Earth and Fire

by Janet Edwards

  I bit my lip to stop myself swearing, and reluctantly turned to face Cathan. I didn’t know if this was pure bad luck, or if he’d been hanging round here waiting for us, but either way he had a stupid smile on his face as he admired the sight of me dressed up like a vid star.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. “I’m on my way to my room so …”

  He took a step closer and interrupted eagerly. “Why don’t we go out this evening, Jarra? Just the two of us.”

  “No!” I held up a hand to stop him. “We aren’t going anywhere, Cathan.”

  “Oh, come on, Jarra. I know we had a fight, but that didn’t mean anything. Everyone has the odd fight when they’re boy and girling.”

  “I said no!”

  I saw his face take on its habitual sulky expression and groaned. Going to Europe Off-world had been pretty nardle, but nothing like as stupid as the mistake I made when I agreed to boy and girl with Cathan. I’d suffered two months of his whining before I gave up and dumped him. That was back at the start of March, and it was June now, but Cathan still hadn’t accepted things were over. I explained it to him for the thousandth time.

  “Cathan, we aren’t boy and girling any longer. There is no we. There is no us. We’re not going anywhere together.”

  “So why did you get all dressed up if it isn’t for me?” The sulky expression turned into suspicion. “Who are you seeing?”

  I considered pretending I was seeing someone else, but decided it would only make life more complicated. “No one.”

  “In which case, we should …”

  “Cathan, stop it! Whether there’s anyone else or not doesn’t matter. Things are over between us. I don’t want a clingy boyfriend who grumbles if I want a few minutes alone or a private chat with Issette.”

  He was back to pure sulks again. “I’m not clingy!”

  “Not clingy?” I stared at him in disbelief. “How can you say you’re not clingy? You wanted me to act like a human hover bag, spending my life trailing round after you. You don’t think the three concentric spheres of humanity are centred on Earth, you think they’re centred on you!”

  I shook my head in despair and stalked off towards my room. Issette giggled and chased after me, with Cathan bringing up the rear. I was planning to go into my room and slam the door in Cathan’s face, but when I got there I couldn’t. The Principal of our Next Step was standing outside it!

  I stopped, Issette bumped into me, and Cathan’s voice broke off in mid-complaint. I had a sick moment of panic, wondering how the chaos the Principal had found out about my trip to Europe Off-world, and whether Issette was in trouble too, before I saw the woman had her saccharine professional smile on her face. That smile slowly changed into a puzzled frown as she looked at me.

  “You’re looking very well-groomed today, Jarra.”

  “I thought I’d try dressing up as an experiment,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s really me.”

  She swapped back into the professional smile mode. “Well, it’s lucky the three of you arrived just now. Since you weren’t in your rooms, I was going to call you.”

  She’d been going to call us? What about? I waited nervously for more clues rather than risk saying anything that might incriminate me.

  “I’m doing my mid-year monitoring checks a couple of weeks early because of my holiday plans,” she continued. “I notice you haven’t seen your ProDad recently, Jarra.”

  I relaxed. The Principal raised the ProDad issue with me every time she did her monitoring checks. Hospital Earth allocated each of its wards two ProParents, who you were supposed to see for two hours each week. My ProMum, Candace, was great, but I’d fallen out with my ProDad so we avoided each other as much as possible. Three years ago, I’d worked out and memorized a sentence that would stop the Principal from forcing us to meet. I recited it now.

  “As I am approaching adult womanhood, I feel my parental needs at this time are more adequately provided by my ProMum rather than my ProDad.”

  The Principal sighed, took out her lookup, and tapped away at it for a moment before holding it towards me. “If you could verify that for the official record.”

  I placed my hand on the lookup to confirm my statement about my ProDad, and the Principal chose her next victim.

  “Issette, your room is far too cluttered again. I’ll be back tomorrow to check it. I expect you to have thrown away all those childish toys by then.”

  Issette silently nodded, and the Principal turned to Cathan and gave him a frosty glare. I blinked in surprise. I’d never seen her look at anyone but me with such an evil expression.

  “Cathan, I’ve removed those extremely unsuitable images from your room wall.”

  Issette was pulling one of her buggy-eyed expressions at me from behind the Principal’s back, while Cathan looked as if he wanted to dig a hole in the flexiplas floor and bury himself. I tried not to laugh.

  “I’ll be doing an Art Paint Foundation course next year,” said Cathan. “My art teacher has suggested I prepare for that by studying famous works of art.”

  “These images are not works of art,” said the Principal. “They’re distasteful pictures of women in a state of undress and should not be in the possession of someone underage.”

  Cathan bravely tried to argue his case. “They’re all the works of famous artists from back in the days of pre-history, like Titian and Goya, and excellent examples of brushwork.”

  I put my hand over my mouth to smother a giggle, and I heard a strange squeaking sound from Issette. The Principal obviously didn’t share our amusement, because her expression plunged several degrees further below freezing point.

  “People were much less strict about keeping the private body areas covered back in the days of pre-history,” added Cathan. “Jarra’s a history specialist, so she can tell you all about it.”

  The Principal turned her icicle look on me. I didn’t appreciate Cathan trying to drag me into this, so I gave her a look of shocked innocence.

  “I believe there were some morally lax periods back in the days when all of humanity lived on Earth, but our teacher naturally avoids using any improper images in our school history lessons. Perhaps things are different in art lessons.”

  The Principal smiled her approval of my speech, and returned her attention to Cathan. “Give me your lookup.”

  “My lookup?” Cathan looked appalled. “Why do you want it?”

  “So I can have it analyzed for inappropriate content.” She waited impatiently for a few seconds. “Give me your lookup, Cathan!”

  He reluctantly handed it over.

  “Now come with me to my office. I need full details of the material your art teacher supplied to you, so I can register a formal complaint with your school.”

  She swept off imperiously, with Cathan scampering after her, the desperate look on his face confirming what I’d already guessed. If Cathan had got those images from someone in his art class, it was from a classmate rather than the teacher.

  Issette grinned at me. “I didn’t know you were so virtuous about the ‘morally lax’ periods of pre-history.”

  “I don’t see why I should risk the Principal confining me to Next Step for the whole summer break just because Cathan hasn’t enough sense to hide his pictures.” I opened my room door. “We’d better get your stuff moved now.”

  We started ferrying armfuls of Issette’s belongings between our two rooms. We went through this ritual every time the Principal did an inspection and ordered Issette to throw out some of her treasured childhood possessions. Ten minutes later, Issette’s room was beautifully empty, while every corner of mine was infested with fluffy toys. I consoled myself with the thought I’d only have to live with the toy invasion for a day or two at most, until the Principal inspected Issette’s room again and declared herself satisfied.

  I sat on my bed, and a weird, skinny, purple object promptly fell off one of the shelves and landed on my head. I picked it up and held it at arm’s length.

&
nbsp; “Must I have this in here as well? The Principal can’t complain about you having one fluffy toy.”

  “We mustn’t risk her throwing out Whoopiz the Zen,” said Issette.

  I sighed. “All right, but the creepy thing goes back in your room the second she’s done her inspection. I’ll never know why you loved it so much when you were a little kid. It gives me nightmares just looking at it.”

  I was putting Whoopiz the Zen back on the shelf, when my lookup chimed with an incoming message from my history teacher. I read it and was totally grazzed.

  “Something wrong?” asked Issette.

  I didn’t answer her. My mind was focused on the news I’d just been sent. I could never travel to the stars, I could never stand on another world, but I had a chance to own the sky.

  Chapter Four

  “Jarra, Jarra, Jarra.” Issette’s voice nagged at me. “Why are you standing there with your mouth open?”

  I forced myself out of my trance. “We have to go and hide.”

  “Hide?” Issette frowned. “Why do we need to hide?”

  “Because as soon as the Principal finishes telling Cathan off, he’ll come back here and start complaining that I didn’t help him get out of trouble.”

  “I never understood why you agreed to boy and girl with Cathan,” said Issette. “You must have known what he was like. He’s been moaning at everyone all through Nursery, Home, and Next Step.”

  I groaned. “Of course I knew, but he asked me during the last Year Day party. I was all sentimental watching the year above us turn 18, become legally adult, and head off to freedom. Cathan was on his best behaviour and looking rather attractive, so I had a weak moment.”

  Issette raised her eyes to the ceiling. “I know we have totally opposite tastes in men, but you can’t seriously think Cathan is attractive.”

  “You have to admit he’s got nice legs.”

  “True,” said Issette, in a grudging voice. “The problem is the nice legs are attached to the rest of him. Cathan’s not just whiny, he’s manipulative too, and I think he was carefully manipulating you at that Year Day party.”

  Now I thought about it, Issette was probably right. There was something very suspicious about the way Cathan had looked at the Year Day party. All my friends knew I had a crush on the hero of the vid series, Defenders, with his blond hair and his Military uniform. Cathan had been wearing an outfit in Military blue, and he’d done something to his hair to make it look much fairer than usual.

  “I know I was a total nardle to agree to boy and girl with Cathan,” I said. “Now can we please go and hide before he comes looking for me? I don’t want to waste time dealing with Cathan, because I’ve got some incredibly important news to tell you.”

  I led the way to the door of the one place in our Next Step where we’d be perfectly safe from Cathan. I put my hand on the door plate, and heard the sound of a musical tone followed by a voice saying, “Your friend Jarra is requesting admission.”

  There was no response, but I hadn’t expected to get inside that easily. Issette and I took turns putting our hands on the door plate every five seconds, and finally the door opened. Keon gave us a wounded look.

  “Go away,” he said. “I’m busy.”

  We walked past him into his room. He’d got the glows turned fully off, and there were a host of tiny golden lights floating around in midair. They had to be some sort of holo, but when I waved my hand at them, they dodged it, acting like a flock of miniature birds.

  “Amaz,” I said. “How do you make them do that?”

  It was mid-afternoon, but this wasn’t a school day, so the legendarily lazy Keon Tanaka was still wearing his sleep suit. He sighed and lay down on his bed. “You really want me to give you a highly technical scientific explanation?”

  I gave an exaggerated, theatrical shudder as he said the science word, because it was the best way to cover up my entirely genuine shudder at the memories it triggered. I’d never been any good at science, but I’d always tried my hardest at it until the nightmare day when our bullying science teacher called me back at the end of class. She’d said an off-world comedian would love to see my homework. She’d said he could use my answers to make up an entire new routine of jokes about the Handicapped being stupid. She’d said…

  Well, she’d said a whole lot of things. I’d spent over four years trying to blot that day out of my mind, but I could still remember every word she’d said, as well as the gloating, triumphant expression on her face as she enjoyed ripping me to shreds. I’d never told anyone about what happened that day; not Issette, not my ProMum, and especially not my psychologist, but it finished me with science forever.

  My friends and I had grown up knowing our parents dumped us at birth. We’d all reacted to that in our own way. Issette clung to fluffy toys, Cathan whined for attention, and I got angry. That anger wasn’t just at my parents, but at all the norms I saw in the off-world vids. Every day I heard them make jokes about people like me, dismissing us as brainless throwbacks because we were stuck on Earth and couldn’t portal to their worlds.

  Those constant jokes hit my confidence like water dripping on a stone and wearing it away. I fought back by reassuring myself that the off-worlders didn’t know what they were talking about. Few of them ever came to Earth, many of those that did would never willingly talk to one of the Handicapped, and none of us ever appeared on their vid channels.

  I told myself their opinion of us meant nothing. Their opinion of me definitely meant nothing, because they’d never even met me. Hearing my science teacher, someone who knew me and was Handicapped herself, say that the norms were right about me, I really was a stupid ape, was …

  From that day onwards, the science teacher could make me sit through her lessons, but she couldn’t force me to listen to what she said or ever do any work again. I didn’t care how many punishments she gave me. I was going to make it clear to everyone that Jarra didn’t do science because she hated it and refused to do it. Not because she couldn’t do it. Not because she was a stupid ape. Not because she was the sort of dumb Neanderthal that off-world comedians mocked.

  I drove that painful memory back into the darkest corner of my mind, and answered Keon in a carefully casual voice. “You know I hate science.”

  “Then please go away and leave me in peace,” he said.

  Issette and I grabbed cushions from the corner of the room, and settled ourselves on the floor. Keon gave a resigned groan, tapped his lookup, and the golden lights changed to glowing blue feathers.

  “We made it into Europe Off-world,” I said. “Your door code was right, thank you.”

  He frowned up at his floating feathers. “Of course it was right. You should know by now that I’m always right. Did you have to invade my room to tell me that?”

  “We had to invade your room because we’re hiding from Cathan,” said Issette. “He spotted Jarra all dressed up, and wanted her to go out with him this evening.”

  Keon brushed his tangled black hair out of his eyes, and turned his head to give us a martyred look. “I quite understand you wanting to hide from the whiny child, but please do it somewhere else.”

  “But this is the safest place,” said Issette. “I don’t know why you’ve been being so horribly sarcastic to Cathan lately, but he’s scared to come anywhere near you.”

  “I’ve been being horribly sarcastic to Cathan, because he kept asking me questions about my parents,” said Keon.

  Issette and I exchanged confused glances. Once we reached the age of 14, we had the right to request information about our parents, though we were warned that any attempt to contact them would almost certainly be rejected. Of the nine of us in my year at our Next Step, only Keon and I hadn’t asked for parental information. I’d been too bitter about the way my parents had casually discarded me to risk another rejection, and Keon said it was too much effort.

  “But you don’t know anything about your parents,” said Issette.

  “Exactly,”
said Keon. “Cathan kept nagging me to get details about them, or at least what planet I came from. I told him that I already knew what planet I came from, because the whole of humanity came from Earth. He still wouldn’t shut up about it, so eventually I had to exert myself to drive him away.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand why Cathan would care what world you were from.”

  Keon went back to watching his feathers. “Cathan only cares about it because he thinks I’m from a world in Alpha sector like him. Anyone looking at me can see most of my ancestors were from part of Earth Asia. That probably means I was born on one of the dozen or so Alphan worlds colonized directly from that area, rather than the worlds in other sectors that were open for random colonization. I don’t see any point in confirming if that’s true though. Discovering he had Alphan parents didn’t do Cathan any good, did it?”

  “You can’t blame Cathan for being chaos upset when his parents refused to have anything to do with him,” I said. “It wasn’t just that if he’d been born a norm he’d have grown up in a rich Alphan family. It was the fact his father turned out to be a famous medical researcher. Someone like that must have known perfectly well there’s no difference between the norms and the Handicapped other than our faulty immune system. With so many leading medical research centres on Earth, it would have been easy for Cathan’s father to move here to continue his work and be with his son, but instead he handed Cathan over to Hospital Earth and walked away. There was absolutely no excuse for such a selfish decision.”

  “Cathan’s father probably thought it would damage his career if people knew he had a Handicapped son,” said Keon. “I agree he made a selfish decision, and I don’t blame Cathan for being upset about it, but Cathan wants the two of us to spend endless hours sympathizing with each other about our heartless Alphan parents. That’s not going to happen. Cathan may be obsessed with the parents who’ve never been part of his life and never will be, but I don’t care who contributed to my genes.”