Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean Page 6

  The two thin men darted out at us. ‘Clear off! Get out of here with your dirty mouths, you filthy girls, shames of your mothers!’

  We scattered backwards, but no one stopped hissing or hooting, and Dipti stood firm and alone there. ‘Clear off!’ she sang. ‘Get out of here!’

  ‘Dirty mouths!’ I called out as we hurried back to stand around her.

  ‘Shames of your mothers!’ said Neddi behind me.

  ‘I’d like to look under that skirt,’ said a boy, and we laughed, because Thin Two had a jumper tied around his middle that did indeed flap like a skirt.

  He stepped forward. He would have slapped Dipti, and she – she stood like a rock – she would have taken it, too.

  But the big man spoke then. He just said Thin One’s name, and that killed the fear in the man’s eyes. How relieved he was, to have the big man take over! He spat, instead, at Dipti’s feet. She hissed at him. ‘Filthy girls!’ she carolled as he hurried back to his place at the door.

  Then the big man moved. With his lip still curled at us, he hoisted his arms back to put his huge hands to the armrests of his chair; he unwedged himself from between them, and I saw that his tiny feet could take the full weight of him. He cast a last look over the crooning crowd behind me.

  ‘Lovely pair of titties!’ one of the boys called.

  ‘Bring me some of that on a plate!’ shouted Shinna.

  And the big man turned his back on us, and Thin One and Thin Two stepped aside to let him enter the teashop door.

  They swaggered and smirked, the Thins, and Red Shirt, and Boots, as they followed him in, but we had seen their fear, we had seen their doubt and confusion. They could swagger all they liked; we knew what they were. We had silenced them! We had made them get up and go inside!

  The door closed behind them. Cheers went up among the hissing. Dipti waved our noise down. ‘I hereby declare, this road is safe for any girl to pass along!’ And she came and hugged me.

  ‘You are a wonderful friend.’ I hugged her back. Then Neddi joined in, and Suzy too, and someone else behind me, and everyone who was there, all laughing and holding tight. ‘Everyone is wonderful friends,’ I said, squashed in the middle, ‘all of you!’

  Having sung us up the road to the school gate, the boys ran off to their school.

  ‘Those men’ll be there again tonight, of course,’ I said to Dipti. ‘Without you there, they will be just as rude as before.’

  Dipti burrowed in her pocket, brought out two folded pieces of lined paper and gave me one. Shinna and Kate waved their paper squares at me.

  I unfolded mine. It was a neatly ruled table, filled out in Dipti’s round handwriting. For each school day, she’d written the names of four of my classmates, two for morning, two for afternoon. And she’d put ‘Melita’s Device’ at the top, and drawn a Gran Sasso there with neutrinos spurting out both ends, each neutrino a star with a little ‘n’ inside.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘we are not a sweet, silver Device that fits in the palm of your hand – we are a big, messy Device with lots of loose parts coming and going. But we don’t cost anything, and we don’t need a battery. And when we do work, we’re much more fun.’

  The bell clanged, then, which was just as well, because my heart seemed stuck in my throat again, stopping me from speaking. I folded the paper, put it in my pocket, and ran after my friends into class.

  Cool

  Manjula Padmanabhan

  Irfan leaned forward in his seat, waiting to sign in to his Home Languages class when …

  Parp-parp-parp!

  Lights flashing on his console!

  Vibrations in the pod-frame!

  He groaned. An emergency. Again.

  ‘PodTwo,’ he said into the mouthpiece of his helmet, as he glanced up and confirmed the situation. ‘Incoming at twenty.oh.fifteen.’ Though the pods were pressurised SpitRiders wore life support on their heads at all times. Just in case. ‘Strapped in. Ready to go.’

  Being ready was fundamental to the space miner’s life. Continuous, all-day alerts. No fallback if a SpitRider failed to respond to a signal. Serious consequences if performance statistics fell below minimum expectations.

  Irfan’s fifteen-year-old body was like a slender whip, all muscle and tension. Perfect for spending hours coiled into the ScholarPod, from which he could attend classes and do his lessons while monitoring his section of the station’s boundary. He wore a skin-tight suit bristling with electronic aids. His honey-brown skin was smooth and hairless. The cap of tight curls on his head was always cropped short.

  His tiny spherical vehicle shot out from its docking cradle like a bullet aimed at the star-spangled void of space. The interior of its transparent hull rippled with glowing numbers. Irfan spotted the faint orange dot that was his target. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye. Even on the SmartGlass screen, it was only a blur at this distance.

  ‘Irfan—?’ That was Erdovan, the station captain. Irfan’s father.

  ‘I see it, Dad,’ said Irfan. He locked his sensors so that the object remained at the centre of the screen. The pod’s humming micro-jets fired in short bursts, repositioning the vehicle. Within seconds it was moving in a smooth curve towards the glowing chunk. ‘Locked on,’ he said into his mouthpiece. ‘Closing.’

  It wasn’t really dangerous, what he and others like him did. It just took precision and full concentration. SpitRiders had to be small enough to fit inside the pods, they had to be at peak physical efficiency to respond instantly to alerts, and they had to be ferociously focused. Once they achieved their performance level, all they had to do was maintain it for four years. Exceeding the mark led to bonuses. And bonuses led all the way back to that distant, shining blue marble called Earth. The home that none of the young pod jockeys had ever known.

  ‘I see it now,’ said Erdovan, who was monitoring the quadrant from his remote console. ‘Be careful. It’s a spinner.’ Erdovan had been in the first teams to harvest the precious mineral known humorously as Flying Spit. Its official name was Saturnium: the molten lumps of matter thrown off by Saturn9, a small dark moon orbiting the ringed giant, Saturn. Saturn9 had only been identified after an exploratory MissionProbe parked itself in the planet’s vicinity forty years ago.

  The whole manoeuvre would be over in less than six minutes. For Irfan, however, that was beyond eternity. His Home Languages class had already begun. Yes, it lasted a full two hours. But the first half-hour was the one that he lived and breathed for.

  The orange blip on his screen had grown rapidly from the size of a Sesame Seed to Grape Pip to Pistachio and in seconds would be at Hazelnut.

  ‘Closing,’ said Irfan. The sizes were precise definitions, named for food items that belonged to the distant home-world. He could see the Spit’s spin now, a trail of translucence extending behind the Hazelnut. Good. That meant the pod was properly aligned alongside the trajectory of the speeding object, leaning in towards it.

  Walnut. Prune.

  ‘Steady, steady,’ said Erdovan in Irfan’s ears. ‘It’s wobbling. You might be too close—’

  Plum. Peach.

  I know Dad, I know, thought Irfan. Out loud he said, ‘Forward thrusters trimmed.’ The blackness of space had become a crazy quilt of flashing zigzag lines now as the pod powered forward towards the object. The object had reached Mango. The trail behind it looked like a dozen crystalline streamers, twirling in tight formation.

  ‘Any moment now—’ His father’s voice was tense. Irfan could imagine Erdovan’s face, the lean lines, the engraved creases in the skin. They were close, though Irfan had three brothers and two sisters. Irfan was the eldest.

  There! Visual contact. A smooth object, shaped like a teardrop and eye-smartingly bright, was hurtling out to space two hundred metres from his position.

  SNAP! He spanked down the twin bolt-generators with the open palms of both hands. A single hard punch of energy slamme
d directly onto the tail of the speeding object.

  BLANG! The pod jarred back from the recoil.

  Then ZZZZZtrannggg! It was a make-believe sound that Irfan heard only inside his head: the boom of the Spit being whacked on its tail, off its original course and at the precise angle that would send it directly into the station’s receiving bay.

  And that was it. Emergency over.

  ‘Nice,’ said Erdovan in Irfan’s ears. ‘Perfect.’

  The young SpitRider’s entire head was buzzing. ‘Thanks, Dad,’ he managed to mutter, through numb lips. All his movements had slowed to a crawl as his body struggled to recover from the extreme accelerations it had experienced. Only his brain was still operating at full throttle. Five-point-seven minutes had passed since the emergency began. It would take him forty-seven seconds to return to Dock. Followed by another ten to slip into position. His heart was pounding.

  But his father wanted to talk. ‘You know, son, if you keep this up I might be able to …’

  Irfan’s fingers were keying in the entry code to his class. ‘All right, Dad,’ he said, trying not to let his impatience show. Respect to elders was considered a security issue on space stations.

  ‘Son, I don’t think you appreciate the importance of advancing quickly within the system. You don’t want to be stuck forever hauling Spit, do you?’

  No, of course not, Dad! thought Irfan. Now please! Let me go!

  ‘Reaching your level is all very well. But rack up your bonuses and you could shave a whole month from your annual work quota!’

  ‘Dad,’ said Irfan. ‘I’ve got my class?’ He’d missed six minutes already. SIX. MINUTES.

  ‘Class?’

  ‘Home Languages. Look—’

  ‘Language class? But you’re already fluent! It’s a waste of time! You don’t need to learn—’

  ‘Dad!’ Irfan cut in. ‘I’m GOING!’ And he switched off his headset.

  The bliss of silence. Plus the faint ping of the remote server as it tuned into the lesson.

  In front of him, through the pod’s skin, the velvet blackness of space had been restored, with its pinpricks of light representing the light of distant suns. Each tiny twinkle was enhanced with glowing numbers and positioning data. It was like looking out onto his own private patch of eternity.

  Between Irfan and the curving interior surface of the pod’s hull was the crescent-shaped console on which his keypad and other controls were located. It was an ‘intelligent’ surface; it looked and felt like a physical console, but was actually a projection. When the remote server beeped to announce that the session was about to begin, the console glowed, then filmed over and grew a smooth platform that floated a centimetre above it.

  A small, graceful figure appeared on the platform. A girl. A very pretty girl. She wore a simple costume made of a lightweight flowing material that left her arms and legs bare. Her dark hair was caught in a ponytail. Even though the entire projection was less than thirty centimetres tall, it was diamond clear. Irfan could make out her microscopic eyelashes. The shadow cast by her eyelashes on her cheeks. The dot of light on her pink lips.

  Leila. Her name was Leila. And she was his personal Home Languages assistant.

  ‘You’re late.’ But she was smiling. She never got angry.

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ stammered Irfan. ‘There was an incoming alert ten seconds before class—’

  ‘Wow. That means you dealt with it in … six minutes? You are amazing!’

  ‘Five-point-seven, actually,’ said Irfan, feeling his cheeks flush. Now he was showing off. ‘It takes a while to recover from the recoil. And stuff. Plus I had to return to dock.’

  ‘It’s awesome. What you SpitRiders do. We’re all so grateful to you.’

  ‘You don’t have to be,’ said Irfan at once. ‘It’s why we’re here.’

  That was the literal truth. His parents, both of whom were astronauts, had been chosen for a mission that required them to have children during the long journey from Earth to Saturn. The first of these offspring would be in their teens by the time they arrived within Saturn9’s orbit, having trained all along the way to become SpitRiders. It was a desperate measure and had been controversial in its time, but it revealed the extreme value placed on Saturnium.

  ‘That doesn’t make it any less amazing. You’re just fifteen. And already a hero.’

  Irfan glowed.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Leila. ‘Let’s get to the lesson. Do you have questions for me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Irfan. ‘The segment I watched was set in the twenty-first century. It was filmed at a … school?’ He had never seen gatherings of more than fifteen children at any time in his life. His siblings and two other families were the only children present on his home station. There were other stations ringing the moon, of course, but face-to-face meetings were impractical.

  ‘Right,’ said Leila. ‘School was where children met in order to learn things.’

  ‘Well, there’s a word they kept using,’ said Irfan. ‘I looked it up. It means “low temperature”. But the way they used the word didn’t make sense!’

  Leila smiled. ‘You mean, “cool”?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Irfan. ‘I’m guessing it’s because they didn’t have climate controls in their homes? It was very hot?’

  Leila’s smile broadened. ‘No! They were talking about a state of mind. An attitude. To be called “cool” was considered a great compliment. Like being “cool-headed” under pressure. Like you are, when you collect Spit—’

  ‘Me?’ exclaimed Irfan. ‘No way! I’m not cool – I have the most boring life! All I do is collect Spit! And listen to my Dad talk about bonuses! With nothing to look forward to but … ‘ He paused. ‘Meeting you.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Leila, pursing her lips and frowning. ‘Irfan, I told you already: it’s not healthy for you to feel that way about me.’

  Irfan drew in his breath. ‘I thought about what you said, Miss Leila.’ He felt ridiculous. His face was hot. His voice was sliding up and down like a yoyo. ‘I’m sorry, but I disagree. I really loved what we did the other day. I really, really want to do it again.’

  ‘But I’m only a virtual teaching assistant, right?’ said Leila. ‘I’m not flesh and blood.’

  ‘I know,’ said Irfan. ‘And it makes no difference. Ever since the last lesson, I haven’t stopped thinking about you.’ He covered the visor of his helmet with his hands. ‘If we can’t go on meeting, Miss Leila … I … I don’t know what I’ll do!’

  Leila paused. ‘Listen to me, Irfan, have you ever thought about what you actually do? As a SpitRider?’

  ‘I told you, SpitRiding is nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s boring and—’

  ‘No! I meant, d’you ever think about what happens to Spit? When it gets back to Earth?’

  He nodded his head glumly. Sure he knew what happened. It just didn’t seem a big deal though. Not for him, not at this distance.

  ‘It’s converted into the cleanest, safest and most efficient form of fuel ever known. The Earth is no longer polluted because of Saturnium. Everyone, everywhere is safer and healthier. And it’s all made possible because of incredibly brave and clever people like – well, you!’

  Irfan made a face. ‘Okay. If you say so. But I don’t want to be brave or clever, Miss Leila. I want … ‘ He sighed. ‘Please! I want to be virtual with you again.’

  There was a pause. Then it was Leila’s time to sigh. ‘All right, then. Come on. We’ve got barely nine minutes.’ Irfan’s fingers were already tapping codes onto the platform on which Leila stood. ‘I’ve signed you in.’

  Seconds later, there were two small gleaming figures on the virtual platform above Irfan’s console. Irfan’s avatar wore a formal dress-suit, while Leila wore a long, graceful gown, pearly white in colour. Leila took his hands and positioned them so that one was on her shoulder and the other was on her waist. From the
speakers, the opening bars of The Blue Danube welled out.

  ‘The waltz again! You’re sure?’ asked Leila, as she began to move, leading Irfan with expert steps. ‘You wouldn’t like to try something else?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Irfan, his eyes shining. ‘This is what I want. Can’t get enough of it!’

  Leila laughed. ‘You know those school students? In the clip? If they could see you now, they’d be blown away! In that era, dancing a waltz with your teacher was considered the absolute screaming opposite of being cool.’

  Irfan shrugged.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said, as they twirled against the backdrop of distant suns.

  Mirror Perfect

  Kirsty Murray

  Ettie cringed at the sight of her reflection in the airport concourse windows. With her baby brother, Max, balanced on her hip, she looked like an overweight and exhausted teen mother. She turned her back on the image in the glass as she wrestled with Max, who was eating a hank of her hair that he’d wound around his fat little fist and shoved into his mouth.

  Up ahead, Dad had stopped outside an electronics shop. He gazed longingly at its window crammed full of computer devices, while Mila made a high-pitched whining sound and writhed in his arms.

  ‘Don’t even think about it, Dad,’ said Ettie, catching up with him. ‘We can’t take the twins in there. They’ll be like kamikaze pilots and dive-bomb every piece of technology in sight. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘They’re exactly like you when you were two.’

  ‘No way! I was never into mass destruction like these little monsters. They could cure anyone of ever wanting kids.’