any signals it finds and records them. The thing is, it kept trying to connect to the network so it could report somewhere."
    Asu's face and neck darkened; her mouth opened as if she were going to say something, but it took several jaw movements and some hand motions as well before she could articulate anything more understandable than, "Oh no. . . ."
    Finally: "I didn't even think! That's the Checksec Jivan gave me—she's head of Security for Diamon. You don't think it was trying to report, do you?"
    Chelly's glance may have struck the ceiling before Theo's, but as they looked down at Asu they both shrugged.
    Chelly's shrug had turned into a slow hand to the side of his face.
    "Could have been calling in, what do I know? I do know that they came in here and swept the place three times, then ran off and did the rest of Erkes. Harney's time here—I guess they had to check everything, since he'd been senior when I got here."
    "Same room as us? Right here? In our beds?" Asu's eyes widened.
    Chelly hand-talked, Yes, right, right, yes.
    "I'll need to get some smutch in then. Bad luck to sleep in a dead man's bed, you know . . ."
    It was then that the exhaustion really hit Theo, and she'd wished, very much that she'd had a certain Scout pilot to . . . talk to. Or something. Even Bek. He wouldn't have understood the piloting problems, but he would have made sure she relaxed.
    Lying in the top bunk, she smiled. Bek had been a good onagrata , even though they'd both gone into the First Pair knowing they'd each be going off in different directions.
    Despite the tea or because of it, she'd slept deeply, if alone, and managed to get up and dress without waking Asu, whose schedule put her on late-day, and took herself to math class, adding a note to shop for tea on the joint to-do list.
    Math drill done, and filed, Theo looked around. Others were still at work, which was something she was used to from the Wall, so she did some calculations in her head, trying to keep herself from remembering that there'd been a live pilot in that craft—somebody Chelly had known—trying to concentrate on the drill's final question, which to her mind had two mutually antagonistic answers. She'd chosen the simple one, of course.
    Visualizing the other one—no, well, she probably shouldn't use the desk for that, not with others around her still working. She resorted then, like she had at the Wall, to her needle. She slipped it and a length of thread out of a cargo pocket, and bent to work, stretching out a point on the fabric here, and one there . . . and after all, since the fabric was