Earth Girl

  ‘Problem Jarra?’ asked Playdon.

  ‘There’s a huge tangle of old wires anchoring it to some of this concrete. We can’t shift that lot in one, so I’ll need to laser them through.’

  Playdon switched to our team circuit. ‘Jarra, can you use a laser gun or should I come and do it?’

  Good question. I’d never used a laser gun but I’d watched someone do it. ‘I think I can do it. It’ll be faster if I do. I’ll come and collect it.’

  ‘All right.’ Playdon sounded nervous. ‘Be very careful. The beam can cut through anything, including right through your impact suit.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said, grimly. ‘I’ll try not to cut myself in half.’

  I tagged a few more rocks at the other side of the area, and left Amalie and Krath to lift those while I collected the laser gun. Playdon showed me the controls and the safety mechanism, and then I headed back to the girder before I carefully set the safety to off and tried triggering the beam. It shone out with a misleadingly pretty glitter effect. I gave it an experimental waft in the direction of the wires and it cut through them without a blink, and sliced deep into the metal girder as well. I gulped a bit, and finished cutting the girder loose. Then I made very sure I set the safety catch back on the laser gun before attaching the evil little thing to my belt. I might need it again.

  ‘You remembered to put the safety catch on, Jarra?’ Playdon asked anxiously. He was on the team circuit again, clearly not wanting to let the rest of the world know just how clueless we were.

  ‘Most definitely on, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  We shifted the rest of the rubble out from around the big girder, and then I tagged both ends of that and moved back. Amalie and Krath each locked beams on to a tag, and Playdon gave them the countdown to lift it in unison. The huge length of metal lifted smoothly up into the air, then suddenly pivoted and went flying sideways. I felt myself being yanked upwards just as the end of the girder crashed down towards me.

  ‘What went wrong?’ wailed Krath on the team circuit.

  ‘Jarra! You all right?’ Playdon shouted across the emergency channel.

  I couldn’t move my left arm where the girder had caught it. I couldn’t move it … I couldn’t move it … Then the impact material of my suit stopped being rigid. I could wave my left arm again and stopped panicking. ‘I’m fine. It only caught my arm for a moment. Thanks Fian. Nice save. I’ll just check what happened.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Krath. ‘I don’t know what went wrong.’

  I did. The end of the girder with Krath’s tag mark had broken off. I had an uncomfortable feeling that was partly my own nardle fault. I’d just accidentally cut part of the way through that beam. I made a mental note not to be so dumb in future. ‘Not your fault, Krath. The girder broke. It’s fallen clear of the area, so we can carry on working on the other stuff. Drag net next please.’

  I retreated while Amalie and Krath dragged the minor rubble out of the area. We shifted another layer of big rocks, and then had another drag net to tidy up the smaller debris. That all went smoothly, which was a good thing because my nerves needed some recovery time.

  The calm voice of authority came across the emergency channel. ‘This is Dig Site Command. Asgard 6, can we have a progress report please?’

  ‘The site is levelled, and we’ve cleared two layers of rubble across the key area,’ said Playdon. ‘We’re just over halfway down.’

  ‘Earth 19, how long before you reach the site?’ asked Dig Site Command.

  ‘This is Earth 19. We will be with them in about twenty minutes. Nice progress, Asgard 6.’

  I tagged more boulders. Amalie and Krath shifted more boulders. Fian yanked me up out of the way of a slight landslide. We cleared out another layer of minor rubbish. It was all going quite beautifully, and I was just about to start tagging the big stuff again when Playdon yelped urgently on the emergency channel.

  ‘I’ve got an amber light. Suit failing!’

  ‘Which one? Where?’ I’d guessed the answer, and was moving there even before Playdon yelled co-ordinates at me. The solo suit nearest that huge hunk of concrete. I could picture it. That suit must have been caught when the concrete fell and bounced aside. It had absorbed the impact but been weakened in the process. Now it was failing. Under the rubble, a suit was failing, and when it failed someone was going to die!

  Nuke it! We were so close! I wasn’t going to let this happen! I was tagging rocks like a mad thing. Forget keeping my site nice and level, right now I needed to dig a hole down to that suit as fast as possible. ‘Amalie, Krath, lift rocks! As fast as you can! No time to be fancy, just throw them over in the direction of sensor 3.’

  ‘Jarra, you should move out of the way,’ said Amalie on our team channel.

  ‘Just lift the furthest tags from me. If I have to, I’ll dodge, and Fian can yank me out. Someone’s dying down there.’

  I could hear screams. My over active imagination of course. Dig Site Command had the trapped team on a separate comms channel, so someone could keep chatting encouragingly to them without distracting the rescuers. There might be real screams on that channel as the wearer of the suit below me started to feel the weight of the rocks on top of them, but I couldn’t hear them.

  ‘You’re close!’ said Playdon.

  He was right. As the next two rocks swung out of the hole we were digging, I could see a gleam of an impact suit.

  ‘Amber light is flickering red,’ said Playdon.

  That meant we had perhaps a minute. ‘Fian, I’m going down!’ I yelled as I broke all the rules and jumped right down the hole. My hover belt cut out for a moment, then back in again, breaking my fall enough to avoid the impact suit locking up. The sides of the hole were already starting to collapse, showering me with lumps of concrete, as I tagged the impact suit arm sticking out from the rubble. ‘Fian pull me out! Amalie lock tag and lift hard!’

  I flew up in the air, and a black and golden professional impact suit followed me up. We’d probably just broken someone’s arm, but it might have saved their life. Amalie swung the suit carefully over to land it on the clearway.

  ‘Are they alive?’ I asked.

  There was a pause of about ten seconds or a few years before Dig Site Command responded. ‘Alive and in need of urgent medical assistance. Emergency evac portal 3 is activated and Hospital America Casualty is standing by for incoming injured.’

  A female voice spoke up. ‘This is Earth 19. We just arrived at rescue site. Asgard 6, should one of our sleds ferry casualty to portal?’

  ‘Thank you, Earth 19. Please do that.’ Playdon sounded relieved that he didn’t need to send novices off on a sled alone.

  ‘Moving our lifting sleds into position to assist, and awaiting tag leader orders,’ said the Earth 19 team leader.

  That was me. I hesitated. ‘Earth 19, do you wish to send in a new tag leader?’

  ‘You are tag leader, Jarra. You’re familiar with the site and doing a fine job. Call for our lifts when ready.’

  I glowed at the praise for about a microsecond, then got tagging. Things went a lot faster with five sleds lifting, and three of them fast professionals. I stabilized a bit of the havoc around where we’d dug out the person with the failing suit, and then went back to steadily working downwards across the whole area where people were trapped. Progress went abruptly slower as we neared their level, and Playdon guided me as I carefully freed one impact suit after another and tagged them for rescue. One, two, three … Finally, we reached number nine and I could relax.

  When we had everyone aboard the sleds, we headed off in convoy towards the emergency evac portal. I lay on the bench at the back of the tag support sled, lost in an exhausted daze, as I vaguely listened to the voices chattering away on the broadcast channel.

  ‘This is Beowolf 4 team leader. Smooth work Asgard 6 and Earth 19. Sounds like you have the situation secure so we’re returning to base.’

  ‘This is Asgard 6,’ said Playdo
n. ‘Thank you for responding in case we ran into trouble.’

  ‘This is Dig Site Command. Patching Cassandra 2 team circuit to broadcast channel.’

  ‘This is Cassandra 2 team leader, Rono Kipkibor,’ said a new voice. ‘Thank you for your assistance, Asgard 6 and Earth 19. Great job, tag leader, we appreciate it.’

  Several other weary voices chorused agreement.

  ‘We hope Stephan is all right,’ said Playdon. ‘Things got too close when his suit failed. Say something, Jarra.’

  Me? I set my comms to speak on broadcast channel for a moment. ‘Glad to help, Cassandra 2.’

  We reached the portal. It was only an emergency evac one, so it was tiny and had no controls, but was just calibrated to transmit to a specified receiving portal. We strapped each Cassandra 2 team member to a hover stretcher before sliding them through, then there was another round of polite conversation involving the various teams and Dig Site Command on the broadcast channel before things finally went quiet.

  Playdon ordered team 1 across to one of the transport sleds, and picked out some of the rest of the class to drive the sleds back. I shifted across from my bench on the tag support sled to a bench on the transport sled, and stretched out again. With the excitement over, I was so tired that I actually fell asleep on the way back to the dome. This wasn’t a good idea. I’d never fallen asleep in an impact suit before, and waking up was quite disorienting and scary. In my panic, I hit poor Fian. He had been holding on to me to stop me falling off the bench whenever the sled hit a bump.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, staggered my way to the edge of the sled, and nearly fell off.

  Fian and Playdon grabbed me, one on each side, got me off the sled and steered me into the dome ahead of the crowd.

  ‘That was totally amaz!’ Dalmora said. ‘Jarra, you were just …’ She broke off. ‘I don’t know the words to describe it.’

  Yay, I thought. I have Miss Alpha lost for words. I tugged my suit hood off and swayed a bit.

  Fian caught me for the second time in two minutes. As my tag support, he probably felt it was still his job. ‘You all right, Jarra?’

  Good question. I had my feet on the solid flexiplas dome floor, but I felt like I was still hovering in mid air.

  Dalmora dashed off for a moment, and reappeared with a glass of Fizzup. She passed it to me, and I gulped it down.

  ‘Jarra’s just been working very hard saving some lives,’ said Playdon. ‘The Military are only human like the rest of us. Get her to the bathroom, Fian, and then to her room.’

  There was a bathroom. I managed to peel off my impact suit and there was, oh joy, a shower. After that, there was a bed, and I slept in my skintight rather than making the effort to change. After a few hours, I woke up, dressed, and groped my way to the dining room. There didn’t seem to be a class in progress, everyone was just sitting round tables and chatting. They all went quiet and watched me as I got some food from the dispensers and started eating.

  ‘We’ve had a news report from the hospital,’ said Playdon.

  I stopped eating and looked up.

  ‘Stephan, the tag leader whose suit failed, lost both legs but has no brain damage. A month in a regrowth tank getting new legs and he’ll be perfectly fine again. Everyone else just has minor injuries. I’ll be heading over to visit them later.’ He paused. ‘The Cassandra 2 team are very good friends of mine.’

  I probably should have asked Playdon to give them a message from me, and wish them a speedy recovery, but I was too exhausted to do more than mutter I was glad Stephan had made it. I finished eating after that and staggered back to bed. I’d helped save some lives. The lives of norms not Handicapped. All through the madness I’d never even thought about that. They’d just been people.

  There was something else. Playdon had referred to me as Military. He’d shifted sides, from threat to ally and I didn’t just feel safer because of that, I felt … I felt good.

  I fell asleep again.

  9

  After sleeping most of the afternoon and evening, I had a restless night with weird panicky dreams. I was the person stuck in the rubble in the failing suit, lying there helpless while my legs were slowly crushed to a pulp. Not nice. Not nice at all.

  We had ordinary lectures all the next day. We didn’t go on the dig site, or even set foot out of the dome. Playdon must have felt we needed some recovery time before facing the dig site again. I don’t know about the others but in my case he was certainly right. My body was stiff and aching, and my mind was a mess.

  So, Playdon spent that day taking us through twentieth century history and the birth of the mega cities instead of working the dig site. The twentieth century is the one they summarize as war, war and bore.

  Well, of course it’s boring in school history lessons. They miss out the space race since it was made irrelevant by portals. They miss out the cold war because it involves the ‘nuclear’ word too much. All the kids keep sniggering, tell their parents what teacher said, and the school gets swamped with complaints. At least, that’s what happens with ProParents, and I can’t imagine real parents are any more sensible about their kids going round saying ‘Nuclear bomb, nuclear bomb, I’m allowed to say nuclear bomb because teacher said nuclear bomb.’ As far as young kids are concerned, the line between nuclear bomb and the proper nuke word is so thin it might as well not be there.

  Playdon wasn’t afraid to refer to nuclear bombs with a bunch of allegedly mature 18-year-olds, so we got war, war, cold war and bore. If there was the odd faint snigger in the class when he said the word nuclear, then it could well have been the memory of him swearing at Lolia on the dig site yesterday, rather than pure childishness.

  Boring or not, I was deeply thankful to sit in the dining hall and let a couple of world wars drift past my ears. My nerves were still vibrating like tightly strung wires, and the boredom was soothing.

  It was worrying to find I was still so wound up. It was all over. Everyone was fine. Why was I still a nervous wreck? At one point, I even found myself wondering if I should talk to my psychologist, but fortunately I returned to sanity ten seconds later.

  I comforted myself with the thought that Playdon seemed to be looking a bit ragged too. Yesterday must have been a nightmare for him, landed with a rescue when all he had to work with was a clueless bunch like us. He’d said the buried team were friends of his, so he must have been trying to stay professional while going through personal hell.

  Class finished about five, and Playdon grabbed some food and vanished off somewhere. Maybe he was in his room, reliving the rescue and quietly screaming to himself, the same way I’d been last night.

  The rest of us lounged around in the dining hall, snacking on whatever we felt was the closest approximation to real food and drink that the food dispensers could produce. Having discovered that it’s more or less impossible to laze comfortably in a flexiplas dining chair, the class dragged in all their pillows and cushions and lounged on the floor instead. They kept making admiring comments about me being tag leader on the rescue. Even Lolia seemed to be rather impressed. It was somehow nice but embarrassing at the same time, so I retreated to a quiet corner by myself.

  Fian joined me after a while, and handed me a fresh glass of Fizzup. ‘Playdon was talking about some interesting stuff today. My school barely mentioned pre-history. Delta sector isn’t exactly keen on any sort of history for that matter. That’s why I applied to Asgard rather than a Deltan university.’

  I suddenly realized that while making a cross-sector university application wasn’t as crazy as an ape pretending to be a norm, it was still quite a brave step. ‘Are you finding it hard on this course?’

  ‘I’m coping. Yesterday was a shock of course. How are you feeling today?’

  I hit the glass of Fizzup with a finger nail so that it made a ringing musical noise. ‘You hear that? That’s my nerves still twanging.’

  ‘You did great yesterday.’

  ‘Only because I knew I could depend on y
ou to get me out of trouble.’

  There was a pause before he spoke again. ‘I wondered if I could ask you something. It’s always puzzled me, and you’re Military so you probably know all about it.’

  Playdon had called me Military in front of the class, and I’d decided that was a message. I’d helped save the lives of his friends, so he’d stop challenging me on my Military knowledge. I’d let myself relax a bit, thinking things would be easier now. I was wrong. Playdon might have stopped deliberately testing me, but my classmates would keep doing it in total innocence, and avoiding talking to people would advertise the fact I had something to hide.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked, warily.

  ‘Why did Kappa sector get settled after Epsilon? Shouldn’t it have been Zeta?’

  I was lucky. I’d wondered about that myself, and worked out the answer years ago. I reached for my lookup, and displayed a standard holo of the three concentric spheres of humanity.

  ‘Alpha sector is the first sphere centred on Earth. Beta, Gamma and Delta cluster round it forming the second sphere. Beyond those, the third frontier sphere has lots of sectors marked out, though we’ve only started colonising two of them so far. Now, look where Zeta sector is, and you’ll see your answer.’

  Fian frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘When the Delta sector planets were nearing the end of Planet First, the Military started setting up the portal relay network for the first frontier sectors. What was happening when Delta was being colonized?’

  Fian’s eyes widened. ‘The Second Roman Empire! Zeta sector is right next to Beta sector.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Beta sector was independent and hostile back then. They’re still the most … different … of the sectors even now. Their clan system. Their class system. Their lack of a nudity taboo. No wonder Lolia and Lolmack don’t fit in with the rest of the class.’