Earth Girl

  Fian and I instinctively glanced across the room at the two Betans, before tacitly abandoning the subject. I’d answered Fian’s question and could relax again, but not too much. I’d passed this test, but I knew there’d be another and another and another. I couldn’t afford to fail any of them.

  Dalmora entered the hall at this point, carrying a guitar. She explained it was an instrument that dated far back into pre-history. There is a natural law of the universe that says someone always brings a guitar along on a history dig. They always play the same songs too. Two people in my school history club had them, though I had to admit Dalmora played better than they did.

  We listened to Dalmora singing the song about two boys and one girl. My first year in Next Step, everyone was singing it. The boys keep asking to date the girl, and she can’t decide between them, and the chorus has her singing that her mum won’t let her go triad so she can only go two. In the last verse, the boys decide to forget her and date each other instead. Dalmora got the words muddled in verse three, but it was a pretty good performance all the same.

  ‘My home planet is Hercules,’ said Fian, when things were quieter again. ‘Please don’t say that I haven’t the muscles for Hercules. Half the class already said it.’

  I giggled and looked him over. He wasn’t exactly a muscle man but … ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  He looked absurdly pleased at my comment. ‘My parents are specialists in solar storm prediction. My older sister is studying multi particle wave expansions.’

  ‘I understand solar storm prediction,’ I said, ‘but multi particle wave expansions mean nothing to me. Like … what?’

  He smiled. ‘Me too. Delta sector is heavily into science, like Beta sector is heavily into sex, but I can’t see the appeal of it.’

  I laughed.

  ‘I meant I can’t see the appeal of science, not sex. Sex is …’ Fian shook his head. ‘I’m digging myself in deeper here, aren’t I?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, I can’t understand the fascination of science, and my family feel much the same about history. It’s pretty zan being here with people who I can actually talk to about history without them falling asleep.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I was always boring my friends to death, and getting told off for lecturing them, but when I find out something totally amaz about the past I just want to share it with someone.’

  ‘I can imagine history isn’t the number one topic of conversation on the average Military base.’

  Alarm bells sounded in my head. I’d been off guard again, answering as myself, and I had to remember that I was JMK. ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Your parents are on assignment?’ asked Fian.

  ‘Planet First,’ I said.

  ‘Planet First!’ He was obviously impressed. ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Classified.’ I made a mental note that this could be a very useful response to difficult questions.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Even if it wasn’t classified, the planet still only has a number. It has to pass Planet First to get a name.’

  ‘How long are your parents on assignment?’

  I shrugged. ‘Could be a year. Could be tomorrow if something too nasty shows up.’

  ‘Scary,’ said Fian. ‘You have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘One brother,’ I said. ‘A year older than me.’ I’d given JMK a pretty typical Military background. It was usual for Military families to have either two or three kids, all very close together in age. ‘He’s training in …’ I suddenly remembered something. ‘Oh chaos!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I should have called someone, but it’s a bit late.’

  Fian checked the time. ‘It’s only seven in the evening.’

  ‘Time zones,’ I said. I handed him my glass of Fizzup. ‘I’ll be back.’

  I sprinted to my room. Europe was five hours ahead of our dig site time zone. It was already midnight there. I daren’t call Candace at this time of night, but I could call Issette. After yesterday’s excitement, I had something I could easily chat about.

  Not surprisingly, Issette was slow to answer my call. Eventually the screen responded, and showed her sitting on a bed in a sleep suit, looking tired and reproachful. ‘I knew it before I even looked. If someone calls me at midnight, it has to be Jarra …’

  I grinned. ‘Blame the time zones. I had to talk to you.’

  ‘So, how are you? Have the norms found out yet?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not yet. You’ll never guess what happened yesterday. We were just starting a dig when …’

  Issette covered her ears. ‘No history lectures! Not at midnight! Bad Jarra!’

  ‘Listen! There was a tower collapse and it buried ten people.’ I told her all about what happened and how I’d been tag leader.

  Issette gazed at me in amazement. ‘How could you? I’d just have frozen with terror.’

  ‘Jarra of the Military doesn’t freeze with terror,’ said an unexpected male voice. Keon strolled into view and sat on the bed next to Issette. He was wearing a sleep suit and his short black hair looked even more rumpled than usual. He was … He and Issette must be … I gaped at them.

  ‘I told Keon,’ Issette said. ‘I was worried about you and … I hope you aren’t angry.’

  Angry? No. I was too busy being stunned to be angry. Issette and Keon? When had that started? How far had it got? Had they deliberately arranged to be on the same campus? They must be Twoing surely, or were they? If they were spending nights together then Issette would want a contract, on the other hand my mind reeled at the thought of Keon and contracts in the same sentence. You’re either a nice respectable contract boy or girl, or you aren’t. Issette was, and Keon wasn’t.

  I pulled myself together. ‘I’m not angry. You won’t tell anyone, will you Keon?’

  He shook his head, and gave me his usual look of lazy amusement. ‘Of course not. Too much effort.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m fine. I wanted to tell you about the rescue, but now I’d better let you … both … sleep.’

  I hastily ended the call, and stared blankly at the wall of my room. I couldn’t believe this. I knew that lots of kids went a bit wild when they first left Next Step, making the most of their new freedom, but … Issette was supposed to be sensible!

  10

  When I eventually went back to the dining room, Fian was still there guarding my pillow. He handed me back my Fizzup.

  I looked down into the glass. ‘I could do with something stronger.’

  ‘If you mean alcohol, I don’t think the dispensers can help,’ he said. ‘There’s a choice of six flavours of Fizzup, or that brown muddy stuff the Gammans drink. There isn’t even any frujit. Something wrong?’

  ‘I’m in shock.’

  ‘Something happened?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What could shock you after what you went through yesterday?’

  ‘This is worse than yesterday.’

  ‘What?’ He stared at me. ‘Don’t tell me they found aliens at last. Can’t be. If they’d found aliens then every lookup in the place would be screaming.’

  At that moment, there was a chorus of chimes, bleeps and dings from around the room. My lookup chimed along with the rest.

  ‘Oh nuke!’ Fian gasped and frantically pulled out his lookup. He stared at it. ‘Solar storm warning … I’m sorry about the language, but …’

  I’d collapsed on my pillow, and was clutching it and laughing hysterically. ‘Your face when all the lookups bleeped …’ I giggled madly into my pillow.

  Fian looked down at me and gave a reluctant laugh. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought it really was aliens! I thought you’d got warned ahead of the news announcement because the Alien Contact programme was active and they were calling you in for … Can you stop laughing now?’

  I shook my head, still giggling. ‘Yes, I’m the first person they call when they meet aliens.’

  Fian buried his
face in his hands with a groan.

  I slowly calmed down to the level of the occasional muffled squeak as a new giggle tried to surface.

  He glanced warily at me. ‘You safe yet?’

  I nodded, biting my lip so I wouldn’t laugh.

  Fian frowned at his look up. ‘The solar storm warning says we can expect portals to be off for three hours. That’s scary. We had one on Hercules once, but the portals were only out for an hour. Even so, a couple of people died because they couldn’t get to hospital.’

  ‘Solar storms hit Earth several times a year,’ I told him. ‘Anything up to six hours portal outage is quite normal. It can be as long as three days for a really bad storm.’

  ‘Really?’ Fian looked suspicious. ‘Three days! This is a joke, right?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, that can really happen on Earth. You remember all that stuff on the first day about Planet First?’

  He nodded. ‘You were amaz. Playdon called on you out of the blue, and you just calmly stood up and took us through the whole thing.’

  I could feel myself blushing. ‘Thanks. Actually, I rather enjoy giving lectures. Anyway, as Playdon said, Earth would have failed Planet First because of the level of solar storm activity. They reject planets where storms are bad enough to interfere with portals on a regular basis. I think the acceptable level is about one portal outage in fifteen years. On Earth, it’s about once every couple of months.’

  He pulled a face. ‘How do people cope?’

  I shrugged. ‘The warning that just came in was a five hour one, which is about the minimum you get. Five hours is enough warning to close schools, send kids home, and get anyone likely to need medical attention into hospital. They have medical buildings in most settlements to deal with emergencies. Once the portals are off, they just wait it out.’

  ‘Sounds a bit primitive,’ said Fian.

  ‘I’m sure it’s covered in the legal stuff you accepted when you joined the course.’

  Fian laughed. ‘I should have read all 20,000 words of that instead of skipping it. I really wasn’t prepared for the sort of thing that happened yesterday. Please tell me that doesn’t happen every three months too.’

  ‘Oh no.’ I shuddered. ‘That was very, very unusual. I think Playdon, the Earth 19 team, everyone in Dig Site Command … Well, they must have all been throwing fits at a novice team being in the middle of a rescue. I bet there were a lot of private channel discussions going on that we couldn’t hear, but they had no choice. They had to send us in, or leave the University Cassandra research team to die.’

  I pulled a face. ‘One of the experienced University Earth teams should have been in Sector 24 and leading the rescue. With Earth 19 able to arrive an hour later as backup, Dig Site Command would just have ordered us back to our dome. If another tower went down, they wouldn’t want to have to nursemaid a Foundation course.’

  ‘Could one of the other towers have fallen?’

  I nodded. ‘Didn’t you realize? That was why Beowulf 4 were coming. They couldn’t reach Cassandra 2 in time to help them, but if another tower came down and buried us too then Beowulf 4 would have arrived in time to dig us out.’

  ‘I’m glad I didn’t know …’ muttered Fian.

  ‘The first breakaway that Playdon reported was from tower one in a bunch of three. That labelled it as likely to fall, and that’s why Dig Site Command had everyone in the area going to safe ground. Cassandra 2 would have been heading away from the tower cluster when tower three collapsed with no warning and buried them. Fortunately, they were outside the main debris area or the suits might not have coped. The suit closest to the main debris was the one that failed early.’

  ‘Why don’t they do something to prevent this?’ asked Fian. ‘Blow up the remaining towers maybe?’

  I grinned. ‘We’re historians. We’re supposed to study the remains of the past not destroy them. If we blow up towers, it wipes out any surviving artefacts in the area, and deeply buries any stasis boxes. Some boxes would be too difficult to ever reach after that, and ones with weakening power supplies would be destroyed by major rubble hits. It’s a bit of a trade off. Risk to life against potential loss of history.’

  ‘In theory, I agree history is worth dying for, but when you’re actually out there …’ Fian shook his head.

  ‘You’re unlikely to ever be in that situation again,’ I reassured him. ‘Only specialist research teams like Cassandra 2 are allowed to work on towers.’

  ‘If this solar storm had happened yesterday … We couldn’t have got people to hospital. The person with the crushed legs …’ Fian broke off, looking queasy.

  ‘That couldn’t happen. Dig Site Command would never let teams work the site during a portal outage. The minute a solar storm warning comes in, they evacuate the teams.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ Despite his words, Fian was still frowning. ‘What do they do with off-world Handicapped babies during an Earth portal outage? Do they all die?’

  I was pleased he’d said Handicapped babies not ape babies, and he sounded like he felt it would be a bad thing to let people like me die at birth. That put Fian a long way ahead of some off-world people I’d seen on the vids, especially the comedians out for an easy laugh at the expense of us apes.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘they don’t die. Solar storms mess up portal signals originating on Earth, but they can still receive incoming signals from off world. Remember it’s the transmitting portal that does all the work, or we’d get nowhere exploring space. Planet First have special portals that fire through and create their own drop portal at the other end. It’s one shot, and only holds the portal open for five seconds because there isn’t a proper receiving portal to stabilize it, but that’s enough to get a dart ship through.’

  I shrugged. ‘Earth usually cuts off regular incoming portal traffic during solar storms as a safety precaution, but they still take emergency ones like the incoming Handicapped babies. There’s a very small risk of minor ill effects, but if they don’t accept them they’ll die in minutes.’

  ‘You know an amazing amount of stuff about this,’ said Fian. ‘I didn’t know any of it, and my parents study solar storms! I try not to listen when they talk about it but …’

  I realized I’d been giving myself away. Only an ape girl would know this much about how they deal with solar storms on Earth. My big mouth! I could never resist the chance to lecture someone. I thought rapidly about the vids I’d watched.

  ‘Remember that the Military run the solar power arrays. Solar storms are dangerous out in space because of the radiation. The crews have to lock down the array, disconnect it from the transmitter, and evacuate until the storm is over.’

  ‘Oh I see. Of course …’ said Fian. ‘Yes, the Military must be even more worried about solar storms than the rest of us.’

  I nodded. ‘Other planetary arrays aren’t so bad, but they have a busy time coping with all the storms Earth has. All the procedures are based on the five Earth arrays, because if they work for Earth, they’ll work anywhere that has been through Planet First.’

  I told myself sternly to remember not to open my big mouth and show off again. I thought I’d got away with it this time, but Fian was bright. If I did it again he would be bound to get suspicious. Acting my part was going to be a lot harder than I’d realized. I had to remember not only the things JMK should know, but the things she wouldn’t.

  ‘Since we got distracted by the alien first contact,’ Fian said, ‘I never found out what it was that had really shocked you more than yesterday. Your parents are all right?’

  ‘They’re fine,’ I said. ‘I’d called my best friend and … Well, she had someone male staying the night.’

  Fian laughed.

  ‘Yes, I know it sounds silly, but I wasn’t expecting it, and you don’t understand the complications.’

  ‘What complications?’ he asked.

  ‘You know what they say. Some girls are contract girls and some aren’t. Issette, my best fr
iend, she’s … Well, she’s like me about these things. I always thought she’d want a Twoing contract before spending the night with someone.’

  ‘Maybe they have one, and she hasn’t told you. It might have only just happened. Did you ask?’

  ‘I was far too embarrassed to ask questions. I’d been telling Issette about yesterday, and he walked into view in his sleep suit. After that, I just ended the call.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Fian. ‘They could have registered today and your friend hasn’t had time to tell you.’

  ‘With anyone else I’d think that, but … Well, it’s just that Keon isn’t a contract boy.’

  ‘Oh, you know the other party as well. You’re sure he isn’t the contract type? How well do you know him?’

  I glibly wrote Keon into JMK’s background story. He was the same age as me of course, but the odd year didn’t matter, and it would help explain why I was so bothered by this. ‘He’s my brother.’

  Fian frowned at his empty glass. ‘I suddenly see why you’re worried. Your best friend is a nice contract girl. Evil non-contract boy takes advantage of her. Evil non-contract boy being your brother makes life difficult. This needs more than Fizzup. I tell you what. I’ve a bottle of wine in my room. It’s not enough to go round everyone, but we could sneak off, watch a vid together, and share the wine.’

  I hesitated. Back in Next Step, we’d watch vids together in our rooms all the time. Sometimes all nine of us would wedge into one room, but Fian wasn’t one of us. He wasn’t even a friend from outside Next Step. He was a norm. Treating a norm like a real friend … On the other hand, after the strain of the rescue, and the shock of finding Keon was spending the night with Issette … Well, it was tempting to relax, and watching vids should be a lot safer than talking.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Fian. ‘I got the message. You’re a nice contract girl. I promise to behave myself. I have two good reasons for that. One is that I’m a nice contract boy from ultra conservative Delta sector. The other is that I know you can throw me across the room.’