Off-world was teeming with Handicapped parents sending their normal kids away to off-world universities. There were also off-world history and medical students flooding in. The problem wasn’t so much the people, but the quantities of luggage chasing their owners in all directions.
I weaved my way through the mob, avoiding the area with big red information signs about the colossal off-world portal charges, and went to another local portal. Anyone watching would think I was mad, coming here and then just going from one local portal to another. They’d be right too.
I was relieved when I made it without losing myself, let alone my luggage. I entered the code for the dome on New York Dig Site, where our course would be based for the first couple of months, and the portal started talking to me.
‘Warning, your destination is a restricted access area,’ it told me. ‘If your scanned genetic code is not listed as authorized for access, then your portal will not establish but your personal account will still be charged for this journey.’
I hesitated, with last-minute cowardly thoughts running through my head, and an acid voice spoke from behind me.
‘You may have all day, but I don’t!’
I glanced behind me at an impatient, elderly woman, who reminded me of my scary science teacher at school, turned back to face the portal and took a deep breath. I was Jarra, a Military kid, trained in unarmed combat. A history lecturer and twenty-nine other history students wouldn’t scare me.
I stepped into the portal and a new identity.
4
I arrived in a very basic accommodation dome. There had been no attempt to disguise the curve of the outside wall, or even colour the flexiplas from its depressing natural grey. I hadn’t expected anything better, because I’d been to several dig sites before with the school history club.
A harassed looking man of about thirty had been watching a trail of bobbing luggage head out of the door, presumably following its owner. He turned to face me and my own shoal of bags. ‘Welcome to University Asgard Pre-history Foundation course at the New York Dig Site. I’m Lecturer Playdon. You are …?’ He scrolled down a list of names on his lookup.
‘Jarra Reeath,’ I told him.
He first looked startled, and then as if he’d just noticed a very bad smell. ‘You’re in room 6,’ he said, stabbing his lookup with a vicious finger to check my name off on his list. ‘Student greet is in the dining hall in one hour.’
Someone else had just come through the portal. Lecturer Playdon turned to the new arrival, and I led my little procession of bags through the door and went in search of room 6. I’d learnt a few useful things in the one-minute encounter. Lecturer Playdon obviously knew what I was, and didn’t like it, but he was being professional and he wasn’t going to tell the other students. That was good news, but even better was the fact he hadn’t been able to tell at first glance that I was the ape girl. Rationally, I knew there was no truth in all the exo jokes about the look and smell of apes, but eighteen years of seeing them on the vid channels had still worn away at my confidence.
I tracked down room 6, which for some reason was between room 4 and room 12. It wasn’t bad for a room on a dig site. Bed. Storage space. Even a very small wall vid. I unpacked my bags, and then it was time to face the student greet. I’d survived meeting one enemy, and now I was going to meet another twenty-nine. I comforted myself with the fact that Playdon knew what I was, but the other students wouldn’t.
I’d already discovered the dining hall while looking for my room, so I headed back there. I found a dozen or so students sitting on grey flexiplas chairs around grey flexiplas tables and looking at the grey flexiplas walls. More were arriving.
I sat near the back, and tried to get in character. For a month, I’d studied Military vids. I’d trained in unarmed combat. I’d built an entire life history and family for Jarra Military kid, or JMK as I’d nicknamed her. By this time, I knew JMK better than I knew myself.
Lecturer Playdon was sitting at the front of the room and looking depressed. After a few minutes, he seemed to decide he had a full class present. He started with exactly the same words he’d said when I arrived.
‘Welcome to University Asgard Pre-history Foundation course at the New York Dig Site. I’m Lecturer Playdon.’
After that, he branched out into daring new verbal territory. ‘We will be staying at New York for the next two months before moving on to our next dig site. This is the dining hall, used for meals and classes. You’ll have noticed all the other rooms in this dome are very small. Has everyone found their rooms, and have you any problems or questions?’
A hand went up, from a blonde girl in a clinging dress of glowing fabric that showed patches of bare skin in unexpected places. None of them were actually over restricted body areas, but they were certainly very close to them. She could have stepped straight out of a wild party scene in a vid.
‘I couldn’t find the concealed door to the bathroom in my room, or the concealed window,’ she said. ‘Should I have a special key code?’
There were a few giggles from round the room. I was one of the guilty parties.
Lecturer Playdon broke the bad news to her. ‘That’s probably because there is no concealed door. There’s a bathroom at the end of each corridor. That’s one bathroom between ten of you, so no lingering in the shower. There are no windows in the dome. Anyone else?’
Everyone else kept quiet.
‘Good. I’ve one very important warning for you. Don’t go outside the dome until instructed to do so. I really mean that. Now I’ll let you get on with your meet and greet.’
He went to sit in a corner and ostentatiously started working through some info on his lookup. Apparently we were supposed to run things ourselves now. There was a nervous silence, and then a girl stood up. She looked just like a vid presenter, with glittering rainbow lights flickering randomly through her waist long, straight black hair. Expertly applied makeup emphasized the delicate features of her classically-beautiful dark face, and her clothes must have cost a fortune.
‘We’d better start introducing ourselves,’ she said, gazing round at us with a superlatively confident smile. ‘I’m Dalmora Rostha.’ The slow drawling way she spoke told me her home sector before she said it. ‘I’m from Alpha sector. My father is Ventrak Rostha. He’s made some info vids, and I’m hoping to make history vids myself some day.’
There was a sort of stunned silence. What got to me was the sweetly modest way she said it. ‘Made some info vids’ … Ventrak Rostha was famous. Just about everyone followed his History of Humanity series, each eagerly awaited episode covering another key event of the period since the first colony was set up on an Alpha sector world until the present day.
Ventrak Rostha was a brilliant man. I loved his vids so much that I could even forgive him for being an exo. That didn’t stop me hating his daughter though. She was probably a rich and spoilt nardle brain, who thought the rest of humanity should just lie down and be trampled on by her elegant little Alphan feet. It would happen too. She was guaranteed a glistening career ahead of her making vids. It didn’t matter how second-rate and incompetent they were, everyone would praise them to the skies because she was the daughter of the incomparable Ventrak Rostha.
Yes, I admit it, I was jealous.
Ventrak Rostha’s daughter smiled round at the grazzed class. ‘So who next? Anyone else from Alpha?’
There was dead silence.
‘Anyone from Beta sector then?’ asked our new celebrity leader.
The one in the party dress stood up and gave a theatrical wiggle. Oh yes, of course she was Betan. I’d worked that one out already from her dress.
‘I’m Lolia. I see we have sixteen men and fourteen women, so I know you won’t think I’m greedy when I say I’m looking