Earth Star

23

For the next few days, I kept walking blindly down a pitch-black tunnel without a vestige of light at the end of it. In all that time, I hadn’t managed to do more than look at my impact suit. When I tried to touch it, I felt physically ill with irrational terror. I didn’t know how I’d explain this to Fian, but I’d have to find the words somehow. I couldn’t just vanish without an explanation. After Joth’s death, I knew how dreadful it could be to be left endlessly wondering why something had happened.

I’d planned to leave the course and Fian before, when he first found out I was Handicapped, but he was gloriously stubborn and wouldn’t let me do it. He’d threatened to go legal and force me to honour my Twoing contract with him. He couldn’t do that this time, because there were only a few days left on our three-month contract.

I did a lot of thinking about what I’d do after I left the course. Earth was known for the triple H. Hospital. History. Handicapped. Issette was studying medicine, but I couldn’t do that because I was useless at science. There were plenty of options in childcare, but how could I take care of kids? I’d been making too big a mess of my own life to think of taking responsibility for someone else.

Each night, I made an excuse to slip off to our room ahead of Fian, went to bed, and pretended to be already asleep when he followed me. I kept my eyes closed as he crept around the room, like an unusually tall, blond mouse, and went to bed himself. This avoided conversations that I was in no state to handle, but left me facing a long night where sleeplessness warred with bad dreams.

By the end of day three, I was standing at a cliff edge and looking down. Tomorrow morning, people would expect me to wear my impact suit, and I could no more do that than I could portal to Alpha sector. Buying myself time by claiming my skin was still sensitive wouldn’t work. Both Playdon and Fian would insist on me having medical checks, and the doctors would say there was nothing wrong. I was totally and utterly nuked.

I sat in the dining room, surrounded by chattering people, and Fian came over carrying a tray of food. I frowned at him, but he still put a plate of cake on the table in front of me.

‘Please, Jarra, at least eat some cake.’

I reached out and mechanically picked up the cake, but my stomach rebelled at the thought of eating it. Fian watched with a disapproving expression as I broke off token crumbs.

‘Jarra,’ he said, ‘you can’t …’

He broke off, and everyone sitting at our table looked up. Playdon was standing next to us.

‘Jarra and Fian,’ he said. ‘I need you for a moment.’

He beckoned us out into the corridor, Fian headed after him, and I trailed in their wake. This was it then. Playdon was going to discuss the work he had planned for the class tomorrow morning, he’d be assuming I’d be back out there tag leading, and I had to say I couldn’t do it. I’d expected to have a few more hours, but … Chaos take it, what was the point in prolonging the agony?

I braced myself to tell them the situation. At least I’d finally thought of somewhere to go. I’d join the staff on one of the safe historical sites, like Pompeii or the Pyramid Zone. You needed either a history or science degree for the important jobs, but I could do something basic like mowing the grass or handing out armbands to visitors.

I opened my mouth to make my carefully planned speech, but Playdon spoke first. ‘These are for you.’

He handed each of us a genuine, paper envelope. I stared at mine in utter confusion, and opened it up. Inside was a piece of card. I read it. Twice. Read it a third time, still grazzed.

‘Why have you given us these certificates, sir?’ asked Fian.

‘You’ve earned them,’ said Playdon. ‘We’re less than halfway through this course, but you’ve both already done more than enough work on the dig site to qualify for the highest practical grade so I’m giving you the certificates early.’ He gave us his best evil smile. ‘You still need to attend my lectures and complete the theoretical side of the course though. Don’t imagine you can escape that.’

I finally managed to speak. ‘You know! How?’

‘I saw the look on your face when I gave you back your impact suit,’ said Playdon. ‘You aren’t the first person to have this sort of problem, Jarra.’

Fian looked from me to Playdon. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘I’m your lecturer, Fian,’ said Playdon. ‘I can’t divulge information about another student to you, even if you do have a Twoing contract with her. I shouldn’t comment on your personal relationship, and it’s quite inappropriate for me to suggest that you should, for chaos sake, make Jarra talk to you.’

Fian stood there for a second, then grabbed my arm and dragged me off down the corridor. He hadn’t laid a finger on me in days, worried about hurting my new skin, but he seemed to have forgotten all about that. He towed me into our room, slammed the door, and turned to face me.

‘Talk!’

‘What about?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t try dodging this. We’re staying in this room until you tell me what’s going on. Hours, days, weeks. I don’t care how long. We don’t set foot outside until you talk. I’m sure Playdon will send us food supplies if necessary.’

‘We’d need the bathroom before that.’

‘Jarra!’

‘I was just saying …’

‘If necessary, I will escort you down the corridor and back again, but that won’t get you out of this. I’m stubborn, remember. You’ve hardly said a word in days, you aren’t eating properly, and you jump like a Herculean reed frog every time I go near you. At first, I agreed with the others that your new skin must still be hurting you. It was typical of you not to admit you were in pain, and explained the nightmares you’ve been having and carefully not mentioning to me, but now Playdon gives me this!’

He waved his certificate under my nose, before tossing it aside. ‘I’m not going to give you a second of peace until I get an explanation. Understand?’

Yes, I understood. I sat on my bed, which was currently a short distance away from Fian’s bed. One way and another, there’d been a lot of space between us since that tag support sled blew up.

‘Well?’ Fian asked.

I forced myself to say the words. ‘Playdon gave us the certificates because he knows I’m terrified of wearing an impact suit after what happened. He’s done it to stop me failing this course.’

Fian sat down beside me and put his arm around me. I nearly made a nardle of myself by crying when I felt the warmth of him. Fian was holding me again.

‘You’re scared of impact suits.’ His tone made it somewhere between a question, a statement, and sympathy.

‘My suit tried to kill me, Fian. I know that sounds nardle, I know it was just the effect of the freak magnetic field, but my suit started crushing me and cut me to ribbons. You saved me from actually dying, but I still look at my suit and …’

‘I don’t think it’s nardle. I know I got blown up, but I was instantly knocked out and didn’t wake up until I came out of the tank. It was different for you. You must have been in agony on the way to hospital.’

He pulled his arm back, turned, and grabbed my shoulders to shake me. ‘Jarra, I understand you being scared of impact suits. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me.’

‘Because I’m a dumb ape.’

‘Don’t call yourself an …’ He broke off. ‘Yes, you’re a dumb ape! Sometimes I don’t know whether to kiss you or strangle you. What is it with you? Why is it so impossible for you to just tell me when you’ve got a problem?’

Fian released me and flopped back on to the bed. ‘No, don’t answer that. I know it’s because of the way you grew up. I’m not like Candace, limited to two hours a week. I’m here for you all the time, but I can’t help when you don’t tell me the problem. We’ve had this conversation before. We went through precisely the same thing with the rings.’

‘That wasn’t the same. Being scared of a ring wasn’t going to stop me being an archaeologist. This is.’

He reached up and pulled me down to lie next to him. His arm was around my shoulders and I could feel his hair trailing down my left cheek.

‘Yes, it’s a bigger problem. All the more reason to tell me about it. What were you planning to do? Were you hoping the whole of Eden Dig Site would explode, so you wouldn’t have to put on an impact suit tomorrow?’

‘No. I was just about to tell you the problem when Playdon gave us the certificates. I’d worked out what I’d do after I had to drop out of the course.’

Fian tugged me tighter against him. ‘You should be mentioning me in that sentence. It would have been a decision for both of us.’

‘I didn’t want you to have to give up history as well.’

‘There would have been ways to …’ He shook his head. ‘Forget that. Playdon spotted you were in trouble. He’s solved the immediate problem. We can finish this course without you ever wearing an impact suit again.’

‘I’ll look a coward in front of the whole class.’

‘They all saw the accident. They’ll understand. We’ll cope with this, Jarra. We won’t have to make decisions between practical and theoretical history courses until the end of this year. I know exactly how you feel about psychologists, but if you’d really like to work on dig sites again, you might at least consider seeing if one could help you. We’re Military, remember. We can ask for their help. They must have a lot of experience with this sort of problem.’

He made everything sound so simple. For a moment, I even considered the psychologist idea. The Military had centuries of experience with everything from people shadowstruck after Thetis, to the aftermath of the Persephone incident. Impact suit fear was trivial in comparison.

‘I’ve never …’

I broke off because both our lookups were making emergency chiming noises. Fian picked his up, and gave a wail of protest.

‘No! Not Ark! Not now! I was finally getting somewhere with the nardle-brained idiot!’