Earth 2788 (12 page)

I stopped
listening, because I’d completed all my Farming Studies Certificate modules
four months ago. Most of the girls in the class hadn’t bothered doing the final
assessments, since having the actual certificate wasn’t relevant for a girl,
but my mother said that a farmer’s wife needed to know these things to be able
to help her husband.

Once I’d
finished all the Farming Studies modules, Lomas had started sending me other
texts to keep me busy. To begin with, they’d been on random subjects, but
lately they’d mostly been about history. The latest one was about how the near
collapse of civilization back in 2409 had left many worlds totally isolated
when their interstellar portals failed.

I dutifully
started scanning the text, but it was hard to concentrate on the problems of
humanity several centuries ago when I had my own problems right now. Ever since
I was 16, family, neighbours and friends had all been busily asking me what man
I favoured. When I turned 17 last Year Day, the pressure had increased, with
them actively suggesting husbands to me, or even pointedly reminding me of my
duty to marry.

Chaos, I knew it
was my duty to marry. Miranda was a frontier world with exactly the same
problem all frontier worlds had. Too many men. You needed a lot of people to
build a new world, and there were always more male than female colonists
arriving. Some men were happy to marry other men, but most wanted wives. It was
a frontier girl’s duty to help solve that problem by marrying quickly,
preferably to two men rather than just one, and having a lot of children,
preferably daughters.

My parents had
been patient at first, but three months ago they’d anxiously asked whether I
had a problem about getting married. I couldn’t tell the full truth, which was
that I didn’t have a problem about getting married, but I did have a problem
about having children. As the eldest daughter in a family of eleven children, I
seemed to have spent my entire childhood helping my mother change nappies and
feed babies. Three of the Year Day brides had already proudly announced they
were expecting babies. If I married now, then I’d probably be changing my own
baby’s nappies within a year.

I didn’t want to
go straight from caring for baby brothers and sisters to caring for my own
baby. Saying that would sound like I was complaining, or criticizing my mother,
and I wasn’t. Sons were expected to help their father with the farm work.
Daughters were expected to help their mother with the babies. That was the
frontier life. My parents had been generous, making sacrifices to let us stay
on at school when most children had to leave at 15, and I was deeply grateful to
them.

In the end, I
just said that I didn’t want to rush such an important decision. My parents had
accepted that, scolding my brothers and sisters when they made jokes about me,
and saying I was sensible to take my time to make the right choice. A month
later though, they started getting restless again, and my mother gave me a long
lecture about being too choosy. She said that no man was perfect – even my
father had had a few bad habits he’d needed to break when she married him – and
it was silly to spend too long watching other girls marry the best men so I was
left to pick from the rejects.

Since then,
every time one of my friends got married, the nagging voices around me had got
louder and more persistent. Now I was the last unmarried 17-year-old girl in my
settlement, the old maid of Jain’s Ford, there’d be no respite at all.

I was going to
have to marry someone, and it wasn’t as if I was short of options. What Palmer
had said was right, girls didn’t count proposals from men who didn’t have
farms, but I’d had plenty of offers from those who did. If I ignored the ones
who’d been drunk at the time, were over 30, or had dubious reputations …

I made a list of
names on my lookup, counted them up, and made it nineteen respectable offers.
Nineteen men, or pairs of men, who’d make perfectly good husbands. Marrying two
men had obvious advantages, because their two separate farms could be combined
or traded to make one large one. If I was going to marry two men, then I felt
it was simplest to marry brothers, so my best options would be …

“Amalie.”

I looked up,
startled, and saw Lomas standing next to my desk.

“While the boys
are working on their assignment, I thought we could have a private chat outside.”

He turned and headed
for the door. I frowned, stood up, and followed him out of the dome, aware of
the boys giving us curious looks. What was going on here? Lomas had never taken
me out of the class before, and mentioning he wanted a private chat …

I blinked as the
obvious answer occurred to me. Lomas was unmarried, so he was going to make me
an offer. That was a disconcerting idea. Slapping down the boys in my class was
easy, but refusing an offer from my teacher …

Lomas sat on the
bench outside, and gestured at the space next to him. I sat down, keeping a
careful gap between us. I daren’t look at Lomas, so I faced straight forward,
focusing on the mauve flowers of a field of Mirandan medcorn, our main cash
crop for the vaccine industry. Now I was starting to get over the shock, I
realized Lomas might have advantages as a husband. The main one being that
because he’d been my teacher, Epsilon law said he couldn’t marry me until a
year after I’d left school.

If I agreed to
marry Lomas, then even if I left school today, I’d have a whole year before the
wedding. A whole year when no one would call me old maid, or criticize me for
not doing my duty, because I was going to marry Lomas, a man who everyone in
the settlement, with the possible exception of Palmer and his father, respected.

“Amalie,” said
Lomas, “I’ve been watching you with great interest for the last few months. As
far as I know, you haven’t accepted any marriage offer, though I’m sure you’ve
had plenty. Is there an arrangement that you’re keeping quiet for some reason?
Perhaps there’s a man you like, but he hasn’t got his farm yet.”

I liked the way
Lomas was doing this. Checking his offer would be welcomed before he made it.
Making sure he wouldn’t put us both in an embarrassing situation. It showed he
was a considerate man, and, looking at things practically, a teacher was a good
match. It was one of the few jobs on Miranda that was paid solely in credits
instead of bartered goods. Lomas might be a fraction over 30, but not much, so …

I took a deep
breath and said the words that would reassure him that I was ready to hear his
offer. “There’s no arrangement.”

“In that case …”
He paused for a second. “Amalie, I’m a member of the Planetary Development
Board Education Subcommittee.”

Those weren’t
exactly the words I was expecting him to say. I turned to give him a bewildered
look.

“Epsilon isn’t
the newest sector any longer,” he continued. “The first Kappa sector worlds are
coming out of Colony Ten phase and opening for full colonization. It’s time for
the worlds of Epsilon sector to start thinking beyond things like basic
farming. A century from now, we want Epsilon to be a proud, established,
self-sufficient sector, the way Delta sector is now. That isn’t going to happen
unless we start solving some major issues. What’s the biggest problem that
Miranda has right now?”

I just stared at
him. It was clear now that Lomas wasn’t making me an offer, so I’d absolutely
no idea why we were having this conversation.

He sighed. “Think,
Amalie. Remember all the things I said to Palmer about what would happen if the
school fired me.”

“Oh. Miranda
doesn’t have enough teachers.”

Lomas nodded. “Not
enough teachers. Not enough doctors. Not enough skilled people of any type. Not
many of them come to the frontier as colonists, so every world in Epsilon
sector has the same problem. It’s crippling Epsilon’s efforts to educate our
next generation and to build a proper infrastructure for our worlds. The only
way forward is to train our own teachers and doctors.”

He paused. “The
first few worlds colonized in Epsilon sector are all arguing about which gets
to be the permanent capital planet. Miranda is one of the newer worlds, so they
consider us insignificant, but the Planetary Development Board don’t intend
things to remain that way. We’ve been studying what happened in Delta sector.
No one expected Isis to become the capital planet of Delta sector. No one
expected Hercules to have the huge influence that it does. They became the most
important worlds in Delta sector because they were the first to have true
universities and train their own skilled people.”

“I understand,”
I said, still not understanding anything at all.

“Miranda is
going to follow their example,” said Lomas. “Our planetary development plan
involves concentrating a lot of our resources on founding University Miranda in
four years’ time, so we have one of the first universities in Epsilon sector.
Building a university isn’t a problem, but staffing it is. We hope to attract a
few lecturers from the older sectors, but we also want some lecturers who were
born here on Miranda. Their job won’t just be to teach students, but to be role
models, showing the young people of Miranda that they can aspire to more than
farming.”

He finally
turned to face me. “We’d especially like the Miranda-born lecturers to include
some women. I believe you could be one of those women, Amalie.”

I blinked. “Me?
But … How could I? You need qualifications to be a lecturer.”

“Obviously you’d
need to get your degree first, which will involve you going to a university in another
sector.”

I ran my fingers
through my hair. Leave Miranda, leave Epsilon, leave all my family and friends
to go to another sector! That was …

For a second, I
imagined myself travelling to a world in one of the established sectors, seeing
the sort of amaz places I’d only ever seen in vids, getting my degree and
coming home to be a lecturer at University Miranda, but then reality hit me. “I’m
afraid that’s quite impossible, Teacher Lomas. The cost of it … My parents’
farm has fine land, the cash crops give a good yield, but they have eleven
children to provide for. They can’t spend all their credits on me.”

He nodded. “I
understand, but that needn’t stop you doing this, Amalie. The Education
Subcommittee has arranged for our chosen students to be given a small grant
from the Miranda Planetary Development Fund, and there’s also a cross-sector
system where students can borrow the cost of doing their degree. You’d have to
pay it back later through education tax, but that wouldn’t be a problem when
you’ve a guaranteed post waiting for you at University Miranda.”

I shook my head.
“But a university in another sector would never accept a student with just a
Miranda Farming Studies Certificate.”

He seemed to be
trying not to laugh. “Oddly enough, the Education Subcommittee has thought
about that issue too. All universities have a small number of places available
to students under the special access scheme. This scheme was designed to assist
students who come from a background that limited their educational opportunities.
As a girl from a frontier world, you’d qualify for the special access scheme
anyway, but with our Planetary Development Board supporting your application
and stating you’re a potential lecturer for one of the first universities in
Epsilon sector …”

He smiled. “You
don’t need qualifications, Amalie. You just need to prove you have the ability
to do this, and I’m already confident about that. I knew you were a very bright
girl, flying through your Farming Studies Certificate incredibly quickly, so I
got you reading a lot of different texts. You responded best to the history
texts, so we’re thinking of you as a history lecturer, though literature would
also be possible if you preferred that.”

“History? But
why would University Miranda want a history lecturer?”

Lomas did laugh
this time. “If University Miranda is going to be respected, and make our world
a leading force in Epsilon sector, it has to be a proper university that
teaches everything. Yes, the Agriculture Department, Medical Department, and
Teacher Training Department will be the biggest to start with, but we will have
many others, including a small History Department.”

He stood up. “I
knew this whole idea would come as a huge shock to you, Amalie, but please take
a while to consider it. I’ll send some more detailed information to your
lookup. If you think of any questions or issues that aren’t answered in that
information, then please message me about them.”

I watched Lomas
go back into the dome, and then buried my face in my hands. I’d never travelled
further than Memorial. The idea of spending years on another world in a distant
sector …

I was distracted
by the odd, warm feeling of my right foot. I peered down at it, and saw a
small, furry, Mirandan panda mouse was sitting on my foot, trying to find a way
to get inside my shoe. I waved my foot in the air, the panda mouse fell off,
and landed on the ground with a plaintive mooping sound of complaint. The
minute I put my foot back down, the panda mouse went for the shoe again.

I groaned,
picked up the panda mouse, took it over to the nearest bushes, and dumped it
there. Their fascination with shoes made panda mice a perishing nuisance. My
eldest brother was always threatening to stamp on the next one he found
sleeping inside one of his shoes, but of course he never did. Nobody ever had
the heart to hurt a panda mouse. People said that their long, black and white
fur, and huge soulful eyes, meant they were nearly as appealing as a human
baby. Personally, I thought that panda mice were much cuter than human babies,
and had the big advantage that they didn’t need their nappies changing.

I’d just gone
back to the bench again, when my lookup chimed. That must be Lomas sending me
the information. I tapped the screen, was startled to discover I’d actually answered
an incoming call, and even more startled to recognize the male face that
appeared on the display. It was a little green, because my aging lookup’s
colour was a bit erratic, but this was definitely Rodrish Jain, painter of pink
hummingbirds.