Evolution Read Online Free

the jobs you – we – don’t want to do. The kind of jobs that don’t pay much.’
    ‘And they don’t mind?’
    ‘On Earth, in the compounds, there’s no monetary system.’
    Lizzy looks at me blankly.
    ‘They don’t use money. Their food and clothes are provided for them.’
    ‘Who gives them these things?’
    ‘We do.’
    ‘So they get everything free, while we have to pay for everything. That’s not fair.’
    I don’t know how to start to explain. It’s like talking to a child. I sit Lizzy down at the foot of the Obelisk and start to give her a potted history of Earth. If I could make her understand what it’s like to live there maybe she’ll be more sympathetic to her neighbours.
    ‘The completes who escaped to the satellites were the lucky ones. They escaped after The Great Plague. The unlucky ones suffered from mutations and were left on Earth.’
    Lizzy snuggles up to me, ‘I know all that.’
    ‘Some of the completes felt sorry for them,’ I continue, ‘and decided to help them. They built the compounds to keep them safe from further contamination.’
    ‘Yes, I get all that,’ Lizzy says, her head nestling on my shoulder. ‘We were taught all that at school, but what I don’t understand is why they are here.’
    I start to explain how the completes ransacked theEarth and took its resources to create a rich new world for themselves on the satellites creating a standard of living much higher than in the compounds. ‘Now that the atmosphere on Earth is no longer dangerous the humanoids feel they are entitled to share our luck….’
    I stop talking, jump to my feet and turn away from Lizzy, a lump in my throat. I can’t do it. I can’t justify this venture. Not to Lizzy, nor to anyone else, including myself. What was Athene thinking of to agree to this stupid scheme? It’s misconceived from start to finish. For one thing people like Lizzy and her family do not enjoy a high standard of living. They are as confined in the Project as the mutant humanoids in the compounds.
    Another thing, these particular mutant humanoids, the less educated ones from C1, were brought here to work for completes, not to share the culture and higher standard of living. The entire enterprise is an anathema.
    I face Lizzy, pull her up and grip her shoulders. ‘You’re right, Lizzy. I agree with you. You shouldn’t have mutant humanoids as neighbours in the Project. And yes, I will take your letter to the Symposium – if that is what you want.’
    Her face lights up and I think again how pretty she is. ‘Thank you, Mr Darcy.’
    Her reference to Pride and Prejudice , an old joke of ours, embarrasses me. I realise, perhaps for the first time, that our love story, unlike that of Darcy and Elizabeth, will not have a happy ending. I will always be Lizzy’s friend, but not her husband. We are too different.
    In spite of Stella’s warning that I must never tell anyone that I was once a mutant humanoid, I know that I will never ask anyone to share my life without being completely honest about my past. There is no way that person will be Lizzy.
    Her reaction to her new neighbours makes it clear that I can never be able to share my secret with her.
Journal Entry
    When Stella goes upstairs to say goodnight to the children, I give Father the envelope containing the petition. I tell him that a fellow student gave it to me and asked me to make sure the Symposium received it.
    Father asks me if I know what it’s about. I tell him that I do.
    He opens the envelope and frowns. ‘The migrants from Earth weren’t supposed to live mixed up with the Project people, but in a separate section,’ he says. ‘We can’t expect them to integrate straight away.’
    ‘Father, you are on the sub-committee that came up with this suggestion. If you don’t mind me saying, wasn’t the scheme doomed from the first?’
    ‘Doomed is a bit strong, Michael, but I have to admit that there are some people in the Symposium and even on the