Earth and Fire Read Online Free Page A

lot of people
sailing around in boats, the Industrial Revolution, and umpteen wars.”
    Issette
attempted to put her fingers in her ears without dropping her ice cream.
    “Wallam-Crane
invented the portal in 2206,” I continued. “There was the century of United
Earth, and the adoption of Language as the common tongue of humanity, then some
idiot invented the interstellar portal.”
    Issette took her
fingers out of her ears, so she could lick her melting ice cream. “Have you
finished yet?”
    “No, I haven’t! Modern
history started with the colonization of Adonis, then Exodus century emptied
Earth, and for nearly four hundred years this world has just been a dumping
ground for the Handicapped. That villa has been through an awful lot, Issette,
so yes, that’s all there is left!” I paused. “You’ve got ice cream in your
hair.”
    Issette used her
lookup as a mirror and checked her hair. “There’s no need to get so excited
about your rubble. I was just commenting there wasn’t much of it.”
    “We could portal
over to Athens,” I said. “It’s far more impressive and incredibly beautiful.
There was a major project to flatten or remove the more recent ruins a century
or so ago, so now there’s just the ones from ancient Greece in the middle of
the forest. I went there with the school history club last year. We spent three
days helping to spray the Parthenon with a new layer of preservative.”
    “It’ll still be just
ruins though,” said Issette. “No people. The Rome Alive exhibit made a lot more
sense to me. They’ve got proper buildings and holo people.”
    I groaned. Rome
Alive was, in my opinion, horribly tacky. It had reproduction buildings, with holo
versions of historical characters acting out melodramatic scenes. The exhibit
had been set up to attract off-world visitors, especially the ones from Betan
worlds, since Beta sector prided itself on basing its culture on ancient Rome
and Greece.
    There weren’t
enough off-world visitors to keep the place busy, so Rome Alive also encouraged
school parties to visit. Issette and I went there with our school when we were 13,
and I was thrown out for pointing out some of the more blatant historical
inaccuracies. Betan visitors wouldn’t care about them – half their ideas about
ancient Rome and Greece had been wrong to start with and the rest had got
hopelessly mangled over the centuries – but I did.
    “You don’t need
stupid holo characters,” I said. “Just imagine the real people who lived here,
slept here, ate here. They fell in love, married, had children, went through
times of joy and tragedy the same as people do today. Look at that bit of
mosaic pavement.”
    Issette sighed.
“All right, I’m looking.”
    “Three thousand
years ago, ancient Romans were standing exactly where we are now, admiring the
new mosaic floor in their house. Isn’t that an amaz thought? Men in togas,
women in …”
    I broke off my
sentence and frowned at Issette. “Why are you giggling?”
    It took her a
few seconds to recover enough to speak. “Betans wear togas, don’t they?”
    I wrinkled my
nose. “Modern Betan formal dress for both men and women is supposed to be based
on ancient Roman togas, but the Betan togas aren’t remotely historically
accurate.”
    “So ancient
Romans didn’t dress like that Betan man we saw in Europe Off-world?” asked
Issette.
    I blinked. “Of
course not. That Betan man wasn’t formally dressed.”
    Issette grinned.
“He was barely dressed at all. I was just thinking that Rome Alive would be far
more interesting if the holo people wore clothes like his.”
    She started
giggling again after that, so I gave up trying to talk about history. We sat down
on a three thousand year old piece of wall, finished eating our ice creams,
then dialled the portal.
    We’d just stepped
through to the foyer of Next Step E241/1089, when a voice spoke from next to us.
“You look absolutely amaz, Jarra.”
    I bit my lip to
stop myself