That was when I finally took up my option to get information about my parents. I found out they were Military, so when I was born they had to decide whether they should abandon their Military careers and come to Earth with me. I don’t know what they’d have done if I’d been their first child, but they had two older kids so …
So, yes, they’d dumped me, but when I contacted them … Eighteen years of anger at their rejection. Eighteen years of refusing to let myself indulge in nardle hopes like the other kids. Eighteen years of pretending I didn’t care. It had all culminated in the happy ending all ape kids dreamed of, but so few actually got. My parents had wanted to know me, had been going to come to Earth to meet me. It had been more than amaz, and beyond zan, and then the dream was shattered by a Military General calling to tell me they’d died trying to open up a new colony world for humanity.
Any mention of my parents still started a whole mess of raw emotions churning around inside me. Not just about their death, and the dream of having a family that had died with them, but about my Handicap and the Military career I could never have because I couldn’t leave Earth. Fian and I were carefully avoiding the whole subject. I’m never any good at discussing emotional stuff, and Fian seemed scared to push the issue after the way I’d reacted in the past.
I couldn’t face talking about this with Issette any more than with Fian, so I was relieved when the door opened at this point. Fian came in carrying a black impact suit. His long blond hair was in such a mess that I guessed he’d tried on half a dozen of the protective suits to see which fitted best. He saw the floating holo image and stopped to wave.
‘Hello, Issette.’
Issette waved back at him. ‘I must go now. I need to get dressed and check Keon is ready to give his demonstration. Wish us luck.’
‘Good luck.’ Fian and I obediently chorused the words.
Issette’s image vanished as she ended the call, and Fian looked at me in confusion. ‘Good luck with what?’
‘I’m not sure. Issette’s talked Keon into showing his light sculptures to someone.’
Fian shrugged and changed the subject. ‘Dalmora’s back.’
Fian and I were both members of our class dig team 1, and the other three members of the team, Dalmora, Amalie and Krath, were our closest friends. ‘What about Amalie and Krath?’ I asked.
Fian shook his head. ‘Dalmora’s the only one so far.’
He hung up his impact suit and combed his hair back into a semblance of order, then we headed out of our grey flexiplas walled room, and along a grey flexiplas corridor to the grey flexiplas hall, which was the only room in the dome that could hold more than half a dozen people. We found Dalmora there, an anxious expression on her beautiful dark face, and her waist-long black hair uncharacteristically tangled, desperately apologizing to Lecturer Playdon.
‘Normally I can just portal to Danae Off-world, walk up to an interstellar portal and dial Earth. This morning there were huge queues. There were block portal windows scheduled for the most popular planet destinations, but nothing for Earth, so I had to wait in the main queue for over three hours before I …’
Lecturer Playdon gave up waiting for a chance to speak and firmly interrupted her. ‘Calm down, Dalmora. I got your message explaining the delay, and anyway you’re the first one back.’
‘Really? I saw Lolia in the corridor.’
‘Lolia and Lolmack stayed on Earth to spend time with their Handicapped baby,’ said Playdon. ‘Fian and Jarra stayed here as well, of course, and I was visiting friends at the New Tokyo Dig Site. You’re the first to get back from off world. Apparently, there are major delays on all interstellar and cross-sector portal traffic.’
‘Oh.’ Dalmora seemed to relax a bit.
‘Earth is in the centre of Alpha sector, so you just needed an interstellar portal,’ said Playdon. ‘The rest of the class are coming from planets in other sectors and will have to travel cross-sector to Alpha sector first. Amalie will have to portal cross-sector twice to get here from Epsilon sector, so I’ve messaged her to say I understand she’ll be especially late.’
Dalmora went off to her room, followed by a trail of bobbing hover bags, and Playdon turned on the huge wall vid at the end of the hall. The Earth Rolling News banner appeared above a scene of the Solar 5 spaceship lying in the bottom of a giant crater with its shields glowing against the rubble. The shields suddenly vanished, the escape hatches opened, and figures in Military blue impact suits started climbing out.
I groaned. ‘Not again! It’s been five weeks since the solar super storm and the rescue. I know Earth Rolling News don’t often get exciting news stories of their own, they mostly pick them up from the sector newzies, but really …’
Playdon laughed. ‘They started showing all the rescue coverage again after the medal ceremony. Haven’t you been watching yourself on the newzies, Jarra?’
‘I’ve been avoiding them, sir. It’s embarrassing.’ I saw the picture change to an image of Earth Olympic Arena, and cringed. First, there was a view of the audience, and then an image of five people, each wearing the Artemis medal on their shoulder. I was the one on the far left, trying to hide from the vid bees and failing. ‘Can we please change channel?’
Playdon seemed amused but changed to Gamma Sector News. After a sports report, it started showing massive queues of people.
‘Serious congestion continues at all Off-worlds and Sector Interchanges. Portal Network Administration apologizes for portal delays due to limitations on traffic flow during an upgrade of the major portal relay hubs. They request people to postpone non-essential journeys where possible.’
Coverage swapped to a series of people complaining bitterly about how long they’d been waiting. Lecturer Playdon turned off the sound just as a bunch of eleven students from Asgard in Gamma sector entered the hall, followed by a whole fleet of their hover luggage. Our class was being run by University Asgard, so there were a lot of students from that planet.
Krath was at the front of the group, and he immediately burst into an outraged tirade. ‘You wouldn’t believe how long we were waiting at Asgard Off-world. Four hours! Our block portal got rescheduled twice because of congestion in Gamma Sector Interchange 6, and when we finally got there the cross-sector portal to Alpha was …’ He finally noticed the images on the wall vid and trailed off with a disappointed air. ‘Oh, you know.’
Playdon nodded. ‘I suggest you go and unpack. I won’t be starting classes until everyone’s back, so you’ve plenty of time.’
The new arrivals went off to unpack and Fian took out his lookup. ‘I’ll call my parents and check they got back to Hercules safely.’
‘You do that,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and finish my unpacking.’
I hurried off. I’d done all my unpacking, but I’d just suffered four solid days of Fian’s parents and didn’t want to smile dutifully while he called them. Once I was in the corridor, I nearly bumped into one of the arrivals from Asgard. She gave me a look of pure disgust.
‘I see the ape girl is back. That explains the bad smell around here.’
I bit my lip. I’d barely noticed Petra’s existence at the start of this course, but I’d certainly noticed her since my classmates found out I was Handicapped. Once they got over the initial shock, most of them treated me just the same as when they thought I was a norm. Not Petra though. She’d gradually persuaded several of her friends from Asgard to join her in a campaign of furtive insults. Her plan was to make the throwback girl leave the class, but I wasn’t going to be driven out by a few nasty words. I kept the problems to a minimum by avoiding the ape-hating clique, so I tried stepping sideways to walk past Petra.
She promptly dodged sideways herself to block my way. ‘You shouldn’t be here. You should be on a Foundation course run by University Earth like the rest of your kind!’
I tried moving to the other side, but Petra blocked me again. If I turned around and went back to the hall, she’d jeer at me for running away. I gave up t
he nardle dodging from side to side and faced her.
‘I’ve as much right to be on this course as you. The only difference between us is my immune system can’t cope with other worlds. That isn’t a problem because this course spends the whole year here on Earth.’
‘Yes, the nuking rules for studying history say I have to waste a year on Earth before they’ll let me learn the modern history that really matters. That’s bad enough without being forced to share a dig site dome with one of you subhumans as well!’
I’d tried to stay calm, but now I was losing my temper. ‘Odd that you never noticed my subhuman looks and intelligence when we started this course. You believed I was a norm until you were told I was Handicapped. This course is governed by the Gamma sector moral code, which says you have to treat your fellow students with respect, so why don’t you be a good little Gamman and leave me alone. If Playdon spots the way you’re behaving, he’ll hand you a bunch of formal conduct warnings.’
‘He should be giving you the conduct warnings,’ said Petra. ‘You lied to us when you joined this class. Pretended you’d been to a Military school and were human like the rest of us. You didn’t even have the courage to tell us the truth yourself. You had to get Fian to do it for you.’
‘That wasn’t my idea!’
Petra had hit a sore spot. While I was in a hospital regrowth tank, getting my leg fixed after the rescue of Solar 5, Fian decided to tell the class I was Handicapped. He refused to say exactly what happened then, but people would obviously have been shocked and angry about the lies I’d told. Playdon would have kept things under control, but still …
Well, Fian faced the class for me back then, which was truly zan of him, but I’m the sort of person who prefers to fight their own battles rather than cower behind someone else. That was why I was hiding the Petra situation from him now. If he knew what was going on, he’d want to get involved and we’d start arguing. I wasn’t in a regrowth tank now, Petra was my problem, not Fian’s, and I’d deal with her.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t gone crying to Playdon yet,’ said Petra. ‘He’s made it clear he’s an ape lover. Of course, if you do go whining to him, it’s just your word against several of us and …’
She broke off and turned to look down the corridor. I saw Joth was walking towards us and relaxed. Petra was far too cunning to say anything nasty in front of anyone except her fellow ape haters, so she’d have to shut up now.
Joth reached us and Petra turned to smile at him. ‘Smelly around here, isn’t it? Why don’t you tell the throwback to get out of our way?’
I stared at her in disbelief, and saw her smile widen. What was going on here? I turned to Joth and his eyes evaded mine.
‘Get lost, ape,’ he said. ‘You should be kept outside in a cage so real people aren’t bothered by the stink.’
He brushed past me and hurried off down the corridor. I turned to gaze after him in shock. Back at the start of the course, Joth had done something incredibly stupid during an excavation and nearly injured me. Once I realized he was simply clueless at practical things, rather than a homicidal maniac out to deliberately kill me, we’d become friends, though I still felt he couldn’t be trusted to pick up a knife and fork by the handles instead of the sharp ends. Joth had remained my friend even after he found out I was Handicapped, but now he’d …
My face must have given away my hurt feelings, because Petra gave a triumphant laugh. ‘Joth’s asked me to Two with him.’
She chased after Joth and he put his arm around her. The situation was brutally clear now. Joth and Petra were the heavy lift operators for team 4. They spent a lot of time together, and Joth had got involved with her. Either he was fool enough not to realize how nasty Petra was, or he knew what she was like and didn’t care as long as he got to tumble her. It didn’t matter which. Petra wanted Joth to insult me, so he’d done it. A friend had just become an enemy.
I retreated to the nearest bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and stepped into the shower. Comforting warm water poured over me while I thought things through. If Petra and Joth were Twoing, there was no hope of regaining Joth as a friend. I just had to accept the situation. The usual insults would have an extra painful sting when they came from Joth, but I’d cope with it. I was used to insults. I’d spent all my life watching the vids made on the sector worlds, never knowing when one of the characters would suddenly make a joke about dumb apes like me.
I had to forget Joth now. He was just another of the pathetic people calling me names. I should focus on the good things, on the friends who’d stuck by me when they found out I was Handicapped. Dig sites were dangerous places and I was tag leader for dig team 1, so I was the one standing in the middle of the excavation work and taking most of the risks. It was vital to be able to trust the other members of my team, and I’d been very lucky with all four of them.
I turned the shower to dry mode, and jets of air blasted at me while I fixed my thoughts on the people who’d forgiven my lies and accepted me as if I was another norm. Dalmora, our sensor sled operator, was the only Alphan in the class. When we first met, I’d expected her to be a spoilt brat, because she was the daughter of Ventrak Rostha, the famous maker of history vids. Instead, she was one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I’d ever known.
Amalie and Krath were our two heavy lift operators. Amalie was a quiet, solid, and totally dependable girl from a frontier world in Epsilon sector, and Krath … well, he could be a bit of a nardle socially, but he was good at practical things and an amaz heavy lift operator.
I’d been confident both Dalmora and Amalie would give me a chance when they knew I was Handicapped, but I’d expected the worst from Krath. His father helped run an amateur vid channel, Truth Against Oppression, and Krath had kept quoting his stupid conspiracy theories and nasty comments about apes. Once the class knew I was Handicapped, I’d been braced for insults from him, but he’d startled me by grinning and announcing that if Jarra was an ape, then apes were pretty good after all. When Krath bothered to think for himself, instead of repeating his father’s ideas, there were definite signs of hope for him.
And then, most importantly of all, there was Fian. We weren’t just Twoing; he was also my tag support, constantly watching for danger, ready to use his lifeline beam to snatch me to safety. Fian hadn’t just accepted me; he’d even said we could both transfer to a University Earth course if there was too much prejudice from the rest of the class. I was determined not to do that, because it would mess up our studies, but it proved Fian was truly zan.
I was dry now, so I stepped out of the shower. Yes, it would be nice if everyone accepted me as a real human being, and I wasn’t the target of insults whenever I walked down a corridor alone, but that was never going to happen. I’d deliberately chosen to gatecrash a class of norms, I’d had the worst possible motives for doing it, and the current situation was far better than I deserved.
I got dressed again, headed back to the hall, and opened the door to find Krath standing in front of the big wall vid. He’d set it back to Earth Rolling News, and the picture showed dazzling white sparks streaking across an area of rubble. A lifeline beam yanked an impact suit clad figure out of their path, just as the sound of screaming sensor sled alarms was drowned by a loud explosion. There were people shouting and a female voice yelling in pain. That voice was mine.
For a second I was back in time, reliving the accident during the Solar 5 rescue that had earned me the Artemis medal. There was even a shooting pain in my leg. I dragged myself out of that, back to reality, and yelled at Krath.
‘Turn that off!’
‘What?’ He gave me a wounded look. ‘I was just …’
‘Turn it off, Krath.’ Playdon’s voice interrupted him. ‘Jarra doesn’t want to keep watching an accident where she was seriously injured.’
‘Sorry,’ said Krath. ‘I should have thought.’
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m just being a nardle. I’ve seen that vid a dozen times alread
y, so I shouldn’t react this way.’
The rest of the class gradually trickled into the dome during the afternoon, all making loud complaints about queues. Fian, Krath, and I spent a lot of time trying to talk sense into Dalmora, who was still worried about being late.
Krath shook his head. ‘It wasn’t your fault. Why are you so upset about it?’
‘On Danae, being late is considered a serious social failing,’ said Dalmora. ‘My family would be horrified to hear I’d been disrespectful to my lecturer and classmates by being late returning to my course.’
We explained to Dalmora about ten times that Playdon understood it wasn’t her fault and wouldn’t complain to her family. We finally managed to divert her with a discussion into differences between the various sectors and planets.
‘I’ve got a cousin on Jason in Gamma sector,’ said Krath. ‘I wore a green top when I went to visit him, and I wasn’t allowed out of Jason Off-world until I changed into something else. They think green is a terribly unlucky colour.’
‘You should always look up a world’s social conventions before you go there,’ said Dalmora. ‘It’s terribly easy to make a mistake and upset someone. My father was dreadfully embarrassed on Persephone when …’
She broke off, and started a new sentence. ‘Jarra, Fian, I need to ask you something. My father plans to make a vid about the solar super storm and the rescue of Solar 5. He’d like to use some of the vid sequences actually taken during the rescue, and of course those show you both. Are you comfortable with that? I could ask my father not to use the coverage of Jarra’s accident.’
‘You’re the one who got hurt, Jarra,’ said Fian. ‘Your decision.’