Earth Flight (28 page)

‘The Adonis Knights are to deliver a petition for justice to the Alpha Sector Parliament. This is the first time this century that …’

We all turned to stare at Raven. He looked dreadfully embarrassed.

‘I couldn’t say anything until the public announcement, but Colonel Leveque is letting me portal to Adonis for a few hours to join the procession.’

The usual team of four Military Security officers arrived a few minutes later, to take over bodyguard duty while Raven was away. We had a couple more hours of lectures, ate lunch, and then sat watching the vid coverage on Alpha and Omega newzie channel.

‘Can anyone see Raven?’ asked Krath, as the vid image slowly panned along the procession of ornately clad figures with their scarlet and gold cloaks.

‘The trial knights, the ones who’ve completed the trials of Adonis, will be leading the way,’ said Dalmora. ‘Look, they’re going through the Arch of Remembrance into the Courtyards of Memory now.’

The vid image changed to show the leading figures in the procession passing under a huge ceremonial archway.

‘I still can’t … Oh, there’s Raven!’ yelled Krath. ‘Third row from the front.’

‘Do you think the woman walking next to Raven is his mother?’ asked Amalie. ‘She’s about the right age and she looks a bit like him.’

‘Amaz.’ Dalmora’s eyes were rigidly fixed on the wall vid. ‘Just amaz.’

The knights solemnly presented their petition to Aadi Quilla Amarion, First Speaker of Alpha sector, and marched off again. Alpha and Omega returned to the studio presenter, and Playdon turned off the sound. Dalmora gave a soft regretful sigh. I was sure she’d be replaying the coverage of the procession the second she was alone in her room.

My lookup chimed with three forwarded messages from the Dig Site Federation. The first was a message from University Asgard referring the issue of my age to the Dig Site Federation. The second was the Dig Site Federation’s aggressive reply, saying Jarra Tell Morrath was a legally adult citizen of Earth and had far more right to work on Earth’s dig sites than any off-worlder. The third was a grovelling apology from University Asgard, explaining their question had been a mere administrative formality, with no offence intended towards Jarra Tell Morrath, to Earth, or to Beta sector.

I showed them to Fian and he laughed. ‘After what happened over our betrothal contract, I think University Asgard were worried the Dig Site Federation would throw every off-world team off the dig sites.’

‘University Asgard is obviously scared to death of you, Jarra,’ said Krath. ‘I bet you could pass this course without doing any more work.’

‘I bet she couldn’t,’ said Lecturer Playdon.

A few minutes later, Raven entered the hall and nodded at the four Military Security officers. They headed off, and Raven came to join us.

‘We watched the procession,’ Dalmora told him. ‘Living history. Truly fascinate!’

‘It was a …’

Fian jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair in his haste. He hurried across to the wall vid, and turned up the volume. A presenter stood in front of an image of the flag of humanity.

‘General Marshal Renton Mai, commander-in-chief of the Military, has just requested Parliament of Planets to approve a change to Planet First selection criteria. This would allow the Military to select at least one colony world in each sector with a higher level of solar activity than the current allowable range. Scientists advise such a world would be subject to the same solar storms and portal outages as Earth, but it would also be compatible with the Handicapped immune system.’

25

‘Drag net to clear the small rubble please,’ I said, and hovered away from the nearby building to give the heavy lifts space to work. I hadn’t got my hover belt set to a high enough height, so I caught my foot on a big piece of concraz and felt like a nardle. I hoped no one had noticed, but the background note on my comms changed to that of a private channel and I heard Playdon’s voice.

‘You’ve been making a few careless errors today, Jarra.’

I groaned and replied on the private channel. ‘Sorry, sir. I’ve been a bit distracted. Fian and I have been waiting over a month to sort out our betrothal. It’ll be my birthday tomorrow, I’ll be 18 and Military again, and …’

Playdon’s voice sounded amused. ‘I understand, Jarra, but you can’t afford to be careless on a dig site. You don’t want to have an accident and spend your birthday in hospital, so I think you’d better just sit and watch for the rest of the morning.’

The background note on the comms changed again as Playdon spoke on the team circuit. ‘Team 1 finish your drag net, then team 4 will take over.’

I gave my tag gun and hover belt to Steen, went across to sit with Raven on one of the bench seats of the nearest transport sled, and unsealed my impact suit hood. I spent a moment enjoying the wind cooling my face. Blizz!

Fian came to join us, opening his own hood with a sigh of relief, and I tapped my lookup to check my mail.

‘Issette is starting her two weeks practical experience in a Hospital Earth America casualty unit. She says if anyone throws skunk juice at me again, I mustn’t go to her unit.’

Fian and Raven laughed.

‘And Keon says the holo caterpillars in his latest test turned blue.’

‘I suppose that’s a test on the signals from the alien sphere,’ said Fian. ‘Is blue good or bad? Do you think they’re finally getting somewhere?’

‘I’ve given up hope of them ever getting anywhere with that light sculpture,’ I said gloomily. ‘Anything happening on the newzie channels?’

Fian tapped his lookup. ‘Everyone’s still arguing about how big a problem it would be to have more worlds with portal outages. Some politician in Gamma sector made a speech, saying the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few. Lucius Augustus Gordianus replied, saying humanity has chosen twelve hundred colony worlds for the convenience of the many, and can now afford to select a handful for the survival of the few.’

He paused for a moment. ‘Ah, the latest winner of the Physics Nobel has joined in the argument. She says if humanity keeps expanding, we’ll reach the point where it’s impossible to relay the portal signals of Handicapped babies directly from the frontier to Earth. We’ll have to do this eventually, so we should do it now.’

Amalie, Krath and Dalmora arrived, and sat on the next bench facing us. ‘Still no news from Alpha sector?’ asked Krath.

Fian shook his head.

Krath sighed. ‘The Adonis Knights dressing up in their fancy outfits didn’t achieve much, did it?’

‘Krath!’ Amalie frowned at him, and gave a pointed look in Raven’s direction.

‘Sorry,’ said Krath.

‘Give the Alpha Sector Parliament time,’ said Dalmora.

‘They’ve already had a whole month,’ said Krath. ‘Other sectors only needed a day.’

Raven laughed. ‘But Alpha sector isn’t like the others. Many of the planets were settled directly from different regions of Earth, and their cultures still vary hugely, so it’s always a struggle to get the planetary representatives to agree on anything. There’s an old joke that the Alpha Sector Parliament once voted on whether two plus two equalled four. The motion passed with 755 in favour, 648 against, and 200 abstentions.’

I grinned. ‘Lucius Augustus Gordianus had a meeting with Aadi Quilla Amarion, and seems to be fairly happy about whatever’s going on.’

‘Lucius may be happy, but Rono certainly isn’t,’ said Krath.

I giggled. The whole class had been by the pool yesterday when Rono was watching an Alphan newzie channel on his lookup and totally lost his temper. By the time Playdon managed to shut him up, we’d all learned some very creative Cassandrian swear words.

‘You can’t blame him for being frustrated,’ said Fian. ‘He and Keren have got remarried, but they want their original marriage reinstated.’

I sighed. I was still feeling horribly guilty about everyone’s marriages and Twoing contracts being cancelled.

‘The Planet First amendment must surely pass,’ said Amalie. ‘Four sectors are on our side now.’

I shook my head. ‘The sectors are changing their relationship legislation to conform with the treaty of Artemis. It doesn’t mean they’ll support the Planet First amendment as well.’

‘And it’s a very different sort of vote,’ said Fian. ‘Anything to do with the Military has to be agreed by full Parliament of Planets. Even if a sector is generally in favour, some of its planetary representatives are bound to vote against, and the Alphan vote is always vital because they have so many representatives.’

‘It’s unfair that Alpha and Beta sectors have far more planetary representatives than Gamma, Delta and Epsilon,’ said Krath. ‘Each sector has about two hundred planets, so they should all have the same number of planetary representatives.’

‘Do you really think it would be fairer for every world to just have one planetary representative, whatever its population?’ asked Dalmora. ‘Should the huge population of a world like Adonis only have the same voice as the ten thousand citizens of a frontier world that’s newly out of Colony Ten?’

‘Well …’ Krath pulled a face. ‘No, but the system does mean the older sectors get to decide everything, and …’

He was interrupted by my lookup chiming. Everyone gave it a startled look. When we were on the dig site, we kept our lookups set to only chime for emergency messages.

‘What’s happened now?’ asked Krath.

‘I don’t know yet.’ I anxiously checked the display. ‘It’s Maeth!’

‘Who?’ asked Krath.

‘A friend from Next Step.’ I stabbed my lookup with a finger to accept the call, and saw it display Maeth’s face. She looked as if she’d been crying. What the chaos had happened?

‘Jarra,’ she said, ‘I … You know when we were 14, I got information about my parents, but never contacted them.’

‘Yes.’ Of the nine of us who’d gone through Nursery, Home and Next Step together, seven had taken up their option to get information about their birth parents at age 14. Maeth was the only one who’d done that, but not actually tried contacting her parents afterwards. She’d never told me why.

‘My parents were from Beta sector,’ said Maeth. ‘All I knew about Betans was they made sex vids, so I couldn’t face … There’s been a lot about Beta sector on the newzies lately. It wasn’t what I’d imagined, so I decided to contact my parents and … Jarra, they’re coming to Earth to see me!’

I was grazzed. ‘Maeth, that’s totally zan!’

‘They want me to join their clan, like you joined the Tell clan.’ Maeth gave a tense, shaky laugh. ‘I don’t know if … My clan won’t make sex vids, will they?’

‘It’s unlikely,’ I said. ‘What’s their clan prefix? The bit in the middle of their names?’

‘Ston.’

I tapped my lookup, requesting information on the Ston clan. ‘You’ve no need to worry, Maeth,’ I said. ‘They’re a very respectable clan of the middle rank. They manufacture medical equipment.’

‘So that’s all right then.’ Maeth covered her face with her hands. She was crying again.

The image on the lookup screen swung wildly for a second, and then Ross’s face appeared. ‘Jarra, they’re talking about betrothals and adopting me into the clan. There won’t be any legal problems, will there?’

‘There shouldn’t be since you’re both citizens of Earth,’ I said. ‘Would you be happy about getting adopted?’

‘I can cope with it so long as we’re not on the newzies.’ He glanced off to one side, obviously looking at Maeth. ‘I’d better go. Thanks, Jarra.’

The lookup screen went blank. I gave a little shake of my head.

Fian laughed. ‘There’s no need to look so shocked, Jarra. A lot of Betan clans are welcoming their Handicapped children as members now.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s nardle of me not to realize that one of my own friends might …’

‘This is Dig Site Command,’ said a voice on the comms broadcast channel that could be heard by everyone working on the California Rift. ‘We have five hours warning of an incoming solar storm. Solar Watch predicts Earth portal network will be in lockdown for approximately twelve hours. California Rift Dig Site is evacuating. I repeat: California Rift Dig Site is evacuating.’

‘Working teams retrieve your sensor spikes and pack up,’ said Playdon on team circuit. He came over to sit on our transport sled.

‘Evacuating the dig site means what exactly?’ asked Krath.

‘Evacuating means evacuating,’ said Playdon. ‘If dig teams stayed on the Land Raft when a solar storm shut down the Earth portal network, they’d have no way to escape an earthquake.’

‘Where will we evacuate to, sir?’ asked Raven. ‘There are security issues to consider.’

‘Dig Site Command usually arranges accommodation on another dig site, or at a University Earth America campus,’ said Playdon, ‘but I’m happy to take the class anywhere the Military suggest. It’ll only be for a day.’

‘I’ll call Colonel Leveque,’ said Raven.

He made his call, and laughed. ‘Colonel Leveque says the established protocol is for Jarra to pick somewhere to hide.’

Amalie giggled. ‘We’ll probably end up in Zoo America South. Jarra took us there earlier in the year.’

‘I’d prefer somewhere more inaccessible than a zoo,’ said Raven.

‘If you want somewhere inaccessible,’ I said, ‘I know the perfect place.’

‘Where?’ asked Krath.

I grinned at him. ‘You’ll find out when we get there.’

Fian shook his head. ‘It’ll be somewhere with cheese fluffle.’

‘Let’s get the sleds moving now,’ said Playdon. ‘When we’re back at the dome, I’ll give you exactly one hour to get out of your impact suits, shower, and pack a few things.’

It took only a few minutes to drive back to the dome, and then there was a rush for the showers. Fian and I were among the first to finish packing our bags and arrive in the hall. Playdon checked off our names against the list on his lookup.

‘I hope there’s some privacy wherever we’re going,’ said Fian. ‘Given what day it is tomorrow …’

I felt myself blush.

When the rest of the class had arrived, Playdon turned to look at me. ‘Jarra, do you need to make any special arrangements before we portal?’

‘I’ve already called Colonel Leveque and … and someone else,’ I said. ‘I just need to enter the portal code now.’