Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Well, I’m pretty sure he’s a goner,’ Poppy said.

Juno cringed at the word. ‘Why?’

‘Well, his best friend slash girlfriend just jumped into a river.’

‘It wasn’t his fault.’

‘I’m not saying it is, just…’ Poppy lowered her voice conspiratorially, ‘everyone thinks he had something to do with it. Him and—’ she cut herself off with a startled glance at Juno.

‘My sister.’ Juno finished the sentence with bitterness in the back of her mouth.

When they reached the edge of the refectory, smells of food, of roasting meat and warm bread, reminded Juno of the emptiness in her stomach. And yet, once she entered, she couldn’t bring herself to eat any of it.

‘No one is like Eliot,’ Juno said, thinking of the way he had looked earlier that day, in the back of an ambulance, river water pooled around his Converse trainers. His eyes shiny and vacant. He was the only member of the Beta that the UKSA had personally head-hunted; it struck Juno as unlikely that he would be kicked off the programme at this late stage.

‘But Astrid…?’ Poppy asked quietly. They shared a frightened look. ‘Why do you think she did it? Ran off like that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Juno looked down at her plate. Dinner that night was supposed to be a treat. The kind they served for school dinners on Fridays or at the end of term. Burgers smothered in ketchup with a side of thinly sliced fries. ‘All I can think is that Ara must have just convinced her to go. You know that way Ara has…’

‘She can convince anyone to do anything.’ Poppy put a chip in her mouth. ‘There’s a word for it in French,’ she said. Juno sighed. There had never been an evening that she was less interested in Poppy’s linguistic musings. ‘ Folie à deux . Madness shared by two. Like, infectious madness. The kind that makes you make a terrible decision and not think twice about it at the time. Only, all three of them escaped, so folie à trois , or folie à plusieurs – madness of many—’

‘Poppy.’ Juno’s eyes narrowed with a quick pinch of irritation.

‘Would you go without her?’

Juno couldn’t even imagine it, going to Terra-Two without Astrid. ‘There is no thought more horrible,’ she said. They lapsed into a grim silence, like defendants waiting for the jury to return, listening to the sounds of cars pulling up and leaving outside and footsteps in the corridor.

Finally, Poppy flung down her cutlery. Juno watched it clatter across the table. When she looked up, Poppy’s face was wet as she shoved her chair back and rushed away.

‘Poppy?’ Juno called after her.

‘Maybe this is just what she wanted,’ Poppy shouted back. ‘To ruin everything. Did Ara have to do it this way? Did she have to take all of us down with her?’

LEFT ALONE IN THE refectory, Juno let her meal grow cold before abandoning it and walking over to the glass doors at the far end of the room. Moths were flinging themselves at her reflection, attracted to the bright lights of the dining room, which seeped out into the unlit grounds and across the dim stretches of land they had skipped across that morning. Through the gloom, Juno thought she could see her own laughing self, dancing with Ara that morning in the rain.

She pulled the door open and stepped outside. The grass, which had baked under the sun all day, filled the air with a hot earthy smell that Juno inhaled deeply, and then she closed her eyes to pray.

Would you go without her?

It was possible that Astrid might not be cleared in a medical inspection. Juno knew that the incubation time of a virus could be anything from one day to a couple of years. Even as she stood in the garden, tiny strands of genetic code could be hijacking her sister’s cells or slithering into her bones to lie dormant for months. Rhinoviruses – such as the common cold – could live up to forty-eight hours on touchable surfaces, such as handrails and doorknobs, lift buttons and light switches, counters and coins passed from one hand to another. What lived in London’s rivers? Juno rubbed down the goosebumps on her arms and decided silently that if Astrid couldn’t go then she would not either.

A helicopter beat in the air above her head and Juno squinted up at the navy sky, drawn from her worry with a jolt of recollection. The world outside was astir. Everyone in the country was waiting to see if the launch would go ahead.

Juno headed out onto the gravel path behind the space centre, just glad to feel a tepid breeze at her back. As she turned the corner of the building, floodlights exploded behind her and the ground rumbled. Juno spun around in alarm to find herself in the path of an oncoming car, the tyres spinning so fast they skipped sharp little rocks at her ankles. Diving out of the way, Juno tumbled into a darkened patch of shrubbery beside the driveway.

The car came to a violent halt in front of the reception, the headlights drained to blackness, the rumble of the engine faded and was replaced by the muted slam of the driver’s door. ‘This way.’ It was their provost’s voice, and Juno crouched down further in the gloom, hoping not to be caught.

A second later, the back door opened and a boy in pyjamas climbed out. Juno glanced at his angular face with a jolt of recognition. She was sure she’d seen him before, in school perhaps, but it was difficult to tell in the darkness. He had waist-length hair and spider-black eyes. She liked the delicate way he moved, sloping back into the car to pull out a duffle bag and slinging it over his shoulder. She knew him. Jesse Solloway? she mouthed in surprise. She had trained with him for a few months after graduation. And, although she knew that a member of the backup crew would be enlisted to take Ara’s place, it felt unreal to see him so soon after Ara was gone. Before she’d even been buried.

‘You’ve got everything you need?’ came Professor Stenton’s voice. Juno tried to keep as still as possible. After the events of the day, she knew she was in disgrace and supposed to be in the space centre, choking down dinner. If her teacher turned and found her crouching in the shrubbery it was likely she would find herself in even more trouble.

‘Sure,’ the boy said. He turned suddenly and his eyes found Juno’s.

Her heart leapt and she bit down on her tongue.

He smiled conspiratorially, catching his bottom lip on the edge of a tooth. Juno pressed a finger to her mouth, as if to say shh . He nodded and turned away.

‘Come right this way,’ Professor Stenton’s voice called out from the entrance. ‘We have so much to do.’ The two figures disappeared inside. The driveway filled once more with darkness. Juno waited for a long while in the gloom before she was certain it was safe to clamber from her hiding place and return inside.

She walked around the edge of the building and re-entered at reception. The television was on low. The news was running, a man speaking into a microphone as headlines rolled across the screen. There was only one guard on duty. His ID badge read Edward . The lanky boy who collected the mail and nodded at them from behind the desk as they came and went.

‘Hi, Teddy.’

When he turned from the television his eyes widened with surprise. ‘Oh. Hello,’ he said. ‘Thought you’d be asleep by now.’

‘Even if they let me I don’t know if I’ll be able to.’ Although, even as she said it, Juno could feel the tiredness in her bones.

‘I bet. If I were you I’d be crapping myself.’

‘Really?’

‘For sure.’ He nodded towards the television, where the camera zoomed in to a live shot of the shuttle at the launch site, dimly illuminated in the darkness. ‘All those people watching you. All those reporters.’