He gave a shrug of resignation. ‘Our clan is in an alliance headed by the Breck clan of the middle rank. Being in an alliance is the first step towards getting our clan officially recognized, but we’ve little status and no influence in alliance council decisions.’
‘That’s why your clan has to accept whatever the alliance decides about Lolette?’ I asked.
‘Exactly,’ said Lolmack. ‘If we caused trouble, the alliance would discard us, and we’d have to begin again from nothing. It should have been so different. Our clan has no status but we’re wealthy. We’d arranged to buy adoption for our child.’
I frowned. Lolette wasn’t an unwanted baby. Lolmack and Lolia had made great sacrifices to keep her. ‘I don’t understand what you mean by buying adoption.’
‘A clan may adopt someone as part of marriage negotiations, because they’re impressed by someone’s talent, or if they’re given a large financial incentive,’ said Lolmack. ‘Lolette should have been adopted into the Breck clan as a baby. She’d have remained our daughter, but she’d have been elevated to the middle rank and …’
He pulled a pained face. ‘Lolette was born Handicapped, so now we’ll be grateful if she’s even acknowledged by our clan cluster.’
The silence after that was broken by Playdon’s voice coming from near the door. ‘Since this is a pre-history course, I’d like to point out the original Parthenon was not a Roman building but a Greek temple.’
Lolmack shrugged. ‘There’s no real difference. Ancient Rome and Greece were both on Earth and far back in pre-history.’
I smothered a giggle as I saw the expression on Playdon’s face.
‘There is a very significant difference,’ said Playdon. ‘Although Beta sector claims to be inspired by ancient Rome, there were many initial misconceptions, and of course Betan society has evolved over the centuries.’
He paused for a second. ‘Now I’ve important news for you. Military Security have released Petra. I’ve spoken to her about the issue of insulting Jarra, and she knows I won’t tolerate any further breaches of the Gamman moral code.’
Steen stood up. ‘You can’t let Petra rejoin the class!’
‘I can and I will,’ said Playdon. ‘Military Security arrested her, interrogated her, and decided she’s innocent. Anyone with access to the dig team assignment schedule would know when this class was moving to London Main. Whoever passed on that information, it wasn’t Petra. I’m moving her from our class dig team 4 to team 5 because ill feeling between team members can be dangerous, but I’m not throwing a student off this course for a crime she didn’t commit. Please sit down, Steen.’
Steen didn’t move.
‘I asked you to sit down.’
There was another moment of suspense before Steen flung himself down in his chair. Playdon nodded, turned, and went out of the door.
‘Why is Steen so angry, Jarra?’ Raven asked in an urgent whisper.
I sighed. ‘Steen hates Petra. One of the students in our class, Joth, was Twoing with Petra. They had an argument and Joth got himself killed doing something stupid. Steen was a friend of Joth. He blamed Petra for what happened, so …’
‘I was Joth’s friend too,’ said Krath, ‘and Steen’s right. We should all insist that …’
He broke off because Playdon was back, with Petra standing next to him. There was an awkward silence and I realized some of the class were looking at me. I took a deep breath, forced myself to stand up, and walked across to Petra.
‘I hope we can make a fresh start.’
She stared at me, her expression changing from defiance to shock. I waited a second, but Petra seemed far too grazzed to say anything, so I just went back to my seat.
Krath frowned at me. ‘Why didn’t you tell Petra to nuke off?’
‘Because Playdon’s done a huge amount to help me since I joined this class. I’m not rewarding him by stirring up trouble when he’s grieving for his dead wife.’
‘Jarra’s right,’ said Dalmora. ‘We must respect Playdon’s decision.’
Krath glanced at Amalie and then Fian, but they both nodded agreement.
‘Fine,’ muttered Krath. ‘Have it your way, but I’m not happy about Petra being back with us.’
‘Neither am I,’ said Raven.
A crowd of figures in impact suits were gathering by our sled storage dome. Impact suits are wonderful things. When a ruined building collapses on your head, or something explodes and sends debris flying at you, the special fabric triggers and goes solid to protect you. The only problem is they’re chaos difficult to put on. I’d been proud that I could suit up in the Military standard time of two minutes, but I’d just seen Raven casually beat my best ever time by ten seconds.
‘I can’t believe how fast you suited up,’ I said.
Raven laughed. ‘I’ve had special training, Jarra.’
The last few stragglers arrived, and Playdon started talking. ‘Now Jarra is able to come with us, we’ll drive to the edge of the island. You can all admire the view from the Land Raft before we start our excavation work.’
A few minutes later, our line of hover sleds was heading along Gap 15. There was an unbroken wall of buildings on either side of us, towering up to about twenty storeys high. In ancient vid images of San Angeles, these buildings were dazzling white, and their long uniform lines had a regal elegance, but time had aged the concraz to a grubby pale grey and scarred it with cracks and holes.
Our sleds kept carefully to the safe zone between the two red lines, so we had the luxury of keeping our hoods down for the trip, instead of breathing the musty, filtered air inside our suits. I was sitting on the bench seat of a transport sled, between Fian and Raven, our three Military impact suits conspicuous among the standard black suits worn by the other students.
There was an excited yelp from opposite us. ‘Alien Contact have announced they’ve finished searching Alpha sector!’ said Krath.
Everyone madly checked their lookups. ‘So the alien home world definitely isn’t in Alpha sector,’ said Dalmora. ‘I must admit I’m relieved. It would have been worrying to think of it being near my family on Danae.’
‘And the General Marshal’s speech was only a few days ago,’ Krath said joyfully. ‘If they can search Alpha sector that quickly, then it won’t take long to find the aliens after all.’
‘Alien Contact started searching Alpha sector the moment the alien probe arrived at Earth,’ said Fian.
‘Oh,’ said Krath. ‘That’s months so … Why don’t they borrow more people from the Planet First teams, or even stop working on the new colony worlds entirely for a while? The Isolationist Party would whine about it of course, because they don’t want us to find the alien home world, but nobody else would care.’
‘My brother would care,’ said Amalie in acid tones. ‘His Colony Ten group are on standby waiting for Planet First to declare the next Kappa world safe for first stage colonization.’
‘Oh.’