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, there are bound to be some other students from there, and I won’t have the accent or know the dialect. My plan is to say that my parents are Military.’
Issette looked suspicious. ‘Is that because you’re a fan of Arrack San Domex?’
It wasn’t, really it wasn’t. I’d picked Asgard because of Arrack San Domex, and he plays a Military character in Defenders, but my decision was based on logic this time.
‘No, it isn’t. All the sectors have their dialect, but the Military don’t. They stick to Language. When they’re on assignment, their kids live in places just like Home and Next Step, and Military kids usually go Military themselves. No chance of running into one in a class of thirty history students.’
‘That could work,’ Issette admitted. ‘That would explain your name too. Hospital Earth and the Military both use stupid old-fashioned names. I mean, “Issette”! Have you ever seen an Issette in the vids who’s less than eighty?’
I giggled. Issette has successfully resolved her anger and bitterness over being Handicapped, but her psychologist is still working on her hatred of her name. The only reason she hadn’t changed it years ago was that she couldn’t make up her mind about a new one.
Issette fell asleep soon after that, so I went back to my own room and started scanning info vids about the Military. You can’t totally trust the facts in these things, but it was fascinating all the same.
Well, the ones about Planet First opening up new worlds were fascinating. The ones about running the solar space arrays were interesting too, though I didn’t follow all the science in them. The policing stuff was a bit too like sociology in school. Yeah, yeah, we have cross-sector Military so the different sectors don’t have their own armies and get tempted to re-invent war. I shouldn’t be rude about it – I’m going history and I know we don’t want any more wars – but it gets a bit preachy.
As for the alien standby exercises, well that was just funny. Even the Military people taking part in them sometimes started to laugh in the middle. How do you train to fight aliens when you’ve never met any? The answer is you get someone to imagine mad scenarios, so you find yourself fighting computer-generated bouncing-ball-shaped aliens who can stick to ceilings or eight-legged things that squirt sticky ribbons at you that explode on contact.
All right, it’s serious stuff really. We haven’t met intelligent aliens yet, but it’s been mathematically proven that they must exist, and humanity will at some point meet them. Some of those aliens will be hostile. I may find it hard to believe, but it’s a scientific fact. We have to be prepared, and the Military are doing their best.
I scanned vids all night, and made notes of what I needed to study. I had one month to create myself an identity as a kid of Military parents. If I was going to make a success of this, I needed to make Military Jarra into a real person, and know what she would know. The more I found out, the more I realized I had to learn.
The bit about Military schools was a big shock. Since Military kids usually go Military themselves, their schools cover a lot of things to prepare them for that career. Military basic training is for new recruits from the sectors. Military kids skip it because they’ve already done it at school.
I nearly gave up when I found out all Military kids were trained in unarmed combat. It was only a month until Year Day, and University courses started the day after that. How could I learn unarmed combat in that short a time? Should I pick a different fake background? At least there were info vids I could study on this, and if I didn’t know all I should about the Military, it was pretty certain that my fellow students would know a lot less.
In the end, I decided to stick with the Military idea. I started making up career histories for my fake Military parents, details about bases where I would have lived, and mailed Candace asking if she could arrange anything about unarmed combat training.
Candace mailed me back about nine in the morning. The mail showed her holding a glass of frujit and smiling. ‘Congratulations, Jarra. I’ll find out about the training, but maybe you’re taking the Military research a bit too seriously. You do tend to get carried away by things. Why not have breakfast and get some sleep?’
I decided to take her advice.
3
The Year Day party was … a bit sad. The nine of us had lived together through Nursery, Home and Next Step, but now we were splitting up. I was heading off on my personal war against University Asgard. The others were all going to University Earth, but would be scattered across different courses and campuses.
Maeth and Ross were doing different courses, but would be on the same campus in Europe Central. Issette, Cathan and Keon would be together on a campus in Europe South. The other four of us would be heading
