Earth Star(5)
Playdon laughed. ‘They started showing all the rescue coverage again after the medal ceremony. Haven’t you been watching yourself on the newzies, Jarra?’
‘I’ve been avoiding them, sir. It’s embarrassing.’ I saw the picture change to an image of Earth Olympic Arena, and cringed. First, there was a view of the audience, and then an image of five people, each wearing the Artemis medal on their shoulder. I was the one on the far left, trying to hide from the vid bees and failing. ‘Can we please change channel?’
Playdon seemed amused but changed to Gamma Sector News. After a sports report, it started showing massive queues of people.
‘Serious congestion continues at all Off-worlds and Sector Interchanges. Portal Network Administration apologizes for portal delays due to limitations on traffic flow during an upgrade of the major portal relay hubs. They request people to postpone non-essential journeys where possible.’
Coverage swapped to a series of people complaining bitterly about how long they’d been waiting. Lecturer Playdon turned off the sound just as a bunch of eleven students from Asgard in Gamma sector entered the hall, followed by a whole fleet of their hover luggage. Our class was being run by University Asgard, so there were a lot of students from that planet.
Krath was at the front of the group, and he immediately burst into an outraged tirade. ‘You wouldn’t believe how long we were waiting at Asgard Off-world. Four hours! Our block portal got rescheduled twice because of congestion in Gamma Sector Interchange 6, and when we finally got there the cross-sector portal to Alpha was …’ He finally noticed the images on the wall vid and trailed off with a disappointed air. ‘Oh, you know.’
Playdon nodded. ‘I suggest you go and unpack. I won’t be starting classes until everyone’s back, so you’ve plenty of time.’
The new arrivals went off to unpack and Fian took out his lookup. ‘I’ll call my parents and check they got back to Hercules safely.’
‘You do that,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and finish my unpacking.’
I hurried off. I’d done all my unpacking, but I’d just suffered four solid days of Fian’s parents and didn’t want to smile dutifully while he called them. Once I was in the corridor, I nearly bumped into one of the arrivals from Asgard. She gave me a look of pure disgust.
‘I see the ape girl is back. That explains the bad smell around here.’
I bit my lip. I’d barely noticed Petra’s existence at the start of this course, but I’d certainly noticed her since my classmates found out I was Handicapped. Once they got over the initial shock, most of them treated me just the same as when they thought I was a norm. Not Petra though. She’d gradually persuaded several of her friends from Asgard to join her in a campaign of furtive insults. Her plan was to make the throwback girl leave the class, but I wasn’t going to be driven out by a few nasty words. I kept the problems to a minimum by avoiding the ape-hating clique, so I tried stepping sideways to walk past Petra.
She promptly dodged sideways herself to block my way. ‘You shouldn’t be here. You should be on a Foundation course run by University Earth like the rest of your kind!’
I tried moving to the other side, but Petra blocked me again. If I turned around and went back to the hall, she’d jeer at me for running away. I gave up the nardle dodging from side to side and faced her.
‘I’ve as much right to be on this course as you. The only difference between us is my immune system can’t cope with other worlds. That isn’t a problem because this course spends the whole year here on Earth.’
‘Yes, the nuking rules for studying history say I have to waste a year on Earth before they’ll let me learn the modern history that really matters. That’s bad enough without being forced to share a dig site dome with one of you subhumans as well!’
I’d tried to stay calm, but now I was losing my temper. ‘Odd that you never noticed my subhuman looks and intelligence when we started this course. You believed I was a norm until you were told I was Handicapped. This course is governed by the Gamma sector moral code, which says you have to treat your fellow students with respect, so why don’t you be a good little Gamman and leave me alone. If Playdon spots the way you’re behaving, he’ll hand you a bunch of formal conduct warnings.’
‘He should be giving you the conduct warnings,’ said Petra. ‘You lied to us when you joined this class. Pretended you’d been to a Military school and were human like the rest of us. You didn’t even have the courage to tell us the truth yourself. You had to get Fian to do it for you.’