Earth Flight (9 page)

In the interests of peace, I tried a random change of conversation. ‘Don’t the protection of humanity laws apply to implants?’

‘Implants aren’t banned like robots or clones,’ said Raven, ‘just restricted by the same rules as gene therapy. You can use them to treat medical and cosmetic problems as long as they don’t enhance someone’s abilities beyond the normal human range.’

‘You’re claiming an internal comms system is normal for humans?’ asked Fian.

‘No,’ said Raven, ‘but when Military Security agents are undercover on assignment, a visible external comms unit can get them killed. I’m claiming that’s a cosmetic problem that justifies using implants instead.’

Fian frowned. ‘You’re bending rules that exist for very good reasons. I’ve been arguing with my father for years about this, because my great-grandfather was a member of Cioni’s Apprentices. A huge amount of scientific knowledge was lost in the Earth data net crash. We’re still blindly accepting many things as facts because records state they were once proved. Cioni’s Apprentices were trying to recreate the lost science and proofs, find out what was true or not for themselves.’

He shrugged. ‘I agree with my father that’s a good thing to do, and totally support other scientists working on it, but Cioni’s Apprentices went to inhuman extremes. They didn’t just cause the Freya conflict, and the Persephone incident, but the horror of what happened on Gymir. We need the protection of humanity laws to stop that sort of thing happening again.’

Raven gave Fian a startled look. ‘Your great-grandfather was an Apprentice? Well, yes, I agree the Apprentices took things too far, but plenty of things bend the rules a little. Look at the dome cleaning system. The autovacs break the rules on both robots and artificial intelligence.’

‘No they don’t,’ said Fian. ‘They can’t create another robot, they fail the Owusu intelligence ratings, and they have no digits capable of manipulating …’

I knew the real disagreement here was still about
Stalea of the Jungle
and privacy, so I gave a pointed cough. ‘I’m starving to death.’

The other two abandoned their argument and we headed to the hall. Raven stopped just inside the doorway, following his regular morning routine of tensely surveying the room for a few minutes, presumably checking to see if any of the class showed signs of having turned into psychotic killers overnight. Fian and I carried on walking to the food dispensers, collected our breakfasts, and went to join Dalmora, Amalie, and Krath at our usual table.

Krath shook his head at us. ‘I still don’t understand why you’ve got an Adonis Knight as a bodyguard.’

I shrugged. ‘Colonel Leveque said he picked Raven because it would be impossible for anyone to bribe him.’

Krath sighed. ‘Yes, the families of the first Adonis colonists all got land grants in perpetuity, so Raven must be stinking rich. I wish I was. All the girls would throw themselves at me.’

Dalmora, Amalie, and I gave him matching glares. Krath hastily changed the subject.

‘Draven Fedorov Seti Raven.’ He started counting on his fingers. ‘Draven is the randomly generated gender specific. Fedorov is the historic reference. Seti …’ He broke off. ‘I’ve forgotten again.’

Dalmora had already explained the Adonis Knight naming system three times, but she patiently did it again. ‘Seti is the month of the fourteen-month-long Adonis year when he was born, and Raven is the Earth nature reference.’

‘It’s too complicated,’ said Krath, ‘and randomly generating a name is a nardle idea.’

‘The Adonis colonists were selected from every region of Earth, and created new traditions to symbolize the fresh start for humanity,’ said Dalmora.

‘Well people obviously didn’t like the new traditions,’ said Krath. ‘Nobody else randomly generates names.’

‘The colonists for other planets in Alpha sector weren’t chosen in the same way,’ said Dalmora. ‘Many of the planets were settled from specific regions of Earth and brought their old customs with them. Other sectors just had open colonization, but you still see major differences between the planets of Alpha sector even today.’

I stopped eating for a moment to join in the conversation. ‘Hospital Earth Administration staff pick what they consider appropriate names for its wards from an approved list. They gave me a different surname as a child, but they let me keep my original first name because Jarra is an old enough name to be on the approved list. They haven’t updated that list for about a century. My best friend from Next Step, Issette, is always complaining about having such an old-fashioned name.’

‘My great-grandmother was called Issette,’ said Amalie. ‘I think it’s a sweetly quaint name.’

I giggled. ‘Please, never say that to my Issette. She’d scream.’

‘Anyway,’ said Krath, ‘I’m glad Raven doesn’t make us use his title or …’

‘Shut up, Krath,’ hissed Amalie. ‘He’s coming.’

Raven put his breakfast tray on the table and sat down in his regular seat, chosen so he’d have his back to the wall and a clear view of everyone in the room. ‘Good morning.’

I heard the wall vid go on, and a presenter say my name. I turned and saw the Beta Sector Daily banner streaming across the top of the vid image.

‘… Commander Tell Morrath as a clan member. The scale of demonstrations, both in support and opposition, increased after the skunk juice attack. The situation escalated further last night, with violent clashes between rival demonstrators outside the Parthenon. We’re now getting reports of demonstrations on other Betan worlds, including Janus, Romulus, Aether and Artemis.’

The image behind the presenter showed a night-time view of the famous Beta Sector Parliament building, with its rows of statues of former First Speakers of Beta sector. The figures of fighting people were silhouetted against the floodlights.

‘The demonstrators are acting as individuals,’ continued the presenter, ‘with clans still awaiting indications from alliances of their official stance on this unprecedented move by a clan of the
gentes maiores
. The August clan have still made no comment, leaving their alliance and the entire reactionary faction in confusion, though there are allegations that either the August or the Fabian clan are secretly orchestrating the protests against the Tell clan ceremony.’

Lolmack made a noise of disgust and turned off the wall vid. ‘The demonstrations prove we’ve strong public support, but the alliances still don’t have the courage to declare themselves.’

I sat there, totally grazzed. I’d been huddled in my own self-absorbed little world for the last few days, carefully avoiding watching the newzies because they kept showing those two horribly contrasting images of me. I’d had no idea there was a political storm raging in Beta sector, with demonstrators fighting outside the Parthenon itself.

‘I don’t understand Betan politics,’ said Krath. ‘What’s the
gentes maiores
?’

‘Betan society was inspired by ancient Rome, basing its clan structure on it, and naming the Parthenon after one of its famous buildings,’ said Lolmack.

I blinked, opened my mouth to object, but shut it again because Lolmack was still talking.

‘The highest ranked Betan clans are the
gentes maiores
, the clans of the Founding Families of Zeus,’ he said. ‘Some official positions, like the First Speaker of Beta sector, are traditionally held by a member of those clans.’

He glanced in my direction. ‘The Tell clan is the one exception among the clans of the
gentes maiores
. Tellon Blaze was born into a clan of the middle rank, but after the Thetis crisis a grateful Beta sector honoured him by granting him the right to found a new clan of the rank of the
gentes maiores
.’

‘So how do the alliances work?’ asked Amalie.

Lolmack looked round, saw he had the whole class listening to him now, and settled into lecture mode. ‘Clan alliances are based around political or business interests, and bridge the social divides. The Military clans are all of the middle and first rank, and belong to the Military clan alliance headed by the Tell clan. Lolia and I belong to a plebeian clan of the lowest rank, a mere clan cluster without the right to a true clan name. We make sex vids so …’

He gave a shrug of resignation. ‘Our clan is in an alliance headed by the Breck clan of the middle rank. Being in an alliance is the first step towards getting our clan officially recognized, but we’ve little status and no influence in alliance council decisions.’

‘That’s why your clan has to accept whatever the alliance decides about Lolette?’ I asked.

‘Exactly,’ said Lolmack. ‘If we caused trouble, the alliance would discard us, and we’d have to begin again from nothing. It should have been so different. Our clan has no status but we’re wealthy. We’d arranged to buy adoption for our child.’

I frowned. Lolette wasn’t an unwanted baby. Lolmack and Lolia had made great sacrifices to keep her. ‘I don’t understand what you mean by buying adoption.’

‘A clan may adopt someone as part of marriage negotiations, because they’re impressed by someone’s talent, or if they’re given a large financial incentive,’ said Lolmack. ‘Lolette should have been adopted into the Breck clan as a baby. She’d have remained our daughter, but she’d have been elevated to the middle rank and …’

He pulled a pained face. ‘Lolette was born Handicapped, so now we’ll be grateful if she’s even acknowledged by our clan cluster.’

The silence after that was broken by Playdon’s voice coming from near the door. ‘Since this is a pre-history course, I’d like to point out the original Parthenon was not a Roman building but a Greek temple.’

Lolmack shrugged. ‘There’s no real difference. Ancient Rome and Greece were both on Earth and far back in pre-history.’

I smothered a giggle as I saw the expression on Playdon’s face.

‘There is a very significant difference,’ said Playdon. ‘Although Beta sector claims to be inspired by ancient Rome, there were many initial misconceptions, and of course Betan society has evolved over the centuries.’

He paused for a second. ‘Now I’ve important news for you. Military Security have released Petra. I’ve spoken to her about the issue of insulting Jarra, and she knows I won’t tolerate any further breaches of the Gamman moral code.’

Steen stood up. ‘You can’t let Petra rejoin the class!’

‘I can and I will,’ said Playdon. ‘Military Security arrested her, interrogated her, and decided she’s innocent. Anyone with access to the dig team assignment schedule would know when this class was moving to London Main. Whoever passed on that information, it wasn’t Petra. I’m moving her from our class dig team 4 to team 5 because ill feeling between team members can be dangerous, but I’m not throwing a student off this course for a crime she didn’t commit. Please sit down, Steen.’

Steen didn’t move.

‘I asked you to sit down.’

There was another moment of suspense before Steen flung himself down in his chair. Playdon nodded, turned, and went out of the door.

‘Why is Steen so angry, Jarra?’ Raven asked in an urgent whisper.

I sighed. ‘Steen hates Petra. One of the students in our class, Joth, was Twoing with Petra. They had an argument and Joth got himself killed doing something stupid. Steen was a friend of Joth. He blamed Petra for what happened, so …’

‘I was Joth’s friend too,’ said Krath, ‘and Steen’s right. We should all insist that …’

He broke off because Playdon was back, with Petra standing next to him. There was an awkward silence and I realized some of the class were looking at me. I took a deep breath, forced myself to stand up, and walked across to Petra.

‘I hope we can make a fresh start.’

She stared at me, her expression changing from defiance to shock. I waited a second, but Petra seemed far too grazzed to say anything, so I just went back to my seat.

Krath frowned at me. ‘Why didn’t you tell Petra to nuke off?’

‘Because Playdon’s done a huge amount to help me since I joined this class. I’m not rewarding him by stirring up trouble when he’s grieving for his dead wife.’

‘Jarra’s right,’ said Dalmora. ‘We must respect Playdon’s decision.’

Krath glanced at Amalie and then Fian, but they both nodded agreement.

‘Fine,’ muttered Krath. ‘Have it your way, but I’m not happy about Petra being back with us.’

‘Neither am I,’ said Raven.

9

A crowd of figures in impact suits were gathering by our sled storage dome. Impact suits are wonderful things. When a ruined building collapses on your head, or something explodes and sends debris flying at you, the special fabric triggers and goes solid to protect you. The only problem is they’re chaos difficult to put on. I’d been proud that I could suit up in the Military standard time of two minutes, but I’d just seen Raven casually beat my best ever time by ten seconds.

‘I can’t believe how fast you suited up,’ I said.

Raven laughed. ‘I’ve had special training, Jarra.’

The last few stragglers arrived, and Playdon started talking. ‘Now Jarra is able to come with us, we’ll drive to the edge of the island. You can all admire the view from the Land Raft before we start our excavation work.’

A few minutes later, our line of hover sleds was heading along Gap 15. There was an unbroken wall of buildings on either side of us, towering up to about twenty storeys high. In ancient vid images of San Angeles, these buildings were dazzling white, and their long uniform lines had a regal elegance, but time had aged the concraz to a grubby pale grey and scarred it with cracks and holes.

Our sleds kept carefully to the safe zone between the two red lines, so we had the luxury of keeping our hoods down for the trip, instead of breathing the musty, filtered air inside our suits. I was sitting on the bench seat of a transport sled, between Fian and Raven, our three Military impact suits conspicuous among the standard black suits worn by the other students.

There was an excited yelp from opposite us. ‘Alien Contact have announced they’ve finished searching Alpha sector!’ said Krath.

Everyone madly checked their lookups. ‘So the alien home world definitely isn’t in Alpha sector,’ said Dalmora. ‘I must admit I’m relieved. It would have been worrying to think of it being near my family on Danae.’