Frontier

  JANET EDWARDS

  FRONTIER

  An Epsilon Sector Novella

  Copyright

  Copyright © Janet Edwards 2016

  www.janetedwards.com

  Janet Edwards asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or localities is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Janet Edwards except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by The Cover Collection

  Cover Design © Janet Edwards 2015

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Message from Janet Edwards

  Books by Janet Edwards

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The planet Miranda, Epsilon sector, June 2788.

  On the day after Cella’s wedding, I came close to skipping school for the first time in my life. If I’d done that, stayed home on that crucial afternoon, I’d probably never have been faced with a choice between two different lives.

  Even after I’d started walking down the track towards Lone Tree portal, I was tempted to turn round and go back home. Afternoon school shift started at one o’clock, and I was already late. Partly because I’d been babysitting my three youngest brothers and sisters all morning, partly because the water pipe from the spring needed unblocking for the third time this week, and partly because I’d heard the chickens squawking for help and had to go and rescue them from a moon monkey that was peering nosily into the chicken run. Moon monkeys were one of the original native species of Miranda, perfectly harmless herbivores, but our chickens were terrified of their round, glowing faces.

  These things were all just excuses, of course. The real reason I’d set off late for school was because I knew exactly what would happen when I got there. In fact, it started before I was anywhere near the school, because Torrin Summerhaze was lying in wait for me at the portal that was shared between the dozen nearest farms.

  It would take me an hour to walk to the next nearest portal, so I gritted my teeth and marched up to this one, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Torrin. That didn’t stop him happily jeering at me.

  “Old maid! Old maid! Amalie is the old maid!”

  I didn’t turn to look at him, just reached out with my right hand to slap him on the back of the head.

  “Ow!” he complained. “That hurt.”

  “It was meant to hurt.”

  I reached out to set the destination for the portal, but hesitated at the last moment. It was one of the economy models, just offering the six most important local destinations: Jain’s Ford Settlement Central, Jain’s Ford School, Mojay’s General Store, the livestock market, the vet, and the medical centre over at Falling Rock Settlement.

  If you wanted to go anywhere else, you had to portal to Settlement Central first. That had a proper portal you could use to travel anywhere on the inhabited continent of Miranda, though naturally the portalling charges were a lot higher. The only time I’d been through it was last year, when my parents took all eleven of us to visit Memorial. We’d seen the sea, and the hilltop monument marking where the Military handed Miranda over to the first colonists thirty-one years ago. It was a totally zan day, apart from the twins falling in a rock pool so they stank of seaweed.

  Right now, I felt like going to Settlement Central and portalling to Memorial again, or even all the way to Northern Reach. I’d seen images of the great cliffs there on the Miranda Rolling News channel. I could see those cliffs for myself, and have a glorious day of freedom, far away from Jain’s Ford Settlement, Jain’s Ford School, and people like Torrin Summerhaze. The snag was that I’d have to come back and face them all at the end of it. I’d have spent credits I couldn’t afford, and it would change nothing.

  I set the destination to the school, and walked through the second the portal established. I stepped out of the portal in the school field, and headed for the nearest of the six grey flexiplas domes, the one that was labelled with a large white number 6 and a lopsided pink hummingbird.

  The number 6 was the official school dome label. The pink hummingbird was a legacy of when the boys in the year above us got drunk on their last day at school and found a stray can of paint. Rodrish Jain had climbed onto the dome roof to finish painting the hummingbird’s wings, stopped in the middle to shout and wave at the rest of us, fell off, and was portalled to the medical centre at Falling Rock with a broken arm. There was a rumour that Doc Jumi had fixed Rodrish’s arm, and then locked him in quarantine for twenty-four hours in case his pink spots were a sign of a previously undiscovered Mirandan disease. It was probably true. Doc Jumi had an evil sense of humour.

  Torrin came through the portal and chased after me. “Amalie, I could help you solve your problem. Marry me!”

  I stopped walking, looked him up and down, shook my head sadly, and gave him the standard frontier planet rejection line. “Come back when you’ve got a farm!”

  He sighed, and trailed along after me to dome 6. As we went inside, twenty boys looked at me, stood up, and yelled it in unison. “Old maid! Old maid! Amalie is the old maid!”

  Last year, there’d been twenty-one boys and eighteen girls in our class. Here on Miranda, as on most of the planets in Epsilon sector, you could have Twoing contracts at 16 and marry at 17. On Year Day 2788, we’d all turned 17, and seven of the girls instantly proved themselves perfect frontier world women by having Year Day weddings. Admittedly, in Rina’s case, there was a scandal over her last minute change of husband.

  Norris was still fuming about that, and you could hardly blame him. He’d been Twoing with Rina for ten months, so when she dumped him in the middle of their wedding and married another man it was a shock for everyone. The fact the other man was Norris’s older brother, made things even worse. Jain’s Ford Settlement was pretty equally divided between those who thought Rina had done the right thing, those who thought she should have stuck with Norris, and those who thought she should have married both of them. I was the exception. I thought it would have been much more sensible for Rina to cancel the wedding, and think things over for a few weeks before she married anyone, but it was her life, not mine.

  Over the next three months, nine of the other girls had got married as well, though without any more scandals. My friend, Cella, had held out for a further two months before caving into social pressure and marrying yesterday. Now there were twenty-one boys, seventeen empty desks, and me. I was the class old maid. Worse than that, I was the settlement old maid, because all the girls my age who’d left school at 15 were married as well.

  Teacher Lomas let the boys enjoy their fun for a minute, before yelling at them. “Quiet!”

  They reluctantly calmed down, and Lomas turned to Torrin. “Why are you late? No, don’t bother answering that. We can all guess the reason. We can all guess Amalie’s answer too.”

  �
�Come back when you’ve got a farm,” yelled the mob.

  Torrin blushed.

  “Time for work now,” said Lomas.

  I sat down at my desk, took out my lookup, turned it on, and frowned as I saw the display flicker wildly for a moment or two before focusing properly. My lookup had started doing this a couple of months ago, and it seemed to be getting worse. I hoped like chaos that it wasn’t going to break down entirely. I was the third eldest of eleven children. Schooling on Miranda was free, and my parents believed in education, but it was a struggle for them to afford the vital lookups we all needed to scan the school texts and send and receive work assignments. A girl of my age had no real need to be in school, so if my lookup broke down ...

  “We’re revising Farming Ecology today,” said Lomas, “starting with methods of limiting potentially harmful interactions between imported Earth and native Mirandan species.”

  There was a chorus of groans, and one of the boys in the front row mimed strangling himself before collapsing on his desk.

  Lomas sighed. “Year End is six months away now, and the school will be closed for a month during harvest. Those of you capable of subtracting one from six can work out you have barely five months of study time left before you leave school. You must pass all the modules of your Farming Studies Certificate before then, or you can’t register to do community service and earn yourselves a farm.”

  “The others need to do community service to earn farms,” said Palmer Nott smugly, “but I don’t. I’ve already got a farm, because my father bought me one yesterday. We’ll be ordering my machinery next month.”

  There was dead silence as every other boy in the room looked at him in shock, which rapidly changed to bitter resentment. Palmer was deeply unpopular in the class. That wasn’t because he was an incomer from Loki in Gamma sector, rather than born on this planet. Miranda had only opened for full colonization twenty-one years ago, so most of the class were incomers. Palmer’s unpopularity was because he constantly rubbed everyone’s nose in the fact his father was sickeningly wealthy. Since he arrived two years ago, we’d all had to suffer him showing off his expensive clothes that were totally unsuitable for farm work, and his fancy lookup with all the special features, but this ...

  All the other boys would have to do three years of community service to earn their farms. That was what my two older brothers were doing right now, patiently working to prepare farmland and build houses for others, waiting for the day that the next farm and house would be for them.

  Palmer wouldn’t have to do that though. His father had just handed him a farm, and his easy ride wasn’t stopping there. All parents did their best to give their sons starting seed and livestock, especially the vital pair of horses, but Palmer’s father was buying him machinery too. No endless hours of backbreaking labour for Palmer. He was going to stand idly by, watching while his fields were ploughed by machines. Given how much I resented that on behalf of my brothers, chaos knew how the boys around me were feeling.

  “Obviously I can’t start running the farm until I’m 18,” said Palmer, “but my father said it was best to buy me one now to make sure I get prime land by the river, and order the machinery early because there’s a waiting list for the next bulk shipment from Gamma sector.”

  He turned to grin at me. “Amalie, I know girls don’t count marriage proposals from men without farms, but you’ll have to consider mine!”

  If he’d been within arm’s reach, I’d have hit him. He wasn’t, so I gave him a withering look of contempt. “Come back when you’re a human being, Palmer.”

  “Yaya! Yaya! Yaya!” All the boys in the room were shouting their approval of my words, hammering on their desks with their fists.

  Lomas pointedly put his hands over his ears, waited until the noise started to flag, and then yelled at them. “Shut up!”

  The shouting and hammering gradually petered out, and Lomas turned to Palmer. “Go home!”

  “What?” asked Palmer.

  “Go home!” repeated Lomas. “If you stay here and keep talking about your prime farmland, and ordering your machinery early to avoid the waiting list, someone is going to punch you. Quite possibly me.”

  Palmer hesitated, and then stood up. “I don’t understand why you’re all acting like this. Rodrish Jain was in the year above us. Nobody minded when his father gave him a farm. In fact, the whole school cheered for him.”

  Everyone had been angry already, but now we were furious. Torrin was the fastest shouting a reply.

  “Your answer’s in our settlement name, idiot! This is Jain’s Ford. It’s called that because Rodrish Jain’s parents led the first colonists here when the Military cleared Miranda to enter Colony Ten phase. Those colonists came when there was nothing but a heap of supplies and flexiplas panels. They had to clear the farms. They had to build the houses. Most of all they had to live here for ten years in quarantine to prove the Military hadn’t missed anything dangerous, and that Miranda was safe for humans. If there weren’t just the usual problems between imported and native species, but something utterly lethal, those first colonists would have died!”

  Torrin paused for a second to breathe before ranting on in an impassioned voice. “That’s why we honour the Founding Families, that’s why they were rewarded with land grants, and that’s why everyone cheered for Rodrish. Your father’s rich, Palmer, so you jumped ahead of us in the queue and took prime farm land from under our noses. Rodrish wasn’t queue jumping, his father owned that land at Jain’s Ford before any of our parents set foot on Miranda. Rodrish wasn’t taking anything from us; his father gave us our world!”

  “Yaya! Yaya! Yaya!” The other boys shouted their approval again.

  Lomas lifted a hand to stop them. “Go home, Palmer, and don’t come back for a week. You’re suspended.”

  “You can’t suspend me,” said Palmer. “I didn’t break any rules. My father will complain to the school board. You could lose your job!”

  “Watch me cower in fear,” said Lomas, in his most sarcastic voice. “Since Teacher Horath moved to the school at the new Twin River Settlement, I’m the only teacher in this school qualified to either teach or assess students working on their Farming Studies Certificate. I teach the 16-year-olds in first shift school from eight in the morning to one in the afternoon. I teach the 17-year-olds in second shift school from one in the afternoon to six in the evening. Four nights a week, I teach evening classes for all the boys who left school at 15 to work on their parents’ farms.”

  He pulled a face. “I’m doing all that solo because the school board have been trying and failing to recruit another qualified teacher for the last fifteen months. If they fired me today, I could get a new job tomorrow, but everyone studying for their Farming Studies Certificate would have to join waiting lists for places at other schools, and given schools always give priority to students from their own settlement ...”

  He paused. “For the final time, go home, Palmer. You’ve been living on this planet for two years now, and you still don’t seem to understand the basics about a frontier world. You can’t buy respect with credits. You have to earn it yourself. Go home and think about that, before your classmates take you outside and beat the lesson into you.”

  Palmer finally turned and left the dome. Lomas watched the door shut and then started talking again. “There are currently over two hundred known potentially harmful interactions between imported Earth and native Mirandan species. The following farming procedures must be enforced to prevent these interactions. Firstly, apple trees can only be grown within secure caging since their juice is toxic to ...”

  I stopped listening, because I’d completed all my Farming Studies Certificate modules four months ago. Most of the girls in the class hadn’t bothered doing the final assessments, since having the actual certificate wasn’t relevant for a girl, but my mother said that a farmer’s wife needed to know these things to be able to help her husband.

  Once I’d finished all the Farming S
tudies modules, Lomas had started sending me other texts to keep me busy. To begin with, they’d been on random subjects, but lately they’d mostly been about history. The latest one was about how the near collapse of civilization back in 2409 had left many worlds totally isolated when their interstellar portals failed.

  I dutifully started scanning the text, but it was hard to concentrate on the problems of humanity several centuries ago when I had my own problems right now. Ever since I was 16, family, neighbours and friends had all been busily asking me what man I favoured. When I turned 17 last Year Day, the pressure had increased, with them actively suggesting husbands to me, or even pointedly reminding me of my duty to marry.

  Chaos, I knew it was my duty to marry. Miranda was a frontier world with exactly the same problem all frontier worlds had. Too many men. You needed a lot of people to build a new world, and there were always more male than female colonists arriving. Some men were happy to marry other men, but most wanted wives. It was a frontier girl’s duty to help solve that problem by marrying quickly, preferably to two men rather than just one, and having a lot of children, preferably daughters.

  My parents had been patient at first, but three months ago they’d anxiously asked whether I had a problem about getting married. I couldn’t tell the full truth, which was that I didn’t have a problem about getting married, but I did have a problem about having children. As the eldest daughter in a family of eleven children, I seemed to have spent my entire childhood helping my mother change nappies and feed babies. Three of the Year Day brides had already proudly announced they were expecting babies. If I married now, then I’d probably be changing my own baby’s nappies within a year.

  I didn’t want to go straight from caring for baby brothers and sisters to caring for my own baby. Saying that would sound like I was complaining, or criticizing my mother, and I wasn’t. Sons were expected to help their father with the farm work. Daughters were expected to help their mother with the babies. That was the frontier life. My parents had been generous, making sacrifices to let us stay on at school when most children had to leave at 15, and I was deeply grateful to them.