Side Trip Read online

  Slipping into a seat in the back row, I asked Arlyne if Mrs. Bromley had been in while we’d been gone.

  “Once. I said you were in the washroom.” She didn’t ask where we’d been. She knew us as well as she knew Simon.

  Mrs. Bromley arrived a few minutes later, holding Simon by the hand. Having found him near the main entrance she was now certain his disappearance was unintentional. She said a main entrance was the best place to wait when lost and actually commended him for thinking of it.

  He told us later he’d had a great time at the amusement park.

  Chapter Two

  Our side trip to the Fortress of Jorthoa whetted our appetite for a less formal approach to sightseeing, an approach Kirsty and I took whenever a chance came our way.

  We faced reprisals, of course. The straying student story soon wore thin, and once Mrs. Bromley realized what we were doing, unauthorized absences got us confined to our hotel room with extra work. Not that we stayed confined. As soon as she was gone, so were we. Those pejorative reports from our boarding schools must have failed to inform her that the deactivation of locks was one of the first things we had learned there.

  Unwilling to concede defeat, she took to making us—and Simon, who was likewise off at every opportunity—walk in front of her whenever the group went anywhere. This made escape more difficult, but not impossible. At least one of us managed to duck out every time she got distracted. Solitary jaunts weren’t much fun, though. Kirsty and I liked to go sightseeing together, and only Simon, for whom thwarting those in authority is a pleasure in itself, got any real enjoyment out of these illicit excursions.

  Then, one day, our luck turned. On our last day in the last city on our Jorthoan itinerary, we were taken to a museum to view some native pottery. Some of the display rooms were very small, and the one we were in was already crowded when an adult touring party tried to squeeze inside. In the resulting confusion, Kirsty and I both managed to slip away.

  The first thing we did was to go riding around the city’s canal district in a water skimmer. The old man operating it supplied us with endless information about the area, and his spiel was much more interesting than anything we’d heard from Mrs. Bromley.

  He let us off at the Bridge of Jewels, a famous footbridge studded with every type of jewel imaginable. It was quite dazzling; as were the miniature bridges (with imitation jewels) we bought as souvenirs. We got back to the hotel later than ever before, and Mrs. Bromley was lying in wait for us. Simon had lit out too, and she was livid.

  “I have put up with as much as I intend to,” she informed us. “You three are wilful, untrustworthy, and a bad influence on your companions. You will accompany this group no further. I shall send star-comms to the people responsible for you in your parents’ absence and put you on a ship back to Yerth tomorrow.”

  AUP always arranges for people on Yerth to stand in loco parentis to the offspring of colleagues who are off on assignment. Unsatisfactory as the edu-tour had been, Kirsty and I had no desire to be returned to annoyed guardians who would probably stick us in the strictest boarding school they could find that had not already barred us.

  “There’s naught else for it,” Kirsty said after we’d gone up to our room for the night. “We’ll just have to go off by oorselves like we wanted to do in the first place.”

  “What?” I said, my ‘Idiotic Scheme Alert’ button kicking in.

  “It’s simple. The starport officials aren’t going to let Mrs. Bromley past oor transit barge’s check-in point. Once we’re in the boarding passage, we’ll just wave Simon on and wait ’til the others are called aboard their own transit barge.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’ll go back to the check-in, say there’s been a mix-up with oor tickets, and get them exchanged for tickets to somewhere else.”

  “At which point we will be labelled runaways and handed over to the authorities. People our age cannot buy, or even exchange, interplanetary tickets on AUP-member worlds unless their passports contain independent traveller declarations stating that their parents are willing to let them travel on their own. Ours don’t.”

  Kirsty gave an impatient snort. “I know they don’t. But they contain declarations allowing us to travel with Mrs. Bromley. We’d not have to change but a word or two to turn them into independent traveller declarations.”

  Minor forgery was something else we’d learned at one of our schools.

  “What about the scanners that pick up on such alterations? Ticket machines won’t issue tickets without checking every section of our passports.”

  “People will, though—especially busy ones. Starports have flesh and blood ticket agents too, and they’re not likely to call up secondary travel documents if they’ve a long line of passengers to see to.”

  The idea started to have possibilities. Tempted, I said, “Heltiga would probably have the heaviest traffic flow. It’s the largest planet in the system, and even though it’s an AUP member, it’s not on any of the edu-tour itineraries. That means we wouldn’t have to worry about running into any of Mrs. Bromley’s cronies if she puts out an alert for us.”

  “Which she will,” Kirsty replied. “And Heltiga’s a bonny choice anyway. It’s going to be hosting a royal treasure exhibit from Cholar in just a week or two. Mon, I’d love to go to that.” Her face lit up at the prospect. Kirsty has many interests, but fine jewellery, exquisitely formed ornaments, and other rare and beautiful objects are her passion. She doesn’t actually own any, but she enjoys looking at other people’s collections. “The treasures have never been displayed outside of Cholar before,” she went on. “They’re sure to be worth seeing.”

  I agreed, but had a more practical reason for wanting to make Heltiga our first stop. Our parents were now in an area of space that was entering its cosmic storm season. These storms last several months, and have always played havoc with communications, making transmissions between planets difficult, and contact with other star systems nigh on impossible. The journey from Jorthoa to Heltiga took only four days, and we would probably not be missed for seven, when the ship to Yerth went into orbit and the people waiting for us realized we weren’t on it. By the time our guardians got hold of Mrs. Bromley and learned we had taken off, there was a good chance they wouldn’t be able to inform our parents. Even if a message did get through, our parents wouldn’t want to risk the wrath of their superiors by putting us on a formal runaway list. AUP frowns on personnel who allow family members to attract negative attention. The most they were likely to do was hire a runaway seeker to make some discreet, unofficial inquiries; inquiries that would be hard to follow up once we were on a planet as large as Heltiga.

  There was, however, one problem. In order for the above hindrances to be of help to us, it was crucial that news of our disappearance be kept from our guardians for as long as possible.

  “What about Simon?” I asked. “If he boards the Yerth ship ahead of us and then can’t find us, he might start asking questions. Questions that could result in almost instantaneous pursuit.”

  “Could we not bribe him to cover for us?”

  “Possibly. He’s responded well to it in the past.”

  It was really all we could do. Before we went to bed we forwarded a time-delayed message to his pocket computer and transferred some money into his travel account. The latter stretched our resources a little, but we had to make sure he would consider it reasonable recompense and keep quiet about us until after he reached Yerth.

  The next day, Mrs. Bromley deposited everyone in the lounge of Jorthoa’s main starport and went to the star-communications station to send star-comms to the guardians of those she was, with little or no regret, expelling from her edu-tour group. Simon wandered off almost at once, but Kirsty and I stayed with the others and tried to mask our excitement about striking out on our own. We sighed a lot and nodded morosely every time Arlyne or one of the others attempted to commiserate with us about being shipped home in disgrace.

 
As soon as Mrs. Bromley returned, she ordered us to gather up our hand luggage and proceed to the boarding area. Simon arrived back in the midst of this activity, but if she noticed he’d been AWOL, she was probably too close to getting rid of him to care.

  The barge for the Yerth ship was at the end of a long corridor containing a labyrinth of transit barge boarding passages. Since it was scheduled to launch at almost the same time as the barge for our former companions’ ship, Mrs. Bromley made them stay by their own boarding passage while she hurried us across to ours.

  After entering the boarding passage, we stopped and moved aside to let other passengers go by. Seeing this, Simon stopped as well. I told him we’d forgotten to ask Mrs. Bromley something and suggested he go on ahead. He gave me a skeptical look, but went off without comment.

  We waited inside the passage until we were certain Simon was aboard his transit barge and Mrs. Bromley and her remaining captives were aboard theirs. We then headed back to the check-in point and set about convincing the attendant to let us back into the starport.

  “Och, there’s been a mix-up,” Kirsty said, her eyes wide with concern. “We’re supposed to be going to Zerthos to meet up with oor parents, but the lady that was with us has been and got us tickets for Yerth.”

  “She just saw us into the passage and then went aboard her own ship,” I added, trying to look very young and helpless. “What should we do?”

  The attendant smiled. “Don’t worry. There’s a ticket exchange desk right at the end of this corridor. Someone there will correct your tickets for you.”

  “What about our luggage? It will have gone up to the Yerth ship by now.”

  “I’ll see to that. Give me your claim badges. I’ll have your luggage pulled and transferred to the reclaim station. It’ll be there by the time you exchange your tickets.”

  He quickly altered our claim badges and returned them to us. Flashing him grateful smiles, we wriggled past him and set off in the direction indicated.

  We had no trouble getting a ticket machine to give us a refund for our Yerth tickets. The tickets were genuine, and the only other documents the machine was required to scan were our equally valid travel-account cards. The showing of passports was required for actual ticket purchases but, as Kirsty had predicted, the busy ticket agent only chose to scan the identity sections. She debited our travel accounts and issued us new tickets without questioning our right to buy them.

  There were three ships going out to Heltiga that day. All of them were officially full, so we had to accept stand-by tickets. Since such tickets are often honoured, we weren’t too worried about getting on a ship. We retrieved our luggage from the reclaim station, exchanged the destination decals, and went to one of the starport’s café lounges. There we accessed our travel accounts to buy some vreena buns and soft drinks and changed our remaining funds to AUP Standard Currency so that a runaway seeker couldn’t use the accounts to pinpoint our location. There was not much in them anyway. The refund for our Yerth tickets had not begun to cover the price of the Heltiga tickets, and what had seemed like a generous amount of spending money when we were travelling with a prepaid, all-inclusive, edu-tour was not going to cover our expenses now that we were on our own. We knew Neil was financing his travels by getting jobs as he went along and figured we could do the same. Until then, we would just have to live frugally.

  “Prices in the Heltigan capital are sure to be scandalous once the Cholarian treasures get to town,” Kirsty mused. “Jobs should be plentiful though, and we can keep oor expenses doon by staying in a budget hotel and buying food from shops and markets instead of eating in restaurants.”

  I nodded. “There might even be a youth hostel there. They’re supposed to be quite cheap. If we took out memberships in the Young Interplanetary Travellers Association, we’d be able to stay in them.”

  There was a YITA service counter at the starport. The memberships we purchased came with info-cards, and going through them entertained us for a while. After that we just wandered around the starport until, finally, we were called aboard the last ship of the day. We had to share a cabin with two old ladies, but they were quite nice and we were seldom in the cabin anyway. We were too busy enjoying all the lovely recreational facilities we’d been denied access to on our first ship.

  When we got to Heltiga, it was our intention to go through customs and other formalities without attracting undue attention. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way. As soon as our luggage got to the reclaim station, Kirsty hit the pick-up button on a remote control unit belonging to one of the starport’s auto-porters. A woman bumped into her just as she pressed it, jamming the signal. The auto-porter shot out its clamps, seized her backpack and hold-all, and threw them both onto its luggage platform. Having been told to pick up luggage, it then proceeded to grab all the bags it could find, even if their decal codes didn’t match the one on Kirsty’s claim badge.

  “Stop it,” Kirsty ordered as owners of hijacked luggage began to howl in protest.

  The auto-porter took no notice. When it ran out of room on its own platform, it gave an indignant squawk and moved in on auto-porters with empty platforms it could load.

  “No, no, stop. Come back,” cried Kirsty. “Leave that luggage alone, you daft mechanical beastie.” Dropping the remote, she leapt onto the crazed machine, which promptly took off with her on top of it. Alarmed, I snatched up the remote and pushed every button it had, but that only made the auto-porter go faster. It careened around the starport scattering luggage and people alike.

  This might have gone on indefinitely if an official-looking type had not appeared from somewhere and wrestled the remote away from me. Flipping open its back, he tinkered with its inner workings until the auto-porter made a screeching, grating noise and came to an abrupt halt, catapulting Kirsty onto the floor.

  I raced over to her. “Are you okay?” I inquired anxiously.

  “No-o-o,” Kirsty moaned as I helped her up. “My head’s all awhirl, and I think I’ve broken every bone in my body.”

  “What do you expect, cavorting about like that?”

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “You got on the thing.”

  “Aye, I know, but I wasn’t the one who sped it up.”

  The official-looking type turned out to be the starport’s assistant manager. Handing the remote back to me, he suggested I help people gather up their luggage while he took Kirsty to the first aid station to see if she had sustained any injuries.

  As soon as she returned (slightly bruised, but otherwise unharmed), we set about clearing customs. This took hardly any time at all. The man behind the counter recognized Kirsty as the girl with the berserk auto-porter and simply waved us through. I suppose smugglers don’t create such spectacles.

  Just outside the starport we found some travel tubes that went directly into the capital city of Heltig. Upon ascertaining which one stopped near the Heltig youth hostel, we clambered aboard and tried to find seats. About six hundred other people had the same idea. We had to stow our luggage in a side pouch and travel wedged between a Delveckian man who was even fatter than most of his exceedingly rotund race, and a blue-feathered Bithian couple with the standard Bithian brood of three identical offspring. Fortunately, the trip didn’t take long. Fifteen minutes later, we were walking along an attractive little street in an outer residential area.

  At the hostel, we were informed we could only stay one night. After that, all its beds were taken.

  The hostel manager’s green, octagon-shaped eyes regarded us with concern. “You’re not likely to find lodgings anywhere else, either. What were your parents thinking of, letting you come into a strange city at such a busy time without reserving a place to stay?”

  I bit my lip. “We didn’t…I mean, they didn’t, know youth hostels required reservations.”

  “They don’t, always, but the Cholarian treasure exhibit has made Heltig a very popular stopping place for travellers. Those treasures are famous. T
ourists are coming in from every planet you can think of, and then some.”

  “There must be a wee nook somewhere,” Kirsty remonstrated. “And once we get jobs—”

  “Jobs? Hmm, that might be worth looking into.” The manager thought for a moment. “The Imperial Exhibition Hall’s been hiring students to help with the treasure exhibit. A few have been allowed to use some back rooms in exchange for their services. They probably only have put-up cots and such, but I could ask someone, if you like.”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  She put a call through to a Mr. XanChiv at the Imperial Exhibition Hall. In the course of asking him if he had any live-in helper positions for us, she told him we were very young. She even managed to imply that, if anything happened to us as a result of having nowhere to stay, it would be his fault. It was emotional blackmail, but it worked. Mr. XanChiv agreed to let us start the very next day. A glitch in his inventory programme had obliterated the storage locations for items being displaced by the incoming treasures and he wanted them re-entered into his main computer. The job sounded dull, but paid a small wage in addition to room and board, so we considered ourselves lucky to get it.

  Chapter Three

  The Imperial Exhibition Hall was one of the largest museums we had ever seen. The only areas open to the public were some rooms containing permanent displays, but our ID badges got us into most of the closed-off sections. For days, workmen scurried about the central display rooms trying to construct cabinets that were attractive enough to please the museum staff and impenetrable enough to suit AUP’s security people. The latter spent most of their time checking alarm systems and determining where guards should be placed once the treasures were installed. Everything was running behind schedule, and the AUP officials in charge did not look pleased.

  Having heard snatches of conversation before our parents went off on assignment, I was aware that the AUP Directorate considered the Cholarian treasure exhibit an important step toward full planetary unity in the Zaidus system. The system was AUP’s doorway into other regions of space, and having independent planets in such an important space sector made the Directorate nervous. Everyone knew it was mostly the opposition of the influential, mineral-rich Cholar that was keeping the other independent planets out of the Association, and the Directorate was sure that if Cholar were to become a member—even a conditional member—the others would join as well. But the usual inducements, such as mutual protection agreements, guaranteed trading rights, and an exchange of technologies, were of little interest to a planet like Cholar. It already had an excellent defence system, an abundance of almost every commodity its people could possibly want, and a technology equal to that of any of the leading AUP members. When my father and other recruiters first approached Cholar, a few of the Sub-Rulers and Crown Councilmen on the Supreme Council had liked the idea of raking in bigger and better profits from the planet’s rare minerals, but the Supreme Ruler, Obruk, had not.