I looked down at the twentieth century girl on my lookup. “Yes, I would! Just give me ten minutes to pack!”
Delta Sector 2788 - Fian
Hercules, Delta Sector, June 2788.
“Fian, you’re a disgrace to the entire Eklund family,” said my father.
He said that at least twice a week, but I’d no idea why he was saying it right now. It was eight o’clock in the morning, so I was exactly on time for breakfast. I’d only just walked into the room, so I hadn’t had time to do anything he thought stupid. I couldn’t have said the wrong thing, because I hadn’t said a word yet.
I glanced at my mother, but she gave a slight shake of her head to indicate she didn’t know what the problem was either. I sat down at the table in wary silence. I hadn’t seen my father since yesterday morning. Had he found out some of the things I’d been hiding from him? The fact I had a girlfriend. The Gamma sector vids I’d been watching. The history thing.
But no, it couldn’t be anything nearly that bad. If it was, my father wouldn’t just be calling me a disgrace, he’d be exploding with rage. He was probably leading into another round of complaints about my long hair. He preferred a brutally close-trimmed hairstyle himself, and hated the way my blond hair trailed round my shoulders. Which was, of course, the main reason I kept it that long. My father had forced me to do so many things I hated; my long hair was a gesture of defiance.
“A son of mine coming second in a school physics test!” my father said in tones of deepest disgust.
That explained everything. My physics teacher had been messaging my father about me. Again! I could at least argue my case on this one. Not that my father would listen, he never did, but … “I got 96 per cent in the test.”
“That’s a very good result.” My mother pulled a sympathetic face at me.
“No it isn’t,” said my father. “Not when someone else got 97 per cent. Why can’t you be more like your sister?”
I braced myself to endure yet another lecture about my wonderful older sister who’d got her physics degree before she was 20. She’d moved away from Hercules a year ago, to join a specialist group on another Deltan world and research multi particle wave expansions. I’d hoped my father would stop comparing me to her after that, but things had got worse instead of better. While she lived at home, there were inevitable clashes between her and my father that stopped him seeing her as utterly perfect, but now …
“I hope you’re thoroughly ashamed of yourself,” said my father. “A great-grandson of the brilliant Jorgen Eklund failing a simple school physics test!”
Oh no! It wasn’t going to be the lecture about my sister. It was going to be the lecture about Jorgen Eklund, which was even worse. My father seemed to have the idea that I only had to study a little harder to turn myself into a copy of my great-grandfather. Well, I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to either!
“I blame it on your ridiculous interest in history,” said my father. “A totally pointless subject. Humanity shouldn’t waste time looking back at the past; it should be working for the future!”
I wanted to argue that it was vital humanity learned the lessons of history, because otherwise we’d keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again, but that would be an incredibly bad idea. It was four years since my father had told me to take an optional specialist technology course at school, and I’d signed up for a three month history module instead. When he found out what I’d done, my father had been furious and ordered me to drop the history module at once. I’d tried standing up to him, told him how much I hated physics, and said that I wanted to move from the science stream to the history stream.
That started an epic battle between us. I lost. My school wouldn’t let me change from the science stream to the history stream without my parents’ consent, and my mother sympathized with me but got shouted down by my father. Ever since then, I’d carefully avoided mentioning history, but my father still held a grudge over my brief rebellion, and kept blaming all my failures on it.
“I remember visiting my grandfather in his laboratory at University Hercules when I was only 10 years old,” continued my father. “It was a true inspiration seeing everything that he’d achieved. I remember how he looked at me and said …”
I was 17 years old, and Father must have told me this story at least twenty times during every single one of those years. By now I could recite every word in my sleep. I tuned out my father’s voice, and concentrated on eating a bowl of crunchy blue slices of my favourite Hercules melon. It was just the way I liked it, packed with the tiny juicy seeds that hovered on the borderline between sweet and sour. Some people liked the seedless varieties of Hercules melon, but I …
“Are you listening to me?” demanded my father.
“Yes, Father.” I scraped the last stray melon seeds from my bowl. I’d definitely heard a mention of the Military, so … “Great-grandfather told you how the Military tried to sabotage his research by dumping him under planetary arrest here on Hercules when it was still just a frontier world. He didn’t let that stop him though. He founded University Hercules and carried on his work anyway.”
Father nodded, and continued the story. “Your great-grandfather left a shining legacy to human knowledge. The only ambition he never achieved was winning a Nobel, and that was because of a blatant injustice. His improvements to the design of the interstellar portals and their relay system totally revolutionized cross-sector portal travel, but the Nobel Committee back then deliberately overlooked him.”
I felt the Nobel Committee had good reason to overlook my great-grandfather’s work. Jorgen Eklund hadn’t just used highly unethical research methods, he’d been rumoured to be involved in the Persephone incident, and there was absolutely no doubt that he’d started the planetary civil war on Freya in Alpha sector.
I opened my mouth to say that, but my mother gave me a pleading look, so I picked up my glass of frujit and sipped it instead.
“I wish you’d had the chance to meet him yourself,” said my father.
I didn’t. I was deeply grateful for the fact that Jorgen Eklund had reached his hundredth and died long before I was born. It was embarrassing enough having him as my great-grandfather when he was dead. I shuddered at the thought of what my life would be like if he was still alive. I hated the way everyone constantly talked to me about my sister, asking whether she’d published any more papers, but if my great-grandfather was still alive it would be far worse. I’d probably have people asking whether he’d started any more wars yet!
“On Year Day 2789, you’ll be 18 and will start your physics degree at University Hercules,” my father relentlessly carried on with his lecture. “That means you’ve only got six months to improve the standards of your work. You can’t carry on in this slapdash way when my own colleagues are teaching you. Remember that I’ll have been awarded my Nobel Prize by then, so I won’t want to be embarrassed by hearing bad reports of my son.”
Mother grabbed at the chance to interrupt his lecture. “Yes, the deadline for work to be considered for the Nobel is less than a week away now, and there really is nothing else significant in the Astrophysics area this year, so … It’s wonderful to think that you’ll finally have the recognition you deserve.”
Father nodded. “Ever since I heard my grandfather talk about the one ambition he’d never achieved, this has been my dream. To make up for that old injustice, by winning a Nobel Prize myself. I’m planning to use my acceptance speech to dedicate the prize to my grandfather’s memory.”
I blinked. The Nobel ceremony would be held on Adonis in Alpha sector. I knew my father could be incredibly insensitive, but surely even he should realize that mentioning Jorgen Eklund’s name on any planet in Alpha sector was a really bad idea.
My father stood up, his mind clearly focused on his Nobel now rather than on his failure of a son. “I’ll make a few notes about my speech before going to the university.”
He headed off to his study, and I turned to give my m
other a worried look. “We can’t let Father make an acceptance speech that’s all about Jorgen Eklund. Not when he’s on the capital planet of Alpha sector. He’ll have the audience throwing things at him!”
She frowned. “I know your great-grandfather left Alpha sector under unfortunate circumstances.”
“Unfortunate circumstances!” I repeated. “Mother, it was a lot more than unfortunate. He started a war on Freya!”
“That wasn’t a war. It was merely a planetary incident. A conflict has to escalate beyond a single planet before it counts as a real war.”
“That may be technically true, but I think the people who died on Freya felt it was a real war.”
She sighed. “I suppose you’re right, but hopefully everyone will have forgotten all about it by now. It was a very long time ago.”
“Not long enough,” I said grimly. “And it wasn’t just the war; there was what happened on Persephone too. You can’t tell me people have forgotten about that. The ent vid channels show almost as many horror vids about what happened on Persephone as they do about Thetis and Gymir. Given the number of people who died on Persephone, and the state of the survivors afterwards …”
“Your great-grandfather was never proved to be personally involved in the Persephone incident.”
“He was proved to belong to the group that caused it. You have to talk sense into Father. Make him see he can’t mention Jorgen Eklund in his acceptance speech.”
Mother sighed again. “I’ll do my best, but you know what your father’s like.” She checked the time on her lookup. “It’s nearly half past eight. What day is it on your school timetable?”
My school worked on a complex 21 day timetable, which confused even the teachers. Everyone else complained about it, but I found it very useful. My father didn’t even try to understand it, so he’d got no idea what I should be doing on any particular day.
“It’s day 6 of the 21 day cycle,” I said. “That’s a rest day for the school science stream.”
“Ah,” said my mother. “You’ll be … resting then.”
I nodded. “I’ll be … resting.”
I went over to a cupboard, collected a couple of cartons of food and drink, and then tiptoed through the hall. My father’s study door was closed, so I made it outside without any more lectures. I looked round warily at the luxury, one-storey homes. There was no one outside the houses, and the central garden with the local portal in the middle seemed totally deserted.
I walked across to the portal, gave a last paranoid look over my shoulder just in case my father had materialized out of the ground behind me, and dialled my school. The second the portal established, I stepped through, arriving on the expanse of bare concraz in front of the array of school buildings. No one else should be portalling in for at least another fifteen minutes, but I still sprinted madly to the small building at the far end, entered the code into the lock plate, went inside, and shut the door behind me.
Now I was safe. The cross-sector education laws said that every school had to have sports facilities and offer sport as a voluntary option for its pupils. Since Delta sector was science obsessed in general, and Hercules was the most science obsessed of all its two hundred and two planets, my school only went through the motions of complying with those laws. This small, empty dome, and the area of grass beside it, were the school sports facilities. Sport was listed as a voluntary optional course, but there was no sports teacher, and no pupils ever signed up to do it. That meant nobody except me and my two friends had entered this dome in the last four years.
I went across to the table and three chairs that my friends and I had “borrowed” from another classroom, sat down, put the cartons of food under the table to eat later, and took out my lookup. I checked for messages, and saw my last physics homework had been returned with the highest possible mark. I didn’t bother looking at my teacher’s comments. Even though I’d got a perfect mark, he was bound to have said something about how my sister would have done better.
My life would be a lot easier if my physics teacher hadn’t taught my older sister. My life would be a lot easier if my sister had gone to a different school. In fact, I sometimes felt my life would be a lot easier if I’d never had a sister at all!
But even if my sister had never existed, I’d still have suffered from being compared to the rest of my depressingly brilliant relatives. My father, my mother, my uncles, my cousins, my grandparents, and of course my notorious great-grandfather were all genius level scientists as well, while I was just reasonably clever. Short of annihilating my entire family tree, both living and dead, there was no way of changing the fact I was the Eklund family failure.
I briefly, and pointlessly, wished I’d been born to different parents, perfectly average and very boring parents, who had ordinary expectations of their son. Parents who’d have been pleased and proud of me for coming second in a school physics test.
I was being unfair to my mother though. I knew she was disappointed in me, she was bound to be in the circumstances, but she did her best to hide it.
I sighed, put my lookup in my pocket, went across to the loose section of dome floor, lifted it up, and took out my secret second lookup. This was a very basic model, but it had one huge advantage over the advanced one that my father had given me. He couldn’t run remote checks to watch what I was doing on it, because he didn’t know it existed.
I heard the door open behind me, took a fast look over my shoulder, and saw both my friends had arrived together. They shut the door carefully behind them, and Macall spread his arms in an expansive gesture.
“Tremble, oppressed ones of Delta sector. The corrupting influence of Gamma sector is among you!”
Valin hit him, and turned to eagerly look at me. “How was last night’s date with your girlfriend? Did you get anywhere?”
I retrieved both their secret lookups from under the floor and handed them over, before putting the floor back into place, standing up, and answering the question. “I got my face slapped, called a sexual pervert, and dumped!”
“Oh.” Valin slumped down into one of the chairs. “Things didn’t go too well then.”
“Sexual pervert!” Macall repeated. “What the chaos did you do to the girl?”
“I tried to hold her hand,” I said. “I thought she wanted me to push the boundaries a bit, but apparently I’d misread the signals.”
“All that for trying to hold her hand?” Macall gave a sad shake of his head.
“No respectable Deltan girl would dream of holding hands with a boy without a Twoing contract.” I mimicked my ex-girlfriend’s voice as I quoted her.
I sat down at the table, dropped my secret lookup on top of it, and stared down at it gloomily. “It’s not as if I’d have objected to having a Twoing contract. My father would throw a fit, saying I shouldn’t let emotions distract me from my studies, but I’d have stood up to him over it. I just wanted a little reassurance first.”
Macall laughed. “A little reassurance that you wouldn’t fight a huge battle with your father, and commit yourself to a legal contract for months, then discover you were Twoing with a complete frost of a girl?”
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “It’s so difficult to tell if a girl is freezing you off to obey Deltan social conventions, or if she really is a human icicle.”
Macall sat down in the third chair. “It’s been five years since my parents dragged me to Hercules to further their wretched careers, but I still don’t believe how prudish things are here. It’s so unfair. If I was back on Asgard in Gamma sector, dating a girl there …”
There was several minutes’ silence, while all three of us daydreamed about dating a girl in Gamma sector. Macall had left Gamma sector when he was 12, so he’d never actually dated anyone there himself, but he’d seen his older brother kissing a girlfriend. Valin and I were basing our ideas on the Gamma sector vids we’d seen.
Normally you had to be 18 or have parental permission to watch Gamma sector vids, but Macall
had dual Deltan and Gamman citizenship, so he had free access. He let me and Valin watch his vids with him. My personal favourite was a series called Stalea of the Jungle.
“I wish I was Stalea’s boyfriend,” I said.
“But she lives in a jungle village on a world that’s been cut off from civilization,” said Macall. “That vid series has a totally ridiculous plot.”
“It’s not that ridiculous,” said Valin. “Civilization virtually collapsed after Exodus century. A lot of worlds had their interstellar portals fail in the early part of the twenty-fifth century and genuinely were totally isolated.”
“What about the jungle though?” asked Macall. “The Military wouldn’t open up a new world for colonization with a proposed inhabited continent covered in jungle. Especially a jungle with monsters in it.”
“I don’t care about the plot being unrealistic,” I said. “I like the way Stalea throws her boyfriend across a jungle clearing, leaps on him, and forcibly kisses him. If only my girlfriend, I mean my ex-girlfriend, was like that.”
“You’d need more than a Twoing contract to get a Deltan girl to kiss you like that,” said Macall. “I don’t think even marriage would be enough. Anyway, being thrown across a jungle clearing could be extremely painful if you landed on a rock.”
“Stalea’s boyfriend never lands on rocks,” said Valin, in a dreamy voice. “She always throws him somewhere soft, and the way she kisses him is totally amaz. It’s a pity the credits start rolling as soon as it gets really interesting.”
Macall shook his head in mock disapproval. “I’m shocked! Well behaved17-year-old Deltan boys shouldn’t be having impure thoughts about girls kissing them.”
“I’m a very badly behaved Deltan boy,” I said. “Just ask my father and he’ll tell you! Anyway, the thing I like best about Stalea is that she makes it perfectly clear what she wants from her boyfriend. If my ex-girlfriend had made her rules clear to start with, then we might still be together.”