I glanced at Fian and saw the creases on his forehead as he concentrated on my words. ‘They carefully keep groups of kids together all through their childhood so we can form our substitute family, but we see real families on the vids and know it’s not the same. Some Handicapped kids react by becoming grabbers, rushing into creating their own family to fill the gap in their lives.’
I sighed. ‘I don’t like saying it, but Maeth and Ross are classic grabbers. They were devoted to each other all through Next Step. At our last Year Day party there, after midnight passed and made us 18 and legally adult, they started their first Twoing contract. Earth law requires three Twoing contracts adding up to at least a year before you can get married. Next Year Day, they’ll get married, and Maeth wants to have three kids by the time she’s 22.’
I shuddered. ‘It’s Maeth’s life, her decision, and I hope she and Ross will be happy, but …’
Fian was silent for a second. ‘You think I’d want something like that? Some people in Delta sector do get married quite young, but I don’t want to rush us into anything, and I see children as something a very long way in the future.’
I relaxed a little and gave a foolish laugh. ‘The worst thing is Maeth’s plans terrify me, but sometimes a bit of me envies her. The thought of having a proper family, people who really belong to you …’
Fian nodded. ‘I understand, but I’m not pushing for anything drastic. I just want to know we’re both serious about our relationship. I get nervous when I see you with someone like Drago. You obviously thought he was pretty impressive.’
‘Drago’s impressive, good-looking, and a heroic fighter pilot, but you don’t need to feel threatened. He’s just looking out for his friend’s kid sister.’
Fian pulled an expressive face of disbelief.
‘Don’t be a nardle. Drago wouldn’t want to tie himself to an ape.’
‘Please don’t call yourself that, Jarra. I know you deliberately use the ape word yourself, so you can pretend it doesn’t hurt when other people say it, but I don’t like it. As for Drago, he’s Betan. He might not want Twoing contracts, just to …’ He stopped, inhibited by his Deltan background from putting it into words. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘If Drago wants a quick tumble, he’s out of luck. He must be ten years older than me, and he isn’t my type. Naturally I’m interested in talking to him, I’ve never met a relative face to face before, and I’d love to see his fighter.’ I frowned. ‘I wonder what really went on at Hera. If Drago was such a dreadful pilot that he flew straight into an asteroid, he’d never be leader of shift 2 now. Maybe …’
‘Twoing rings.’
I’d thought I’d escaped discussing the real problem, but now Fian firmly interrupted with the two words that brought the chimera out of the shadows. I shut up and waited nervously.
‘As Drago helpfully pointed out, we’re not wearing Twoing rings. Chaos knows what he thought when you said we hadn’t got around to it yet. I’d just told him we started our first Twoing contract during the solar super storm, and he must know exactly how many weeks ago that was.’
Fian stood up and began moving restlessly around the room. ‘Like I said, I’m feeling insecure and want to know where I stand. You don’t want us to wear Twoing rings. In Delta sector that signals someone regrets registering the contract, and intends moving on as soon as it ends. It wouldn’t bother me if Twoing rings weren’t worn on Earth, but I’ve seen your own friends wearing them, so …’
‘I don’t regret anything, Fian. I just don’t like wearing rings.’
‘Jarra, I’m finding it hard watching heroes like Drago sniffing around you. I’m asking you to help me by wearing a Twoing ring while we’re on this base.’
That sounded dangerously close to an ultimatum. I made a last attempt to lighten the mood. ‘If I could, I’d wear my top that says “I TAGGED FIAN”. It’s not exactly Military uniform though.’
He just stood there in grim silence. I looked at the pain in his face, and gave in. I stood up and faced him.
‘All right. I surrender. I didn’t want to tell you, because it makes me look such a coward. Nobody knows this except Candace. I’ve even kept it hidden from Issette. It’s not just that I don’t like wearing rings. I’m terrified of them.’
Fian frowned. ‘What do you mean? What’s frightening about a ring?’
I groaned. ‘You know I had to have my left little finger regrown after a dig site accident when I was fifteen?’
He looked grazzed. ‘That was …?’
I nodded. ‘All the kids at my school were wearing stupid snake-shaped rings that year. I wore mine on my left little finger, and it didn’t fit properly. I knew I shouldn’t wear it under an impact suit, but one day I forgot to take it off. There was an accident, the suit material triggered to protect me, going rock hard, and the ring cut … Ever since then, just thinking about wearing a ring has given me a creepy feeling.’
Fian shook his head. ‘Jarra, why didn’t you tell me? I’d never laugh at you. What did your psychologist say?’
‘I never told him, only Candace. You know I hate psychologists.’
‘There must be rings that are safe to wear under impact suits.’
I shuddered. ‘I know there are special rings that are safe, I’ve seen Rono Kipkibor of Cassandra 2 wearing one, but my head still …’ I broke off. ‘Oh this is stupid. Tellon Blaze was the only human being who wasn’t afraid of the chimera. His descendant can’t be scared of a nardle ring. I can face this. I’ll find out about the special rings and …’
Fian grabbed me and gave me a fierce kiss. ‘You don’t have to do that, Jarra. You’re serious about your relationship with me. That’s all I needed to know. You should talk more.’
‘Issette always says I talk too much.’
He shook his head. ‘Not about important things.’
‘Blame my psychologist. He was always trying to force me into talking about things that upset me, like being Handicapped and my parents dumping me. Issette thought her psychologist was wonderful, but …’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe Issette had a better psychologist than me. Hospital Earth tries to give the Handicapped the sort of jobs they want, whether they’re any good at them or not.’
‘I’m not your psychologist. You have to talk to me, Jarra. I’ve been worrying about the rings for weeks. When I saw you hero-worshipping Drago, I was wondering if I should just give up, pack my bags, and head back to join the class. The Military don’t really want me here, and I can’t stay in a relationship, however good, if I know the other person is already planning to walk away at the contract end date. It would be pure emotional torture.’
I had a painfully sharp mental image of what might have happened. ‘I’m really sorry. I know I keep dodging discussions, and I’m not very good at saying sentimental things, but …’
He laughed. ‘Not very good? Jarra, it’s easier to dig up a stasis box than get you to say a word about how you feel. I have to look for other clues. That’s why the ring symbol was so important to me.’
I pulled a face. ‘It’s just that some things are hard for me because … well, growing up in residences run by Hospital Earth can be tough sometimes.’
‘You’ve never talked to me about your life in the residences.’
‘You’ve had such a different childhood that I didn’t know how to start explaining. All that really matters is that I’m not used to sharing emotional stuff. I didn’t want to talk to my nosy psychologist, Candace always had a lot of other kids to worry about as well as me, and Issette had too many of her own problems for me to bother her with mine. When something hurt, I tried to pretend to myself that it didn’t, tried to avoid thinking about it. I know that’s not …’
I broke off for a moment. ‘I can’t totally change the way I am overnight, Fian, but I’ll work on this. I mustn’t keep shutting you out, so I’ll try and talk more, and I’ll do something about the rings as well.’
He shook his head. ‘Now I k
now we’re both committed to our relationship, I can cope without rings. It’ll probably only be a few days before we’re back at the dig site and are civilians again.’
I automatically corrected him. ‘Well, we’ll never be civilians again, but yes.’
Fian stared at me. ‘What do you mean?’
I looked at his puzzled face. He really didn’t know. We’d bypassed all the background information and basic training for sector recruits, skipped intake testing and just taken the oath, but I’d still assumed he’d realize … I broke the news to him.
‘We’ll never be civilians again. We’ve taken the oath, and those promises are for life. The Military have accepted us into their family, and their obligations are for life too. Once you’re Military, you can’t just leave and be civilian again. They worked that out centuries ago. It’s not just that people who’ve been Military for decades would find the adjustment hard. Delayed traumatic stress after something like Thetis can hit many years later and when it does people need proper support.’
‘But! But!’ Fian literally stuttered in panic. ‘What can I do in the Military? They want people to explore new planets and run the solar arrays, not to be archaeologists, and you can’t even leave Earth, so …?’
‘Calm down, Fian. The Military aren’t unreasonable. When this is over, they won’t just thrust us into Military careers. I expect they’ll offer us a choice between a Military career, which I obviously couldn’t have, and a permanent civilian sabbatical.’
I grinned. ‘Sabbaticals are usually for medical or solar array specialists working in University research groups. We’ll probably be the first ever Military to be on sabbatical studying history.’
Fian shook his head. ‘My parents will get a huge shock when they find out the family failure is a Captain in the Military. It was bad enough when I told them I was going history instead of science, but this …’
I laughed. ‘I think they’ll be even more grazzed about the aliens.’
9
The Ark team leader sat down, and Colonel Torrek nodded at me. I stood up and gave my carefully prepared speech to a meeting room packed with Military officers and civilian experts.
‘The History team have found no indication that anything like the sphere has visited Earth in the last nine hundred years. Researching written records is complicated by translation problems, since Language was only formally ratified as a common tongue as late as 2280 in some areas of Earth. We’re now working well before that, when there were thousands of languages in use, each evolving over time. Not only does no one speak any but a handful of these any longer, but we don’t even have computer translation for the uncommon ones.’
I paused. ‘Since translations will take far too much time, we’ve opted to pay special attention to historical images, art in all forms, even cave paintings. We’re collecting as many potentially relevant images as possible, and the Threat team are helping us analyse the results looking for hot spots on locations and dates.’
I sat down again, and pulled a face at Fian who was sitting next to me. He grinned back at me, and mouthed a couple of words that looked like ‘well done’. There was some incomprehensible scientific report next, so I let my mind wander for a few minutes, before discovering the report had somehow turned into a verbal fight between a civilian adviser from the Physics team and the ever-relaxed Threat team leader, Commander Leveque. The unfortunate Military officer in notional overall command of the Science teams made a last attempt to keep his civilian adviser in check, before giving up and listening with a look of despair on his face.
‘Perhaps I should remind you, Professor Devon,’ said Leveque, ‘that Colonel Torrek makes the tactical decisions, not you.’
I exchanged startled glances with Fian. So this was the Gaius Devon who’d come up with the new portal theories.
‘But a pre-emptive strike against the sphere is the only sane course of action,’ said Devon. ‘It’s sitting up there in Earth orbit to test our defence capability. You have to blow it up now to prove we aren’t an easy target.’
‘Premise One of the Alien Contact programme states an unprovoked attack should be avoided,’ said Leveque.
‘Premise One was written centuries ago by people who didn’t have a genuine alien threat on their doorstep,’ said Devon.
Leveque’s smile widened. ‘Which meant they were in a position to think calmly and logically rather than rush into precipitate action that could later prove regrettable in the extreme.’
There was no doubt who was winning this argument. Devon’s face was turning an ever-deeper shade of puce, while Leveque’s smile kept growing more maddening, and his sentences more ornate.
‘You have to attack now!’ Devon turned to Colonel Torrek. ‘You can’t keep listening to that coward.’
I gave a shocked look at Leveque to see how he felt about being called a coward in front of every senior officer in the base. He seemed to be struggling not to laugh.
‘I have every confidence in the personal courage of Commander Leveque,’ said Colonel Torrek. ‘You might note he wears the Thetis medal. He would have qualified for the Artemis, if he hadn’t been incredibly lucky and escaped totally uninjured.’
‘With respect, sir, that was good planning not luck,’ said Leveque.
‘Chaos take your Military medals,’ said Devon. ‘My evaluations show we’ve a good chance of destroying the sphere, so do it.’
‘And what happens if we try and fail?’ asked Colonel Torrek. ‘Even if we succeed, we’ll have committed an act of war. The cross-sector Military was founded to prevent any repetition of the wars fought between humans before Exodus century, not to deliberately start wars with aliens, and I’m advised the sphere may not represent the current technological level of the alien race.’
‘Oh we’re back to that again,’ said Devon. ‘It’s ridiculous to think the sphere could have got here by any means other than a drop portal. That’s how we always get to new star systems, isn’t it?’
‘If it used a drop portal,’ said Leveque, ‘it must have been one of dimensions above the maximum possible size according to Jorgen Eklund.’
Fian leaned forward in his chair as he heard his great-grandfather’s name.
‘That’s a very old theory,’ said Devon.
‘The laws of physics haven’t changed in the last century,’ said Leveque, ‘and I have good reasons to take the work of Jorgen Eklund extremely seriously.’
‘Why?’ demanded Devon.
Leveque beamed at him. ‘Unfortunately I cannot supply you with classified information from Military records.’
I bit my lip to stop myself laughing and leaned to whisper in Fian’s ear. ‘I told you Leveque wasn’t making fun of you.’
Devon was virtually shouting now. ‘If it’s impossible for the sphere to have reached here by drop portal, then it’s even more impossible that it travelled conventionally. It would have taken …’ He broke off, but he’d already made a fatal mistake.
‘Precisely,’ said Leveque. ‘You agree with my other expert evaluation of the situation. The sphere must have taken hundreds or thousands of years to get here, in which case the aliens could have made huge technological progress since it was launched. It’s possible those advances include the discovery of portal technology, so we may have far more advanced craft arriving without any warning. In these circumstances, it would be highly inadvisable to commit an unnecessary act of aggression.’
Fian’s face looked ludicrously grazzed as he heard his warning described as an expert evaluation.
‘If you accept Eklund’s theory then you would get a warning of more alien craft arriving,’ said Devon. ‘It gives rigid limits on possible portalling distances as well as size, and the Search team have found no signs of alien portal relays in Alpha sector. Alien craft couldn’t just casually portal across whole sectors of our space. They’d have to repeatedly use a drop portal, emerge, gain power, refocus, and portal again. It would take days, if not weeks, for them to get across Al
pha sector, and we’re watching for the telltale bursts of energy now.’
Fian startled me by suddenly joining in the debate. ‘If aliens don’t have their own portal relays, can they use ours?’
I gave him a grazzed look. Everyone else was looking at him too, and there was an odd silence in the room.
Fian flushed. ‘It’s probably impossible but …’
Colonel Torrek looked at Leveque. ‘Is it impossible?’
‘We usually use the standard portal system to send our ships as close as possible to their destination, and then send them the last step by drop portal, but bouncing a drop portal signal a long distance across standard portal relays is definitely possible. During the Artemis crisis, we sent our dart ships half-way across Beta sector, and we did it by bouncing their drop portal signals across Beta sector’s portal relays without their knowledge.’ Leveque stood up. ‘If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes.’
He left the room and there was total silence. Even Devon quietly sat down, which told me just how bad this was. It was five or ten minutes before Leveque returned, with an edge of grimness marring his usual relaxed expression.
‘Unfortunately, Captain Eklund is correct to be concerned. Aliens utilizing our portal relay network is not nearly as impossible as we’d like.’
‘Worst-case scenario?’ asked Colonel Torrek.
‘The alien sphere waits until Earth’s portal network shuts down during the next major solar storm and we’re at our weakest. The radiation means we can’t keep the solar arrays manned, keep fighters in orbit, or create outgoing portals. The sphere would attack to distract us, while its reinforcements portal in using our own portal relay network. We portal our forces into Sol system in response and there is a decisive conflict with significant implications for the future safety of all our worlds.’
Colonel Torrek pulled a face. ‘Meaning we’d have to win at any cost.’