Earth Star(80)

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.’