He handed over the sealed packet containing the fluid patch. ‘You know how to put this in place and activate it?’
I nodded.
‘If you’re still in any pain after the treatment cycle completes, then you’re going straight to casualty. I have a duty of care towards my students. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Playdon left, but Dalmora hesitated. ‘Do you need any help with the patch?’ she asked.
‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ve done this before, and since it’s somewhere a bit private …’
My hint at my statutory right to personal modesty worked its magic as well with Dalmora as it had with Playdon. Dalmora instantly retreated, and I was left alone in my room feeling the worst kind of fraud. Playdon was concerned about me. Dalmora had been so dreadfully nice.
I really and truly hate to admit I’m wrong, but sometimes I have to. Dalmora Rostha, the gifted daughter of Ventrak Rostha, born to be an adored Alphan vid personality of the future, and a living embodiment of everything I envied, was nice. I’d fought the idea for as long as I could, but she really was. It was truly sickening that someone so perfect should actually be nice as well, but …
I sighed, stripped off my robe and skintight, and went over to the mirror. I didn’t really need the patch, but it seemed vaguely more honest to use it. I ripped open the packet, unfolded the patch, and positioned it carefully over my bruise. When I was sure it was right, I pulled the activation loop, and gasped as the edges of the patch fastened to my skin and the icy chill of the fluid hit me.
‘One, two, three …’ I dutifully followed the instructions and counted up to twenty before getting dressed. As always, the feel of the fluid felt disturbingly cold and alien under normal clothes. I picked up my lookup and checked the time. We’d returned to our dome a little earlier than usual so I could afford to rest a while in my room.
I lay back on my bed, and messed around with my lookup, checking my mail and credit balance, and then setting it to bring up a holo gallery like the one Playdon had shown me on the dig site. I wasn’t showing the heads of my classmates of course, but of my friends from Next Step and school. Candace, and assorted other adults who’d been important in my life, were there as well. I was alone among the exos, confused about whether they were the villains or I was, and in a mood to even feel nostalgic about the Principal of my Next Step.
I’d just set the holo heads to drift randomly around the room, when there was a tap on the door.
‘It’s unlocked,’ I yelled.
As the door opened, I reached for my lookup to turn off the holos, but realized there was no need. Who could tell the heads of civilians from Military?
‘Playdon wondered if we should bring you some food.’
I’d expected it to be Dalmora again, but it was Fian, his eyes hesitating between me and the drifting holo heads.
‘No need,’ I said. ‘I’ll come to the hall and eat there. Dalmora rather overreacted. The bruising isn’t that bad, it just kept me awake last night.’
Fian frowned. ‘If I’d been faster, got you out of the way of that collapsing wall …’
Now I felt really guilty. ‘It’s not your fault. I’d tagged my rocks, was backing out of the way to let the heavy lifts shift them, and got too close to a wall that wasn’t as stable as it looked. I made a nardle mistake, and you were very fast and stopped me getting buried.’
Fian appeared unconvinced, but nodded and dropped the issue. He gestured at the heads. ‘Is Issette one of these?’
‘Yes.’ I pointed to Issette.
‘And Keon?’
I pointed to Keon.
Fian looked puzzled. ‘There isn’t much of a family resemblance.’
I was a nardle. I’d forgotten I’d said Keon was my brother. You only had to look at him to know we couldn’t possibly be related. The shape of the eyes was …
‘He’s adopted.’ I added yet another lie to the hundreds I’d already told. ‘His parents were close friends of mine, so when they were killed …’
‘Oh, I see.’
I grabbed my lookup, turned off the holo display, and stood up. ‘Let’s go and eat.’
13
Lunch was a hideously embarrassing affair. Playdon asked if the pain was easing. Fian brought my food over for me. Dalmora told everyone how terribly bruised I was. Amalie offered to make me some strange herbal drink from her home planet, Miranda, that was supposed to counteract fatigue and hangovers. Even the evil Krath insisted on bringing me more glasses of Fizzup than either norm or ape could possibly drink.
I was relieved when lunch was over and everyone, except poor injured Jarra who was only allowed to sit and watch, shuffled the tables and chairs ready for the afternoon lectures. Playdon was sticking to the wise approach of us working the site for a few hours in the morning, and having classes in the afternoon. Just being in an impact suit is tiring, every movement takes extra effort, and after a few hours of it you’re going to make more mistakes than usual.
I have no idea what Playdon talked about for the first hour of the afternoon. It could have been pre-history sex for all I know. I wasn’t in pain, but I was very tired and embarrassed about making all this fuss over a simple bruise, and I couldn’t seem to keep my own head under control. My brain was totally distracted, replaying all the events since I’d joined the class. Why in chaos had I got myself into this mess, and how was I going to get out of it? It was only when the entire class seemed to bounce with excitement that I came out of my private world and rejoined them.
‘That would be totally zan!’ said Fian, alive with enthusiasm.
‘Just totally!’ Everyone cried out.
What the chaos was going on? I sat up, paid attention, and tried to pick up clues on what I’d missed.
‘I think so too,’ said Lecturer Playdon. ‘I know we’re supposed to be covering pre-history, and this is much later than that, but I can’t resist it either. I’ve been waiting for this just as impatiently as any of you. So, Dalmora, please go ahead. You have an eager audience waiting.’
Everyone sat up straight in their flexiplas chairs, eyes on Dalmora as she stood up and went to the front of the hall. She turned on the big vid wall, inserted a chip, and started it playing. The wall flashed with some strange white symbols for a moment.
‘This is a copy taken straight after final editing,’ said Dalmora, ‘and those are the edit codes. The vid itself will start in a minute.’
She went and sat down. I’d worked out what was going on now. Dalmora must have an early copy of one of her father’s vids. With the class so excited, this had to be … I was grazzed!
It was! The familiar amazing graphic sequence started running, showing the history time line. Then the words appeared. ‘Ventrak Rostha presents …’ Those faded and were replaced by ones in larger letters. ‘History of Humanity.’
People living everywhere from Alpha to the first Kappa colony worlds know Ventrak Rostha’s series on the history of humanity. The critics love it for its excellence, the historians love it for its accuracy, and ordinary people just love watching the way it brings history to life. Everyone waits eagerly for the next vid in the series. The next one was due out in three weeks, but we were getting to see it early. My tiredness was banished by excitement.
I waited, breathless, as the twisting timeline with its background of stars returned. The view zoomed in and focused on it, and we could hear the famous voice of Ventrak Rostha setting the scene. ‘Exodus,’ he said, ‘the century that emptied Earth.’
The time line passed by, then a date flashed suddenly bright. ‘2409, the Earth data net failed,’ said Ventrak Rostha. ‘So much history, science, medicine, and technology lost in a jumble of data corruption. The mother planet had been bled to death by the effort of seeding the new worlds, and those new worlds were barely strong enough to cope alone. We did too much, and we did it too fast. Alpha, Beta and the beginning of Gamma sector in one century was too great an effort. Humanity even came close to
losing portal technology. Vital components had only been made on Earth. We were close to a return to barbarism.’
The time line was moving on again now. ‘Exodus was followed by two centuries when humanity struggled to survive and rebuild,’ Ventrak Rostha continued. ‘Few portals could handle the distance between sectors, and they were reserved for priority traffic only. Current messaging technology was yet to be invented. Sector culture began to diverge. Humanity was fragmenting.’
We could watch the time line moving on as he spoke, with its thousands of tiny flickering pictures of the past. Another date flashed brightly. ‘2605,’ said Ventrak Rostha. ‘Beta sector declares the Second Roman Empire under its first Emperor, Haran Augustus. Military personnel, together with Alphan and Gamman civilians, are asked to leave Betan territory. Military personnel on the space solar arrays supplying power to the Betan planets are allowed to remain for five years to complete transfer to Betan personnel.’
The timeline moved on a little to another flashing date. ‘2610. The last Military personnel leave Beta sector and the Second Roman Empire stands alone. Humanity is divided. The spectre of mass warfare had been left behind in pre-history, but now it looms again.’
It was emotional and dramatic, but that’s why everyone watches this series. Ventrak Rostha brings history alive and makes you care about it. Even Issette is a fan. If Ventrak Rostha can make Issette voluntarily watch a history vid, then he’s really good. She never wants to listen to a word of the stuff I try and tell her.
The timeline moved on to another date. ‘It is now 2658. The second Emperor, Kyath Augustus, dies suddenly. His elder son, Faron Augustus, becomes the third Emperor of the Second Roman Empire and is crowned with laurels on Zeus, but the younger brother Ceron mounts a challenge.
‘The year is 2658,’ repeated Ventrak Rostha.
That was the end of the introduction. The series timeline vanished, and the vid individual title appeared. ‘Artemis.’
Ventrak Rostha took us through it all, and I couldn’t spot a single factual error. The third Emperor sending troops to capture his rival brother, and the brother taking refuge on the Artemis solar power array and holding the whole planet hostage.
‘It’s not a solar power array,’ muttered Krath. ‘Sol is Earth’s star, not the star Artemis orbits.’
We all told the class pedant to shut up. Yes, Sol is Earth’s star, but I really can’t see the point in whining about phrases like solar power and solar storm. Language moved on when we portalled to other worlds. People looked up at the sky and still said the sun is hot today, they didn’t start giving technical star names. Every planet has their great sail arrays in space that collect their power, and they all call it solar power. Language evolves, and people like Krath should just shut up and accept it.
We all concentrated on the vid as it built up to the turning point. We looked at pictures of the big sails, with their attendant transmitter, and the great power beam going down to the receiving station on the planet below.
Ventrak Rostha was talking on the vid again. ‘Emperor Faron Augustus refuses to step down. His brother Ceron unlocks the power supply beam from its receiving station on the planet surface. He turns it against the inhabited continent of Artemis in a brutal demonstration.’
The graphics were horrific, but I’m sure every molten rock was realistic as the beam carved through a swathe of the Artemis settlements and 47,000 people died.
‘Emperor Faron Augustus still refuses to stand down as Emperor, and is overthrown by the population of Zeus. They declare Ceron Augustus the fourth Emperor, but secretly send an appeal to the Military for aid. The Military respond by using Planet First technology to simultaneously open an unprecedented twelve drop portals in space around the Artemis solar array.’
Then came the thrilling moment. We watched as the twelve ephemeral, five second, drop portals opened, and a tiny two man dart ship appeared from each. The power beam turned and fried two of them, but the rest made it through to the solar array.
That was the end of the action. Ventrak Rostha’s voice spoke as the picture changed to show a modern day view of Artemis from space. ‘Ceron died resisting capture. The control of all the Beta planet solar arrays was returned to the Military. Beta sector declared the end of the Second Roman Empire and rejoined humanity. The scars on the surface of Artemis remain clearly visible from space to this day, but humanity is once more united.’
The end of the vid showed a memorial on Artemis that listed the names of the destroyed settlements. The second it came up on the screen, Lolia and Lolmack were on their feet and saluting the vid. I gaped at them in shock, and then I remembered I was Jarra Military kid. I wasn’t sure if Military kids would normally stand and salute at something like this in a vid, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t stay sitting around while civilians were doing it. I bounced to my feet, stood to attention and saluted.
The rest of the class, startled, looked at each other. Fian and Dalmora stood up and joined the salute. Others were hesitantly standing up as the Artemis memorial faded and was followed by the faces and names of each of the four Military casualties in turn. Each face was full screen for a moment, and then shrank off to be in twin screen with a tiny clip from the appropriate Honour Ceremony. Number four just got a picture of a plaque on the wall of the Military Academy. I suppose they didn’t have relatives, so there wasn’t an Honour Ceremony.
By the end of it, Playdon and all of the class except one was saluting. We held the salute until the last picture faded from the screen.
‘That was blatant Military propaganda,’ said Krath, class cynic and the only one still sitting down.
Lolia turned on him. ‘Shut up! Our clans are from Artemis!’
At this point, Krath badly misread the situation, assuming that in a battle between him and Lolia the rest of the class would be on his side against the common enemy from Beta, but he was wrong.
People are strange in some ways. A couple of days ago, Playdon had been giving us classes on the twentieth century. War, war and bore. Those wars killed millions of people. They destroyed more lives than you can possibly imagine, and it had left us unmoved. It wasn’t just that it was hundreds of years ago; it was that the scale was too big to comprehend. Millions of people died, but they were faceless millions in a war that had no personal meaning to us.
The crisis on Artemis was a hundred and thirty years ago. Thousands of people on the planet had been killed by the power beam, and obviously that didn’t mean quite as much to us as it did to Lolia and Lolmack, but we all felt how awful it was. All the planets got their power from their solar arrays up in space. All the planets had their giant beam that was their power lifeline. Earth had five of them, one for each continent. Every one of us could picture exactly what a giant power beam from space would do if it ran wild on our home world, and it was terrifying. I, for one, was really glad to know the Military were up there guarding the arrays from any madman like Ceron.
So, we could all imagine what it was like being there on Artemis. Those Military ships had arrived to save the rest of the population, and the class were pretty emotional about the four who died. They weren’t faceless millions from some ancient war. They weren’t even like the 47,000, who we cared about but were anonymous because of the sheer number of them. There were only four of the Military, we’d seen each face and we knew each name. We’d just seen their nephew, their niece, their grandson at their Honour Ceremony, and these were real people to us. Krath was on dangerous ground.
Instead of backing off and apologizing, Krath started digging the hole even deeper. ‘Oh come on, be realistic. That end bit was ridiculous including the Honour Ceremonies like it did. My dad says it’s all rubbish anyway because actually it never happened and …’
That did it. When Lolia stepped forward, the class was united against Krath.
‘If you wish to remain capable of fathering children, clanless one, you will show respect!’ Lolia ordered.
The rest of us probabl
y wouldn’t have used those exact words, but we were right behind the spirit of them. We weren’t at all happy when Krath reacted by thrusting a defensive hand out to ward off Lolia, gave her a shove backwards, and she nearly fell over.
Lolmack wasn’t just unhappy, he was furious. ‘Leave my wife alone!’ he shouted and leapt forward to put himself between Krath and Lolia.
There was a second of pure confusion. Lolmack seemed intent on throttling Krath, so three of us grabbed him, while another two held on to Krath. Nobody was that keen to hold on to Lolia, since her clothes featured a lot of gaps and she might take it as a sexual advance, but I had my eye on her.
After a couple of minutes, we judged Lolmack and Krath had calmed down enough for us to let go, and then Playdon waded in with a full blown red warning for breach of the Gamman moral code.
Krath didn’t seem to believe it was him, a Gamman, getting the warning rather than the Betans. ‘Why me?’ he asked.
‘You physically attacked another student,’ said Playdon. ‘That is an automatic red warning.’
‘She provoked me!’
‘You provoked her first,’ said Playdon. ‘Your conduct breached section 8 of the Gamman moral code on respect. Lolia and Lolmack had just watched a re-enactment of the deaths of 47,000 people on their home world. Memorials were being shown. You failed to show appropriate respect for the natural high emotion of your fellow students.’
Krath seemed about to challenge this, but then backed down. He probably realized it would only earn him another warning for breach of respect.
‘Your personal beliefs are not my concern,’ said Playdon, ‘but your conduct is. Members of this class are from a variety of backgrounds with cultural differences. You will be living together in cramped and difficult accommodation for a year, and working in dangerous conditions where one person’s actions could put the lives of others at risk. Anyone deliberately generating conflict among the class will be dealt with.’