Earth Star (26 page)

The banner of newly born Zeta sector made its way slowly around the arena, surrounded by a positive cloud of hovering, spherical vid bees, all jostling for good positions to record images of the historic moment. Humanity had existed in six sectors since before I was born, but now there were seven. It might be twenty years before any planet in Zeta sector entered stage one of Planet First, forty years before it went into Colony Ten and the first children were born on its planets, but the Military were out there now. The frontier edge was moving out from Kappa to Zeta.

Fian’s parents said their goodbyes and left after that, and Fian turned to look at me. ‘A new sector! A historic moment.’

I nodded. ‘And a declaration of faith in Beta sector too.’

‘What?’

‘The colonization of Zeta sector was delayed because of Zeta’s huge boundary with Beta sector and the aftermath of the Second Roman Empire.’ I paused and changed the subject. ‘Do you think they’ll let us out of hospital now? We’ve both had our twenty-four hours of checks and scans after coming out of a tank. You had major organ damage, so I wouldn’t want to take any risks, but …’

‘We can ask,’ said Fian, and pressed the button that brought a doctor in to see us. ‘We’re wondering if we’ll be able to leave soon.’

The doctor produced the inevitable scanner. ‘Let’s take a look.’

We both submitted to what was at least our tenth scan in twenty-four hours. The doctor gazed thoughtfully at her scanner. ‘I’m happy to discharge you at this point, but remember the newly grown skin will remain sensitive for a couple more days.’

I went to my room to collect my things. Seeing the Zeta banner for the first time had been an amaz moment, but now I’d dropped from an exuberant high mood straight into depression. What had I been getting so excited about? I was Handicapped, so Zeta sector was just another place where I could never go. The marriage thing was bothering me too. I hadn’t expected Fian to turn me down and …

I shook my head. Wallowing in gloom like this was silly. I’d been through a lot of strain, and I was overreacting to things the way I always did. Fian had nearly killed himself saving me. He wasn’t rejecting me. He was just being sensible.

It was the hospital’s fault. Being here, constantly prodded and scanned by doctors, had made me stupidly nervous and insecure. As soon as Fian and I were back at Eden Dig Site, everything would go back to normal.

We got a noisy welcome when we rejoined the class. Playdon had just finished giving his afternoon lectures, so everyone was in the hall, shuffling furniture ready for dinner. They instantly stopped work and surrounded us, with everyone talking at once. I was struggling to cope with it, but Playdon quickly intervened.

‘Jarra and Fian have come straight from hospital, so please don’t mob them.’

The rest of the class retreated to leave us with just Dalmora, Amalie and Krath, and Dalmora gave us an apologetic smile. ‘Everyone’s just relieved that you’re both back. Lecturer Playdon kept telling us that you’d recover, but after Joth … Well, we couldn’t be sure until we actually saw you.’

I pulled a face. ‘I can understand that.’

‘Playdon hasn’t let us set foot outside the dome since the accident,’ said Amalie. ‘He said we all needed some time to calm our nerves, so we’ve just had lectures and watched some vids.’

‘Oh no,’ said Fian. ‘You haven’t had to repeat all the safety lectures again, have you?’

Amalie shook her head. ‘This wasn’t like with Joth. No one had done anything stupid. Technically, Fian should have run with the rest of us, but Playdon said Dig Site Command don’t even bother with standard reprimands in a case like this. They accept the tag support and tag leader relationship is always intense, and when people are Twoing as well you can’t expect …’

‘I should have been faster sounding the alarm,’ said Dalmora.

I shook my head. ‘Nobody could have hit the alarm faster.’ I suddenly realized that the person who should have been talking most of all was oddly silent. ‘What the chaos is the matter with you, Krath? You haven’t said a word.’

‘I feel so guilty, Jarra.’ Krath’s face was a picture of misery.

Amalie reached out a hand to casually slap him on the back of the head.

‘Ouch!’ Krath gave her a wounded look.

She turned back to me. ‘He’s been like this ever since the accident. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but it’s even more irritating than when he talks all the time.’

‘But what have you got to feel guilty about, Krath?’ asked Fian. ‘The accident wasn’t your fault.’

Krath sighed. ‘I made that stupid remark about the huge bounty payment if anyone found the secret to making glowplas.’

I tried to make sense of this. ‘Yes, but we didn’t.’

‘I don’t want blood money,’ he wailed.

‘Shut up, Krath!’ Amalie hit him again, harder than before, and Krath gave a loud yelp of protest.

Playdon had gone over to get a drink from the food dispensers, but turned to call across the room to them. ‘Amalie, I’ve been treating you hitting Krath as some sort of Epsilon sector courting ritual rather than a violent attack that’s against the Gamman moral code, but please don’t injure him.’

‘I wish there was a brain to injure,’ muttered Amalie.

‘Dig Site Command studied the data from our sensor readings,’ said Dalmora. ‘A magnetic field that strong was completely unprecedented, so Earth 3 and Cassandra 2 research teams went to take a look.’

Fian stared at her in disbelief. ‘But it was lethal there!’

She pulled a face. ‘I know, but they went in without impact suits or sleds. They wore old style protective clothing and shifted rubble with ropes instead of beams.’

I shook my head. ‘Why did Dig Site Command allow it?’

Dalmora shrugged. ‘They’re highly skilled experts, and they knew exactly what they were doing. They found the source of the magnetic field and pulled its power cell to shut it down. They think they’ve found a research lab. It may have been in use until Eden was abandoned, because a lot of the equipment was left in stasis fields. They think one of those fields failed while we were there, and something became active which generated that magnetic field.’

‘If that lab has any clues to lost technology, the bounty payments could be big,’ said Amalie. ‘It’ll take ages to investigate properly, and the money would be shared around a lot. The research teams took huge risks, and the Dig Site Federation gets a share of big payments to help with dome and equipment costs, but we should still get …’

‘I don’t want it,’ said Krath. ‘When I went through that evac portal, I saw the state Jarra was in and …’

I hit him myself this time. ‘Playdon shouldn’t have let you see …’ I broke off. ‘No, that’s nardle of me. He had to get everyone out of the danger zone, and emergency evac portals are made the cheap way. No controls, they’re just set to transmit to a specific receiving portal in the nearest major casualty unit. Playdon had no way to recalibrate the portal, so …’

‘He told us to crawl through and keep moving straight ahead and out of the door,’ said Amalie, ‘but of course Krath had to stop and be nosy in the casualty area.’

Krath rubbed his head. ‘I wanted to check Jarra and Fian were all right, but …’

I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. ‘Krath, you just made a casual remark. What happened to me and to Fian wasn’t your fault. Playdon, and you, and Dalmora, and Amalie were all heroes. You took a huge risk and you saved our lives!’

Krath blushed. ‘You really think I’m a hero.’

I nodded, let go of his shoulders, and stepped back.

‘Don’t let it go to your head though,’ said Fian. ‘You’re still a nardle.’

Krath grinned at him. ‘But a heroic nardle!’

Playdon came over, carrying a large box. ‘Jarra, Fian, we’ll have to allow at least three days before either of you try getting into an impact suit, so you’ll have to stay in the dome until then. I made vids of the lectures you missed, so you can spend your mornings catching up with those while the rest of us get back to work on the dig site.’ He gave us one of his evil smiles. ‘Being in a tank is no excuse for missing my lectures.’

Fian laughed. ‘I guessed you’d have made vids, sir. Thank you.’

‘Dig Site Command had your suit completely serviced and reconditioned, Jarra.’ Playdon handed me the box. ‘You’ll find it’s as good as new.’

‘That’s very kind of them,’ I said, trying to control the shake in my voice. ‘I’ll just put it away.’

I took the box, carried it off into the privacy of the room I shared with Fian, and closed the door behind me. I opened the lid and looked at the impact suit that the Cassandra 2 team had given me. I’d been delighted with their gift, I’d loved it, and now it made me sick to even see the thing. The magnetic field had turned it from friend to foe. It had tortured and nearly killed me. I could never bear to wear it, or any other impact suit, ever again.

I put the lid back on the box, shoved it out of the way, and sat on the bed. I’d had no idea I’d react like this, and it took a few minutes to realize the implications. I had the key spot in my class, tag leader for dig team 1, but I couldn’t do my job without an impact suit. There were endless hazards on a dig site. Falling rocks, abandoned chemicals, decaying power cells that could explode. Never mind the hazards, I couldn’t even fire a tag at a block of Eden glowplas without a suit, because a ricochet could seriously injure or even kill me.

The grim facts started to sink in. I couldn’t even set foot in a ruined city without an impact suit. My career as an archaeologist was over and I’d have to aim at being a theoretical historian, like the members of team 5 who did the minimum they could on the dig site just to …

Panic hit me. No, I couldn’t become a theoretical historian either. If I couldn’t do the practical work on the dig site, I’d have to drop out of this course, and successfully completing your Pre-history Foundation course was a prerequisite for entry to a full history degree. It was a strict rule. I’d smugly laughed about how it forced norm history students to spend a year on ape planet Earth, but now that rule was going to destroy my future.

I’d have to leave the course, and what would that mean for me and Fian? He’d offer to come with me, because he was a zan person, but I couldn’t let him. Fian loved history as much as I did. Twoing with me demanded too many sacrifices already, keeping him chained to Earth, and causing trouble between him and his parents. I couldn’t selfishly make him give up his history studies and his career as well.

Being afraid of an impact suit seemed such a small thing, but it could systematically wreck my life. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I had three days before I needed to wear an impact suit again. Three days to force myself past my fear and into the suit that had tried to murder me. I could do that. I had to do that. It was the only way.

For the next few days, I kept walking blindly down a pitch-black tunnel without a vestige of light at the end of it. In all that time, I hadn’t managed to do more than look at my impact suit. When I tried to touch it, I felt physically ill with irrational terror. I didn’t know how I’d explain this to Fian, but I’d have to find the words somehow. I couldn’t just vanish without an explanation. After Joth’s death, I knew how dreadful it could be to be left endlessly wondering why something had happened.

I’d planned to leave the course and Fian before, when he first found out I was Handicapped, but he was gloriously stubborn and wouldn’t let me do it. He’d threatened to go legal and force me to honour my Twoing contract with him. He couldn’t do that this time, because there were only a few days left on our three-month contract.

I did a lot of thinking about what I’d do after I left the course. Earth was known for the triple H. Hospital. History. Handicapped. Issette was studying medicine, but I couldn’t do that because I was useless at science. There were plenty of options in childcare, but how could I take care of kids? I’d been making too big a mess of my own life to think of taking responsibility for someone else.

Each night, I made an excuse to slip off to our room ahead of Fian, went to bed, and pretended to be already asleep when he followed me. I kept my eyes closed as he crept around the room, like an unusually tall, blond mouse, and went to bed himself. This avoided conversations that I was in no state to handle, but left me facing a long night where sleeplessness warred with bad dreams.

By the end of day three, I was standing at a cliff edge and looking down. Tomorrow morning, people would expect me to wear my impact suit, and I could no more do that than I could portal to Alpha sector. Buying myself time by claiming my skin was still sensitive wouldn’t work. Both Playdon and Fian would insist on me having medical checks, and the doctors would say there was nothing wrong. I was totally and utterly nuked.

I sat in the dining room, surrounded by chattering people, and Fian came over carrying a tray of food. I frowned at him, but he still put a plate of cake on the table in front of me.

‘Please, Jarra, at least eat some cake.’

I reached out and mechanically picked up the cake, but my stomach rebelled at the thought of eating it. Fian watched with a disapproving expression as I broke off token crumbs.

‘Jarra,’ he said, ‘you can’t …’

He broke off, and everyone sitting at our table looked up. Playdon was standing next to us.

‘Jarra and Fian,’ he said. ‘I need you for a moment.’

He beckoned us out into the corridor, Fian headed after him, and I trailed in their wake. This was it then. Playdon was going to discuss the work he had planned for the class tomorrow morning, he’d be assuming I’d be back out there tag leading, and I had to say I couldn’t do it. I’d expected to have a few more hours, but … Chaos take it, what was the point in prolonging the agony?

I braced myself to tell them the situation. At least I’d finally thought of somewhere to go. I’d join the staff on one of the safe historical sites, like Pompeii or the Pyramid Zone. You needed either a history or science degree for the important jobs, but I could do something basic like mowing the grass or handing out armbands to visitors.