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I stood at the edge of the silent crowd, facing the huge sheet of flexiplas covered in white paint that had been set up at the far end of the gathering field. One of the Mayor’s husbands was in charge of projecting the live coverage of the Founders Day ceremony onto the makeshift screen. The images from Epsilon Sector News were perfect, but it was a minute or two before he got the sound working properly. That didn’t matter. The first bit of the ceremony was the massed members of the Founding Families saying the words of the Colony Ten oath, which we all knew by heart anyway.
Everyone stood at attention while the giant screen figure of Kellan Jain recited the names of the twenty-three Military officers who died making this continent of Miranda safe for the first colonists. When the last name was reached, the screen image changed to show the flag of humanity. There was two minutes of silence, followed by the music of the hymn. When it got close to the final high note, everyone gave furtive glances sideways at where Koulsy was standing on the nearby hillside, so they could time their salute to match his.
Salute over, everyone relaxed, and the screen swapped to showing Kellan and Inessa Jain. Kellan Jain was holding the crystal globe of Miranda now, the original one that the Military had presented to them when Miranda opened for full colonization.
The image focused in on Inessa Jain as she repeated the words she’d said back then. “This world is called Miranda.”
The crowd responded with the ritual reply that had been said on every new colony world since the handover ceremony for Thetis was interrupted by torrential rain. “May the sun shine brightly on Miranda.”
I couldn’t stop myself giving a surreptitious glance at the sky. I didn’t think that rain at this particular moment would make the nightmare chimera appear from the shadows. I didn’t even believe the superstition about it meaning the next harvest would be a poor one. I was only looking upwards because rain would spoil the rest of the day’s celebrations.
The sky was still a reassuringly clear blue, the solemn ceremony was over, and the screen went blank as the children’s pageant started. Six fearsome green and black lizards appeared from where they’d been hiding behind the flexiplas screen. My brother, Henri, was inside the cloth costume of the leading one. He’d spent weeks practising how to use the wooden poles to snap its jaws together, and had added some red painted blood on the teeth as an extra gory touch.
The crowd booed the lizards, and the children came running forwards. In the front were a group of 12-year-olds, wearing a homemade approximation of Military uniforms and carrying bags of over-ripe fire plums. Behind them was a mob of younger children. Most were wearing the usual glowing moon monkey masks, black and white panda mouse masks, or silver flutterfly masks, but I spotted a couple of girls wearing pink and blue masks that I guessed were supposed to be hummingbirds.
The lizards made snarling noises and charged the children, but the Military stood their ground and fought them off with a hail of well-aimed fire plums. The lizards retreated, rallied, charged again several times, and finally dropped dramatically to the ground and lay still. The mob of Mirandan animals cheered, and danced round the fallen lizards in a victorious circle. I glanced across at Koulsy, wondering what he’d think of this. It was hard to be sure when he was so far away, but I thought he was smiling.
Battle won, the children streamed across to the food tables to get their reward of lurid green cakes decorated with lizard shaped icing, and the rest of the crowd broke up into chattering groups. The flexiplas screen started showing the scene at Memorial again, vision only this time.
I caught sight of Rodrish standing next to his mother. He was looking happy right now, but tomorrow he’d be furious with me. Everyone else was going to be furious with me too. Even my own family would be shocked and horrified at my behaviour, while Shelby Summerhaze was going to be gloriously triumphant, telling everyone how she’d been right about me all along. It was strange to think that Rodrish’s brother Bened was probably one of the few people who’d understand why I was breaking my betrothal and sympathize with me.
I remembered how Koulsy had been alone in the storm, standing among the rain, the gale, and the lightning that night, while the trees tumbled around him. Tomorrow, I’d be facing a different sort of storm. The next few months were going to be ugly, but last night I’d studied the information that Teacher Lomas had sent me, and discovered there was a light in the darkness that was even brighter than the sign over Mojay’s General Store.
I was going to apply to study history at University Asgard, but I wouldn’t be going to Gamma sector at Year End. I needed to complete the Pre-history Foundation course before moving on to do my full degree, and that course wouldn’t be held on Asgard but on Earth itself!
I’d been born on a frontier colony world, only a few years after it opened for full colonization. I loved the fact we were building the future here, but I also loved learning about the past, and I was going to spend next year on the oldest of humanity’s worlds.
Next year I’d be studying history on the world where Sean Donnelly sang his songs, Carla Maria Ortiz founded rejuvenation medicine, Thaddeus Wallam-Crane invented the portal, Amita Patel built her staggering triumphs of engineering, Shakespeare wrote his plays, and Leonardo da Vinci mastered science and art.
Rodrish would hate me for breaking my betrothal and costing him his dream of owning the Great House. I was sorry about that. Breaking my betrothal would hurt me too, because I’d cared about Rodrish far more than he cared about me, but Koulsy was right. People showed their true characters in a crisis. Now I’d seen what Rodrish was truly like, I couldn’t marry him. Bened had wasted decades of his life, living a life he didn’t want for the sake of houses and land. I wasn’t making the same mistake.
I was going to study history on the world where history began, and come back to Miranda to teach others about how the lessons of the past could guide our decisions for the future.