LITMIR.BIZ

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highest Military honour, had been awarded to civilians for the first time. I was one of the despised Handicapped, born with a faulty immune system that meant I could only survive on Earth, but I was also one of only eleven living people entitled to wear the Artemis medal. It was an amaz thought.

      ‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘Fian’s parents said they’d stay on Earth until our four day break started, so Fian could go back with them to Hercules. Fian said he wanted to stay on Earth with me, but they were really disappointed.’

      Issette frowned. ‘So what happened? Did he go or …?’

      ‘He stayed with me. Fian can be incredibly stubborn.’

      Her frown vanished. ‘That’s good.’

      I shook my head. ‘Not entirely. His parents decided to stay on Earth with us during our break.’

      ‘Noooo!’ Issette ran her fingers through her frizzy hair. ‘Was it dreadful?’

      ‘Well, they did their best to be friendly, but …’

      ‘But?’

      I sighed. ‘They were being far too carefully polite all the time, and there were a lot of awkward silences. They said some nice things to me, but …’

      Issette wrinkled her nose. ‘You don’t think they meant them?’

      I tried to be fair about the situation. ‘It’s not surprising they’re unhappy about their son having a Handicapped girlfriend. I can’t leave Earth, which means Fian’s tied to Earth as well.’

      ‘Fian doesn’t seem to think that’s a problem,’ said Issette. ‘He says he wants to specialize in pre-history and spend a lot of time on Earth anyway.’

      ‘Fian may think that, but his parents must feel it’s already causing trouble. If I’d been a norm, we could have all gone to Hercules for a few days. And it’s not just the practical problems, it’s the stigma. Fian’s parents politely call me Handicapped, but what do their friends say to them? Their son has a Twoing contract with an ape, a nean, a throwback. That must be horribly embarrassing for them, so naturally they wish he’d picked a norm girl instead.’

      Issette pulled a face. ‘So what did you do during the break? You were stuck with Fian’s parents the whole time?’

      I nodded. ‘The four of us visited lots of places. Stonehenge. Pompeii. The Spirit of Man monument. The Wallam-Crane Science Museum. The Green Time exhibition at Greenwich.’

      Issette groaned. ‘It sounds like a list of our most boring school trips.’

      ‘I didn’t mind Stonehenge and Pompeii, but we spent an entire day at the Wallam-Crane Science Museum, including four ghastly hours looking at the technical displays on the history of portal development. Fian’s parents do some sort of scientific research at University Hercules, so they were fascinated, and Fian seemed to understand it all, but you know me and science.’

      She nodded. Issette knew exactly how much I hated science lessons at school, because she’d sat next to me during them and suffered my constant moaning. ‘My poor Jarra.’

      ‘If I ever get my hands on a time machine …’

      She grinned. ‘I know. You’d go straight back to 2142 and strangle Wallam-Crane at birth so he can’t invent the portal. You’re always saying that. It’s a stupid idea, you nardle brain! Would you really want to have to drive everywhere on hover sleds, instead of portalling around Earth?’

      I giggled. ‘Maybe not. I like ordinary portals. It’s just the interstellar ones that … Anyway, the worst bit was staying in the hotel.’

      ‘What’s wrong with a hotel? Surely it was nice to have your own bathroom for a change.’

      ‘I may be obsessed with history, but you’ve got obsessed with bathrooms since you started your Medical Foundation course.’

      ‘Bathrooms are very important,’ she said. ‘Do you know how many different sorts of bacteria live in the human digestive tract?’

      ‘No, and don’t you dare tell me! The problem with the hotel was that Fian’s from a planet in Delta sector.’

      Issette gave me a look of total incomprehension. ‘So?’

      ‘Everyone knows planets in Beta sector are the most sexually permissive. Gamma sector customs are similar to Earth, but Delta sector is really strict.’

      Issette caught up with what I meant. ‘You couldn’t share a room with Fian?’

      ‘Share a room? I’m surprised his parents allowed us to have rooms in the same hotel! We couldn’t even hug each other.’

      ‘Things can’t really be that prudish in Delta sector. Fian’s always seemed very … affectionate to you.’

      I grinned. ‘Fian’s an incredibly badly-behaved Deltan, but his parents are traditionalists. Since we’re only on our first three-month Twoing contract, they barely approved of us holding hands. Fian said it would save arguments if we followed their rules while they were around.’

      Issette rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling as she pulled an expressive face of disbelief. ‘And you were happy with that?’

      ‘Not exactly happy, but I don’t want to cause trouble between Fian and his parents. I’ve no idea what it’s like to have a real family, and it’s hard to discuss it with Fian because …’ I shook my head. ‘You understand.’

      Issette gave me a sympathetic look. The parent issue was as emotionally explosive for her as it was for me. A few brave parents move to Earth to be with their Handicapped child, but most never even consider it. They just hand the throwback over to be a ward of Hospital Earth and forget about the whole embarrassing affair.

      Kids like Issette and me grow up knowing we’re rejects, envying the children we see in the off-world vids who have real families. Most of us spend our time in Home dreaming of the day we’ll be 14, and have the option to get information on our parents and try to contact them. We have wildly unrealistic fantasies about how they’ll regret dumping us and want us back. By the time we’re actually 14, we know exactly how unlikely that is to happen, but most of us can’t let go of the hopeless dream and still go ahead and try to make contact.

      Issette was a classic case. She was desperate for acceptance and a real family, so she contacted her parents, but she just got more rejection. I was the opposite extreme, much too bitter at 14 to take up my option. I didn’t want acceptance from my parents, I wanted revenge for the way they’d abandoned me. When I was 18, I decided to get that revenge by pretending I was a norm and joining a class of off-world history students who were on Earth to work in the ruins of the ancient cities. My idea was to prove I was just as good as they were, then tell them I was an ape girl. I’d laugh at their shocked faces, scream my anger at them, and walk away. That didn’t work out as planned, because I discovered the off-worlders, the exos, weren’t as bad as I thought.

      That was when I finally took up my option to get information about my parents. I found out they were Military, so when I was born they had to decide whether they should abandon their Military careers and come to Earth with me. I don’t know what they’d have done if I’d been their first child, but they had two older kids so …

      So, yes, they’d dumped me, but when I contacted them … Eighteen years of anger at their rejection. Eighteen years of refusing to let myself indulge in nardle hopes like the other kids. Eighteen years of pretending I didn’t care. It had all culminated in the happy ending all ape kids dreamed of, but so few actually got. My parents had wanted to know me, had been going to come to Earth to meet me. It had been more than amaz, and beyond zan, and then the dream was shattered by a Military General calling to tell me they’d died trying to open up a new colony world for humanity.

      Any mention of my parents still started a whole mess of raw emotions churning around inside me. Not just about their death, and the dream of having a family that had died with them, but about my Handicap

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