Regulated Planet, page 31
part #2 of Worlds Apart Series
As if she needed his approval.
Seething silently, she followed him out of her home, pausing to lock the door behind her.
“Why do you always lock your door? It’s not like anyone is going to steal anything, much less all that old rubbish.”
Anger bubbled up in her. “That old rubbish is what is going to fix your garbage disposal. Half the machines here wouldn’t work if it wasn’t for my rubbish.”
Aleck held up his hands. “Hey, no need to snap, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that no one locks their doors. Most doors don’t even have locks. It’s weird, that’s all.”
Weird. Folly tried to ignore the cutting word. “At least my rubbish doesn’t insult me when I fix it,” she snapped.
She liked her home. Tucked in a small cave off the larger cavern, she was far enough away that people only visited her when they wanted help, and close enough to the entrance that she could climb out to explore the ruins of Prioris when she wanted to without having to answer any questions first.
The treasures she brought back with her, broken electronic devices, books, tinned food, were far more fascinating than any of the cave’s residents and their constant concerns about protecting the wildlife that had survived the meteor blast in the shelter of the cave.
Aleck opened his mouth to protest, and she could almost hear their mother’s voice berating him, ‘Stop fighting you two, can’t you just get along for once?’ She still made the comment frequently, even though they were both twenty-five. His mouth snapped shut. “Come on, Ma’s waiting,” he said instead.
Folly bit back a sigh and followed him. She let the sense of awe she always felt when she walked out into the main cave distract her from his negativity. She may scorn the biologists’ fascination with the minute bugs, insects and small mammals in the cave, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be amazed by the structure as a whole.
The roof loomed nearly a hundred metres over her head. A creaking sound told her the flaps were being closed for the night in case of a surprise dust storm or rare downpouring of acid rain. Six o’clock. Despite their protection, a light layer of dust covered the trees and vegetation that filled the cave floor.
A grunting sound filled the air, and the serrated, dark green leaves of a nearby tree rustled.
“Eww.” Aleck held his nose.
The pungent, acidic smell was familiar to Folly, and not offensive. Chicken’s head popped out of Folly’s pocket, sniffing the air. “Do you want to go join your friends?” Folly asked, scratching the skuttle under the chin.
She wasn’t surprised when Chicken disappeared back inside her pocket. Ever since the little critter had scurried up her leg, pursued by one of its larger relatives, Chicken hadn’t left Folly’s side. Secretly, she was rather happy that the shy little creature, who avoided all the biologists, had chosen her to be a friend.
“You should send her back out into the wild. It’s not right to keep a wild creature as a pet.” Aleck’s voice and words repeated what Ma had said often.
“I don’t keep her at all. She’s free to go whenever she wants. I can’t help it if she prefers me to her own kind. Sometimes, people just don’t fit where others try to shove them.”
Aleck stared at her, but didn’t say anything further. Folly was glad of his silence as they continued on.
Above her head ran a tangle of metal and plastic pipes with colourful cables twisted them. Fluorescent lights hung on chains at regular intervals. Several of them were lacking tubes, or hanging at odd angles. It was lucky they weren’t needed as much now as they had been in the first few years, when dust had blocked out the sun almost completely.
Faintly glowing lights in the stonework of the path lit their way, even when the lights above were missing or switched off to conserve electricity. Similar paths split off in different directions through the undergrowth, with little remnants of the painted bricks that had once helped people find their way through the maze. After living like this for twenty years, they were no longer needed.
As they neared the home Folly had lived in for eleven of those twenty years, the area became even more familiar. The memories though, were not happy ones. Echoes of being the odd one out, the sideways glances, the whispers, her awareness of Ma watching her, looking for any signs that she might be as mad as her mother, washed over her.
Aleck opened the door and stepped aside, waiting for her to enter, and even that polite gesture annoyed Folly. She made herself ignore it and stepped into the cheerful din. The twins, Ema and Kalie, practised a clapping rhyme in one corner, and there was a spirited game of cards at the dining room table. Kyle and Binny helped Ma cutting up vegetables at the sink.
“Tata…” A toddler’s chubby arms wrapped themselves around Folly’s shins, almost tripping her up.
She couldn’t help an involuntary smile as she bent down and scooped the child into her arms. “Hey, Trouble. What have you been up to lately?”
Issy stared up at her solemnly. “Me no trouble.”
Her twinkling eyes betrayed her.
“She tried to push a whole pineapple into the garbage disposal,” Ma said with a frown.
“A whole pineapple, hey?” Folly tickled her under the chin. “That must have been heavy.”
Issy’s face lit up. “It was, but I wifted it all by mwyself.”
“Stop encouraging her, Tahlia,” Ma scolded. “She’s old enough to know better.”
The name grated. But Folly was more concerned with the pride on Issy’s face evaporating. She knew the feeling well—that knowledge that no one else understood what you’d been trying to do, and that it had all suddenly gone wrong.
“Don’t worry. I can fix it. And Issy can help.”
Ma frowned, but for once, didn’t comment. Folly felt like she’d achieved a small victory as she lifted the flap and bent over the chute in the wall that mulched the waste before sending it under the house to the compost bin.
The blockage was surprisingly easy to remove. She didn’t even need to unscrew the cover to get to it. Folly frowned as Issy hauled on the pineapple top, falling over with a plop as it came free suddenly.
She glanced back at Ma standing at the table cutting up potatoes. She could have removed it herself easily. Why had she sent Aleck to drag her away from her work for something so simple?
Because they wanted her to be like them.
She was supposed to like getting together and talking, even though none of them talked about anything that interested her. If she ever tried to discuss Prioris, and the things she found there, they were dismissive. Her treasures were ‘rubbish’. And even those that were useful, someone else took credit for. They were the ones who put them there—she was just uncovering them from the dust.
What point was talking when no one wanted to listen to what you had to say?
She heaved a sigh as she pulled herself to her feet. She wouldn’t get away without sitting down to the dinner Ma was cooking. Any hope she had of finishing her book faded, overpowered by the unpleasant smell of cooking soy sausages.
“It’s done,” she announced.
“Thanks, Tahlia,” Ma said cheerfully.
“Don’t call me that!”
The words were out before she could stop them. Everyone in the room, Ma, Da, Aleck, Issy, and all her other siblings, stared at her. She took a deep breath. “Folly, please.”
A mutinous look crossed Ma’s face. “That’s not a proper name, it’s an insult. Why would you want to call yourself something like that?”
As if she had to ask. Or was she daring Folly to say it? “If it was good enough for my dad, it’s good enough for me.”
The room was silent. Pitying faces stared at her from around the table. Pity because her dad was dead. Pity because they thought he hadn’t been much of a man anyway.
No one had believed her mum when she’d told them that he had a spaceship that could travel even faster than the anysogen engine would—a spaceship that might be able to get them off this planet and back to real civilisation. They’d scoffed, and said it was impossible.
She’d show them.
Folly whirled around and ran from the room, running through the trees and back to her cave. When she got there, Chicken fled down her leg to watch her from the middle of the bed, chuttering loudly, mimicking Folly’s muttering as she stuffed some clothes and the leftover tins of food into her bag and grabbed her toolbox.
She then took a deep breath as she stared at the maps on the wall.
It had to be in Tadig. There was nowhere else. And it made sense too. The only people who lived in Prioris were biologists and zoologists, studying the wildlife in the cave. The important people, those who worked on the anysogen project, had all been in Tadig. That would have been where the engineer her dad had wanted to talk to would have lived. Maybe he’d taken the ship with him, to prove that his project was a success.
If she wanted to prove that her mum hadn’t been crazy, that her dad had been a brilliant scientist, then she was going to have to go there and find it. No matter what the risks were.
She carefully unpinned the maps, folded them along the crease lines, and then tucked them into her bag. Picking up the compass that sat on the shelf, she added that too.
The clock on the wall showed six thirty. It would be dark outside soon. If she’d been going to Tadig, where she knew her way, now would be the perfect time, safe from the UV radiation that would slow her down during the daylight. But she didn’t know her way.
Sighing, she sat down on the edge of the bed. Better to wait until morning.
After a moment, Chicken crawled over to Folly, and put her tiny paws on her knee. Folly ruffled her fur. “We’re going on an adventure tomorrow, Chicken. Are you sure you don’t want to run off and join your family? You’d be much safer there?”
Her monologue was interrupted by a knock at the door, and she swore. Of course, they couldn’t just leave her alone, could they? She ignored it, not wanting to talk. Not wanting to hear an apology, even if they offered it.
“Folly, are you in there?” Da called out.
She softened just a little. At least he hadn’t called her Tahlia. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Then don’t talk. Just come back and have dinner with us.”
As if that would happen. “If I come back, Ma will insist on talking, you know that.”
Da didn’t argue, no point really. “Issy was upset that you left. She cried.”
Turning on the guilt trip, of course. She should have left tonight, then she wouldn’t have to deal with this.
Folly sighed and scooped up Chicken. Stashing her packed bag under the bed, she stood up and opened the door.
Da smiled at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile back. They got what they wanted. They always did.
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He expected searing heat. He expected acid rain. He even expected the sunburn from hell. What he doesn’t expect is to meet the most prickly, irritating, and fascinating girl he’s ever known.
Kerit never wanted to explore the universe, or even go into space. Not like his space force captain brother. But somehow he finds himself following him half way across the galaxy to help terraform an inhospitable planet. Maybe he does have something to prove after all.
Folly has plenty to prove, but the most salient is to find her father's ship and show that he was a brilliant scientist. Accompanied by her cheeky albino pet skuttle, Chicken, she doesn't need any more help, certainly not from the cute stranger who thinks he knows what is best for her.
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