Janet Edwards - Earth Flight

I bit my lip, remembering the Flight day when I was 4 years old. I’d sat on the floor with the other kids in Nursery, watched the vid coverage, and asked a nurse when I could portal to Adonis. She’d shaken her head and gently explained I couldn’t do that because I’d die. It had taken me a few minutes to understand what she was saying. I already knew the people I saw in the vids had families, while my friends and I didn’t. I couldn’t believe I’d been cheated out of the stars as well.

I could still feel my shocked outrage at the monstrous unfairness of it. A feeling that was repeated again and again as I grew older. When I was 5 years old, laughing at a joke on the vids about stupid, ugly apes, and an older kid slapped my face and told me to stop laughing because the joke was about people like us. When I was 7, and there was a lesson at school about how Earth was run by the off-worlders on the main board of Hospital Earth. Other people, real people, got to vote about how their own world was run, but the Handicapped had no say in what happened on Earth.

The final insult was when I was 9, and discovered Earth was physically in the centre of Alpha sector but not legally part of it. The off-worlders hadn’t just rejected me and everyone like me, they’d rejected Earth itself because we lived there!

Fian gave me a worried look. ‘Are you all right, Jarra?’

My psychologist at Next Step kept telling me it was pointless making myself unhappy by brooding over things I couldn’t change. I didn’t have much faith in psychologists, but he was probably right about that. I forced away the old bitterness. ‘I’m fine.’

The Earth Flight vid sequence ended. Krath went over to the wall vid just as a Gamma Sector News presenter started talking. ‘Now the news headlines for today. Major Jarra Tell Morrath is to join one of the Betan Military clans.’

The entire class stopped talking and stared at me as if I’d grown an extra head.

‘Talks between the two political factions on Hestia have failed to reach an agreement,’ continued the presenter. ‘The …’

Krath turned off the wall vid and gave me a grazzed look. ‘Jarra, that story’s a nardle mistake, isn’t it? You aren’t Betan.’

This was chaos embarrassing. Like most of the class, I’d grown up with prejudices about Beta sector. Only months ago, I’d been joining in their jokes about Betan sex vids, giggling at the scanty clothes Betans wore, and saying Beta sector couldn’t be trusted because it had been on the verge of war with the rest of humanity during its Second Roman Empire period.

Then I discovered I’d been born into a Betan clan, and they actually wanted contact with me. Anyone who’d grown up in Hospital Earth’s residences would understand exactly why I’d promptly rethought my attitudes, but I was in a class of norms. They wouldn’t know how rejected kids longed to have a family, and I didn’t want to explain that sort of private emotional stuff, so I kept my response simple and matter of fact.

‘It’s perfectly true. I was raised on Earth, but my birth family were Betan. You should have realized that. The newzies have been talking for weeks about me being descended from Tellon Blaze, and he was Betan.’

‘Tellon Blaze was Betan!’ Krath waved his hands in disbelief. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ said Lolmack, open contempt in his voice.

Lolmack and Lolia were the only two Betans in our class. They were older than the rest of us, married, and had a Handicapped baby. At the start of this course, Krath had made some remarks about the Handicapped being subhuman apes. He’d changed his opinions now, but Lolmack still held a grudge against him.

‘The other sectors never mention Tellon Blaze, the hero who saved humanity from the chimera of Thetis, was from Beta sector,’ continued Lolmack. ‘They never admit it was Beta sector that saved civilization from total collapse after Exodus century. They never tell our side of the Second Roman Empire, or try to understand our culture, or …’

‘That doesn’t matter now,’ Lolia interrupted in an oddly tense voice. ‘Jarra, is it true what Earth Rolling News is saying? The Tell clan are making you a clan member?’

Lolmack made a horizontal, air-slicing movement with his left hand; a classic Betan gesture of rejection. ‘That’s just an outlander news channel making a mistake.’

‘It’s not a mistake,’ I said.

Lolmack stood up and hurried over to me. ‘You’re sure, Jarra?’ he demanded. ‘The Tell clan aren’t just acknowledging your birth, but offering clan membership?’

I didn’t understand the urgency in his face, but I nodded. ‘The presentation ceremony is in three days time.’

‘A presentation ceremony!’ Lolmack turned to his wife. ‘That would …’

‘One of the Handicapped being formally presented to a clan of the gentes maiores !’ Lolia put her hands to her face. ‘If that happens …’

I was shocked to see she was crying. ‘I don’t understand why this is so …?’

‘Jarra,’ she said, ‘a handful of clans have acknowledged a Handicapped birth, but none has ever offered clan membership. The Tell clan are of the gentes maiores , the aristocracy of Zeus. If they do this, it could change our lives!’

I stared at her, totally bewildered by her dramatic words.

‘There’s a lot of prejudice against the Handicapped on Betan worlds,’ said Lolmack.

‘It’s like that in all the sectors,’ I said. ‘I’ve grown up watching off-world vids, and they all use the same insults. The only difference between Handicapped and norms is a fault in our immune system, but they call us throwbacks, Neanderthals, and ugly, smelly apes.’

‘It’s a bigger problem in Beta than the other sectors though, because of the clan system,’ said Lolmack. ‘The shame of a Handicapped birth doesn’t just affect the parents, but the whole clan.’

Lolia nodded. ‘When our baby was born Handicapped, the other partner in our triad marriage instantly divorced us. Lolette wasn’t genetically his child, but …’

Lolmack went to put his arm round her. ‘By saying that, he proved himself lower than the clanless. If things had been reversed, I would still count Lolette as my daughter, and still be here with you on Earth.’

Lolia smiled up at him. ‘I know that. He was more of a loss to you than to me.’ She looked back at me. ‘Hospital Earth rules meant Lolmack and I had to choose between making our daughter their ward and never seeing her again, or moving to Earth to be with her. Clan council ordered us to give up our ape child or be disowned. To have our own clan calling our daughter an ape and threatening us …’

‘Clan council had no choice,’ said Lolmack. ‘Alliance council had ruled the alliance could not afford the loss of status of a Handicapped birth, and threatened to remove our clan from the alliance if our child’s birth became known.’

He pulled a face. ‘So we joined this course to have an excuse for being on Earth. All this time, we’ve lived with the fact that if Lolette’s existence becomes known, our clan cluster must disown us to save their position in the alliance, but if the Tell clan welcome you as a clan member …’

‘It would change everything,’ said Lolia. ‘Just seeing you on the newzies has already made a difference to the way Betans speak of the Handicapped. Every clan was watching the vid coverage when you and Fian sent the signal to the alien sphere. Every clan saw how you looked and spoke and acted like any normal human. Every clan heard you named as a descendant of the great Tellon Blaze.’

Her words tumbled out eagerly now. ‘Jarra, if a clan of the gentes maiores make you a clan member, alliance council may agree to acknowledge Lolette’s birth, perhaps even permit her to be formally presented.’