Earth and Air: An Earth Girl Novella (EGN, #2) by Janet Edwards

Author:Janet Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dystopia, Coming of age, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Teen, Young Adult, Novella, Space Opera
Publisher: Wallam-Crane Press
Published: 2018-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Wren stared at me in shock. “That can’t be true. You would never have told Crozier you wanted to leave.”

“It is true.” I hesitated. “Anything you say to me about being scared of crashing planes or lasers is private, and I’ll never repeat it to anyone. This story is private too. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Well.” I gulped down a mouthful of Fizzup. “The school history club was here at New York Fringe that summer too. I was only 11, everyone else was at least three years older than me, and they didn’t want me on the trip because of the state of the history club finances.”

Wren looked puzzled. “What club finances?”

“Crozier doesn’t worry the junior history club with details of the club finances,” I said, “but they’re vitally important. When we come to a dig site like this, the Dig Site Federation charges the history club a lot of credits for the use of their accommodation dome, plus an extra payment per person to cover things like food and use of equipment.”

“I thought Hospital Earth paid for those things.”

“Hospital Earth only pays the history club expenses for two weeks on a dig site each year,” I said. “If the history club is going to spend the whole long summer break on a dig site, and make extra trips in the spring and autumn as well, then we have to find enough valuable artefacts to cover the rest of the costs.”

Wren’s puzzled look had changed to a frown now, so I hurriedly reassured her. “There’s no need for you to be concerned about the club finances, because right now they’re in a very healthy state. Six years ago, things were very different. The history club hadn’t found any good artefacts for quite a while. No valuable artefacts meant no bounty payments coming in, and the spring break trip to London Fringe Dig Site turned into an utter disaster when some nardle knocked a whole glass of Fizzup over the controls of a hideously expensive sensor sled.”

“Oh chaos,” said Wren. “I knocked a glass of Fizzup over my lookup last year. It never worked again.”

“Fizzup is just as lethal for banks of delicate sensor equipment as for lookups. The Dig Site Federation covers the cost of equipment damaged in dig site accidents, but given the rules forbidding taking food or drink on a sensor sled ...”

Wren finished the sentence for me. “The Dig Site Federation made the history club pay for the repairs?”

“Yes. It was a terrifyingly large bill, so the club was barely left with enough credits to cover the summer trip to New York Fringe. We all knew that if we didn’t find some good artefacts that summer, then the history club could be stuck with the minimum two weeks on dig sites for years to come.”

I sighed. “Everyone was worried about what that would mean for our history careers. We’d still be able to get places to study pre-history at University Earth, but we’d be in classes with students who’d had far more experience working on dig sites.

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