lethal alien animal species was overlooked, portal quarantine procedures failed, and the chimera infested other worlds, threatening the survival of the human race.’
There was a moment of grim silence before the General Marshal continued. ‘After the lesson of the Thetis chaos year, humanity finally realized it was vital to allow Planet First teams the time and budget to do a meticulous job, but financial and logistical realities mean we still can’t make an exhaustive search of uninhabitable star systems. I’d be extremely surprised if we’d missed a planet with technology sufficiently advanced to construct the alien probe in Delta, Epsilon or Kappa, but those sectors will be rechecked anyway.’
The Gamma Sector News reporter wasn’t giving way to anyone else. ‘The newly formed Isolationist Party feel searching for the alien home world is a mistake because humanity would be better off not encountering aliens.’
‘I fail to understand the logic of trying to pretend an alien civilization doesn’t exist when they’ve already got a probe orbiting our home world,’ said the General Marshal. ‘We urgently need to know if any of our inhabited worlds are dangerously near alien territory. I’ll take a question from someone else now.’
The next questioner went back to the subject of Fian and me. ‘Alpha and Omega. Our viewers want to know when Commander Tell Morrath and Major Eklund will be available for interviews. They’ve made no public appearances since the signal was sent.’
The General Marshal smiled. ‘I’m fully aware of the ferocious levels of public interest in Commander Tell Morrath and Major Eklund. Fortunately, the remote location of their class protects them from continual invasion of privacy by the vid channels of every sector. No Military officer should have to suffer merciless interrogation by the newzies.’ His smile widened. ‘Except for myself of course.’
‘But Commander Tell Dramis and Major Weldon appeared on Earth Rolling News for extensive periods,’ said the Alpha and Omega representative.
‘Only to provide public information on behalf of the Military.’ The General Marshal paused for a second. ‘That’s all for now. If you want my answers to any questions that weren’t asked, then I’m sure Gamma Sector News will be happy to invent some for you just the way they did after my last newzie conference.’
The General Marshal left the podium while everyone was still laughing at that comment, the vid coverage switched back to the Earth Rolling News studios, and Lecturer Playdon went up to the wall vid and turned it off.
‘A year!’ Krath sounded as frustrated as I felt.
‘If the alien home world is near to Earth, then it may only take a couple of months to find it.’ Playdon turned to look at me and Fian. ‘Congratulations on your promotions, Commander Tell Morrath and Major Eklund.’
I was startled by my classmates applauding. Not all of them of course. When they found out about my lies and my Handicap, some had accepted me, but others tried to drive me away with insults. Eventually, I’d won grudging tolerance from most of the ape haters, and now I was famous a couple of them were fawning over me in a way that made me want to vomit, but there was one person pointedly folding her arms and refusing to give even a token hand clap. Petra would never stop hating me. Not after Joth’s death.
There was the usual stab of pain as I thought of Joth. I blamed Petra for his death, because he was killed doing something stupidly dangerous after an argument with her. She blamed me, because the argument was about her making him insult me. We could both be right, or both wrong. It really didn’t matter. Nothing could bring Joth back, and Petra and I would always be enemies.
‘Put the chairs away and fetch your luggage,’ said Playdon.
A few minutes later, the hall was crowded with people and bobbing hover bags, as the class waited for Playdon to do his final tour of inspection.
‘It’s unusual for High Congress to clarify an order like that,’ said Dalmora. ‘They’re obviously very embarrassed by all the comments on the newzies.’
I sighed. ‘But not embarrassed enough to order Fian and me back to Alien Contact right away.’
She tactfully changed the subject. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing a new city. I hope we’ll spend some time at Jaipur or Chennai later in the year. It would be totally zan to be excavating one of the cities where my ancestors lived.’
‘I’ve started working on my family tree,’ said Amalie, ‘but I’ve only got as far back as 2640. My ancestors were all on planets in Gamma sector then.’
Fian sighed. ‘I’ll never know about mine. My great-grandparents were all on Freya in Alpha sector during the conflict there, and its planetary records were deliberately destroyed. All I know is Freya was originally settled from Earth Europe. What about your ancestors, Jarra?’
I shrugged. ‘They’ll have been from everywhere. The Betan planets all had open colonization, and members of a Military clan marry people from lots of different worlds anyway.’
I was dodging the question. The truth was the Tell clan had a complete family tree on record, but I hadn’t dared to look at it. Fate had robbed me of a family twice already. Once at birth, and again when my parents were killed. If I looked at the Tell family tree before I was actually a clan member, I might tempt fate into making something go wrong a third time.
‘My aunt worked out our family tree all the way back to Exodus century,’ said Krath. ‘I’ve got ancestors from all five of Earth’s continents, so I don’t care what cities we go to. I just hope there’s no more rainforest, or sabre cats, or dire wolves. I’ve had enough of those here at Eden.’
‘I still can’t believe people deliberately genetically salvaged dangerous creatures,’ said Fian.
‘Earth isn’t civilized,’ said Krath, for about the thousandth time. ‘The ruins. The animals. The insects. The solar storms bringing down the portal network.’
Playdon returned just in time to hear him. ‘As I keep saying, the Military Planet First teams carefully select every colony world and make it safe for humans. Earth is our only world that never went through that process, and the vast abandoned areas are dangerous.’
He glanced round the class. ‘We’ll be portalling inter-continent to get to London Main. If we keep close together, with Jarra and Fian in the middle, people may not notice them going through the Transit areas. If we get split up, then I’ll stay with Jarra and Fian. You’ve all got the new dome portal code, so we’ll be able to meet up there.’
Playdon led the way to the portal room and we hurried after him, clicking our key fobs to make our hover bags chase us. Fian and I stayed in the centre of the crowd as we trooped through the portal and gathered under a location board saying ‘Africa Transit 3’. Once the whole class and their luggage had arrived, we headed on past the flashing signs about inter-continental portal charges, and joined the queue for a portal that was already active and locked open to Earth Europe. The queue had been moving rapidly forwards but suddenly stopped.
Amalie groaned. ‘The portal’s cut out. It’s flashing a congestion warning.’
I sighed. ‘Some idiot with more hover bags than brain cells must have stopped in the arrival zone on the other side of the portal to count his luggage.’
‘There’s only a few people ahead of us in the queue,’ said Amalie. ‘I hope it doesn’t … Oh chaos, you’ve been spotted!’
I turned to look behind us. Transits were usually full of purposefully hurrying figures, but now everyone was standing still, staring at Fian and me. A rhythmic sound started, I realized people were clapping, and felt myself grow hot with embarrassment.
‘If we’re stuck here for long we’ll get mobbed,’ muttered Amalie.
She was right. People were constantly arriving through portals but no one was leaving, so the watching crowd was growing larger at frightening speed. Lots of people were holding up lookups to make vids of us, and someone was bound to have called Earth Rolling