Earth Girl

by Janet Edwards

  20

  Several of my classmates looked at me anxiously as I came back into the hall, and Playdon came over. ‘Everything all right, Jarra?’

  That was my second emergency call from Planet First. No wonder these civilians were concerned, and had been treating me like a fragile glass ornament for days. ‘Yes. Things had got messy on K19 … I mean on the planet where my parents are assigned.’

  ‘I’m assuming that messy is Military language for extremely dangerous,’ said Playdon. ‘If they’d hit something bad, like the chimera of Thetis, then I can see …’

  ‘Exactly. It looked like they might have to pull out while under attack, and that can get nasty, but the situation is back under control. That’s great, though it means I won’t see them for another few months.’

  Playdon nodded and wandered off, but Fian was still hovering nearby, obviously uncertain whether to talk to me or not. I smiled at the way his long blond hair flopped round his shoulders. It was longer than mine. Of course, civilian hair fashions were long at the moment, while the Military tended to be rather more practical.

  Fian clearly noticed the smile, because he came over. I’d frozen him off several times, but it looked like he’d decided to make yet another approach. I wondered why I’d kept giving him the cold shoulder. Nerves I suppose, both about the Honour Ceremony, and about possible complications if I got involved with a civilian. Fian was clearly never going to be combat Military, but I might end up just a historian myself.

  I really had to make a decision here. Either I kept all men at arm’s length for at least four years, or I decided I was open to having relationships and dealt with any problems about how they affected a Military career when and if that happened. If I was going to get involved with anyone, then Fian appealed to me far more than anyone else in the class. He was intelligent, fun, and looked enough like Arrack San Domex for me to get a bit powered just looking at him and that blond hair.

  Yes, I know it’s a bit silly for a Military Honour Child to drool over the star of a silly vid series like Defenders, but I happen to enjoy watching a man with the face, hair, and legs of Arrack San Domex having his clothes torn off by tentacled green aliens.

  I’d made my mind up, and it was time to make my move. When you’re Military, and you’ve decided to attack a target, you go for it. No point in a delay that might mean Fian wandering off and turning his attention to one of the other girls. I was tag leader and I was going to tag Fian as mine.

  My mind had a naughty moment, as I considered which bit of Fian to tag, and I gave a huge grin. Fian looked a bit puzzled, but grinned hopefully back.

  ‘I’ve been horribly stressed lately, because of the Honour Ceremony and things getting dangerous on my parents’ assignment, but everything is all right now,’ I said. ‘I can finally relax. Maybe we could watch those history vids you mentioned.’

  Fian nodded eagerly. ‘I could get another bottle of wine as well, though the only place I know to buy wine is back on Hercules.’

  I laughed. These civilians were so helpless. With my parents away on assignment most of the time, I’d learnt to manage things for myself. ‘Delta sector is a bit far to portal for a bottle of wine. Let’s find somewhere closer.’

  I took out my lookup and did some rapid checking. ‘The nearest settlement to us is … a place called Woodstock. They have shops for clothes, furniture, food, and drinks! Let’s go!’

  I looked round. Lecturer Playdon had been being interrogated by Dalmora about something, but had now escaped to a table by himself. I headed over with Fian following me. ‘Permission to use the portal, sir?’

  He nodded. ‘Remember to check out and back in, so we know who is in the dome in case of emergency.’

  ‘We’re allowed to portal?’ asked Krath.

  Playdon sighed heavily. ‘Of course you are. This is a history class, not a jail sentence, but don’t come back drunk or powered. I’m not taking people with hangovers out on a high risk dig site.’

  Krath frowned. ‘On the other hand, I’ve no idea where to go on Earth, unless …’ He gazed hopefully at me.

  ‘No,’ said Fian. ‘You aren’t invited on this trip.’

  ‘Jarra could invite me,’ said Krath.

  I laughed. ‘Jarra could,’ I said, ‘but she isn’t going to.’

  Fian caught my arm and we ran off to the portal room, dutifully checked out of the dome, and portalled to Woodstock.

  ‘Freedom!’ cried Fian, and he dropped to his knees and kissed the ground. We were in the middle of a paved square surrounded by shops, and a few of the shoppers gave Fian funny looks.

  I looked round to see what sort of shops they had on Earth. It looked pretty similar to all the other small shopping squares I’d seen. Well, the Handicapped need the same shops as anyone. ‘Wine and drinks!’ I pointed out the shop, tugged Fian back up on his feet, and we headed over.

  ‘Any idea what sort of wine?’ asked Fian.

  I shook my head. ‘It’s all new to me. With my parents away a lot, I’ve mostly lived in Residences. It’s not easy getting drunk when you’re living in a Residence. Getting things past the Military Police is a lot easier than getting things past the Principal of a Residence. There are room sensors monitoring you all the time as well. If the sensor decides what’s going on in your room is inappropriate for your age group then a horrible computer voice starts lecturing you.’

  ‘Really?’ Fian looked appalled. ‘They spy on you in your rooms? You get no privacy?’

  ‘Well, no real people can see what you’re doing. It’s just sensors, but even just a computer commenting on your behaviour is off-putting at times, and of course they block the adult vid channels.’

  ‘I bet it’s a bit limiting,’ said Fian. He suddenly laughed. ‘No wonder you’re a nice contract girl. My home planet is very conservative even by Deltan standards, but even I managed to sneak off with a few friends occasionally and watch vids.’

  ‘Beta sector vids?’ I saw him blush and laughed. ‘Anyway, I’ve escaped the evil sensors now. My room here may not have a nice bathroom like my old one, but the only sensor is to detect fires.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fian, grinning back at me. ‘It opens up a lot of possibilities.’

  I blushed this time. ‘Getting back to the subject of wine, let’s apply Keon’s law of shopping and buy a couple of bottles that are cheap but not the very cheapest.’

  ‘That’s your brother?’

  ‘Yes. He has a low effort approach to life, but he says taking it too far tends to be counterproductive. I’m applying the same logic to buying cheap wine. Really cheap might mean really bad.’

  Fian laughed as we examined prices of bottles. ‘Keon sounds a bit of a strange person to be in the Military.’

  I grinned. ‘Keon is a strange person to be in anything.’

  ‘What does he do?’ Fian picked up two bottles. ‘Let’s have a red one and a white one. That should keep us going for a few days.’

  ‘He’s a laser specialist.’

  Fian pulled a face. ‘Like that laser gun you used in the rescue? Scary. Is Keon good with them?’

  ‘We all expected him to be hopeless, but then he won an award. My brother seems to have surprising depths, but he keeps them well hidden most of the time.’

  Fian scanned out the wine. ‘Shall we head back?’

  I grinned. ‘One more stop. I spotted a takeaway food place.’

  ‘Real food! Lead on!’

  I looked at the menu in the takeaway food shop, listed a huge order, and entered my credit code to pay.

  Fian watched wide-eyed. ‘You have an extremely healthy appetite. Is this normal for the Military?’

  ‘I want to treat the class to a decent meal. I feel like celebrating.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re suddenly very happy today. That call on the dig site … You must have been really worried.’

  ‘Of course I was, but they’ve got everything back under control now.’

  We staggered back to the p
ortal, struggling to hold on to all the boxes and bags. Back in the dome, we just about made it to the dining hall without dropping anything. The class stared at us.

  ‘We brought real food,’ I told them. ‘Eat!’

  They cheered wildly and dived for the boxes.

  ‘How much do we owe you?’ asked Krath.

  ‘My treat,’ I said. ‘I’m celebrating my courage commendation.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked Dalmora.

  ‘Yes. I’m on a Military scholarship, remember.’ I grinned. ‘Next time, you buy your own.’

  Krath started loading a plate with food. ‘Where is this takeaway?’

  I’d prepared for the helplessness of civilians by picking up a stack of leaflets from Woodstock shopping square. I handed them round to eager hands. Everyone ate while reading through the delights that Woodstock had to offer the desperate history student.

  ‘Alcohol!’ cried the Betans.

  ‘Hairdresser!’ rejoiced Dalmora.

  I’d noticed that Dalmora had been getting steadily less well-groomed with every day that went by. Her long black hair no longer had the glittering light ornaments, and was usually hanging down her back in an inexpert plait.

  Fian and I collected some food, and our bottles of wine, and went out the door. After a second, I popped my head back into the hall. ‘The portal code for Woodstock Shopping Square is on the back of the leaflet,’ I told them.

  ‘I’d been wondering where it was,’ said Lolia.

  Honestly, civilians! I left them to do the next logical step of losing the leaflet, or forgetting to check in or out of the dome.

  Fian and I had a great time watching history vids, had a big argument about the Second Roman Empire which I won, and another about the First Roman Empire which I lost, and then watched an episode of Stalea of the Jungle.

  As in the last episode I’d seen, the vid ended with Stalea throwing her lover across a jungle clearing and then pinning him down.

  Fian looked hopefully up at me from his cushion on the floor. ‘I suppose there’s no chance of you throwing me across the room?’

  I looked round the room, and shook my head. ‘Far too dangerous. My unarmed combat tutor would have a fit. We’d need somewhere bigger with a padded floor.’

  Fian sighed. ‘Pity. I have these dreams …’

  I stood up. ‘Well, time to say goodnight.’

  He sighed again.

  Oh well, I thought. Why not give Fian a treat. After all, he did look very like Arrack San Domex. I grinned, jumped on him, pinned him to the floor, and gave him a long and thorough kiss before leaving.

  As I went out the door, Fian was lying on the floor and muttering. ‘Totally, totally, totally zan!’

  21

  The next day, I started suffering from some sort of mailing error. I got mails from Issette and Keon, but also several from total strangers. They seemed to be for a girl called Jarra Reeath. I fired off a complaint to Message Services, and they said they’d investigate, but the things kept coming.

  I’d never had a problem with my mail in all my years living on Military bases, but the minute I moved into civilian territory it all went haywire. Typical. Fortunately, I was much too happy during the next two weeks to let myself get annoyed about trivial mailing errors.

  It will sound completely nardle, but I’d never felt like this before. I wasn’t just happy, I was blissfully relaxed. Fian and I were really special together. At least, I felt that way, and he seemed to feel the same. We hit our first problem on the day I had a dig site accident. Something deep underground suddenly gave way, and there was a major cave-in. Fian reacted quickly, but he couldn’t get me entirely clear of it. I got carried down among tumbling rocks, and buried by them.

  That was scary of course. My suit triggered so hard it stunned me, and when I woke up I couldn’t move or see. The suit material was clamped tight round me making it hard to breathe. It had registered a major incident, so my comms had gone to emergency mode. My suit was squawking Mayday codes, Playdon was calling me on the team circuit, and Dig Site Command was talking to me on auto distress channel.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, getting over the initial shock rapidly. I’d been buried a couple of times on school trips so I knew the routine, but it’s always reassuring to hear the voices of rescuers. ‘Team all right? How deep am I?’

  ‘The team were safe on the clearway,’ said Playdon. ‘You’re only under a few rocks, but they’re big ones.’

  ‘This is Dig Site Command. Do you require assistance, Asgard 6?’

  ‘This is Asgard 6,’ said Playdon. ‘We should be able to handle this within fifteen minutes. I’m already tagging rocks myself.’

  ‘Don’t mess up my tidy dig site,’ I said, and lay there waiting.

  It was probably only ten minutes before I was back on the tag support sled with Fian and running my suit diagnostics. It was a really minor dig site accident, but Fian was very shaken by it. I assured him that he’d done really well, keeping me clear of the main cave-in, but he was in a filthy mood for the rest of the day.

  That evening, we were watching a vid in my room, and suddenly … Well, up until then, we’d had our boundaries nicely established. Details about what a nice contract boy and girl do, or don’t do, vary between people. Fian and I had worked out our personal rules for boy and girling, but now he went a bit crazy. I fought him off, and he came back to his senses, apologized, and retreated to his room. I wasn’t quite sure where that left us, and I didn’t sleep too well.

  The next morning, I sat in my room and waited nervously to see if he showed up as usual. He had a routine of bringing our breakfasts on a tray, and we’d eat them and chat. I reflected that last night had made one thing clear at least. Fian might get a bit powered at the idea of a girl pinning him down and kissing him, but he was quite capable of taking the initiative himself.

  There was a knock on my door, and Fian came in, carrying the usual breakfast tray. He settled himself on the floor, and started eating. I decided he looked reasonably sane and safe today, sat next to him and started eating too.

  ‘Sorry about yesterday,’ he said. ‘It was the effect of seeing you get buried. I’d been so scared and …’

  ‘It really wasn’t a dangerous situation. I wasn’t far down, and there were plenty of people at the site to dig me out. It’s when everyone gets buried, like the situation with Cassandra 2, that you’re in real trouble.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t help being scared,’ said Fian, ‘I thought I’d lost you, I realized how much I cared, and when we got back here I got a bit carried away …’

  I giggled. ‘I noticed you getting carried away.’

  ‘We need to do some serious talking. I’m a nice contract boy, and if you’re planning to get yourself buried like that again … Well, we need to go legal before I’m shocked by my own behaviour.’ He gave me the look that was all his own, serious and funny at the same time.

  I wasn’t sure how much of that he meant as a joke. It was still early days for us to be thinking of Twoing contracts. ‘Well, we can’t do serious talking now. We’re going to be late.’

  We met up with the others at the dome door. This morning we had a special training session. Tomorrow we had a whole day off. The day after that we were heading deep into New York Main to spend three days out on the Grand Circle. Well, all of us except the Betans. Playdon had excused them from the trip so they could spend more time with Lolette.

  We went outside, opened up the sled storage dome, and started doing some complicated shuffling of sleds. The special transport sled with the mobile dome parts was near the back since we hadn’t used it yet. When that moved outside, I spotted something much smaller that had been hidden behind it.

  ‘Amaz!’ I said, heading over to look.

  Fian followed me. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Survey plane for aerial surveys. Maybe they have one at every dome here. On New York Fringe they only had two for the whole site.’

  Playdon’s voice came
over the team circuit. ‘Team 1, I need you over here now. You get first try at assembling the mobile dome.’

  ‘That’s us,’ said Fian, and we headed outside.

  Fian, Dalmora, Krath, Amalie and I were still team 1. I was happy with that. I had total faith in Fian as my tag support. The girls were both reliable. Krath was a bit of an idiot as a person, but he was great as a heavy lift operator. Playdon had been gradually grouping the rest of the class into teams that worked together as well.

  Team 1 tended to be working most of the time, since Playdon was often running dual teams now. He trusted team 1 to be reasonably sensible, so he could give most of his attention to supervising the other team that was working. Team 2 were pretty good given their lack of experience. Teams 3 and 4 were adequate, but you wouldn’t want to let them loose anywhere too dangerous.

  Team 5 had ten people, but that included Lolia and Lolmack who were only on site occasionally now. They were the leftovers who were planning to be purely theoretical historians and were just enduring the practical sessions on dig sites as a compulsory evil. They had an amicable arrangement going on with Playdon. If they made an effort to do the few things he asked of them as well as they could, then he would get them their minimum practical pass grade with as little work and danger as possible.

  My team started working on the mobile dome while the others watched. Mobile domes come in nicely labelled pieces, and it’s really easy to assemble them if the previous users packed the bits in the proper sequence, and haven’t broken or lost anything. Of course you can’t depend on that, which was why Playdon was getting us to do some dome building training today. It was obviously better to find out any problems before we were stuck hours away out on the Grand Circle. Emergency evac portals are intended for emergencies, not for teams who are missing some mobile dome locking pins.

  It turned out that we had all the right pieces, though the previous team had helpfully packed them with the dome segments on top of the base pieces. This is a bad idea, because obviously you have to start with the dome base.

  We packed things up properly, and team 2 had their turn at dome building. It was easier for them because they had the pieces in the right order.