Earth Star (4 page)

He suddenly broke off, and his expression changed from grazzed to anxious. ‘You’re Handicapped, Jarra. You can’t portal to join the Planet First teams in Kappa sector. Why are the Military calling you in for Alien Contact?’

‘Sir, it makes no sense to me either,’ I said. ‘I may have been born into a Military family, but I can’t have a Military career, I can’t be any use so …’

‘Disobeying Alien Contact is a crime against humanity,’ said Playdon, ‘so you have to go, but … Fian, it’s vital you stick close to Jarra. Make sure the Military understand she’s Handicapped and she’ll die if she goes off world.’

‘I intend to, sir,’ said Fian. ‘She’s not taking a step without me.’

When I joined the class, I’d started calling Playdon ‘sir’ as part of my pretence of being Military and now Fian had caught the habit from me. Playdon frequently suggested that Fian, at least, should stop it, since he didn’t even have any Military relatives. So far, Playdon was losing the battle.

‘I couldn’t portal off world anyway,’ I said. ‘If I stepped into an off-world portal, it would scan me, see my genetic code was flagged as Handicapped, and alarms would start shrieking.’

‘Don’t assume that,’ said Playdon. ‘Civilian portals have those safety checks, but the Military may have their own off-world portals.’

I frowned. Playdon was right. The Military used five second, drop portals to allow Planet First ships to reach new worlds, but they probably had standard off-world portals as well.

‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir,’ I said grimly.

At 14, the Handicapped have the option to make one attempt to portal off world to prove the doctors haven’t made a mistake. I was one of the very few foolish enough to take up that option. I portalled off world, dramatically collapsed into the arms of the waiting medical team, was hurled back through the portal, and spent a week in hospital recovering.

Everyone called me a nardle for trying it, but if I was going to be defeated by fate then I wanted to go down fighting. I’m proud I tried to portal off world, but I also remember very vividly how I nearly died and how very much it hurt. I’d be extremely cautious about walking into strange Military portals.

Fian was checking his lookup, reading the instructions in his mail message. ‘We’re supposed to go to an Earth America portal address. That must be safe for Jarra. When we get there, I’ll keep yelling she can’t go off world.’

I checked my own lookup. ‘We’d better start packing. The instructions say to get there as soon as possible.’

‘If you don’t want to take all your bags with you, leave the rest in your room,’ said Playdon. ‘If you aren’t back by the time we move dig site, I’ll make sure we take them with us.’ He paused, and added pointedly. ‘Don’t waste time on replacing the wall. I’ll put it back myself.’

Fian and I exchanged wary looks.

‘Yes, I know you took out the wall between your rooms,’ said Playdon. ‘I saw you smuggling the tools out of the store room last night. Normally, I’d insist you put it back properly yourselves, but Alien Contact takes priority so I’ll do it myself.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, feeling horribly embarrassed.

Fian and I headed back to our room. We’d been careful until now to each use our own door into it, but since Playdon knew about the illegal missing wall there was no point in keeping up the act. We both went in through the same door and started some frantic packing.

‘We could just take it all with us,’ said Fian.

‘We could,’ I said, ‘but it’s going to look pretty silly if we arrive with all this. I’ve got a set of five hover bags and you …’

‘Nine,’ confessed Fian.

‘We probably won’t need many clothes anyway.’

‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘We’ve no idea how long we’ll be there.’

‘When they call in civilians as advisers, they give them uniforms. Special grey uniforms, with wide white bars on the left sleeve so everyone knows they aren’t genuine combat Military.’

‘We’ll be wearing uniforms? That’s … pretty amaz. What about underwear?’

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘I’ve studied lots of Military recruitment and public information vids, but none of them went into detail about Military underwear.’

‘I’d better take it then,’ said Fian. ‘Are you bringing that little black lacy thing with the …’

‘Yes.’

‘Bring the blue one too and the …’ He paused. ‘There can’t really be aliens. The Military can’t really want us. It’s got to be a mistake.’

My first panic had worn off, and I felt the same way as Fian. This situation was too nardle to be true. ‘Well, we’ve got to go, but I’m sure you’re right. We’ll be back in an hour or two, unpacking all our bags again.’

‘And I bet Playdon will have put the wall back by then.’ Fian sighed.

We finished packing, selected the bags to take with us, gave last guilty looks at where the wall wasn’t, and left the room. Yesterday we’d moved out all the furniture, unlocked the wall dividing our two rooms, shifted it flush against the other side wall of my room, and locked it into position there. After that, we’d brought the furniture back in. Playdon was going to have to do the same thing in reverse, but he’d probably get the class to help.

Playdon was waiting for us in the portal room. ‘What do I tell the class?’ he asked. ‘I popped back into the hall and told them to watch a vid. They seemed to think you were suffering some special punishment for swearing.’

He gave one of his evil smiles. The kind that usually meant the class was about to suffer a lecture on mathematical history analysis, or spend hours practising safety drills. ‘When the class find out you’ve packed your bags and gone, I’ll look like some extremist twentieth-century dictator unless I give an explanation.’

Fian and I looked blankly at each other.

‘Family crisis?’ suggested Playdon. ‘You’re Twoing, so the same family crisis would work for both of you.’

I nodded. ‘I’ve no idea exactly what, but …’

Playdon smiled again. ‘I won’t need to give details because it would be highly unprofessional of me to disclose confidential information about students. You know that, Jarra. You took full advantage of it when you started this course.’

I blushed. Playdon had known my application to University Asgard had come from an Earth school. He’d realized that meant I was Handicapped, but the rules about confidential information meant he had to keep quiet while I told the class a pack of lies. That hadn’t bothered me when I first arrived, bolstered up with my fury against all exos, but I felt bad about it now.

‘Sorry about that, sir,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry about it now.’ He gestured at the portal. ‘You’d better get moving.’

Fian entered the destination code of the nearest Earth Africa Transit. As he stepped into scan range the portal started talking.

‘Military traffic. There is no charge for this journey.’

Fian froze, and then turned to look at me, his mouth open.

I gulped. ‘Military personnel travel free on the portal network. That means …’

‘Our genetic codes are already registered as on Military assignment,’ said Fian. ‘It’s not a mistake. This is really happening.’

I realized something. ‘Pre-empts! That’s why the class was late back!’

‘What?’ asked Playdon.

‘The pre-empt system, sir. Handicapped babies are portalled to Earth as emergency medical pre-empts. Their signal automatically overrides other traffic on the relay system, grabbing any portal it needs to boost their signal on through to the Hospital Earth Infant Crash units. It’s mostly medical emergencies that need to bypass all the queues at Sector Interchanges, Off-worlds and Transits, but the Military use pre-empts for urgent journeys too.’

Playdon gave a nod of understanding. ‘And Alien Contact is active, so …’

‘Exactly. The Military will be moving massive amounts of personnel and equipment. They’ll be using the pre-empt system, both for speed and to avoid everyone asking questions about why Military officers are pouring through every Sector Interchange. Each pre-empt locks out everything on its path, tying up a lot of the relay system, cross-sector and off-world portals. Everyone else has to wait until they’re free.’

‘Jarra, we have to go,’ said Fian in a grimly terrified voice.

He was right. I didn’t understand what mad reason Alien Contact had for calling us in, but we had to report as ordered.

We stepped through the portal.

Fian and I had gone through the first stages of shock and disbelief. Now the enormity of the situation was sinking in. Alien Contact programme had been in place for centuries; preparing for the day the Planet First teams didn’t just find alien animals on a new planet, or a neo-intelligent alien species that used flint tools, but technologically advanced aliens that were a potential danger to humanity. Everyone learned about it in school. Years ago, I’d sat next to Issette in a classroom full of 12-year-olds, having a lesson about it.

I could remember that day perfectly, and how furious I was. I could never portal to the stars. Even if humanity met aliens, I never would. Why did they have to rub my nose in the fact by teaching me about the Alien Contact programme?

So I was fuming, and Issette was bored and messing around with her lookup. Keon was sitting on the other side of her, she passed her lookup to him, and he passed it back again. Then there was an unforgettable moment when Issette hit the wrong button and the lookup announced in a loud voice. ‘Duckfoot Doyle is soooo boring today.’

The rest of our class thought this was hilarious, but Doyle, our teacher, didn’t see the funny side. He grabbed Issette’s lookup, and not only saw the words it had just read to the delighted class, but also found an animated picture of himself in the centre of a group of yellow ducks, all doing the funny walk that had earned him his nickname. Issette got in trouble about the words. I got in trouble about the ducks.

I complained to Keon about that later, since he was responsible for the ducks. He said it was too much effort to confess. These days, Keon has progressed from creating duck images to seriously zan laser light sculptures, but he still goes through life making as little effort as possible.

Now I remembered all the facts Doyle told us back then. When Planet First found intelligent aliens with their own technology, Alien Contact programme would activate. Military plans would swing into action, reallocating Military personnel and resources. Civilians on a constantly updated list of experts would get emergency mails calling them in for instant duty under Alien Contact emergency powers. Alien Contact had absolute authority over everything and everyone, since encountering an advanced alien species would either be the greatest opportunity in history, or the greatest ever threat to the survival of humanity.

Doyle’s monotonous voice had actually managed to make something that dramatic sound boring. Now Fian and I were hurrying across Africa Transit 3, with a trail of hover luggage chasing us, and those words kept repeating in my head. ‘The greatest ever threat to the survival of humanity.’

‘Oh … nuke it,’ I muttered, as we went past the information signs about inter-continental portal charges. ‘This is too nardle.’

‘I know.’ Fian stopped to look around. Earth is the only world with more than one inhabited continent, and he was still confused by Transits and inter-continental portalling.

‘This way,’ I said. ‘This Transit has a dedicated portal continuously open to Earth America, so we just walk through.’

The portal didn’t have time to finish reciting the words about Military traffic before we went through to Earth America, our hover bags following us a second later. I looked around at the location board. We were in America Transit 2. I grabbed Fian’s arm and towed him past the big signs saying ‘Normal Portal Charges Now Apply.’

‘Why can’t you all live on one continent?’ asked Fian. ‘It would save all this long distance portalling.’

‘After Exodus century, there weren’t enough people left to maintain the cities, so they abandoned them and gathered in nearby small communities. There seemed no point in shifting everyone to one continent later on. If humanity keeps expanding, the population of Earth will keep rising, and we’ll need more than one continent anyway.’

‘Oh, that’s true,’ said Fian. ‘One in a thousand of humanity will always need to live here.’

It was actually more than one in a thousand. A few parents of Handicapped kids came with them, and there were the norm kids of Handicapped parents as well. It was the triple ten. The risk of a Handicapped birth was one in ten with two Handicapped parents, one in a hundred with one Handicapped and one norm parent, one in a thousand with two norm parents. I was too embarrassed to discuss that with Fian. If he stuck with me, then our kids would have a one in a hundred risk.

We reached a local portal, Fian entered the code, and the portal started reciting to us. ‘Warning. Your destination is a restricted Military security zone.’ We exchanged nervous looks as it added the usual bit about Military traffic and our journey being free.

‘Could we go anywhere free?’ asked Fian. ‘Any sector?’

I nodded. ‘Military personnel get free travel to help them keep in touch with family and friends.’

‘I wish we could elope to Epsilon.’

‘I’d settle for just being able to portal to an Alpha sector world without dropping dead,’ I said, bitterly.

Fian sighed in sympathy, and counted the luggage to make sure we hadn’t lost any, while I checked the portal destination display. ‘New Mexico,’ I said. ‘I bet we’re going to White Sands. The ships from the solar arrays were trying to land there during the solar super storm.’

Fian nodded, and we both stared at the portal for a moment longer without moving. I finally pulled myself together. In Military families, the first child born into the family after someone’s death in action carries their name and honour on down through the generations. I was the Honour Child of my grandmother, Colonel Jarra Tell Morrath. Only months ago, my parents had also died on Planet First assignments to open up new worlds for humanity. I might only be an ape, but I was a Military Honour Child, the daughter and granddaughter of heroes, and I could face anything, even aliens.