Free The Companions by Sheri S. Tepper

contract provides profit sharing to the members of the certification team…”
    â€œYou don’t know anything about planet certification!”
    â€œThat’s what I told her, that I knew nothing about it, that I wanted to stay and finish school. And Mother said I would need something to live on, which this expedition would pay me. I said I had enough income, and she dropped the sky on me.”
    â€œOh, Witt. Don’t tell me…”
    â€œOh, yes. She told me I had an income, but the trust is in her keeping, and because I entered into a cohabitation liaison without her permission, I don’t get the income anymore, or the principal until I’m thirty.”
    â€œIs that legal?”
    He almost screamed. “Of course it’s not legal! I’m of age. I could prove she has no right if I had ten years’ time and a million Earth-creds to spend in court!” Witt’s head dropped into his hands, and he ran his pale, tapered fingers through his dark mane of hair, over and over. “Which she pointed out at some length, just in case I’d thought of trying it! As of this morning, we have no income. We can’t even break the liaison contract for five years, so she really can starve us if she likes.”
    Can’t break the contract! I’d been getting angrier by the moment, mostly at his mother, but at the way he was acting, too. I tried to keep that under control, as I said, “Witt, we’re well enough educated to hold jobs.” We were. Either of us was quite capable of holding down any number of boring but paying jobs. I knew, because I’d been checking what jobs were available just in case the sanctuary thing didn’t work out.
    â€œThis isn’t the twenty-second century, Jewel. People can’t take a false name and pretend to be someone else. Identichips make that sort of thing impossible. And there’s not a job anywhere on Earth she can’t prevent our getting or getus fired from if she finds out about it, and she will. I hoped…I hoped she’d let me be! She won’t. If we don’t split up, she’ll see that we end up down-dwellers, with minimum I-chip credit, living in a sublevel hole.”
    â€œI don’t believe that, but if it’s true, we’ll sign up for a colony and go off world!”
    â€œYou think she couldn’t stop us? You think she couldn’t block emigration permits?”
    I was talking to a crazy stranger, someone I didn’t even recognize. I knew we could get off planet without an emigration permit! Whenever Joram came home to visit, he told us stories about his travels, including all the tricks he used to get from this impossible place to that impossible place!
    I said, very calmly, “Just because she’s punishing you, you don’t have to go along with it, Witt. As you said, you’re of age. There are other ways…”
    He shook his head at me, raising his hands as though to fend me off. “If we’re going to live, I’ll have to go. She’ll make an allowance for you to live on while I’m gone, I got her to promise that much…”
    â€œWhile you’re gone? When?”
    â€œTomorrow. Oh, God, don’t look at me like that, Jewel. It’s only three years. We’ll…we’ll have plenty of time when it’s over…” He said this last as though he’d been told it, not as though he’d thought it out, his mother’s words coming from his mouth.
    Stubbornly, I went on trying to discuss alternatives. Every possibility I raised, he said it was impossible, and he got more and more frantic and hysterical the harder I tried. He couldn’t even hear me. I knew I could convince him if only I had a little time, but he had no time to consider anything except his own confusion, and my attempts to change his mind were only making it worse.
    I stopped arguing. He made a frantic attempt at lovemaking that