When Leesol came in the morning, Keelic was waiting at the landing pad with his friend. The rising sun shone burnished orange on the craft’s hull and lit up the cockpit windows as Leesol put it on the pad. Keelic stepped aboard, and they smiled at each other.
The seed stalks of the forest below swayed and waved, and Keelic mused that the end of summer was coming. He looked at Leesol, but she was concentrating on flying the shuttle. She didn’t seem to be using any of the automatic piloting. Keelic wanted to talk to her, but couldn’t think of anything that would be sufficiently interesting and sound natural at the same time. Everybody talked about the weather, especially on Ermol. He didn’t want to sound trivial, but any observation he could think of sounded obvious and foolish. He looked back out the windows.
Mr. Hallod met them in the shuttle bay and led them to the kitchen for munchies before heading into the library. Something about the house struck Keelic for the first time. Sunlight from the front reached easily through to the library, and into all the rooms inside the cliff. Somehow the light was refracted to shine straight down wide halls and into every room. The three of them sat in soft orange light around a console table.
"We’ll begin with your homework, Keelic," said Mr. Hallod.
The three pictures appeared on the table. Mr. Hallod and Leesol both leaned over them in sudden interest.
A thrill of pride ran through Keelic.
Leesol pointed at something, and Mr. Hallod nodded. "Excellent detail, down to the colors. Have you been to Vew, Keelic?"
Keelic frowned and looked at his picture. There was much in it that he had no memory of ever seeing. He looked at his friend. The alien was sitting in sunlight on the back of a cushioned chair, and raised an eye to look back. Mr. Hallod called up Keelic’s mathematics, and frowned.
"You did these yourself?"
Keelic nodded without looking at Mr. Hallod.
"Try these." Mr. Hallod touched up another set of equations. They were more complex than the homework.
Keelic’s heart beat, and his friend sought the cause of his distress in mauve and blue. The equations shifted, patterns of numbers and variables fell from them in ordered layers. Keelic felt a meaning in the patterns, but couldn’t quite grasp it.
Wait, thought Keelic, what are you doing? You have to follow the rules.
The alien showed Keelic how it was using the rules Keelic had shown him, plus a few that made sense with those rules. It took a few minutes, but Keelic finally got it.
Mr. Hallod was watching intently, but didn’t say anything. Hesitantly Keelic picked up a stylus and started writing on the table. Mr. Hallod was quiet until all six problems were complete.
"Good. Soon you will be at Leesol’s level. Now tell me what you found in your reading."
As Leesol flew Keelic home, he wondered about the day. Mr. Hallod knew something was different, Keelic was sure about that. Leesol had barely spoken to him. He wanted to know what mathematics level she was at, but the weirdness of the day kept him from talking to her directly. At his home he said good-bye, and watched the shuttle soar away. Walking up to the house, he grabbed grass stems and ripped them off. Nothing was working out.
The next day Mr. Hallod pressed Keelic almost harshly. Leesol sat silent most of the time, but Keelic didn’t have the luxury of wondering what she thought. The rest of the weekdays were the same. Mr. Hallod hammered him with questions, showed him trigonometry, and had him draw until he was almost sick of it. For some reason there was almost no homework, but Keelic didn’t question. He was doing all his work with the alien now. They were in a constant link, and everything Mr. Hallod asked tended to exhaust them both.
Flying home on the last day of the week, Leesol said, "My father said we could go flying. If you want."
Keelic sat straight. Excited but afraid to show it, Keelic said, "’Kay."
"I could come and get you tomorrow morning."
"’Kay," Keelic said again. He couldn’t think of what else to say. Leesol landed the shuttle and opened the hatch.
After the shuttle took off, Keelic jumped in the air and shouted, "Yeeeee!"
The alien raced around him in the grass and did backflips in the air.