Earth 2788 (9 page)

“The Handicapped
are as human as we are,” said Aunt Galina. “In fact, I’d argue they’re far more
human than you.”

My dad glared at
her. “That’s …”

She swept on,
drowning him out with her voice. “What you’re telling me is that you’re
spreading yet another wild rumour. There are several highly respected vid
channels who take risks to reveal genuine stories of true public interest. Your
channel can’t hope to have the respect and viewers that they do, until you
start checking your facts before broadcasting them.”

“This story
isn’t a wild rumour,” said Dad.

She sighed. “So
you’ve checked the details yourself this time?”

“Well … no. It’s
totally unreasonable to expect me to go to a planet in Epsilon sector myself.”

She sighed
again, and tapped at her lookup for a moment. “Totally unreasonable? You could
portal to Asgard Off-world, go through an interstellar portal to Gamma Sector
Interchange 6, join a cross-sector block portal to Epsilon, and arrive in time
for the once a day block portal to Miranda in … just under thirty-six hours’
time.”

“All that
portalling would be expensive,” said Dad, “and I can’t spend three or four days
going to Epsilon sector. I’ve got a business to run.”

“But I thought
this was a critically important story,” said Aunt Galina. “Still, if going to
Miranda is too much trouble, you could verify your facts in other ways. Why not
look up the contact information for a few random people on Miranda, and call
them?”

“I can’t start
calling complete strangers on Miranda,” said Dad.

“Then just check
the import and export information for Miranda.” Aunt Galina tapped at her
lookup. “Miranda is an agricultural world, exporting food as well as
genetically modified corn for the vaccine industry. It imports all its
manufactured goods, including a surprising number of baby clothes for a world
with no children.”

“Information is
easily faked,” said Dad. “The Military cover things up very thoroughly.”

“Some of those
baby clothes are made here on Asgard,” said Aunt Galina. “You could spend half
an hour visiting the manufacturing centre and establishing the facts, but you
won’t because the truth might spoil your exciting story.”

“It’s not like that,”
said Dad. “I have to …”

Aunt Galina
waved an imperious hand. “Be quiet! I’ve wasted more than enough time on yet
another hopeless attempt to teach you basic common sense. I’m really here to
see Krath.”

I’d been
watching in total silence, waiting for a chance to sneak off and hide in my
bedroom, but now I gave a startled yelp. “Me? Why me?”

She turned to
look at me, studying me as if I was some sort of beetle. “Krath, your father is
an idiot. You appear to be an idiot too, but I’m aware that may not be entirely
your fault. Your father chose to drag you between a dozen different worlds
without the slightest consideration for the effect on your education.”

“That’s not true,”
said Dad. “It was only ten worlds, and it wasn’t my fault we had to keep
moving. I was a fugitive! The Military were hunting me!”

Aunt Galina
glanced at him. “If the Military had ever had the slightest interest in you,
they could have arrested you years ago. They could have located you any time
they wanted. Every time you step through a portal, your genetic code is scanned
for billing purposes, and Military Intelligence have full access to that
information.”

She turned back
to me. “I intervened when you were 14, Krath, offering your father this house
if he settled down here on Asgard. I thought this would give you the chance to
attend school normally, but instead I find he’s turned what was a beautiful
field into a scrap yard, and taken you out of school to use you as unpaid
labour.”

“Krath’s not
unpaid labour,” said Dad. “I may not actually be paying him any credits, but
he’s being rewarded by learning valuable skills as my apprentice.”

Aunt Galina
ignored him. “Krath, I feel it is my duty as your aunt to make one final
attempt to remove you from your father’s scrap yard, and salvage you as a human
being. I’m offering to take you to live in my own home.”

“Live with you?”
I gulped.

“You will live
in my home until next Year Day, Krath. You will spend every waking hour of
every day studying history. On Year Day 2789, you will become 18 and legally
adult. At that point, you’ll leave my home and become a student on a
residential course run by University Asgard.”

I’d been busily
picturing life with Aunt Galina, and shuddering with horror, but the mention of
University Asgard caught my attention. “What? I’d be a proper student?”

“Yes,” said Aunt
Galina. “I am an exceptional history teacher. I’ve often said that I could
teach an intelligent rabbit enough history to get them into a leading
university, and this is my chance to prove it.”

I frowned. “I’m
not a …”

“It’s out of the
question,” said Dad. “Krath doesn’t want to be a history teacher like you.”

Aunt Galina
laughed. “I can’t imagine Krath as a history teacher. I think he’d be far more
suited to practical excavation work, but this is his decision, not ours. Do you
wish to spend the rest of your life doing unpaid work for your father, Krath,
or would you like to be in a class with other students of your own age?”

I hesitated
before speaking. “I’m not sure. Going to school never worked out very well. The
other kids didn’t like me. They all had friends already, and they called me
names. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of teasing. Friendly teasing means you’re
part of the group, accepted as one of them, but this was meant to be really
nasty.”

For a second, I
thought there was a hint of sympathy in Aunt Galina’s face. “This time, Krath,
everyone in the class will be just as new as you, and trying to make friends.
You will be living, working, and studying together, and I assure you there will
be no bullying. I have contacts at University Asgard, and can make sure that
you’re in a class with a lecturer who deals with such problems quickly and
effectively.”

I thought for a
moment. Spending months with Aunt Galina would be a nightmare, but at the end
of it … “There’d be girls in this class?”

“There would be
girls,” said Aunt Galina. “You’d need to learn some social skills before they
were interested in you, but there would be girls.”

I considered
that. If there were girls …

Aunt Galina
tapped at her lookup. “It might help if you scan this.”

Zen Arrath
started singing from my lookup. I hastily cut him off and checked what Aunt
Galina had sent me. A boring history text, rambling on about primitive
twentieth century vids. I looked up at Aunt Galina. “This is the sort of thing
I’ll be stuck reading all day?”

She smiled. “You
haven’t got to the end yet, have you?”

I groaned,
looked down at my lookup, and skimmed on. At the end of the text, there were two
images. The first one showed some men in weird, uncomfortable looking clothes.
The second was a girl on a beach. I blinked. The girl was only wearing a couple
of strips of cloth. You could see her legs, all the way up to her …

I made a choking
noise. My Aunt Galina couldn’t possibly have realized that image was included
in the text. Or could she?

“Most worlds,
with the obvious exception of those in Beta sector, have strict rules against
showing legally private body areas,” said Aunt Galina. “However, clothing
etiquette has varied greatly through history. Images for school texts are
carefully chosen to avoid offending the moral sensitivities of pupils, or more
correctly, to avoid scandalizing their parents.”

She paused. “Personally,
however, I strongly disapprove of such censorship. I believe students of
history need unrestricted access to images to achieve a full understanding of
the cultures in different places and different periods of history. What do you
think, Krath?”

I nodded eagerly.
“I agree. You’re totally right.”

“So, would you
like to accept my offer and start studying history?” asked Aunt Galina.

I looked down at
the twentieth century girl on my lookup. “Yes, I would! Just give me ten
minutes to pack!”

Hercules, Delta Sector, June
2788.

“
Fian, you’re a disgrace to
the entire Eklund family,” said my father.

He said that at
least twice a week, but I’d no idea why he was saying it right now. It was
eight o’clock in the morning, so I was exactly on time for breakfast. I’d only
just walked into the room, so I hadn’t had time to do anything he thought
stupid. I couldn’t have said the wrong thing, because I hadn’t said a word yet.

I glanced at my
mother, but she gave a slight shake of her head to indicate she didn’t know
what the problem was either. I sat down at the table in wary silence. I hadn’t
seen my father since yesterday morning. Had he found out some of the things I’d
been hiding from him? The fact I had a girlfriend. The Gamma sector vids I’d
been watching. The history thing.

But no, it
couldn’t be anything nearly that bad. If it was, my father wouldn’t just be
calling me a disgrace, he’d be exploding with rage. He was probably leading
into another round of complaints about my long hair. He preferred a brutally
close-trimmed hairstyle himself, and hated the way my blond hair trailed round
my shoulders. Which was, of course, the main reason I kept it that long. My
father had forced me to do so many things I hated; my long hair was a gesture
of defiance.

“A son of mine
coming second in a school physics test!” my father said in tones of deepest
disgust.

That explained
everything. My physics teacher had been messaging my father about me. Again! I
could at least argue my case on this one. Not that my father would listen, he
never did, but … “I got 96 per cent in the test.”

“That’s a very
good result.” My mother pulled a sympathetic face at me.

“No it isn’t,”
said my father. “Not when someone else got 97 per cent. Why can’t you be more
like your sister?”

I braced myself
to endure yet another lecture about my wonderful older sister who’d got her
physics degree before she was 20. She’d moved away from Hercules a year ago, to
join a specialist group on another Deltan world and research multi particle
wave expansions. I’d hoped my father would stop comparing me to her after that,
but things had got worse instead of better. While she lived at home, there were
inevitable clashes between her and my father that stopped him seeing her as
utterly perfect, but now …

“I hope you’re
thoroughly ashamed of yourself,” said my father. “A great-grandson of the brilliant
Jorgen Eklund failing a simple school physics test!”

Oh no! It wasn’t
going to be the lecture about my sister. It was going to be the lecture about
Jorgen Eklund, which was even worse. My father seemed to have the idea that I only
had to study a little harder to turn myself into a copy of my
great-grandfather. Well, I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to either!

“I blame it on
your ridiculous interest in history,” said my father. “A totally pointless
subject. Humanity shouldn’t waste time looking back at the past; it should be
working for the future!”

I wanted to
argue that it was vital humanity learned the lessons of history, because
otherwise we’d keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again, but that
would be an incredibly bad idea. It was four years since my father had told me
to take an optional specialist technology course at school, and I’d signed up
for a three month history module instead. When he found out what I’d done, my
father had been furious and ordered me to drop the history module at once. I’d
tried standing up to him, told him how much I hated physics, and said that I
wanted to move from the science stream to the history stream.

That started an
epic battle between us. I lost. My school wouldn’t let me change from the
science stream to the history stream without my parents’ consent, and my mother
sympathized with me but got shouted down by my father. Ever since then, I’d
carefully avoided mentioning history, but my father still held a grudge over my
brief rebellion, and kept blaming all my failures on it.

“I remember
visiting my grandfather in his laboratory at University Hercules when I was
only 10 years old,” continued my father. “It was a true inspiration seeing
everything that he’d achieved. I remember how he looked at me and said …”

I was 17 years
old, and Father must have told me this story at least twenty times during every
single one of those years. By now I could recite every word in my sleep. I
tuned out my father’s voice, and concentrated on eating a bowl of crunchy blue
slices of my favourite Hercules melon. It was just the way I liked it, packed
with the tiny juicy seeds that hovered on the borderline between sweet and
sour. Some people liked the seedless varieties of Hercules melon, but I …

“Are you
listening to me?” demanded my father.

“Yes, Father.” I
scraped the last stray melon seeds from my bowl. I’d definitely heard a mention
of the Military, so … “Great-grandfather told you how the Military tried to
sabotage his research by dumping him under planetary arrest here on Hercules
when it was still just a frontier world. He didn’t let that stop him though. He
founded University Hercules and carried on his work anyway.”

Father nodded, and
continued the story. “Your great-grandfather left a shining legacy to human
knowledge. The only ambition he never achieved was winning a Nobel, and that
was because of a blatant injustice. His improvements to the design of the
interstellar portals and their relay system totally revolutionized cross-sector
portal travel, but the Nobel Committee back then deliberately overlooked him.”

I felt the Nobel
Committee had good reason to overlook my great-grandfather’s work. Jorgen
Eklund hadn’t just used highly unethical research methods, he’d been rumoured
to be involved in the Persephone incident, and there was absolutely no doubt that
he’d started the planetary civil war on Freya in Alpha sector.

I opened my
mouth to say that, but my mother gave me a pleading look, so I picked up my
glass of frujit and sipped it instead.

“I wish you’d
had the chance to meet him yourself,” said my father.

I didn’t. I was
deeply grateful for the fact that Jorgen Eklund had reached his hundredth and
died long before I was born. It was embarrassing enough having him as my
great-grandfather when he was dead. I shuddered at the thought of what my life
would be like if he was still alive. I hated the way everyone constantly talked
to me about my sister, asking whether she’d published any more papers, but if
my great-grandfather was still alive it would be far worse. I’d probably have
people asking whether he’d started any more wars yet!

“On Year Day
2789, you’ll be 18 and will start your physics degree at University Hercules,”
my father relentlessly carried on with his lecture. “That means you’ve only got
six months to improve the standards of your work. You can’t carry on in this
slapdash way when my own colleagues are teaching you. Remember that I’ll have
been awarded my Nobel Prize by then, so I won’t want to be embarrassed by
hearing bad reports of my son.”

Mother grabbed at
the chance to interrupt his lecture. “Yes, the deadline for work to be
considered for the Nobel is less than a week away now, and there really is
nothing else significant in the Astrophysics area this year, so … It’s
wonderful to think that you’ll finally have the recognition you deserve.”

Father nodded. “Ever
since I heard my grandfather talk about the one ambition he’d never achieved,
this has been my dream. To make up for that old injustice, by winning a Nobel Prize
myself. I’m planning to use my acceptance speech to dedicate the prize to my
grandfather’s memory.”

I blinked. The
Nobel ceremony would be held on Adonis in Alpha sector. I knew my father could
be incredibly insensitive, but surely even he should realize that mentioning
Jorgen Eklund’s name on any planet in Alpha sector was a really bad idea.

My father stood
up, his mind clearly focused on his Nobel now rather than on his failure of a
son. “I’ll make a few notes about my speech before going to the university.”

He headed off to
his study, and I turned to give my mother a worried look. “We can’t let Father
make an acceptance speech that’s all about Jorgen Eklund. Not when he’s on the
capital planet of Alpha sector. He’ll have the audience throwing things at him!”

She frowned. “I
know your great-grandfather left Alpha sector under unfortunate circumstances.”

“Unfortunate
circumstances!” I repeated. “Mother, it was a lot more than unfortunate. He
started a war on Freya!”

“That wasn’t a
war. It was merely a planetary incident. A conflict has to escalate beyond a
single planet before it counts as a real war.”

“That may be
technically true, but I think the people who died on Freya felt it was a real
war.”

She sighed. “I
suppose you’re right, but hopefully everyone will have forgotten all about it
by now. It was a very long time ago.”

“Not long enough,”
I said grimly. “And it wasn’t just the war; there was what happened on
Persephone too. You can’t tell me people have forgotten about that. The ent vid
channels show almost as many horror vids about what happened on Persephone as
they do about Thetis and Gymir. Given the number of people who died on
Persephone, and the state of the survivors afterwards …”

“Your
great-grandfather was never proved to be personally involved in the Persephone
incident.”

“He was proved
to belong to the group that caused it. You have to talk sense into Father. Make
him see he can’t mention Jorgen Eklund in his acceptance speech.”

Mother sighed
again. “I’ll do my best, but you know what your father’s like.” She checked the
time on her lookup. “It’s nearly half past eight. What day is it on your school
timetable?”

My school worked
on a complex 21 day timetable, which confused even the teachers. Everyone else
complained about it, but I found it very useful. My father didn’t even try to
understand it, so he’d got no idea what I should be doing on any particular
day.

“It’s day 6 of
the 21 day cycle,” I said. “That’s a rest day for the school science stream.”

“Ah,” said my
mother. “You’ll be …
resting
then.”

I nodded. “I’ll
be …
resting
.”

I went over to a
cupboard, collected a couple of cartons of food and drink, and then tiptoed
through the hall. My father’s study door was closed, so I made it outside
without any more lectures. I looked round warily at the luxury, one-storey
homes. There was no one outside the houses, and the central garden with the
local portal in the middle seemed totally deserted.

I walked across
to the portal, gave a last paranoid look over my shoulder just in case my
father had materialized out of the ground behind me, and dialled my school. The
second the portal established, I stepped through, arriving on the expanse of
bare concraz in front of the array of school buildings. No one else should be
portalling in for at least another fifteen minutes, but I still sprinted madly
to the small building at the far end, entered the code into the lock plate,
went inside, and shut the door behind me.

Now I was safe.
The cross-sector education laws said that every school had to have sports
facilities and offer sport as a voluntary option for its pupils. Since Delta
sector was science obsessed in general, and Hercules was the most science
obsessed of all its two hundred and two planets, my school only went through
the motions of complying with those laws. This small, empty dome, and the area
of grass beside it, were the school sports facilities. Sport was listed as a
voluntary optional course, but there was no sports teacher, and no pupils ever
signed up to do it. That meant nobody except me and my two friends had entered
this dome in the last four years.

I went across to
the table and three chairs that my friends and I had “borrowed” from another
classroom, sat down, put the cartons of food under the table to eat later, and
took out my lookup. I checked for messages, and saw my last physics homework
had been returned with the highest possible mark. I didn’t bother looking at my
teacher’s comments. Even though I’d got a perfect mark, he was bound to have
said something about how my sister would have done better.

My life would be
a lot easier if my physics teacher hadn’t taught my older sister. My life would
be a lot easier if my sister had gone to a different school. In fact, I
sometimes felt my life would be a lot easier if I’d never had a sister at all!

But even if my
sister had never existed, I’d still have suffered from being compared to the
rest of my depressingly brilliant relatives. My father, my mother, my uncles,
my cousins, my grandparents, and of course my notorious great-grandfather were
all genius level scientists as well, while I was just reasonably clever. Short
of annihilating my entire family tree, both living and dead, there was no way
of changing the fact I was the Eklund family failure.

I briefly, and
pointlessly, wished I’d been born to different parents, perfectly average and
very boring parents, who had ordinary expectations of their son. Parents who’d
have been pleased and proud of me for coming second in a school physics test.

I was being
unfair to my mother though. I knew she was disappointed in me, she was bound to
be in the circumstances, but she did her best to hide it.

I sighed, put my
lookup in my pocket, went across to the loose section of dome floor, lifted it
up, and took out my secret second lookup. This was a very basic model, but it
had one huge advantage over the advanced one that my father had given me. He
couldn’t run remote checks to watch what I was doing on it, because he didn’t
know it existed.

I heard the door
open behind me, took a fast look over my shoulder, and saw both my friends had
arrived together. They shut the door carefully behind them, and Macall spread
his arms in an expansive gesture.