Earth and Fire (4 page)

Issette gave me
a look of pure disbelief. “You’re making that up.”

“No, I’m not!” I
frowned at her. “I’d never make up a historical fact.”

“Even if that’s
true,” said Keon, “you’ll never convince the Principal it’s safe to fly around
way up in the air by telling her what people did hundreds of years ago. You’ll
have to keep her out of it by getting both your ProParents to consent.”

“Jarra just told
you her ProDad will never agree,” said Issette. “Pay attention!”

“I
am
paying attention,” said Keon. “It’s perfectly easy for Jarra to make her ProDad
agree.”

“It is?” I asked.
“How?”

He sighed at my
stupidity. “Your ProDad has been abusing his position for years, by taking Hospital
Earth’s money but not fulfilling his contract to see you for two hours every
week. The Principal is really annoyed about it, but she can’t do anything
because you keep covering up for him. Send an emergency flagged message to your
ProDad, telling him that either he consents to you learning to fly, or you’ll ask
the Principal to report him for neglect. It’ll take him about five minutes to register
his consent.”

It actually took my ProDad four
minutes and thirty-five seconds to send me the confirmation that he’d
registered his consent. I gazed open-mouthed at Keon, completely grazzed.

“Keon, you’re
amaz!” I said.

“He’s totally
zan!” said Issette.

Keon gave a smug
smile, reached out, grabbed a hand from each of me and Issette, and kissed them
in turn. “It’s a pleasure to help two such elegant Alphan vid stars.”

He laughed at
our startled faces, while the reproving automated voice of the room sensor spoke
from the ceiling overhead. “Your current inter-person intimacy is exceeding
that acceptable for your age group.”

Keon pulled a face
at the ceiling and released our hands. “Whoever sets the rules for those room
sensors must be incredibly prudish if they think kissing hands is unacceptable
intimacy. Now will you both
please
go away and leave me in peace? Jarra needs
to transform back into her normal self before dinner, or Cathan will spend the
whole time trying to talk her into boy and girling again.”

Issette and I
retreated in confusion, closing the door behind us. “That was very odd
behaviour from Keon,” said Issette. “Why would he kiss our hands like that? Do
you think he was testing the room sensors’ rules?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.
I gave up trying to understand Keon when we were 9 years old. Remember that
time he sneaked out of school during the lunch break and fell asleep in the park?
For someone who likes an easy life, it was a chaos stupid thing to do. He
should have known he’d end up having a Hospital Earth Truant Officer monitoring
his every move for … Why are you laughing?”

Issette grinned
at me. “Because Keon
wanted
a Hospital Earth Truant Officer monitoring
him. Nial, the big kid in our class from Home E161/8824, was bullying Keon for
being so smart and …”

“What?” I
interrupted her. “I knew Nial was a bully, but I didn’t know he was picking on
Keon. Why didn’t anyone tell me? I’d have sorted Nial out!”

“That’s exactly
why nobody told you,” said Issette. “Keon said you’d cause just as much trouble
as you did in Nursery over the evil Nurse Cass business, and it was simpler to
deal with the situation himself. Which he did. Keon set things up so his Truant
Officer witnessed Nial being especially vicious, then told the Truant Officer
that he’d only run away from school that lunch time because Nial had forced him
to do it. Keon got his truancy record cleared as he’d been an innocent victim.
Nial got three months in a Correctional Home and never dared to bully anyone
ever again.”

“Oh.” That did
explain a few things that had confused me back then. Why Nial had suddenly
vanished from our class, and why Keon had only had to wear a tracking bracelet
for two days instead of the month that I’d expected. “Wasn’t it a bit drastic
to get Nial sent to Correctional?”

“No it wasn’t.”
Issette’s face took on an expression of implacable hatred. “I haven’t forgotten
the time Nial stole Whoopiz the Zen from me. He said he was going to cut
Whoopiz in half, but you and Ross thumped Nial and saved Whoopiz.”

Issette clearly
felt that three months in a Correctional Home was lenient treatment for a boy
who’d committed crimes against Whoopiz the Zen. Now I stopped to think about a
few of the other things Nial had done back then, and the way he’d terrorized
the other unfortunate kids in Home E161/8824, I didn’t have much sympathy with
him either.

“Keon’s right about
you needing to get back to normal before dinner,” Issette added.

“Yes, I’ll go
and change my clothes now.”

I went back to
my room and removed all my fake elegance. Once I was my usual, slightly scruffy
self again, I did some thinking. My ProDad had registered his consent to me
learning to fly, so now I had to get my ProMum to do the same thing, and I’d
have to use persuasion this time. Even if there was a way to blackmail Candace,
which there wasn’t because she was utterly flawless, I’d never do it.

A host of adults
had drifted in and out of my life over the years. Staff at Nursery, Home and
Next Step, teachers at school, about twelve psychologists, and assorted minor
officials of Hospital Earth. All of them had been Handicapped like me. Some
liked me, some hated me, but for most of them I was just another name on a list.

Our ProParents
were supposed to provide the stable adult influence in our lives. That hadn’t
worked out too well with my ProDad, but Candace was totally zan. She hadn’t
just been there to help me through a hundred minor and major disasters, she truly
cared about me and I cared about her too.

My regular weekly
meeting with Candace was three days away, so I mailed her saying something
urgent had turned up and asking if I could see her earlier. Her reply came a
few minutes later, saying she could manage to see me for half an hour after
dinner. We usually met at the tropical bird dome of Zoo Europe, but Candace’s
message gave a Europe portal code that I didn’t recognize.

I headed down to
Commons for dinner, and found Cathan already there. He looked disappointed to
see the usual unimpressive Jarra again, and sat at the table in silent gloom,
but it still turned out to be a horribly embarrassing meal. The nine of us Seventeens
always sat together for meals, but today there were ten of us because Vina had
brought her boyfriend.

Ayden and Selia
were both in relationships with outsiders, and often brought their girlfriends
to dinner. We had no problem with those guests because they were one in a
thousand and exactly like us, going to the same school but living in another
Next Step. Vina’s boyfriend was different, because Ben wasn’t one in a thousand
but one in ten, the Handicapped child of Handicapped parents.

Education Earth
has three separate schooling systems. Nine out of ten kids of Handicapped parents
are born norms, so they go to off-world schools to help them rejoin “real
society.” Handicapped kids living with their parents have their own schools as
well. Education Earth segregates them from those of us living in a Next Step to
avoid the inevitable jealousy, and to try and discourage what Vina was doing.
The official term is inappropriate family bonding, but most people call it
family crashing.

“I’ve been
looking forward to meeting you all.” Ben gave us a rather anxious smile. “Vina
kept postponing inviting me. She thought I’d feel uncomfortable visiting a Next
Step, but of course I want to meet her friends so I insisted.”

There was an
awkward silence. We all knew Vina would have made every possible excuse to
avoid bringing Ben here. She’d spent months arranging a series of accidental
meetings with him and coaxing him into a relationship. Her efforts were
supposed to be rewarded with precious time spent at Ben’s home getting to know his
parents. The last thing she wanted was for Ben to get involved in her own life here
at Next Step.

“It’s nice to
meet you, Ben,” said Ross. “Vina has told us so much about you.”

That was a
polite lie. Vina had hardly ever mentioned Ben to us, though she often talked about
his parents. We all understood why she was acting this way. The vid channels
were full of programmes showing kids with real families, so we were constantly
aware we had a gap in our lives. Hospital Earth kept groups of us together all
through Nursery, Home and Next Step, so we could form a substitute family, but it
wasn’t the same as the real thing.

Vina was trying
to fill the gap in her life by crashing Ben’s family. She’d carefully chosen
them as her target, because Ben’s older sister had been born a norm, and had
left home last Year Day to attend a university on one of the Alpha sector
worlds. Vina’s plan was that she’d gradually replace the absent sister in the
parents’ affections, and be accepted as their substitute daughter.

The rest of us
sympathized with Vina’s feelings, but knew what she was doing was a chaos bad
idea. Ben and his family weren’t actors who’d obediently follow her fantasy script.
This was going to end up in disaster, with Vina upsetting Ben’s family and getting
badly hurt herself.

“What are you
planning to do after Year Day, Ben?” asked Maeth in an artificially cheerful
tone.

“I’m going to go
medical,” said Ben.

Maeth gave a
pointed look at Issette.

“I’m planning to
go medical too,” said Issette.

The conversation
was less painfully awkward after that. Issette talked to Ben about Medical
Foundation courses, and then we all chatted in turn about future plans. Well,
not quite all of us. When Vina and Ben had gone to get desserts, Maeth glared
at Keon.

“Why didn’t you
say something to Ben instead of just grunting at him?”

Keon shrugged. “I
may not bother studying anything next year. Since I’m one of the unfortunate,
helpless Handicapped, I can get a basic subsistence allowance from Hospital
Earth even if I do nothing at all, and doing nothing is ideal for me. Anyway,
there’s no point in talking to Ben.”

“Of course there
is,” said Maeth. “Vina isn’t saying a word to make him feel welcome here, and
it would be terribly rude if we ignored him too. The poor boy looks so worried.”

“He’s looking
worried because he’s starting to realize Vina wants a relationship with his
parents, not him,” said Keon. “I doubt we’ll ever see him again.”

“Shhh,” said
Ross. “They’re coming back.”

I left the
others to work at keeping the conversation going, rapidly ate my dessert, then stood
up. “I have to go because I’ve got an appointment with my ProMum. It was nice
to meet you, Ben.”

“It was nice to
meet you too, Issette.”

I didn’t correct
Ben’s mistake about my name. Keon was probably right that we’d never see the
boy again. I just nodded at him and hurried off to the portal in the foyer. I
entered the portal code Candace had sent me, and was startled when the portal
started talking to me.

“Warning, you
have entered an adult restricted portal code,” it told me. “If your portal
request is not confirmed by an appropriate adult, then your portal will not
establish but your personal account will still be charged for this journey.”

There was a brief
pause before it spoke again. “Portal request confirmation received.”

The portal finally
established, I stepped through it, and was suddenly, shockingly cold. I gasped.

Candace’s soft
laugh came from beside me and she thrust something into my hands. I glanced
down at a thick robe, hastily shrugged it on over my clothes, and looked around
at a bleak white landscape. I hadn’t been via a Transit to portal inter-continent,
so I must still be in Europe, but this place was obviously either high in the
mountains or somewhere in the far north. No, I could see mountains in the
distance, but there was a vast, flat plain around us. We must be in the north
then.

“I wanted a
break from the hot weather,” said Candace.

There was
nothing here except for the two portals standing in the middle of the ice and
snow. Isolated, hazardous places always had them in pairs in case of some freak
breakdown. I wondered why Portal Network Administration had chosen to put
portals in a place like this. Possibly school geography field trips came here.

“What’s the
disaster this time, Jarra?” asked Candace.

I turned towards
her. She was huddled in the depths of a burgundy red robe, with the hood over
her head, but I could see her face and its anxious expression.

“There isn’t a
disaster.” I pulled a face of self-mockery. “I know an urgent message from me
usually means I’m in trouble, but not this time. I’ve got the chance to do
something special, but I need your consent.”

“Ah.” She seemed
to relax. “What is it, Jarra? Have you managed to talk someone into letting you
visit one of the main dig sites?”

I shook my head.
“It’s a strict rule that you have to be 18 for that. This is about …”

I broke off for
a moment, trying to work out the best way of saying this. I’d never mentioned
the flying to Candace. She’d been worried enough about me going with the school
history club to work on Fringe dig sites. Those were carefully selected areas,
with no major hazards like the teetering skeletal remains of skyscrapers, but there
were still a lot of dangers. I hadn’t wanted to add to her fears by telling her
I was begging rides in planes.

“The Dig Site
Federation employs professional pilots to do survey flights over the ruined
cities,” I said. “One of them will be doing a full survey of New York Fringe
while the history club is there for the summer break. I’ve had several rides in
survey planes and …”

“You have?”
Candace interrupted me, a startled note in her normally calm voice. “You must mean
you were sitting in one on the ground, not actually going up in the sky.”

“No, I was going
up in the sky, but flying in a plane is perfectly safe. Now we have portals, aircraft
are only used for a few special jobs, but they were as common as transport
sleds in the days of pre-history.”

She frowned. “I
don’t see how being so high up in the air can ever be safe. What if something
goes wrong and the plane falls out of the sky? I must have been scared to death
a dozen times over the years by emergency calls telling me you were in a
casualty unit, Jarra. I don’t want to get one telling me you’re in a mortuary!”

“A plane
wouldn’t fall out of the sky, and even if it did you wear impact suits and hover
tunics.” It didn’t seem a good idea to tell her that hover tunics couldn’t stop
your fall, only slow it, so you had to hope your protective impact suit stopped
you being seriously injured when you hit the ground. I hurried on to the key
point.

“I want to do some
more flying this summer and try to get my pilot’s licence. The Dig Site
Federation encourages its professional pilots to give people flying lessons, but
I’ll need your consent to register for a training licence.”