Earth and Fire (3 page)

I put my hand
over my mouth to smother a giggle, and I heard a strange squeaking sound from
Issette. The Principal obviously didn’t share our amusement, because her expression
plunged several degrees further below freezing point.

“People were much
less strict about keeping the private body areas covered back in the days of pre-history,”
added Cathan. “Jarra’s a history specialist, so she can tell you all about it.”

The Principal turned
her icicle look on me. I didn’t appreciate Cathan trying to drag me into this,
so I gave her a look of shocked innocence.

“I believe there
were some morally lax periods back in the days when all of humanity lived on
Earth, but our teacher naturally avoids using any improper images in our school
history lessons. Perhaps things are different in art lessons.”

The Principal smiled
her approval of my speech, and returned her attention to Cathan. “Give me your
lookup.”

“My lookup?”
Cathan looked appalled. “Why do you want it?”

“So I can have
it analyzed for inappropriate content.” She waited impatiently for a few
seconds. “Give me your lookup, Cathan!”

He reluctantly
handed it over.

“Now come with
me to my office. I need full details of the material your art teacher supplied
to you, so I can register a formal complaint with your school.”

She swept off
imperiously, with Cathan scampering after her, the desperate look on his face confirming
what I’d already guessed. If Cathan had got those images from someone in his
art class, it was from a classmate rather than the teacher.

Issette grinned
at me. “I didn’t know you were so virtuous about the ‘morally lax’ periods of
pre-history.”

“I don’t see why
I should risk the Principal confining me to Next Step for the whole summer
break just because Cathan hasn’t enough sense to hide his pictures.” I opened
my room door. “We’d better get your stuff moved now.”

We started ferrying
armfuls of Issette’s belongings between our two rooms. We went through this
ritual every time the Principal did an inspection and ordered Issette to throw
out some of her treasured childhood possessions. Ten minutes later, Issette’s
room was beautifully empty, while every corner of mine was infested with fluffy
toys. I consoled myself with the thought I’d only have to live with the toy
invasion for a day or two at most, until the Principal inspected Issette’s room
again and declared herself satisfied.

I sat on my bed,
and a weird, skinny, purple object promptly fell off one of the shelves and
landed on my head. I picked it up and held it at arm’s length.

“Must I have this
in here as well? The Principal can’t complain about you having one fluffy toy.”

“We mustn’t risk
her throwing out Whoopiz the Zen,” said Issette.

I sighed. “All
right, but the creepy thing goes back in your room the second she’s done her
inspection. I’ll never know why you loved it so much when you were a little
kid. It gives me nightmares just looking at it.”

I was putting
Whoopiz the Zen back on the shelf, when my lookup chimed with an incoming message
from my history teacher. I read it and was totally grazzed.

“Something wrong?”
asked Issette.

I didn’t answer
her. My mind was focused on the news I’d just been sent. I could never travel
to the stars, I could never stand on another world, but I had a chance to own
the sky.

“Jarra, Jarra, Jarra.” Issette’s
voice nagged at me. “Why are you standing there with your mouth open?”

I forced myself
out of my trance. “We have to go and hide.”

“Hide?” Issette
frowned. “Why do we need to hide?”

“Because as soon
as the Principal finishes telling Cathan off, he’ll come back here and start complaining
that I didn’t help him get out of trouble.”

“I never
understood why you agreed to boy and girl with Cathan,” said Issette. “You must
have known what he was like. He’s been moaning at everyone all through Nursery,
Home, and Next Step.”

I groaned. “Of
course I knew, but he asked me during the last Year Day party. I was all
sentimental watching the year above us turn 18, become legally adult, and head
off to freedom. Cathan was on his best behaviour and looking rather attractive,
so I had a weak moment.”

Issette raised
her eyes to the ceiling. “I know we have totally opposite tastes in men, but
you can’t seriously think Cathan is attractive.”

“You have to
admit he’s got nice legs.”

“True,” said
Issette, in a grudging voice. “The problem is the nice legs are attached to the
rest of him. Cathan’s not just whiny, he’s manipulative too, and I think he was
carefully manipulating you at that Year Day party.”

Now I thought
about it, Issette was probably right. There was something very suspicious about
the way Cathan had looked at the Year Day party. All my friends knew I had a
crush on the hero of the vid series,
Defenders
, with his blond hair and
his Military uniform. Cathan had been wearing an outfit in Military blue, and he’d
done something to his hair to make it look much fairer than usual.

“I know I was a total
nardle to agree to boy and girl with Cathan,” I said. “Now can we please go and
hide before he comes looking for me? I don’t want to waste time dealing with
Cathan, because I’ve got some incredibly important news to tell you.”

I led the way to
the door of the one place in our Next Step where we’d be perfectly safe from
Cathan. I put my hand on the door plate, and heard the sound of a musical tone
followed by a voice saying, “Your friend Jarra is requesting admission.”

There was no
response, but I hadn’t expected to get inside that easily. Issette and I took
turns putting our hands on the door plate every five seconds, and finally the
door opened. Keon gave us a wounded look.

“Go away,” he
said. “I’m busy.”

We walked past
him into his room. He’d got the glows turned fully off, and there were a host
of tiny golden lights floating around in midair. They had to be some sort of
holo, but when I waved my hand at them, they dodged it, acting like a flock of
miniature birds.

“Amaz,” I said.
“How do you make them do that?”

It was
mid-afternoon, but this wasn’t a school day, so the legendarily lazy Keon
Tanaka was still wearing his sleep suit. He sighed and lay down on his bed. “You
really want me to give you a highly technical scientific explanation?”

I gave an
exaggerated, theatrical shudder as he said the science word, because it was the
best way to cover up my entirely genuine shudder at the memories it triggered. I’d
never been any good at science, but I’d always tried my hardest at it until the
nightmare day when our bullying science teacher called me back at the end of
class. She’d said an off-world comedian would love to see my homework. She’d said
he could use my answers to make up an entire new routine of jokes about the
Handicapped being stupid. She’d said…

Well, she’d said
a whole lot of things. I’d spent over four years trying to blot that day out of
my mind, but I could still remember every word she’d said, as well as the
gloating, triumphant expression on her face as she enjoyed ripping me to shreds.
I’d never told anyone about what happened that day; not Issette, not my ProMum,
and especially not my psychologist, but it finished me with science forever.

My friends and I
had grown up knowing our parents dumped us at birth. We’d all reacted to that in
our own way. Issette clung to fluffy toys, Cathan whined for attention, and I got
angry. That anger wasn’t just at my parents, but at all the norms I saw in the
off-world vids. Every day I heard them make jokes about people like me,
dismissing us as brainless throwbacks because we were stuck on Earth and
couldn’t portal to their worlds.

Those constant
jokes hit my confidence like water dripping on a stone and wearing it away. I
fought back by reassuring myself that the off-worlders didn’t know what they
were talking about. Few of them ever came to Earth, many of those that did
would never willingly talk to one of the Handicapped, and none of us ever
appeared on their vid channels.

I told myself their
opinion of us meant nothing. Their opinion of me definitely meant nothing, because
they’d never even met me. Hearing my science teacher, someone who knew me and
was Handicapped herself, say that the norms were right about me, I really was a
stupid ape, was …

From that day
onwards, the science teacher could make me sit through her lessons, but she
couldn’t force me to listen to what she said or ever do any work again. I didn’t
care how many punishments she gave me. I was going to make it clear to everyone
that Jarra didn’t do science because she hated it and refused to do it. Not
because she couldn’t do it. Not because she was a stupid ape. Not because she was
the sort of dumb Neanderthal that off-world comedians mocked.

I drove that
painful memory back into the darkest corner of my mind, and answered Keon in a
carefully casual voice. “You know I hate science.”

“Then please go
away and leave me in peace,” he said.

Issette and I
grabbed cushions from the corner of the room, and settled ourselves on the
floor. Keon gave a resigned groan, tapped his lookup, and the golden lights
changed to glowing blue feathers.

“We made it into
Europe Off-world,” I said. “Your door code was right, thank you.”

He frowned up at
his floating feathers. “Of course it was right. You should know by now that I’m
always right. Did you have to invade my room to tell me that?”

“We had to
invade your room because we’re hiding from Cathan,” said Issette. “He spotted
Jarra all dressed up, and wanted her to go out with him this evening.”

Keon brushed his
tangled black hair out of his eyes, and turned his head to give us a martyred
look. “I quite understand you wanting to hide from the whiny child, but please
do it somewhere else.”

“But this is the
safest place,” said Issette. “I don’t know why you’ve been being so horribly
sarcastic to Cathan lately, but he’s scared to come anywhere near you.”

“I’ve been being
horribly sarcastic to Cathan, because he kept asking me questions about my
parents,” said Keon.

Issette and I
exchanged confused glances. Once we reached the age of 14, we had the right to request
information about our parents, though we were warned that any attempt to
contact them would almost certainly be rejected. Of the nine of us in my year
at our Next Step, only Keon and I hadn’t asked for parental information. I’d
been too bitter about the way my parents had casually discarded me to risk
another rejection, and Keon said it was too much effort.

“But you don’t
know anything about your parents,” said Issette.

“Exactly,” said
Keon. “Cathan kept nagging me to get details about them, or at least what
planet I came from. I told him that I already knew what planet I came from, because
the whole of humanity came from Earth. He still wouldn’t shut up about it, so
eventually I had to exert myself to drive him away.”

I frowned. “I
don’t understand why Cathan would care what world you were from.”

Keon went back
to watching his feathers. “Cathan only cares about it because he thinks I’m from
a world in Alpha sector like him. Anyone looking at me can see most of my
ancestors were from part of Earth Asia. That probably means I was born on one
of the dozen or so Alphan worlds colonized directly from that area, rather than
the worlds in other sectors that were open for random colonization. I don’t see
any point in confirming if that’s true though. Discovering he had Alphan
parents didn’t do Cathan any good, did it?”

“You can’t blame
Cathan for being chaos upset when his parents refused to have anything to do
with him,” I said. “It wasn’t just that if he’d been born a norm he’d have
grown up in a rich Alphan family. It was the fact his father turned out to be a
famous medical researcher. Someone like that must have known perfectly well there’s
no difference between the norms and the Handicapped other than our faulty
immune system. With so many leading medical research centres on Earth, it would
have been easy for Cathan’s father to move here to continue his work and be
with his son, but instead he handed Cathan over to Hospital Earth and walked
away. There was absolutely no excuse for such a selfish decision.”

“Cathan’s father
probably thought it would damage his career if people knew he had a Handicapped
son,” said Keon. “I agree he made a selfish decision, and I don’t blame Cathan
for being upset about it, but Cathan wants the two of us to spend endless hours
sympathizing with each other about our heartless Alphan parents. That’s not
going to happen. Cathan may be obsessed with the parents who’ve never been part
of his life and never will be, but I don’t care who contributed to my genes.”

Keon seemed to
genuinely mean what he was saying. He didn’t care about his birth family. I
didn’t understand how he managed that when everything I was, all my pride and
anger, came from my unknown parents rejecting me.

Issette wrinkled
her nose. “The only one of us with a halfway decent parent is Ross. At least
his father sends him the occasional message. Can we please talk about something
else now? You were babbling about some important news, Jarra. What is it?”

Keon groaned. “Please
don’t tell me Jarra’s got another of her wild ideas already. I thought sneaking
into Europe Off-world would make her happy for a few weeks at least.”

I frowned at him.
“This isn’t a wild idea.”

“You always say
that,” said Issette.

“Well, this one really
isn’t. I’m going to learn to fly!”

Keon tapped at his
lookup for a moment, the glowing blue feathers vanished, and a white seagull
started flapping its way round the room. When it flew past me, I saw it had my
face.

I giggled. “Not
like that, you nardle. I mean flying in an aircraft. I’m going to get a private
pilot’s licence.”

There was a
short silence before Issette spoke. “You’re serious? I know you’ve begged some
rides in dig site survey planes, and even talked the pilots into letting you
handle the controls, but you must have to do a lot more than that to get your
pilot’s licence.”

“I’m totally
serious,” I said. “I’ve dreamed of being a pilot ever since I was 11 years old.
When I went on my first trip to a dig site with the school history club, I saw
an aircraft flying overhead. I instantly knew I had to get up there too, escape
the ground and …”

I broke off.
Flying was about far more than escaping the ground. It was somehow about
escaping everything that burdened me, chained me down and limited my life. The strictly
controlled regime of life in Next Step, the total authority of Hospital Earth,
the fact I’d been born Handicapped. None of those things mattered when I was
soaring in the air like a bird.

I was always
chaos bad at explaining my emotions, so I swapped to talking about factual things
instead. “It’s been hard for me to get many flying lessons, because I’m not
often in the same place as a pilot. The school history club is only allowed to go
to the Fringe dig sites, the safer areas on the edges of the old ruined cities,
while the survey pilots spend most of their time on the main dig sites where
the professionals work. This summer will be different though.”

I paused for a
moment before making the dramatic announcement. “I’ve had a message from my
history teacher about an amaz opportunity. The school history club will be at New
York Fringe Dig Site this summer, and a pilot is going to be based there all
summer too!”

Issette and Keon
didn’t seem impressed by this. “I’m never sure whether your history teacher is
a fool encouraging you the way he does,” said Keon, “or if he’s deliberately
trying to get you killed so he finally has some peace.”

I ignored that.
“The pilot will be flying a full aerial survey of New York Fringe, so this is my
big chance to get enough flying lessons to complete the official pilot’s
training. There’s just one problem.”

“If I say I
don’t want to know the problem, will it stop you telling me?” asked Keon.

I shook my head.
“The problem is I’m not legally adult. I’ll need my parents or guardians to give
their consent before I can register for a training licence, and my ProParents
don’t even know I’ve had a ride in a plane.”

“I’m sure you’ll
nag your poor ProMum into agreeing,” said Keon.

I was indignant.
“I don’t nag Candace! We discuss things. Anyway, even if Candace consents, my
ProDad won’t. You know what the situation is like between him and me. If my ProParents
disagree, it will be exactly like when my ProDad tried to stop me going to dig
sites with the school history club. The Principal will get the deciding vote,
and I can’t count on her taking my side.”

“I think you can
count on her throwing a fit,” said Keon. “She agreed to you going to dig sites
because it’s the standard way to prepare for a history degree course, but flying
in an aircraft is far too dangerous.”

“Flying isn’t
dangerous,” I said. “It may be incredibly rare for people to fly now, but they
used to do it all the time back in pre-history. We portal to other continents,
but they flew there in planes.”