Earth Flight

JANET EDWARDS
Earth Flight

Dedication

To Sal

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

About the Author

Also by Janet Edwards

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

This is the third book I’ve written. I wrote the first one for the norms, because I wanted to tell them what it’s like to be born Handicapped. How it feels to be among the despised one in a thousand with an immune system that keeps you trapped on Earth, while everyone else can portal casually between the twelve hundred worlds of humanity.

I wrote about what happened at the start of 2789. How I lied my way into a class of off-world pre-history students, who were on Earth for their compulsory year working in the ruins of the ancient cities. I convinced them I was a norm, fell in love, got caught up in the rescue of a crashed Military spacecraft during a solar super storm, and was awarded the Artemis medal.

I thought that was the end of my story, but then an alien probe was detected approaching Earth, and the Alien Contact programme was activated. Its commanding officer needed someone like me, someone who knew Earth and was Handicapped, and I was the only one he’d ever met. He called in me and my boyfriend to help, and we ended up being the ones who sent a signal to the probe to trigger its communication sequence. The Military kept a lot of the details about that secret, so I wrote a second book about it in the hope that one day some future historians would read it and learn the full truth.

Those first two books are locked away in a highly restricted section of Military records, and now I only have one day to write my third book. This is about what happened after we sent the signal to the alien probe, and it isn’t for the norms, or the historians, it’s for me.

If I’m reading this, then I’ve already read the first two books, so I know Fian is a totally zan person. He’ll tell me all about the things I didn’t have time to write, or was too embarrassed to put into words. I hope I like him again. I hope I love him again. I hope we are very happy together.

But mostly I hope I’m not reading this, because if I am then my memory and everything that made me a person is gone, and this me is dead.

1

According to Earth Rolling News, Jarra Tell Morrath’s favourite colour was green, she was a fan of the singer, Zen Arrath, and she was going to become a member of a Betan clan. My favourite colour was blue, and I didn’t think much of Zen Arrath’s legs, but they were right about the Betan clan.

‘Oh chaos!’

There was the sound of a yawn from where two single beds had been wedged together. ‘What is it this time?’ asked Fian. ‘Another interview with your ex?’

‘No, I told Cathan he wouldn’t just be my ex-boyfriend, but my dead ex-boyfriend, if he talked to the newzies again. Earth Rolling News has found out about me joining the Tell clan.’

The wall vid changed from showing a holo of me to showing one of Fian, and I shook my head. ‘I still can’t believe this. Only a few weeks ago, I could wake up in the morning and watch Earth Rolling News without seeing a single picture of either of us, but now …’

Fian sat up and brushed his long blond hair out of his eyes. ‘We’re famous now, Jarra. People on every world of humanity watched live vid coverage of us sending a signal to the alien probe in Earth orbit. Did you really think we could go back to join our pre-history class afterwards, and everyone would forget about us?’

‘I didn’t think we’d be going back to our pre-history class at all. I expected …’

I let my words trail off into a frustrated groan, remembering all the things I’d expected to happen. I’d thought everyone would be delighted Fian and I had sent the signal to the alien sphere. I’d assumed we’d stay with the Alien Contact programme, and be involved in all the exciting things they were doing.

I’d been a total idiot. Wherever I was, whatever I did, some people would never forget I was Handicapped. A week after we sent the signal, Joint Sector High Congress Committee ordered the Military to dump the throwback girl and her boyfriend.

‘Colonel Torrek is furious about the way we’ve been treated,’ said Fian. ‘He’s fighting to get us back in the Alien Contact programme.’

I’d been haunted by a secret fear for several days. I finally forced myself to put it into words. ‘Colonel Torrek may be able to get you back, but not me. If High Congress make the Military move the base for Alien Contact to another world, like Adonis or Academy, then …’

Fian looked startled. ‘That won’t happen, Jarra. The alien sphere is in Earth orbit, so moving the base to another star system would make no sense.’

‘It would make perfect sense to the prejudiced. They think the Handicapped are less evolved, subhuman, and hate the fact one of us helped send the signal to the alien sphere on behalf of humanity. They won’t be satisfied with just throwing me out of Alien Contact, they’ll want to get rid of the handful of other Handicapped who’ve been involved as well. Our faulty immune systems will kill us if we leave Earth, so they can neatly exclude all of us by moving Alien Contact to another planet.’

Fian shook his head. ‘Colonel Torrek said only a few members of Joint Sector High Congress Committee are prejudiced against the Handicapped. The rest of the committee would never agree to move the base.’

‘They agreed to order the two of us out of the Alien Contact programme, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, but there’s a huge difference between getting rid of two people, and moving the entire base. You don’t have to worry, Jarra. We just have to be patient and we’ll both rejoin Alien Contact.’

I sighed. I wasn’t a patient person, I hated waiting around in suspense like this, and all the newzie interest in us was making everyday life really difficult. It wasn’t just that Fian and I daren’t go out in public. We couldn’t even get mail messages from friends, because our mail addresses were swamped with millions of messages from reporters. Military Command Support had tried giving us several secret mail addresses, but the newzies had somehow found out all of them within hours, so now everything was blocked except official Military mail.

The image on the wall vid changed to show the alien probe in Earth orbit, its central grey sphere almost invisible behind the thousands of constantly changing, multi-coloured strands of its glorious light sculpture. Hundreds of experts were trying to translate those light strands into words. I wondered how they …

A dreadful thought hit me. I shook off the spell of the mesmerizing light sculpture, and turned off the wall vid. ‘Fian, you haven’t told your parents about me joining my clan yet. You have to call them at once, before they see the story on the newzies.’

‘I’m afraid it’s already too late for that,’ said Fian. ‘Earth Rolling News have obviously been talking about that story all night, so the Delta sector newzies must be showing it too. It’s morning here, but it’s late evening on the inhabited continent of Hercules, and my father always watches the evening news on Delta Sector Vision.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s my own fault, Jarra. I should have told my parents weeks ago, but I kept delaying, waiting for a good moment. Stupid of me. There was never going to be a good moment to tell two prudish Deltans that their son’s girlfriend was joining a clan from Zeus, capital planet of sexually permissive Beta sector.’

He sounded surprisingly calm about it, but I still felt horribly guilty. Fian had worked so hard to get his parents to accept me despite my Handicap, and now I was causing yet more trouble by joining a Betan clan. Fian’s home planet, Hercules, was one of the strictest in conservative Delta sector. His parents were dubious about moral standards here on Earth, let alone those of notorious Beta sector.

‘Changing my mind about joining my clan would be awkward now it’s been reported on the newzies,’ I said, ‘but …’

‘I’m not letting you change your mind just because my parents won’t approve,’ said Fian. ‘You try and hide it, but I know you desperately want to have a family.’

I hated admitting it, even to myself, but that was perfectly true. I’d been portalled to Earth at birth to save my life, and my parents had handed me over to be raised as a ward of Hospital Earth. I’d grown up in their residences, hating the unknown parents who’d rejected me for being imperfect, but eventually I tried to contact them and was grazzed to find out they were Military. Moving to Earth would have meant abandoning their careers and wrecking the lives of my older brother and sister, so they had more excuse than most parents who abandoned their Handicapped babies, but …

Well, I still had a mess of conflicting powerful emotions about the parents who dumped me as a baby. The parents who I’d called months ago when I was on New York Dig Site and they were in far off Kappa sector. The parents who’d wanted to come to Earth to see me, but died before they could do it. I’d recorded my only call to them. One day, maybe, I’d be able to face replaying that conversation. One day, but not yet.

I thought I’d lost the chance of having a family forever when my parents died, but now their Betan clan was welcoming me as a member. I could never portal away from Earth, never visit the clan hall on Zeus, but I would still be part of one of the huge extended families of a Betan clan. I was staggeringly, unbelievably, bewilderingly lucky. Every kid in the residences run by Hospital Earth, whether they were in Nursery, Home or Next Step, dreamed of something amaz like this. It would have been incredibly hard to give up that dream, even for Fian.

‘I’d better call my parents now.’ Fian reached for his lookup.

By Deltan rules of behaviour, a couple of 18-year-olds on their second Twoing contract were barely allowed to hold hands, so Fian’s parents mustn’t see us together wearing only sleep suits. I pulled on a robe and headed for the door. ‘I’ll go and shower.’

Our pre-history class was spending the year excavating the ruins of the ancient cities of Earth, and staying in a series of basic dig site accommodation domes. That meant there were only three bathrooms for twenty-nine students, so I had to wait in a queue to shower. When I got back to our room, Fian was standing by the bed, his lookup discarded beside him. I didn’t like the grim expression on his face.

‘How bad was it?’ I asked.

‘Very bad.’ Fian hesitated for a moment before continuing. ‘My father ordered me to break our Twoing contract or he’ll disown me.’

I had a sick, nervous feeling in my stomach. ‘I could ask my clan to postpone the ceremony.’

‘He isn’t just angry about you joining the clan, Jarra,’ said Fian. ‘I’ve always been a bit … careful when talking to my parents about how we met. My parents thought I’d known you were Handicapped all along, but now my father’s somehow found out what really happened.’

I stared down at my hands for a moment. I’d done the unthinkable at the start of this year, pretended I was a norm and lied my way into a pre-history course run by University Asgard in Gamma sector, instead of joining a course run by University Earth. I still felt guilty about the lies and …

‘He’s found out we’re sharing a room as well,’ Fian continued.

‘Oh nuke!’

‘He said a scheming ape girl had seduced me into a Twoing contract, and ordered me to dump the throwback right away.’

I fought to stay calm despite the insults. ‘He was understandably angry when he said that.’

‘I told my father that you’d apologized for lying, and I’d chosen to forgive you. I told him I was a very badly-behaved Deltan, and sharing a room was my idea not yours. Then I told him I’d no intention of breaking our Twoing contract and he could nuke off! He ended the call then.’

Well of course he had. Fian’s father would never tolerate his son swearing at him. ‘Fian, I don’t want you falling out with your father because of me.’

‘It’s not just because of you; it’s because of a whole list of things.’ Fian’s face flushed with anger. ‘He spent years mocking me for wanting to study history instead of science, and saying what a disappointment I was compared to my brilliant older sister. His method of subtly breaking the news to my mother that he didn’t plan to renew their term marriage contract was to put their house up for sale. Then there was the way he reacted when he discovered an alien probe had arrived at Earth and I’d been drafted into the Military to help the Alien Contact programme.’

‘That was a bit …’

Fian didn’t give me the chance to finish my sentence. ‘I actually thought he’d be impressed by that. His son playing a leading role in the first contact between humanity and an alien civilization! My mother was proud of me, but my father just started ranting on about how I should have nothing to do with the Military because of some ancient family grudge.’

Fian had been on bad terms with his father for years. The big question was … ‘Did you talk to your mother too?’

Fian nodded. ‘My father had already called her and told her everything. She said I should ignore him because he’s too cold-blooded to understand people with real emotions. She said all that matters to her is that we’re happy together.’

I had a dizzy moment of relief. I should have guessed Fian’s mother would react that way. She wasn’t just a born romantic, but determined to take the opposite side to his father in every argument these days. Fian’s parents were at the end of one of the standard twenty-five year term marriages for people who planned to have children but didn’t want to sign up to an unlimited full marriage. Fian’s mother wanted to renew the term contract, his father didn’t, and the final weeks of the relationship were descending into open warfare.

Fian was deeply upset by his parents breaking up, and I’d no idea how to help him. I’d only ever had a ProMum and a ProDad, paid by Hospital Earth to spend two hours a week with each of their ten ProChildren, and that was nothing like having real full-time parents. Candace was a wonderful ProMum to me, but I had to make appointments to meet her, and I’d hardly seen my ProDad since our big fight when I was 12 years old.

I sighed. ‘When I first agreed to join my clan, I never thought anyone except the two of us would know or care about it.’

Fian hugged me. ‘We’re famous now, and that changes everything.’

2

By the time Fian and I arrived in the hall for breakfast, the rest of the class had already set out the flexiplas tables and chairs. The wall vid was on, showing Gamma Sector News since most of the class were from star systems in that sector. I recognized a horribly familiar vid sequence and groaned. With my worries about Fian’s parents, I’d forgotten today was 1 June, the anniversary of Earth Flight.

Every Wallam-Crane day, all the vid channels showed the footage of the first portal experiment. Every Flight day, they ran a sequence about the first manned interstellar flight by drop portal. Thankfully, we’d missed most of the incomprehensible scientific bit about how the transmitting portal does all the work, and the instant when the drop portal dust ring simultaneously exists at both transmission and reception point, stabilizing its own incoming signal.

‘… together with power issues mean this is limited to dust particles. When a link is established between two normal portals, it can be held open indefinitely, but a drop portal establishes for a maximum of 5.13 seconds before the ephemeral receiving dust ring dissipates,’ said the commentator.

Fian and I went to join the queue at the food dispensers and I frowned gloomily at the available menu. The panic over the alien probe had disrupted their regular service and restock, so we’d run out of most meal options. I settled for a glass of Fizzup, a plate of toasted wafers, and some reconstituted Karanth jelly. There was plenty of Karanth jelly left because of the rumour that eating it made your baby Handicapped.

No one understood what caused a baby to be Handicapped, so norms had a lot of these nardle superstitions about it. Researchers were always claiming to be on the verge of a major breakthrough, but they hadn’t achieved anything since they first established the basic facts of the triple ten. There is a one in ten risk of a baby being born Handicapped if both parents are Handicapped themselves. One in a hundred if one parent is Handicapped. One in a thousand if neither parent is.

Fian and I carried our trays across to sit with the other three members of class dig team 1 at our regular table. Krath greeted us with an exaggerated weary sigh.

‘It’s not fair making us work on a holiday. Playdon’s a slave driver.’

Lecturer Playdon turned his head to call across the room. ‘I’m a slave driver with perfectly good hearing, and Flight day isn’t a holiday on Earth.’

Krath gave an embarrassed groan and looked at me. ‘I thought Flight day was a holiday everywhere.’

Amalie leant across to hit him on the back of the head. Krath was one of the big group of students from Asgard, who’d chosen a course run by their home university, while Amalie was from a planet in frontier Epsilon sector. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on between them. Krath was definitely chasing after Amalie, but she seemed more interested in teaching him common sense than having a romantic relationship with him.

Krath sighed. ‘What did I do wrong this time?’

‘Think about it, nardle brain,’ said Amalie. ‘Most of the population of Earth is Handicapped and can’t portal to other planets.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Wallam-Crane day is a holiday here, because he invented the portal and we can at least portal around Earth. We don’t really celebrate it though, because that was the first step towards interstellar portals a century later. Flight day was the start of Exodus century, everyone pouring off world to new planets and leaving Earth to fall apart, so we just try to ignore it.’

I glanced over my shoulder at the vid. The commentator was talking about the S.T.A.R. – Simultaneous Transmission And Reception – series of automated probes, while the screen was showing an image of a curiously shaped ship in Earth orbit.

Dalmora gave me a sympathetic look. She was the only Alphan in the class, the daughter of the famous Ventrak Rostha who made the History of Humanity vid series, and I’d resented her at first sight. With her waist-long black hair adorned with flickering lights, and her lovely dark face delicately highlighted with makeup, I’d expected her to be a selfish, spoilt aristocrat. Instead, I’d discovered she was one of the kindest, most compassionate people I’d ever met.

‘Would you like the vid turned off, Jarra?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘I’ve seen it dozens of times before so it doesn’t bother me.’

I munched on my toasted wafers, keeping my back to the wall vid, but of course I could still hear it. They’d finally got to the interesting bit, so the odious commentator stopped talking over the ancient soundtrack. The calm female voice of the mission controller was calling for final confirmations from the various teams. I knew every word of this by heart, and the sound of all the different voices as they spoke the archaic accented version of Language from almost half a millennium ago.

‘Countdown is holding at sixty seconds. Final checks. Drop portal focus?’

‘Drop portal focusing confirmed at 98.73 per cent of optimal.’

‘Telemetry?’

‘Telemetry is green.’

‘Power?’

‘Power is green.’

‘My board is showing clear greens,’ said the mission controller. ‘Mission Control to Earth Flight, are you ready for this?’

‘Earth Flight to Mission Control,’ responded Major Kerr. ‘I’ve been ready for this all my life. Let’s do it.’

‘Prepare to pick up countdown at sixty seconds and initiate power build on my mark,’ said the mission controller. ‘Mark!’

As the countdown started, I gave in and turned to watch the wall vid. The image on the screen showed the view through the front window of the Earth Flight ship, the blackness of space contrasting with the blue and white curve of Earth below.

‘Thirty-five. Committing to auto power spike sequence … Now!’ The mission controller’s voice and the background chatter stopped. They were on auto sequence now. Nothing could stop the power spike building and firing the primitive drop portal, so they could only count down the seconds and hope nothing went wrong. Of the thirty automated probes in the S.T.A.R. series, twenty-four had made it to their destinations, but six had exploded when the power spikes went unstable.

Everyone had stopped eating now, and was watching the wall vid in silence. There was something about this vid sequence that compelled you to watch it even though you already knew exactly what happened.

‘Five seconds,’ said the voice of the mission controller. ‘Four. Three. Earth Flight, take us to the stars!’

The image went totally black as the drop portal fired. There was an agonizing delay, with the sound of increasingly tense voices as Mission Control waited for contact from the tiny comms portal on board Earth Flight. Finally, there was a white flash that broke up into multi-coloured jagged lines. Those formed together for an instant, dissolved again into randomness, then stabilized.

It was a grainy picture now, from the days before they’d invented two-way comms portal twinning or message streaming. The scene it showed was almost identical to the earlier one, but the continents on the blue and white planet were a different shape.

‘Earth Flight to Mission Control,’ said the breathless voice of Major Kerr. ‘Drop portal from Earth successfully completed. The comms portal established after only three mill of fine-tuning. I hope you’re getting visual as well as audio feeds, because this is the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.’

There was an audible sigh from around the hall, as everyone released the breath they’d been holding, and the class started eating and talking again. The vid sequence still had a few minutes to run, but no one was interested in Major Kerr’s spacewalk to detach the portal sections attached to the outside of his ship and assemble them. No one cared about how that created the first standard portal link between Earth and another star system, or the other ships that portalled in through it. No one wanted to hear how Major Kerr’s first description of the new world led to it being named Adonis. They only cared about the symbolic moment when Earth Flight took humanity to the stars.

I bit my lip, remembering the Flight day when I was 4 years old. I’d sat on the floor with the other kids in Nursery, watched the vid coverage, and asked a nurse when I could portal to Adonis. She’d shaken her head and gently explained I couldn’t do that because I’d die. It had taken me a few minutes to understand what she was saying. I already knew the people I saw in the vids had families, while my friends and I didn’t. I couldn’t believe I’d been cheated out of the stars as well.

I could still feel my shocked outrage at the monstrous unfairness of it. A feeling that was repeated again and again as I grew older. When I was 5 years old, laughing at a joke on the vids about stupid, ugly apes, and an older kid slapped my face and told me to stop laughing because the joke was about people like us. When I was 7, and there was a lesson at school about how Earth was run by the off-worlders on the main board of Hospital Earth. Other people, real people, got to vote about how their own world was run, but the Handicapped had no say in what happened on Earth.

The final insult was when I was 9, and discovered Earth was physically in the centre of Alpha sector but not legally part of it. The off-worlders hadn’t just rejected me and everyone like me, they’d rejected Earth itself because we lived there!

Fian gave me a worried look. ‘Are you all right, Jarra?’

My psychologist at Next Step kept telling me it was pointless making myself unhappy by brooding over things I couldn’t change. I didn’t have much faith in psychologists, but he was probably right about that. I forced away the old bitterness. ‘I’m fine.’

The Earth Flight vid sequence ended. Krath went over to the wall vid just as a Gamma Sector News presenter started talking. ‘Now the news headlines for today. Major Jarra Tell Morrath is to join one of the Betan Military clans.’

The entire class stopped talking and stared at me as if I’d grown an extra head.

‘Talks between the two political factions on Hestia have failed to reach an agreement,’ continued the presenter. ‘The …’

Krath turned off the wall vid and gave me a grazzed look. ‘Jarra, that story’s a nardle mistake, isn’t it? You aren’t Betan.’

This was chaos embarrassing. Like most of the class, I’d grown up with prejudices about Beta sector. Only months ago, I’d been joining in their jokes about Betan sex vids, giggling at the scanty clothes Betans wore, and saying Beta sector couldn’t be trusted because it had been on the verge of war with the rest of humanity during its Second Roman Empire period.

Then I discovered I’d been born into a Betan clan, and they actually wanted contact with me. Anyone who’d grown up in Hospital Earth’s residences would understand exactly why I’d promptly rethought my attitudes, but I was in a class of norms. They wouldn’t know how rejected kids longed to have a family, and I didn’t want to explain that sort of private emotional stuff, so I kept my response simple and matter of fact.

‘It’s perfectly true. I was raised on Earth, but my birth family were Betan. You should have realized that. The newzies have been talking for weeks about me being descended from Tellon Blaze, and he was Betan.’

‘Tellon Blaze was Betan!’ Krath waved his hands in disbelief. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ said Lolmack, open contempt in his voice.

Lolmack and Lolia were the only two Betans in our class. They were older than the rest of us, married, and had a Handicapped baby. At the start of this course, Krath had made some remarks about the Handicapped being subhuman apes. He’d changed his opinions now, but Lolmack still held a grudge against him.

‘The other sectors never mention Tellon Blaze, the hero who saved humanity from the chimera of Thetis, was from Beta sector,’ continued Lolmack. ‘They never admit it was Beta sector that saved civilization from total collapse after Exodus century. They never tell our side of the Second Roman Empire, or try to understand our culture, or …’

‘That doesn’t matter now,’ Lolia interrupted in an oddly tense voice. ‘Jarra, is it true what Earth Rolling News is saying? The Tell clan are making you a clan member?’

Lolmack made a horizontal, air-slicing movement with his left hand; a classic Betan gesture of rejection. ‘That’s just an outlander news channel making a mistake.’

‘It’s not a mistake,’ I said.

Lolmack stood up and hurried over to me. ‘You’re sure, Jarra?’ he demanded. ‘The Tell clan aren’t just acknowledging your birth, but offering clan membership?’

I didn’t understand the urgency in his face, but I nodded. ‘The presentation ceremony is in three days time.’

‘A presentation ceremony!’ Lolmack turned to his wife. ‘That would …’

‘One of the Handicapped being formally presented to a clan of the gentes maiores!’ Lolia put her hands to her face. ‘If that happens …’

I was shocked to see she was crying. ‘I don’t understand why this is so …?’

‘Jarra,’ she said, ‘a handful of clans have acknowledged a Handicapped birth, but none has ever offered clan membership. The Tell clan are of the gentes maiores, the aristocracy of Zeus. If they do this, it could change our lives!’

I stared at her, totally bewildered by her dramatic words.

‘There’s a lot of prejudice against the Handicapped on Betan worlds,’ said Lolmack.

‘It’s like that in all the sectors,’ I said. ‘I’ve grown up watching off-world vids, and they all use the same insults. The only difference between Handicapped and norms is a fault in our immune system, but they call us throwbacks, Neanderthals, and ugly, smelly apes.’

‘It’s a bigger problem in Beta than the other sectors though, because of the clan system,’ said Lolmack. ‘The shame of a Handicapped birth doesn’t just affect the parents, but the whole clan.’