LITMIR.BIZ

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on their chosen courses at University Earth. I was a nervous wreck though. I’d been scanning stuff about University Asgard. There was a lot of competition for places on their courses, especially history, and they’d be trying to find every reason they could to reject an ape girl.

      If they rejected me … Well, Candace could go legal at them, but forcing my way in with a lot of publicity was no good. Everyone would know what I was, and the whole point was to fool them, and see their faces when they found out the truth. Maybe I should have been sensible and applied to University Earth as well, but it was too late to be thinking of that. I could only hope that if necessary, Candace would throw her ProMum weight around and get me a place there.

      We were due to get the mails about our degree courses on 1 December. I spent all day waiting to hear from University Asgard, nerves jumping every time a mail arrived. Mostly I flipped through vid channels, but I couldn’t even concentrate on an episode of Defenders. By the evening, I was furious. They hadn’t even bothered to reject me! I sent Candace a mail telling her exactly what I thought of off-worlders. She sent me a mail back saying the inhabited continent of Asgard was in a time zone eleven hours behind us, and they hadn’t had breakfast yet.

      Have you ever felt really stupid? I had no excuse at all. We have enough time zones on Earth. The everyday stuff we portal to is all local and in a similar time zone, but some of our school trips had set off in the middle of the night so that we would arrive in daylight at the other end. I’m a nardle brain. Nardle, nardle, nardle …

      My mail from University Asgard came five hours later. They’d accepted me! They didn’t sound ecstatic about it, and there was a special note about how they couldn’t make any non-standard arrangements to allow for my disability, but I didn’t care. I danced round my room in victory.

      The special note was designed to worry me, but it didn’t. They couldn’t do anything to stop me taking part in all the classes. There was a shakeup in history teaching twenty years ago, because so many historians had never been to Earth at all. That wasn’t so bad if they specialized in modern history, but even the leading experts in pre-history had never visited a single site. They didn’t want to be contaminated by us apes! Teaching pre-history when you’ve never been to Earth is like teaching literature when you’ve never scanned a book.

      So they cracked down on the whole thing, made the History Foundation course purely about pre-history, and made it compulsory for it to be held on Earth. It makes sense. You can’t ignore pre-history. It’s the starting point for everything that has happened since the invention of the portal. So, all historians have to learn pre-history and experience Earth dig sites right at the start of their training.

      When I finished dancing round the room, I sent a jubilant mail to Candace. She wouldn’t read it until next day of course. I had enough sense not to wake up my ProMum at midnight with an emergency-flagged mail unless it really was an emergency. Issette was a totally different matter. She was my best friend and I wanted to tell her this right away!

      I dashed next door and stuck my hand on the door plate. I could hear the faint sound of its response from the other side of the door. A musical tone, followed by a voice saying, ‘Your friend Jarra is requesting admission.’

      I gave it another minute or two and then tried again. The door opened and Issette stood there in a crumpled sleep suit, looking at me with bleary, accusing eyes. ‘This better be good! Are you dead or something?’ She turned round without waiting for an answer, went across to the bed and flopped on it with a dramatic groan.

      I followed her in and the door shut behind us. ‘I got the mail about my course. I’ve been accepted!’

      ‘What? You woke me up at this hour to tell me that!’ Issette lifted her head to glare at me.

      I grinned back at her. ‘I’ve been accepted by University Asgard.’

      ‘WHAT!’ Issette screeched.

      A computerized voice interrupted us. ‘Please have consideration for others attempting to sleep at this hour and reduce your noise levels.’

      Issette threw her pillow at its sensor box. We all hated having those things in our rooms. Officially they weren’t an invasion of privacy, because the units didn’t record or pass on information, they just told us off reproachfully. If you kept ignoring them for too long then they started making an annoying noise like a gong being sounded every second until they beat you into submission.

      It wasn’t just noise they complained about either. They didn’t like fire hazards, messy rooms, or you getting too boy and girlish. It does nothing for a romantic moment when a computer voice interrupts saying: ‘Your current inter-person intimacy is exceeding that acceptable for your age group.’

      There were always rumours going round that people had managed to hot-wire their room sensor to bypass monitoring, but most people just set the tampering alarm off and have to pay for a new unit out of their personal credits. Those things are expensive so I’ve never tried it myself. Cathan wasn’t worth it.

      ‘I can’t wait to leave Next Step and get away from that thing,’ snarled Issette. She turned back to me. ‘You’re not serious about University Asgard? You can’t be!’

      I spent the next hour convincing her I was serious, and explaining what I was planning. The computer complained about our noise level several more times. Eventually Issette started taking me seriously.

      ‘I’d love to see their faces when they find out,’ she said. ‘You have to promise me to vid it and mail it to me.’

      ‘And you have to promise to keep this secret. Don’t tell anyone, none of our friends, no one. Only you and Candace know. If too many people find out about it, then someone will be bound to give it away. I can’t fool the other students if they’re expecting an ape to join their course.’

      Issette pulled a face. ‘Don’t call yourself that!’

      ‘Please have consideration for others attempting to sleep at this hour and reduce your noise levels,’ said the voice.

      We both groaned.

      ‘You aren’t even telling your psychologist then?’ Issette was shocked.

      ‘I’m dumping my psychologist. He’s optional after I leave Next Step.’ I didn’t think much of psychologists, and I felt my sessions with mine were a total waste of time.

      ‘I’d be lost without my psychologist,’ said Issette, but she didn’t argue any more. She was a believer in psychologists and I wasn’t. We’d been round this too many times in the past to bother with it again now.

      She got back to the point. ‘I don’t see how you can manage to fool them even if you do manage to keep it secret. You won’t know all their stuff. The right clothes. The way they talk. I know we watch the vids but … And the sectors all have their own silly words. Those aren’t in the vids we see. We don’t see sector only stuff, there’s only the odd bit in a comedy when they do it for a joke.’

      I nodded. ‘Yes, they can all speak Language, but they have dialects too. Alpha sector has the strongest dialect because those are the first planets settled during the Exodus century. Did you know, the newer the sector, the closer the dialect is to standard Language? I saw this info vid about linguistic history mapping and …’

      Issette had her fingers in her ears. ‘No history lesson. Bad, bad, Jarra!’

      ‘Stop doing that.’

      She took her fingers out of her ears. ‘Well, stop lecturing me on history. You’re always doing it.’

      ‘I’m not.’

      ‘Oh yes you are. You’re obsessed.’

      ‘I’m not obsessed.’

      Issette just gave me her special look. It’s a sort of hard stare, which says she’s right, I’m wrong, and we both know it. It’s very hard to argue with, so I gave in.

      ‘Well, if you say so … Anyway, if I pretend to be from a sector,

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