I couldn’t face talking about this with Issette any more than with Fian, so I was relieved when the door opened at this point. Fian came in carrying a black impact suit. His long blond hair was in such a mess that I guessed he’d tried on half a dozen of the protective suits to see which fitted best. He saw the floating holo image and stopped to wave.
‘Hello, Issette.’
Issette waved back at him. ‘I must go now. I need to get dressed and check Keon is ready to give his demonstration. Wish us luck.’
‘Good luck.’ Fian and I obediently chorused the words.
Issette’s image vanished as she ended the call, and Fian looked at me in confusion. ‘Good luck with what?’
‘I’m not sure. Issette’s talked Keon into showing his light sculptures to someone.’
Fian shrugged and changed the subject. ‘Dalmora’s back.’
Fian and I were both members of our class dig team 1, and the other three members of the team, Dalmora, Amalie and Krath, were our closest friends. ‘What about Amalie and Krath?’ I asked.
Fian shook his head. ‘Dalmora’s the only one so far.’
He hung up his impact suit and combed his hair back into a semblance of order, then we headed out of our grey flexiplas walled room, and along a grey flexiplas corridor to the grey flexiplas hall, which was the only room in the dome that could hold more than half a dozen people. We found Dalmora there, an anxious expression on her beautiful dark face, and her waist-long black hair uncharacteristically tangled, desperately apologizing to Lecturer Playdon.
‘Normally I can just portal to Danae Off-world, walk up to an interstellar portal and dial Earth. This morning there were huge queues. There were block portal windows scheduled for the most popular planet destinations, but nothing for Earth, so I had to wait in the main queue for over three hours before I …’
Lecturer Playdon gave up waiting for a chance to speak and firmly interrupted her. ‘Calm down, Dalmora. I got your message explaining the delay, and anyway you’re the first one back.’
‘Really? I saw Lolia in the corridor.’
‘Lolia and Lolmack stayed on Earth to spend time with their Handicapped baby,’ said Playdon. ‘Fian and Jarra stayed here as well, of course, and I was visiting friends at the New Tokyo Dig Site. You’re the first to get back from off world. Apparently, there are major delays on all interstellar and cross-sector portal traffic.’
‘Oh.’ Dalmora seemed to relax a bit.
‘Earth is in the centre of Alpha sector, so you just needed an interstellar portal,’ said Playdon. ‘The rest of the class are coming from planets in other sectors and will have to travel cross-sector to Alpha sector first. Amalie will have to portal cross-sector twice to get here from Epsilon sector, so I’ve messaged her to say I understand she’ll be especially late.’
Dalmora went off to her room, followed by a trail of bobbing hover bags, and Playdon turned on the huge wall vid at the end of the hall. The Earth Rolling News banner appeared above a scene of the Solar 5 spaceship lying in the bottom of a giant crater with its shields glowing against the rubble. The shields suddenly vanished, the escape hatches opened, and figures in Military blue impact suits started climbing out.
I groaned. ‘Not again! It’s been five weeks since the solar super storm and the rescue. I know Earth Rolling News don’t often get exciting news stories of their own, they mostly pick them up from the sector newzies, but really …’
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