He shook his head. “I can just about accept us not being allowed to have a Twoing contract until we’re 18 and adult, but we shouldn’t still be treated like little kids. Yes, we got tired of waiting until Year End to get some privacy and broke a few rules, but admit it, all the rest of you are getting impatient too.”
“I certainly am,” said Issette. “I’m sick of the Principal snooping round my room.”
“Yes, everyone’s been getting impatient for freedom and doing ridiculous things,” said Keon. “Even I’ve been acting like a fool out of frustration.”
Issette frowned at him. “I hadn’t noticed you doing anything other than being as lazy as ever.”
“I know,” said Keon. “You haven’t noticed. Jarra hasn’t noticed. It’s really depressing me. I may have to do something drastic to get your attention. That would be a lot of effort, but the rewards could be worth it.”
I was about to ask him what he meant, when the first block portals completed, a set of new ones opened, and another wave of kids started coming through. We had to move further into the hoverball zone to avoid the indignity of mingling with the lowly Sixteens. Selia’s girlfriend came over to talk to her, and then Ayden’s latest love interest appeared at his side, shrieking her delight at seeing him until she was interrupted by the piercing sound of the school bell.
As we all started moving towards the huge green and silver domes, there was a tap on my arm from Cathan. He leaned to whisper in my ear. “Jarra, you passed the tests, so when …?”
“After school,” I said. “Portal home to Next Step with the others, wait an hour, and then come back and meet me outside the history club store room.”
He frowned. “That’s no good. Every room in the school has sensors monitoring our behaviour, even the store rooms.”
“Yes, but I’m a senior member of the history club, so I know the code for the store room door lock. I found out the same code works on the room sensor in there, so I can turn it off.”
“Amaz!” Cathan’s frown changed to a thoroughly unpleasant leer. “I’ll see you later.”
He hurried off after that, and we were in different classes all morning, but I had to suffer him leering at me again all through lunch. It was embarrassing to think I’d actually been boy and girling with this loathsome object for two months before I had enough sense to tell him to nuke off. Issette was right. Next time I was attracted to nice legs, I should make sure they were attached to a human being, not a …
I thought through every animal I’d heard of, trying to think of one as repellent as Cathan. I failed. The boy was even worse than a Cassandrian skunk!
After school, I headed to the history club store room to get ready for my modelling session with Cathan. I’d told him to wait for an hour before coming, but I wasn’t surprised when the knock on the door came ten minutes before that. I hid behind a stack of crates and called out.
“It’s unlocked!”
I heard the door open and shut, then Cathan spoke in a thick, eager voice. “Jarra, where are you?”
“I’ll come out when you’re ready to start painting,” I said.
There was a short pause before he spoke again. “I’m ready now.”
I stepped out from behind the crates, and saw Cathan standing there. He hadn’t even bothered to unpack his painting things, and had an obnoxious, flushed look on his face. That changed to outrage as he looked at me. “You promised not to wear any clothes.”
I laughed at him. “And I kept my promise, Cathan. I’m not wearing clothes, only one of the impact suits we use on the dig sites to protect us from falling rocks and jagged glass.”
“But it covers everything. That’s cheating!”
I went over to where Cathan’s lookup was wedged on the edge of a shelf, picked it up, tapped it, and two holo figures appeared. The holo Cathan looked at the holo me and spoke. “You promised not to wear any clothes.”
I tapped the lookup again to stop the vid playing, and the holo figures vanished. I tossed the lookup to Cathan, and shook my head at him. “You cheated far more than I did, Cathan. You were going to make a vid of me that you could gloat over and show your friends.”
“I … Yes, I was making a vid, but that was just for …”
“Artistic purposes?” I asked.
Cathan blushed. “Anyway, you cheated first. You were already wearing that impact suit before I came in here.” He paused. “I spent weeks helping you pass that test, so you owe me a favour.”
“Forget it, Cathan. I’d be happy to do you any ordinary favour, but I’m not taking my clothes off.”
“This is an ordinary favour. You said you got Keon to find out the door access code so you could sneak into Europe Off-world. I need a door access code too. Keon will never help me, but if you ask him …”
That did seem a reasonable request. “All right. Send me the door location and I’ll do my best.”
Cathan grinned. “Totally zan!”
He tapped at his lookup to send me the door details, then grabbed his painting bag and hurried off. I looked after him, puzzled that Cathan hadn’t whined more about his disappointment. Perhaps the door access code he wanted was for somewhere that showed Betan sex vids.
My lookup chimed with an incoming message that made me forget all about Cathan. My training licence had been processed, and I had my official pilot’s identity code!
Chapter Ten
Next day, I spent my lunch break talking Keon into getting the door access code. I played safe by claiming it was for me rather than Cathan, but of course Keon still made a huge fuss about the effort involved.
When Keon finally gave in, I sent him the door location, and was startled when he laughed and sent me the access code within two minutes. Apparently, getting me the door code for Europe Off-world had been horrendously difficult because they had top level security to protect the interstellar portals, but this door code was for some unimportant public building.
That confused me a bit, because I couldn’t imagine why Cathan would want to sneak into some random public building, but I sent him the access code at the end of the school day and then forgot all about it as I headed to New York Fringe. Less than an hour later, I was in one of their changing rooms, struggling into another tight-fitting impact suit. I’d picked out the best of the half-a-dozen standard black suits they had in my size, but it still had the typical musty smell of a suit that had been worn a lot.
I finished smoothing the fabric down my arms, pulled up the hood, and sealed the front of my suit so it would run its automatic self test sequence. The musty smell was a lot stronger now I was inside. The test sequence ran through successfully, so the air system was in perfect working order. According to the experts, that meant it was totally impossible for there to be any noticeable smell. Either my nose or the experts were wrong, and I knew which one I believed.
I set the front and back of my suit to display my name, then headed for the landing area. Gradin was already there, standing next to his survey plane. He had the hood of his fancy official pilot’s impact suit up and the front sealed, so I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but he was tapping one foot impatiently.
“Reception called me to say you’d arrived ages ago, Jarra. I don’t expect you to suit up in the Military standard time of two minutes, or even match the three minutes it takes me, but maybe you could try and manage it in less than half an hour next time.”
“I had to wait while my suit requisition request was submitted and authorized,” I said. “Actually putting on the suit only took five minutes.”
He made a snorting sound. “That’s still ridiculously slow.”
I bit my lip to stop myself making an angry reply. My history teacher always said it was more important to put a suit on properly than quickly, because if the special protective fabric was unevenly spread it could be hideously uncomfortable, but I’d have to make sure I learnt to suit up faster. Not just as fast as Gradin, but as fast as a Military pilot.
We bot
h put on hover tunics and climbed into the plane, then Gradin entered his pilot code into the control panel and nodded to me. I entered my own pilot code for the first time ever, and was thrilled to watch the plane control system interact with the Earth data net, displaying my name and training status as it accepted me as co-pilot.
Gradin tapped his suit comms control and spoke on the broadcast channel that would be heard by everyone working on New York Fringe Dig Site. “This is New York survey plane. Requesting clearance to launch.”
“This is Fringe Dig Site Command,” responded a voice. “New York survey plane, you are clear to launch.”
“This is New York survey plane,” said Gradin. “Pilot handing control to co-pilot for launch.”
Chaos take it, I’d expected Gradin to give me control of the plane in midair, not throw me straight into handling a take-off! What did I do now? Admit I’d deliberately exaggerated my flying experience to him. Confess that I’d only ever done a handful of take-offs and landings, and those were over a year ago?
I hesitated for a moment. Gradin had followed flight protocols by informing Dig Site Command that I had control of the plane. If I said I couldn’t do this, he’d have to tell Dig Site Command he was keeping control after all, and he’d probably add something sarcastic about me being clueless or scared. Hundreds of amateur archaeologists working on New York Fringe would hear those words on broadcast channel and laugh at me.
All right. Gradin wanted me to do the take-off, so I’d do the nuking take-off! I took a deep breath, hit the unlock switch for the co-pilot controls, and set my suit comms to speak on broadcast channel.
“This is New York survey plane co-pilot, Jarra Reeath. I have control.”
I heard a different hum on my suit comms, which meant Gradin had opened a private channel with me. I set my comms to speak on the private channel as well. We hardly needed it now, because I could hear him perfectly well sitting next to me, but it would be a help when our aircraft thrusters were on high.
“I’m keeping pilot controls active,” said Gradin. “Those can override yours if necessary.”
Despite his critical tone of voice, I found that reassuring and calmed down a little. I used the hovers to lift the survey plane into the air, and slowly turned it ready for take-off.
“I’m already over sixty,” said Gradin. “Do you think we can get in the air before I reach my hundredth and die of old age?”
I tensed again, hit the thrusters hard, and pulled back on the stick. We shot forward, and I heard Gradin gasp as we soared steeply up into the air.
“Unnecessarily spectacular,” he said. “You’re even more heavy-handed on the thrusters than I remembered.”
I giggled with relief that the take-off was over. “You wanted me to hurry up.”
I banked the plane and circled, still gaining altitude. Most of my previous flying had been on survey flights, where you needed to stay low so the sensors could record as much detail as possible, but this time I could go as high as I liked. I kept flying wide circles, joyously increasing height all the time, until we were well above the single small cloud in the sky.
“Exactly how high are you planning to go?” asked Gradin.
“All the way to Adonis. Hoo eee!” I yelled.
“There’s no need to deafen me, and I strongly suggest you pay more attention to your control panel. Your altitude is approaching red zone, and this type of survey plane doesn’t have its own air system. If we go any higher we’ll need to fit oxygen booster cells to our impact suits, which seems an unnecessary amount of trouble for a flight like this.”
I glanced at my control panel, saw the flashing warning message about my altitude, and levelled off the plane. “Sorry.”
“All right, I’ve seen enough to start planning your summer training schedule. Let’s land now.”
I obediently banked left and eased off on the thrusters, letting the plane gradually lose height as I flew over New York Fringe Dig Site. My attention had been on the sky before, but now I was looking down at trees and fire-blackened ruins. Over to my right, the ruins were taller, and the trees more sparse. I could see the skeletal outlines of the ancient skyscrapers of New York Main Dig Site in the far distance.
I made another turn, so New York Main was behind me, and looked for the distinctive cluster of domes that were New York Fringe Command Centre. They should be straight ahead of me, but I couldn’t see them. I was disconcerted, panicked for a second like a nardle, then saw the huddle of grey domes were further to my left than I’d expected.
I side-slipped off a bit more height, corrected my course, and started my approach run to the landing area. I judged that exactly right, coming in low and ideally positioned to land, so I just had to slow to stalling point and I was ready to make the final transition from thrusters to hovers. That transition phase is the trickiest bit of any landing, so I held my breath as the plane gently sank down on to the ground, then gave a long sigh of relief as I hit the control to shut down hovers.
As I did that, the plane tilted sideways, and I heard a sickening crunch followed by a scraping sound. I didn’t understand what was happening. The hovers were off, they were definitely off, but the plane was still moving. Gradin’s hand slammed down on a switch, the plane stopped, and there was a moment of silent suspense before he spoke.
“You nuking idiot! You total nuking idiot! You crashed my plane!”
Chapter Eleven
I still didn’t know what had gone wrong, but I did know I wanted to die. I wanted to sink through the floor of the plane I’d just wrecked, and the ground below it, heading on downwards until I hit the magma layer and died a merciful death.
Gradin was still ranting at me. “How can anyone make a flawless landing and then crash the plane?”
The contempt in his voice prodded me into movement. I fumbled blindly for the cockpit release, climbed out of the plane, yanked off my hover tunic, and threw it back inside. I wanted to run straight for the nearest portal and get out of here, but I’d already smashed up a plane and I couldn’t steal an impact suit as well. I headed for the misty shape of the nearby dome, and groped my way through a door, then along a corridor to the changing room where I’d left my clothes.
“How stupid do you have to be to cut hovers while the thrusters are still active on minimum?”
Gradin’s voice followed me, shouting at me through the suit comms system. I was too numb with shock to think of turning off the comms, so the tirade only stopped when I took off my suit. I dragged my clothes on, returned the suit to the correct rack in the store room, then headed for the portals in the reception area. The woman behind the desk said something to me as I went by, but I didn’t turn my head to look at her, just dialled America Transit 1 and stepped through the portal.
About five seconds after I arrived in the Transit, I heard a soft chime. I reached for my lookup and glanced at it, but the display was blurred and unreadable. I blinked the tears out of my eyes and it abruptly came into focus. Gradin was calling me!
I hesitated, rubbed the back of my hand across my face, and answered the call, speaking in a rush before he could throw any more insults at me. “Don’t worry. I’ll never set foot in a plane again.”
He started to say something, but I ended the call and walked on towards the inter-continental portals. My lookup gave another chime and I saw it was Gradin calling me again. Nuke him! I’d told him I’d never set foot in a plane again, what more did he want?
I rejected the call, glanced at the overhead signs, and went to join the queue of people for an inter-continental portal that was locked open to Europe. As the queue shuffled forward, my lookup wailed for attention yet again, this time with the louder sound of an emergency call. I could see people turning to stare at me. Why couldn’t Gradin leave me alone?
I rejected the emergency call, set my lookup to automatically block any future calls from Gradin, and was left in peace as I walked through the portal. The signs told me I was in Europe Transit 4 now, and I head
ed for the local portals. I was dialling the code for my Next Step, when my lookup made a squawking noise I’d never heard before, and flashed up a holo of a man in uniform. I gaped at him, open-mouthed.
“Jarra Reeath,” he said. “We’ve had a report stating you’re rejecting emergency calls, and registering concern for your welfare.”
Pure anger helped me pull myself together and speak in an icily calm voice. “If you check my travel record, you’ll see I’ve just been through several portals in rapid succession so emergency calls may have failed to reach me. If whoever called you had any sense they’d have realized I was portalling, waited a few minutes, and tried again before bothering you.”
The man seemed to glance down at something. “Your travel record confirms recent portal transfers. I apologize for disturbing you.”
My lookup screen went blank, and I went over to a quiet corner and called Gradin. The second he answered, I screamed at him. “How dare you set the police on me?”
He laughed. “How dare you crash my plane and run away without making a statement for my accident report?”
“You told them you were concerned for my welfare! You could have got me sent to Correctional for psychological treatment!”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I was genuinely worried you might do something drastic. I saw the surveillance vid of you going through reception, and the look on your face … I’m not a nice man, Jarra, but I’m not actively evil. I instinctively yelled at you when you crashed my plane, but I wasn’t trying to destroy you.”
My head started replaying the humiliating moment when I crashed the plane. The crunch, the scraping sound, the … I fought off the ghastly memory, and took refuge in my anger at Gradin contacting the police. Being angry was good. Being angry blocked the pain. Being angry kept my voice from shaking.