Chapter 1:
“Good morning, Jenny.”
Jenny paused, a smile on her face. The young man who’d spoken to her was bent over a small flowering garden that had been helped along by seeds brought to Revant Two from other planets. “Hello, Perin. It looks like that stuff is growing well.”
He grinned at her. The tattoo on his forehead and the scar on his arm—the spot where he had once had a massive chip implanted that would track his moves—marked him as a former slave. “It is. Thank goodness. I was afraid I’d ruin it somehow and get sent to another task.”
Her smile was sympathetic. “I know how you feel. But here nobody punishes anyone for a task gone wrong.”
Perin nodded. He was vaguely humanoid but he was completely bald and his skin was a strange, shifting thing that took on the color of his surroundings. “I know. That’s why I want it to be well.”
That too she understood. He asked, “So you are to go to med now?”
She sighed and shifted from foot to foot. “Yes, I’m to go there.”
Perin stroked the leaves of a small plant with one stubby digit. “Perhaps that is where you will be of the most use.”
“Perhaps. I should get going.”
He nodded and then said, “Here.” He dug into a small basket and handed her a small pale-orange root. “Try this. Just brush the dirt off.”
She took it with a smile. The root went between her clean white teeth. It was crisp, but not hard, and it tasted of fresh dirt and some mild and sweet flavor as well. “It’s delicious! What is it?”
Perin gave her a sheepish look. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. Talon pretty much buys any seed he can find that promises food since we don’t have any printers, and they don’t want them either.”
That was a slight sore spot for some. Many feared hunger and voted for the printers, but many more were tired of the things able to be made by the printers and wanted to eat as naturally as possible.
“Renall and the others have sworn that if we lose food and need it badly, they will use the printers on the ships to feed us. We won’t go hungry.”
Perin said, “I think I fear having to eat printed food far more than being hungry these days.”
Their laughter was rich and true. Jenny brushed the small bit of dirt that had gathered on her palms off by rubbing her hands together. “Have a good day, Perin.”
“You too, and good luck at your new task.”
“Thank you.”
She set off again, her smile widening as others called out greetings to her. A young woman carrying a basket filled with small rocks drew up close. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Jenny’s head went up and back, and her eyes scanned the blue sky overhead. That wild sense of elation that filled her every single time she saw that endless blue dome rocketed through her. It was so beautiful!
How had she ever lived without seeing the sky?
How had she managed to shunt aside the very real and very human longing for the sight of the sun and stars, the clouds and the things that flew across the heavens?
Back on old Earth, she had never seen the sky at all, not even once, except in a book her mother had. Jenny had stared at the book’s illustration for hours on end and for years, always trying to work up the courage to sneak above the tunnels where she and others of her station were forced to live—and always failing. She had always wanted to see that sky, and she had never had the bravery to actually attempt to do what it would take to do so.
And with good reason.
Back on Old Earth, she had lived Below, down in the underground section of the city where the poorest people lived. To go above ground, to risk stepping out of the place where she had been born and consigned due to her class and birth circumstances, meant risking death.
Actual death!
Only those who were wealthy or important and the few of those who lived Below who were allowed to work on the surface had ever seen the sky. They often told stories about it, and tales of what the parks looked like, what the air smelled like. Real air, and not recirculated air brought underground by the massive vent fans.
Her own mother often went above, but hers had been a clandestine visit every time and, in the end, that had cost Jenny’s mother and her father their lives. Jenny had never been able to ask them; they had been executed, and she had gone into hiding to avoid being executed simply because she was a family member, but she was positive, now that she had the ability to see the sky and feel that air on her face, to feel earth and grass below her feet, that both of her parents would have said that death was worth it.
They would have had other reasons for thinking that too though.
