Earth and Air

by Janet Edwards

  We made some minor detours down the side corridors to check the showers were working and inspect a few of the rooms. School party accommodation domes had rooms so microscopic that there was barely space to stand next to the single bed. They didn’t have even the tiniest of wall vids, but of course there were room sensors attached to the ceilings to monitor our behaviour.

  I sighed. “Why is it that we can be given accommodation domes with missing doors, walls, beds, and non-functioning bathrooms, but every room sensor is always working perfectly?”

  Owen shrugged. “Because Hospital Earth is run by off-worlders who are determined to make our lives as miserable as possible.”

  We ended up in the dome hall, where the flexiplas tables and chairs had been left randomly scattered around the room by the previous inhabitants. We tidied up a little, and then tested the food dispensers by helping ourselves to glasses of Fizzup and some cake. At first, we were fooled into thinking the food dispensers were operating flawlessly, but then Radley discovered the toasted wafers were out of stock.

  “How can you run out of wafers?” he said in despair. “That’s like running out of water.”

  The rest of the club members slowly trickled in to join us. I checked the big wall vid was working correctly, and was watching the Earth Rolling News coverage when I heard raised voices. I looked round to see what was happening, and found the Owen and Dezi argument had started up again. Owen’s expression was one of sneering disgust, while Dezi had started tapping her elegant right foot on the ground.

  I turned off the wall vid, and exchanged apprehensive glances with Meiling. We both knew that Dezi’s foot tapping was a warning sign that she was on the edge of losing her temper in a spectacular fashion.

  Owen must have recognized that warning sign too, but he still kept ranting at Dezi. “I don’t know why you bothered coming along on this trip. You didn’t want to waste your spring break doing excavation work, so why waste your whole summer?”

  Dezi’s dark face remained calm, but her foot was tapping faster now. “I chose to spend the spring break with the art club because I needed to work on my exhibition pieces.”

  “You needed to work on your exhibition pieces,” Owen echoed her words in a mocking voice. “What you really mean is that you wanted to spend your spring break daubing paint on canvas and pretending you were Leonardo da Vincent.”

  “I think you mean Leonardo da Vinci,” I said.

  Both Dezi and Owen ignored me. “Naturally you were furious about me pulling out of the history club spring trip,” said Dezi. “You’d been telling the other boys fantasies about how we’d be sneaking off to spend the nights together in the sled storage dome, so you looked a boasting nardle when I didn’t go on the trip at all.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t understood why Owen and Dezi had split up. Now the reason seemed painfully clear.

  Owen glanced nervously at the rest of us. “That’s not true.”

  Dezi’s foot abruptly stopped tapping. She brushed the tight curls of her black hair out of her eyes, took a step towards Owen, and snapped at him. “Yes, it is true! I heard you telling Sunesh how you planned to tumble me.”

  I hastily turned to check if Crozier had arrived yet, but fortunately there was no sign of him.

  Meiling frowned at Owen and Dezi. “You mustn’t say those things when Crozier could walk in at any moment. He won’t want to get us into trouble, but our teachers are legally obliged to report any hint of immoral behaviour to Hospital Earth.”

  “I don’t care if Owen gets reported,” said Dezi. “With any luck, a Hospital Earth Inspector would show up and send him to Correctional for spreading immoral lies about me.”

  “The problem is that it wouldn’t stop with just Owen getting in trouble,” I said. “You know what happens when a Hospital Earth Inspector starts sniffing around. We’d all be interrogated, and the Inspector would go through every fault listed on our records since we were in Nursery. It would end with the whole history club summer trip being cancelled.”

  Dezi shrugged. “You can’t expect me to keep quiet when Owen is spreading a lot of lies about me.”

  “I haven’t been spreading lies,” said Owen. “I may have said a few things to Sunesh, but that was his fault not mine.”

  Dezi gave him a contemptuous look. “You can’t blame your lies on Sunesh.”

  “But he was the one who started saying things about you.” The whine in Owen’s voice reminded me unpleasantly of Cathan. “I just joined in.”

  “What did Sunesh say about me?” demanded Dezi.

  “Sunesh said that ...” Owen broke off and hesitated before speaking again. “He made some ridiculous claims about what happened between you and him on the autumn history club trip.”

  I was grazzed. I could believe Owen had been telling boasting lies to other boys, but it seemed entirely out of character for shy, retiring Sunesh.

  Dezi turned her glare on Sunesh now. “Is every boy in this history club telling lies about me? Exactly what did you claim had happened between us?”

  Sunesh looked terrified. “I didn’t claim anything had happened. I just said that ... Well, it doesn’t matter what I said.”

  Dezi advanced on him. “It does matter. Tell me what you said to Owen!”

  “It wasn’t anything bad. I just ...”

  Sunesh abruptly broke off his sentence because Crozier had finally arrived. He was carrying a large box under his arm, which he dumped onto a table, before opening his bag and taking out the genuine, twenty-first century baseball cap that the history club had found in a stasis box on a dig site three years ago. It had been rejected by the experts as completely worthless, so Crozier had been wearing it on school trips ever since.

  “It’s time for the room lottery,” he said.

  We all instantly forgot about the Owen and Dezi crisis, and gathered around Crozier, watching expectantly as he took out his lookup.

  “For the benefit of the newcomers,” continued Crozier, “I need to explain that these domes are set up to have rooms for thirty pupils and their party leader. I often have over thirty pupils wanting to come on a history club trip. Rather than turn anyone away, the club tradition is that we have a room lottery on arrival to see who gets a room and who has to sleep in the hall. There are thirty-one of you on this trip, so only one person will be unlucky.”

  I saw Wren look nervously around the hall. She was probably thinking that trying to sleep in here would be a nightmare. She was right too. Some of the class would stay up late, chatting to friends and watching the hall wall vid. Others would get up at the crack of dawn and come in to eat breakfast. During the brief part of the night that the hall was empty, the food dispensers ran system cleanses every hour. Those involved making a loud gurgling noise, followed by a series of painfully high-pitched bleeps.

  I knew these things from personal experience. I’d been stuck without a room on two previous school history club trips. Fortunately, both times it had been on the shorter spring or autumn break trips. Being stuck without a room for the whole of the long summer break was far worse.

  “Another tradition is that you can make a room pact with someone,” said Crozier. “That means that if one of you gets a room and the other doesn’t, then the one with the room has to let the other person sleep on their floor. There’s just enough space for that, though it means the person in the bed can’t get out without standing on the person sleeping on the floor.”

  He paused for a second. “The room sensors obviously won’t allow boys and girls to share a room, and they check your medical records so those with same-sex preferences aren’t allowed to share with their own sex either.”

  “Which is a blatant abuse of personal information given to our psychologists in supposedly confidential consultations,” said Milo.

  “You’re welcome to register a formal complaint with Hospital Earth, Milo,” said Crozier. “Everyone now has three minutes to make room pacts. All pacts should be sealed with a public handshake to avoid a
nyone trying to sneak out of their commitment.”

  People always made room pacts within their own year group. After several years visiting dig sites together, we Seventeens already knew exactly what we’d do. Dezi and Meiling always made a pact, and so did Owen and Sunesh. Milo and Radley weren’t allowed to share a room with anyone, and I never made pacts. The only person I’d have been prepared to share such a tiny room with was my friend Issette, and she’d no interest in coming on history trips.

  Dezi and Meiling shook hands on their pact, but I was grazzed to see Owen try to shake hands with Sunesh as usual, only to have Sunesh pointedly turn his back on him. That had to be because of Owen diverting Dezi’s anger against him on to Sunesh instead.

  I could understand Sunesh being annoyed about that, but he’d been putting up with much worse from Owen for years, so I was a little surprised that he was making a stand against him now. I just hoped that Sunesh wouldn’t be the unlucky one left without a room in the lottery, because if he was then Owen would spend the whole summer gloating about it.

  The younger ones only took a few seconds longer to make their decisions too, except for the Fourteens where Landon was urgently negotiating with the others. Wren and Alund just stood silently watching the rest of us with tense faces. As the only ones in their year groups, they had no friends here, so no options for room pacts at all.

  Once the Fourteens had sorted themselves out, Crozier put his lookup on top of the food dispensers, tapped it with his finger, and then moved away as it started the automated room lottery sequence.

  “Room 1,” said the monotone, automated voice of the lookup. “Owen Durham.”

  “Amaz!” Owen gazed triumphantly at Sunesh.

  Meiling was the next of the Seventeens to get lucky, being allocated room 6. By the time we got up to room 23, all the Seventeens except me and Sunesh had got a room. I could see an anxious frown on Sunesh’s handsome face.

  “Room 23,” announced the lookup. “Sunesh Atwal.”

  Sunesh gave a sigh of relief. I was the one getting nervous now. Wren and Alund were both still roomless too, and looked close to panic, but I knew they had nothing to worry about. I’d been on enough history club trips to work out that Crozier had rigged his room lottery sequence. The room allocation was perfectly random as far as room 28, but room 29 and room 30 always went to the two youngest remaining club members.

  “Room 24,” announced the lookup. “Jarra Reeath.”

  I relaxed briefly, but grew concerned again as the lottery reached room 28 and allocated it to one of the Sixteens. None of the three kids on their first history club trip had a room yet. The rigged lottery would give the last two rooms to Wren and Alund, so Landon would be the one left without a room. I consoled myself with the fact that Landon wouldn’t have to sleep in the hall, because I’d seen him shake hands with one of the other Fourteens for a room pact.

  I was shocked when the lookup gave room 29 to Landon, and room 30 to Alund. Wren didn’t just look shocked but devastated. Oh nuke. I couldn’t help imagining how I’d have felt if I’d been in this situation on my first trip with the school history club. My room had been my only safe refuge.

  There was an awkward silence for a minute, with everyone pulling faces at each other, and then I groaned and gave in. History club tradition was that room lottery results should be accepted without argument, but someone had to do something in this case, and I was the history club captain so ...

  “Wren can have room 24,” I said.

  Chapter Three

  All the other club members turned to stare at me, but Crozier just nodded calmly. “Wren and Jarra, please stay here and talk to me. The rest of you can go and unpack your things. I want everyone back in the hall in twenty minutes, so we can have lunch before I give my introductory talk and start issuing equipment.”

  There was a babble of conversation as the rest of the history club picked up their bags and left the hall. I reluctantly went over to join Crozier and Wren.

  “Jarra, are you suggesting sharing room 24 with Wren?” asked Crozier.

  I shuddered at the thought of spending all summer wedged into a sliver of a room with the girl. “Chaos, no. Wren can have room 24 to herself. I’ll be fine with a sleep sack in the hall.”

  Crozier went across to the box on the table, opened it, and took out a black impact suit. “Wren, the protective impact suits we wear on the dig sites have to be precisely the right size or the special fabric makes them hideously uncomfortable to wear. There won’t be any impact suits in the store room that are small enough to fit you, so I ordered this one from New York Fringe Central Supplies. Don’t let me forget to return it to them at the end of our trip, or we’ll get charged for it.”

  He paused. “You can take your suit to your room now, Wren, and I’ll get someone to show you how to put it on later.”

  Wren tucked the impact suit under her arm, hesitated, gave me a weird look, and then dragged her bag off out of the hall. She probably felt I’d given my room to her out of pity, fiercely hated the idea of accepting it and having to be grateful to me, but couldn’t force herself to turn it down. At least, that was how my 11-year-old self would have felt.

  Crozier faced me. “Thank you for giving up your room to Wren. That was a very awkward situation.”

  “What went wrong with the room lottery?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said warily.

  “The lottery is rigged so rooms 29 and 30 always go to the two youngest people left without a room. Wren should have got room 29.”

  Crozier raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize the history club members all knew the room lottery was rigged.”

  I shook my head. “They don’t. I’ve watched so many room lotteries that I worked it out, but I haven’t told anyone else because I approve of your reasons for doing it. So what went wrong this time?”

  “Nothing went wrong. I wanted to make sure that newcomers weren’t left without a room, so I rigged the lottery to give rooms 29 and 30 to the two who’d most recently passed their gold safety award. In most cases, they’re also the youngest two, but Wren passed her gold safety award the week before Alund and Landon.”

  “Ah, now I understand.”

  “I’ll change the lottery to make sure this doesn’t happen again, but we’re stuck with today’s result. In the circumstances, I’ll let you use the dome store room as your room for this summer break, Jarra.”

  I was too grazzed to speak. Crozier had never allowed anyone to enter a dome store room without him before. It wasn’t just that the school history club would have to pay for any damaged items. Some of the things in the store room, like the laser gun, were potentially lethal if misused.

  “The door code of the store room is the date of the first moon landing,” added Crozier. “I assume you know what that is.”

  I nodded eagerly. Norms probably wouldn’t even know that people had gone to the moon long before the invention of portal technology, but all Handicapped historians knew the details of the Apollo programme. People must have been born with the same immune system flaw as us all through history. Any of the astronauts in the Apollo programme could have been Handicapped like us, and no one would ever have known.

  It was the invention of interstellar portals that made us different, subhumans to be dumped on Earth and ignored. Interstellar portals gave norms the stars, but slammed the door to space in the faces of the Handicapped. The space programmes of pre-history were different. Nothing had taken those away from us. Those ancient dreams were still our dreams. Those ancient triumphs were still our triumphs.

  “20 July 1969,” I said. “Thank you for trusting me to use the store room.”

  “You’ve earned my trust, Jarra,” said Crozier. “For years, I’ve known I could depend on you to do all the most difficult and dangerous excavation work to the very best of your ability. You’ve been the finest tag leader that the history club has ever had.”

  I flushed with pleasure at his complimen
t. This was my chance to say some things myself. Crozier had given me so much help over the years, particularly during that crucial first trip with the school history club when I was 11. I’d been overwhelmed by problems back then. If it hadn’t been for Crozier’s patient help, I’d have given in and abandoned my dream of becoming an archaeologist.

  Crozier hadn’t just helped me hold on to that dream, but spent countless hours teaching me how to move in impact suits, use tag guns, shift teetering rocks without causing a landslide, and all the other skills I needed on a dig site.

  I wanted to take my chance to thank him for that, but I was always chaos bad at saying anything emotional. I was still struggling to find the right words when Crozier started talking again.

  “I’ll have to issue equipment to everyone today, and after that I’ll need access to the stores every morning straight after breakfast to collect any extra items we need for the excavation work that day. If anything unexpected happens, so I need access at another time, then I’ll message you. It’s not an ideal arrangement, but you’ll still have far more privacy sleeping in the store room than in the hall.”

  Crozier carried his bag off to his own room, and I was left alone in the hall. I stared gloomily at the blank wall vid. Crozier’s words had been hugely complimentary, but something about them was bothering me. He hadn’t said that I was the finest tag leader that the history club had ever had, but tellingly used the past tense.

  I’d been a tag leader for the history club since the summer when I was 13 years old. Even on the safer, flatter areas of fringe dig sites, there was an element of danger in excavating the ancient ruined cities. A wall could fall and bury you, the ground beneath you could collapse, or you could stumble across something deadly that had been casually discarded during the great rush of people leaving Earth for other worlds in Exodus century.

  A tag leader worked in the middle of the hazard zone, directing the excavation. I loved the challenge of making rapid decisions, the thrill of the risks involved, and the excitement of discovering ancient artefacts. The history club ran several dig teams, each with its own tag leader, and I’d held the coveted spot of tag leader for our team 1 since I was 15.