Earth and Fire (2 page)

Portal 4 flared
into life with a new incoming block portal, and a large group of people in
medical uniforms came through. One of Earth’s major specialities was medicine,
so these were probably off-world students here for part of their training.
Behind them walked a couple with two children, both girls.

The older girl
was about my age. I pictured the life she had, and thought how it could have
been mine too if the genetic dice had landed differently. I could have been
growing up with a family on a distant world. I could have been portalling to
Earth for a visit. I could have had everything, instead of …

Issette gave me
a painful jab with her elbow, and I turned to frown at her. “Ouch!”

“Shhh,” she
hissed. “Look over there!”

She was pointing
towards portal 7. Someone had obviously just arrived through it, because a set
of hover bags were still appearing. I watched them chase after their owner and
gather up in a group behind him, then looked at the owner himself and gasped.
He was young, attractive, and dressed in clinging clothes that showed bare
patches of skin in shocking places. I stared at him for a moment, totally
grazzed, before turning my head away.

“He must be from
one of the planets in Beta sector,” said Issette, still happily studying him.
“Nowhere else has clothes like that. He’s got to be filthy rich to dial
interstellar instead of block portalling, so maybe he’s from their capital
planet, Zeus. He’s got nice legs, hasn’t he?”

She was using
the polite word, “legs,” but I could tell from the way she said it that she
really meant a far more private area. I frowned at her. “Issette, behave
yourself!”

She turned her
head for a second to give me a wicked grin, before staring at the man again.
“It’s not my fault he’s dressed like that, and everyone else is looking too.”

I gave in to
temptation and had another look myself. The man did have extremely nice legs,
and you could see an awful lot of them! He was dark-haired, and I generally
preferred men with the much rarer blond hair, but in this case I could
definitely…

At this point, a
security guard hurried up, threw a blanket round the man’s shoulders, and had a
whispered conversation with him. The man laughed, but nodded, and went off with
the blanket wrapped firmly round him.

Issette sighed.
“Pity.”

After that, we
watched a group of young people come through portal 2, chattering to each other
in the classic drawling voices of aristocratic Alphans. Judging from the
snatches of conversation I could hear, they were pre-history students returning
from a break on their home world. I was planning to study pre-history myself,
so I listened avidly, trying to work out which of Earth’s ruined cities they’d
be excavating. Since they’d portalled into Earth Europe Off-world, it was
probably London, Paris Coeur or Berlin. Madrid Main Dig Site was still closed
for clean up after an ancient storage facility had a major radioactive leak.
Rome didn’t accept students. Budapest was …

I heard the
sound of someone shouting, and twisted round in my seat to look across at where
people were entering Earth Europe Off-world the legal way through the security
checks. A man clutching a plant was arguing with the guards. I shook my head in
disbelief. Did he seriously expect to stroll through an interstellar portal
carrying that? The dimmest of nardles should know that introducing random
plants or animals to an alien world could cause havoc with the eco system. Even
some of the most carefully planned introductions of Earth species to colony
worlds had caused unexpected problems.

Apparently this
dim nardle truly didn’t know that, because he was shouting at the security
guards so loudly now that everyone in the waiting area could hear him. “You’re
a bunch of officious nuking idiots!”

Issette turned
to me and pulled a buggy-eyed, shocked face, which could either have been at
the man’s stupidity or at him using the nuke word in public. I covered my mouth
with both hands to stop myself laughing. If I was one of the security guards,
I’d be strongly tempted to let the man try to take his precious plant through
an interstellar portal. The bio-filters would instantly shut the portal down,
and he’d be fined a fortune for attempting to breach interstellar quarantine.

The security
guards had a lot more patience than I did, because they just made soothing
noises, took the offending plant into custody, and let the aggrieved traveller
stalk off through portal 1 to Adonis.

I was still exchanging
grins with Issette when portal 7 came to life again. We both turned to see if
this was another scantily-clad man from Beta sector, but this time it was a
couple in the unremarkable clothes of Gamma sector. The woman was openly
crying, uncaring of who might see her, and the man appeared to be torn between
comforting her and keeping his distance. I’d worked out what was happening here
even before an older woman in the formal grey and white uniform of a Hospital
Earth Child Advocate hurried up to meet them.

The man spoke
before she could. “There’s no throwback genes in my family. This must be a
ridiculous mistake, unless …”

He turned to
give a suspicious look at the crying woman, and she seemed to forget her tears
as she glared at him in outrage. “There’s never been any apes in my family. It
must be you!”

The advocate
hastily intervened. “Please remember that on Earth we prefer to use the
official term, Handicapped, rather than derogatory slurs. I’m sorry, but
there’s no mistake. Your son was born with a flawed immune system, so he can’t
survive on any world other than Earth.”

She paused for a
moment. “There’s a random one in a thousand risk even with two normal parents,
so this can happen to absolutely anyone, but you’ll be happy to hear your son
was portalled here in time to save his life. He’s currently in a Hospital Earth
Infant Crash Unit, but his condition should soon be stable enough for you to
visit him. Before then, I’d like to give you information on all the options
available to help parents move to Earth to be with their Handicapped babies.”

The three of
them headed off to the exit, with the advocate still talking in bracingly
cheerful tones, but I could tell she was wasting her time. The man had a rigid,
cold expression on his face, and the woman had the distant look of someone
already rehearsing the speech she’d make to explain how she couldn’t possibly
give up everything and move to Earth to take care of her son. She’d use the
same excuses they all did, claiming it was nothing to do with the embarrassment
or the damage to her lifestyle, but because she felt it was best to let the
child grow up with his own kind.

This couple were
going to do what 92 per cent of the parents of Handicapped babies did. They
were going to hand their son over to be raised as a ward of Hospital Earth,
turn their backs on the reject, and walk away. That was what my parents had
done when I was born. That was what Issette’s parents had done. That was what
the parents of all my friends at Next Step had done.

I turned to look
at portals 9 and 10 for the first time. They were dark, but occasionally their
lights would blink as they relayed a portal signal for an incoming medical
emergency, sending a newborn Handicapped baby directly to a Hospital Earth
Infant Crash Unit.

I glanced at
Issette’s face, saw she was on the verge of tears, and stood up. “We’d better
go now.”

We walked back
to the door hidden behind the food dispensers. I’d just entered the code into
the lock plate, and was opening the door, when I heard a sudden shout.

“Hey! Where are
you going?”

I looked round, and saw a security
guard heading towards us. I grabbed Issette’s hand, dragged her through the
door with me, and kicked it closed behind us. Hopefully, the guard wouldn’t
know the code to open the door and …

There was a
series of clicks from the lock plate, and I saw the door start opening again. I
groaned, turned, and ran down the corridor, tugging Issette along with me. The
ceiling glows overhead were automatically turning on for us, just as they’d
done earlier, but now we were moving too fast for them. We were running on the
edge of darkness, with the pool of light always a pace or two behind us. I
could hear the sound of heavy footsteps chasing after us, and noisy, irregular
gasps for breath from Issette. Was she breathing like that because of the
physical effort of running, or because she was about to panic?

There was a dark
shadow on the wall to my left. A side corridor! I turned and skidded into it,
towing Issette with me. I was hoping that we could hide while the guard ran
past us, but of course the glows overhead started turning on, signalling our
location.

“Nuke it!” I
cursed my own stupidity and ran on, taking another couple of random turns. We’d
been moving faster than the guard to start with, but now I was horribly aware
the footsteps behind us were getting steadily closer. Our best chance would be
to split up, because a single guard could only chase one of us, but I couldn’t
leave Issette on her own in the darkness.

I was expecting
to be grabbed from behind at any moment, when the sound of footsteps suddenly
stopped. I risked turning my head for a second, and saw the guard standing
still, leaning against the wall and panting for breath.

“He’s given up!”
I said.

We ran on down
another couple of corridors, before stopping to rest and get our breath back. I
was rejoicing in our escape, when Issette spoke in a shaky voice.

“Is it far to
the way out?”

There was a sick
feeling in my stomach as I tried to remember all the turnings we’d taken during
the chase. We must be far away from the route we’d used to get to the
Off-world. I tried to keep my voice calm and confident as I answered her.

“There are
several ways out. Let me check the plans on my lookup to work out which is
closest.”

I tapped my
lookup, and stared at the maze of corridors. We’d taken a right turn, run past
two more turnings, taken a left, and then … No, according to the plan, the left
turn we’d taken didn’t exist. Either I’d forgotten something, or I’d missed
seeing some side turnings in the darkness. I couldn’t work out where we were,
or even which direction we should be going. There was a numbered door nearby,
but that didn’t help because there were no numbers on my plan.

I daren’t tell
Issette that we were lost. If we kept going straight on, then we must get
somewhere eventually. If we didn’t … Well, we could use our lookups to call for
help, but we’d be in an awful lot of trouble.

“We go this
way,” I said.

I led the way
down the corridor to the next junction and went straight on. At the next two
junctions, we went straight on again, but at the third we had to turn left or
right. I’d just decided to go right, when there was a cry of delight from
Issette. I turned to look at her, and saw she was pointing to a faded sign on
the wall. A fire exit sign!

We followed the
sign down the corridor to the left, found another sign pointing to the right,
and a corridor that ended in a red door. I waved my hand at the door release,
the door opened, and a combination of heat and bright sunlight hit us as we
went through it. We’d escaped!

I stopped and
shielded my eyes with one hand as I looked around. We were standing outside a
massive building, its grey flexiplas wall dotted with small doorways and
windows. At the far end of it, I could see some much larger doors, and a huge
sign saying “Earth Europe Off-world”. If we wanted to, Issette and I could come
back when we were 18, go in through those doors and see those ten chunky
portals again. What we couldn’t do, what we could never do however old we were,
was walk through one of the portals.

I knew exactly
what would happen if we did, because Hospital Earth allowed its wards one
attempt at portalling off world when they were 14, to prove there hadn’t been a
mistake in diagnosing them as Handicapped. I’d been one of the very few fool
enough to try it. I’d portalled from a hospital rather than an Off-world,
arrived on an Alpha sector world, collapsed into the arms of the waiting
medical team, and been thrown back through the portal. Things were a bit hazy
for a while after that, but I remembered enough pain to make me absolutely
certain I never wanted to try it again.

Interstellar
portals were for the norms, not for me and my friends. Whether you called us
the officially polite but sneering word, Handicapped, or the open insults like
throwback and ape, didn’t change anything. Every other handicap could be
screened out or fixed before birth, but the doctors couldn’t do anything about
this one. There were over eleven hundred inhabited planets spread across six
different sectors of space, but we were imprisoned on Earth. Any other world
would kill us within minutes.

As soon as our eyes had adjusted to
the sunlight, we started walking away from the building. Issette was looking
much more herself now, relieved and happy to be outside, but I was still furious
with myself for letting her come here with me. I’d known there was a danger of
getting caught, but I hadn’t realized how creepy that maze of corridors would
be, and I hadn’t even considered the risk that we’d get an unpleasant reminder
of how our parents had dumped us at birth. Chaos stupid of me. Given the number
of Handicapped babies portalled to Earth, there must be a constant stream of
distressed and defensive parents arriving in every one of Earth’s five
Off-worlds.

“I’m really sorry
you saw that couple talking to the advocate,” I said.

Issette shook
her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.
I was an idiot to even think of doing this. I was just so chaos frustrated
waiting to leave Next Step, and then there was Earth Flight day with all the
vid channels full of norms celebrating the anniversary of the first
interstellar flight by drop portal. I thought going to see those interstellar
portals, confronting my problem head on, would somehow …”

I waved my arms
in a gesture of hopelessness. “I don’t know what I thought it would do. I blame
my nuking psychologist for putting silly ideas into my head. He keeps saying I
have to find a way to accept the stars are out of my reach, stop caring about
it, and move on. He may have stopped caring himself, but I can’t. I never will.
Coming here wasn’t going to change anything, and seeing that couple has upset
you.”

Issette shook
her head again. “You don’t need to feel guilty, Jarra. I see far worse things when
I’m sitting in my own room at Next Step and watching vids. The off-world dramas
use the Handicapped baby plot so often you’d think the risk for norm parents was
one in ten, the same as a Handicapped couple, instead of one in a thousand. What
I hate is the way the story always focuses on how awful it is for the parents,
and how it destroys their lives. Nobody ever considers what it’s like for the
baby. My psychologist says …”

“No! Please
don’t tell me what your psychologist says. It’s bad enough having to listen to
my own psychologist without suffering yours as well. I think all psychologists
should be thrown into the California Rift!”

Issette giggled.
“I’ve always felt sorry for your psychologists. How long have you had the
latest one?”

I grinned. “Two
years now. It’s a new record.”

“Hospital Earth
must be paying him a special bonus to keep seeing you,” said Issette. “We can’t
risk going back into the Off-world, so where do we go to portal home?”

I took out my
lookup and studied it for a moment. “There isn’t a proper settlement here, just
the Transit, the Off-world, some offices for Portal Network Administration, and
a minor history site.”

“Nooo,” Issette wailed.
“You’re going to drag me to this history site, aren’t you? Can’t we go back to
the Transit and portal from there?”

“We could, but
we’d have to walk most of the way round the Off-world to get there, and that
takes us straight past the history site.”

Issette gave a
groan of despair.

I tried bribery.
“There’s an ice cream dispenser at the history site. I’m buying.”

“Oh, all right
then.” Issette fanned her face with one hand. “I can’t believe how hot it’s
been this week. You’d think it was August instead of June.”

I laughed. “It’ll
probably rain as soon as the school summer break starts.”

We walked down a
narrow path between the vertical wall of Europe Off-world on one side, and the
curved wall of a flexiplas dome on the other. All the flexiplas had been left
in its natural depressing grey colour, and there were none of the flowerbeds
and trees you had in settlements. We finally reached a grassy area, where the
stones of an ancient ruin had been excavated and sprayed with a protective
transparent coating.

The ice cream
dispenser was next to the portal. I bought chocolate ice cream for myself, while
Issette had the disgustingly sweet Adonis peach flavour she adored. We stood
there licking our ice creams and looking at the ruins. Issette didn’t seem
impressed by them.

“Is that all there
is?” she asked, in a disparaging tone.

I sighed. “This
is a villa built three thousand years ago by ancient Romans. Rome fell. Europe
went through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, a lot of people
sailing around in boats, the Industrial Revolution, and umpteen wars.”

Issette
attempted to put her fingers in her ears without dropping her ice cream.

“Wallam-Crane
invented the portal in 2206,” I continued. “There was the century of United
Earth, and the adoption of Language as the common tongue of humanity, then some
idiot invented the interstellar portal.”

Issette took her
fingers out of her ears, so she could lick her melting ice cream. “Have you
finished yet?”

“No, I haven’t! Modern
history started with the colonization of Adonis, then Exodus century emptied
Earth, and for nearly four hundred years this world has just been a dumping
ground for the Handicapped. That villa has been through an awful lot, Issette,
so yes, that’s all there is left!” I paused. “You’ve got ice cream in your
hair.”

Issette used her
lookup as a mirror and checked her hair. “There’s no need to get so excited
about your rubble. I was just commenting there wasn’t much of it.”

“We could portal
over to Athens,” I said. “It’s far more impressive and incredibly beautiful.
There was a major project to flatten or remove the more recent ruins a century
or so ago, so now there’s just the ones from ancient Greece in the middle of
the forest. I went there with the school history club last year. We spent three
days helping to spray the Parthenon with a new layer of preservative.”

“It’ll still be just
ruins though,” said Issette. “No people. The Rome Alive exhibit made a lot more
sense to me. They’ve got proper buildings and holo people.”

I groaned. Rome
Alive was, in my opinion, horribly tacky. It had reproduction buildings, with holo
versions of historical characters acting out melodramatic scenes. The exhibit
had been set up to attract off-world visitors, especially the ones from Betan
worlds, since Beta sector prided itself on basing its culture on ancient Rome
and Greece.

There weren’t
enough off-world visitors to keep the place busy, so Rome Alive also encouraged
school parties to visit. Issette and I went there with our school when we were 13,
and I was thrown out for pointing out some of the more blatant historical
inaccuracies. Betan visitors wouldn’t care about them – half their ideas about
ancient Rome and Greece had been wrong to start with and the rest had got
hopelessly mangled over the centuries – but I did.

“You don’t need
stupid holo characters,” I said. “Just imagine the real people who lived here,
slept here, ate here. They fell in love, married, had children, went through
times of joy and tragedy the same as people do today. Look at that bit of
mosaic pavement.”

Issette sighed.
“All right, I’m looking.”

“Three thousand
years ago, ancient Romans were standing exactly where we are now, admiring the
new mosaic floor in their house. Isn’t that an amaz thought? Men in togas,
women in …”

I broke off my
sentence and frowned at Issette. “Why are you giggling?”

It took her a
few seconds to recover enough to speak. “Betans wear togas, don’t they?”

I wrinkled my
nose. “Modern Betan formal dress for both men and women is supposed to be based
on ancient Roman togas, but the Betan togas aren’t remotely historically
accurate.”

“So ancient
Romans didn’t dress like that Betan man we saw in Europe Off-world?” asked
Issette.

I blinked. “Of
course not. That Betan man wasn’t formally dressed.”

Issette grinned.
“He was barely dressed at all. I was just thinking that Rome Alive would be far
more interesting if the holo people wore clothes like his.”

She started
giggling again after that, so I gave up trying to talk about history. We sat down
on a three thousand year old piece of wall, finished eating our ice creams,
then dialled the portal.

We’d just stepped
through to the foyer of Next Step E241/1089, when a voice spoke from next to us.
“You look absolutely amaz, Jarra.”

I bit my lip to
stop myself swearing, and reluctantly turned to face Cathan. I didn’t know if
this was pure bad luck, or if he’d been hanging round here waiting for us, but
either way he had a stupid smile on his face as he admired the sight of me
dressed up like a vid star.

“Thanks,” I
muttered. “I’m on my way to my room so …”

He took a step
closer and interrupted eagerly. “Why don’t we go out this evening, Jarra? Just
the two of us.”

“No!” I held up
a hand to stop him. “We aren’t going anywhere, Cathan.”

“Oh, come on,
Jarra. I know we had a fight, but that didn’t mean anything. Everyone has the
odd fight when they’re boy and girling.”

“I said no!”

I saw his face
take on its habitual sulky expression and groaned. Going to Europe Off-world had
been pretty nardle, but nothing like as stupid as the mistake I made when I
agreed to boy and girl with Cathan. I’d suffered two months of his whining before
I gave up and dumped him. That was back at the start of March, and it was June
now, but Cathan still hadn’t accepted things were over. I explained it to him
for the thousandth time.

“Cathan, we
aren’t boy and girling any longer. There is no we. There is no us. We’re not
going anywhere together.”

“So why did you
get all dressed up if it isn’t for me?” The sulky expression turned into
suspicion. “Who are you seeing?”

I considered pretending
I was seeing someone else, but decided it would only make life more complicated.
“No one.”

“In which case,
we should …”

“Cathan, stop
it! Whether there’s anyone else or not doesn’t matter. Things are over between
us. I don’t want a clingy boyfriend who grumbles if I want a few minutes alone
or a private chat with Issette.”

He was back to
pure sulks again. “I’m not clingy!”

“Not clingy?” I
stared at him in disbelief. “How can you say you’re not clingy? You wanted me
to act like a human hover bag, spending my life trailing round after you. You
don’t think the three concentric spheres of humanity are centred on Earth, you
think they’re centred on you!”

I shook my head
in despair and stalked off towards my room. Issette giggled and chased after
me, with Cathan bringing up the rear. I was planning to go into my room and slam
the door in Cathan’s face, but when I got there I couldn’t. The Principal of
our Next Step was standing outside it!

I stopped,
Issette bumped into me, and Cathan’s voice broke off in mid-complaint. I had a
sick moment of panic, wondering how the chaos the Principal had found out about
my trip to Europe Off-world, and whether Issette was in trouble too, before I
saw the woman had her saccharine professional smile on her face. That smile
slowly changed into a puzzled frown as she looked at me.

“You’re looking very
well-groomed today, Jarra.”

“I thought I’d try
dressing up as an experiment,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s really me.”

She swapped back
into the professional smile mode. “Well, it’s lucky the three of you arrived
just now. Since you weren’t in your rooms, I was going to call you.”

She’d been going
to call us? What about? I waited nervously for more clues rather than risk
saying anything that might incriminate me.

“I’m doing my
mid-year monitoring checks a couple of weeks early because of my holiday plans,”
she continued. “I notice you haven’t seen your ProDad recently, Jarra.”

I relaxed. The
Principal raised the ProDad issue with me every time she did her monitoring
checks. Hospital Earth allocated each of its wards two ProParents, who you were
supposed to see for two hours each week. My ProMum, Candace, was great, but I’d
fallen out with my ProDad so we avoided each other as much as possible. Three
years ago, I’d worked out and memorized a sentence that would stop the
Principal from forcing us to meet. I recited it now.

“As I am approaching
adult womanhood, I feel my parental needs at this time are more adequately provided
by my ProMum rather than my ProDad.”

The Principal sighed,
took out her lookup, and tapped away at it for a moment before holding it
towards me. “If you could verify that for the official record.”

I placed my hand
on the lookup to confirm my statement about my ProDad, and the Principal chose
her next victim.

“Issette, your
room is far too cluttered again. I’ll be back tomorrow to check it. I expect
you to have thrown away all those childish toys by then.”

Issette silently
nodded, and the Principal turned to Cathan and gave him a frosty glare. I
blinked in surprise. I’d never seen her look at anyone but me with such an evil
expression.

“Cathan, I’ve
removed those extremely unsuitable images from your room wall.”

Issette was
pulling one of her buggy-eyed expressions at me from behind the Principal’s
back, while Cathan looked as if he wanted to dig a hole in the flexiplas floor
and bury himself. I tried not to laugh.

“I’ll be doing
an Art Paint Foundation course next year,” said Cathan. “My art teacher has
suggested I prepare for that by studying famous works of art.”

“These images
are not works of art,” said the Principal. “They’re distasteful pictures of
women in a state of undress and should not be in the possession of someone
underage.”

Cathan bravely
tried to argue his case. “They’re all the works of famous artists from back in
the days of pre-history, like Titian and Goya, and excellent examples of brushwork.”