Lolia and Lolmack didn’t know what was really going on, but I was sure they’d choose to stay with their daughter anyway. They’d already been through a nightmare to keep their baby and aliens wouldn’t stop them. Krath, Amalie, and Dalmora were different. If they knew the truth, they’d probably go off world, but I couldn’t warn them.
I suddenly realized I’d been just as blindly romantic as Dalmora. I got emotional about all the Military traditions and medals, but I hadn’t realized the hardest thing about Military life until this moment. I couldn’t tell Krath, Amalie, and Dalmora classified information, but if my friends went to Ark and got hurt or worse as a result, then …
I sighed and said as much as I could. ‘It’s a historic occasion, but you’d be safer going off world. I keep trying to talk Fian into visiting Hercules for a few days.’
‘I’m staying with you.’ Fian waved his ring finger pointedly at me and there were several excited squeals from the class.
‘Rings!’
I was forced to display my own ring, and the conversation moved on to the subject of flowgold. Petra and Joth had signed up for their Twoing contract while Fian and I were away, and Petra insisted on showing off their rings as well. It wasn’t a good moment for someone who suffered from ring phobia. My poor, scared, left little finger wanted to run away and hide in a dark corner.
‘Of course,’ Fian said smugly, ‘we chose not to have end-date markings on ours.’
‘Zan!’ cried Dalmora. ‘You’re planning to wear the same rings when you get married. How totally romantic!’
‘We do that in Epsilon sector,’ said Amalie. ‘We get married very quickly on the frontier, so it’s hardly worth bothering with different rings.’
Krath grinned at her. ‘We could elope to Epsilon.’
She gave him a look of unenthusiastic assessment. ‘I’ve turned down twenty-three other offers, Krath, and all from men with better legs than you!’
Everyone laughed at Krath’s outraged face, even Playdon. Everyone except for one person. Petra was looking at me with an expression of pure loathing on her face, and I knew she was already planning the names she’d call me as soon as she caught me on my own.
I turned away from her, pretending to listen to Amalie explaining how the rest of team 1 had been helping Playdon train the other teams while Fian and I were away, but my mind was thinking about Petra and her ape haters. If they started their insult campaign again, I’d have to tell Fian about what was going on. I could explain to him that I wanted to fight my own battles, and he’d let me do it, but he’d also ask the obvious questions about why I hadn’t told him about this before and why I hadn’t reported Petra to Playdon.
I’d been avoiding thinking properly about that, but now I finally forced myself to do it. If I complained to Playdon, it needn’t just be my word against Petra’s, because it would be trivially easy to set my lookup to record one of our conversations. I hadn’t done that, not just because I always hated asking for help and wanted to fight my own battles, but because I hadn’t wanted Fian or Playdon to hear the things Petra and her friends were saying about me. I’d spent my life watching off-world vids where people said those things about the Handicapped, and I’d had an unconscious, nagging fear that …
Oh, this was ridiculous. Petra’s insults would have stopped on the first day if I’d complained to Playdon, or even if she’d believed I might. I’d had some teachers at school who’d taken the easy way out and ignored trouble, but Playdon wasn’t like that. He’d dealt with problems between class members several times already, always decisively and with perfect fairness to both sides. He took any conflict in the class extremely seriously because we weren’t just living together in one small dome, we also had to work together in dangerous places.
Petra had known she could do whatever she liked and get away with it, because she’d noticed my weak spot; the fact that I didn’t want Fian to hear her insults. She’d been happily taking advantage of that, and I’d been stupid enough to let her do it, but that stopped right now. Fian hadn’t changed his mind about me because of what Major Maven had said; he’d just been angry, and he’d react in exactly the same way to Petra.
I turned around and smiled at Petra. Her initial glare changed to a puzzled look and then to anxiety. This time she was the one who turned away.
15
That night I had dreams where images of the alien sphere mingled with ancient vid scenes of the glowing city of Eden, and woke feeling eagerly expectant. Today I’d finally see the ruins of Earth’s last city, built just before Exodus century when human technology and knowledge were at a peak that we were still struggling to regain. We’d overtaken its builders in portal and medical technology, but in everything else they were still beyond us, and we scavenged for scraps of their knowledge left behind in the ruins of their cities.