Free View from Ararat by Brian Caswell Page B

could be alone – I mean, really alone. And though she tried to act tough, she was pretty sensitive to the stares we’d get, so as there was nowhere inside, we found our own way to avoid them.
    Out side . . .
    It wasn’t all that hard. The security around the camp – especially on the western side – was no better than it had been back in the storage yards of Puerto Limon.
    And to be alone with Maija, I’d have risked a lot worse.
    We’d met Maija during our period as one of the crew- families on the Pandora , and we’d grown up together for eight years, as the only kids of our age awake on the ship. She was a couple of months older that Élita, and we hit it off from the first day. To Élita, she was like a sister, but to me . . .
    Well, I already had a sister. It wasn’t another sister that I was looking for. And Maija certainly didn’t act like a sister. At least, not when we were alone.
    Of course, we never said anything to Élita. About, you know, not coming outside with us. Even if I’d had a mind to, which I didn’t, Maija would never have allowed it, but it didn’t come to that.
    It seemed like she decided to give us some space, anyway. I guess she figured it was crowded enough in the camp without your little sister cramping your style.
    So Élita spent her time helping Mrs Gough with the twins. Stephen and Simone were seven, and they were a handful. They were about the age we’d been when our parents died and we’d gone to live with our aunt, so I suppose she felt a kind of link with them.
    And Mrs Gough was special. The Goughs had almost nothing. Everything they’d saved had gone to pay for the passage. But she was the most cheerful person I ever knew.
    â€˜We’re on a new world,’ she told me once. ‘New rules apply.’
    I remember her reaction when we gave her the bags of clothes we’d brought with us. We’d never opened them from the moment we’d left Earth, and they were useless to us by that stage. It was one thing my aunt hadn’t thought of when she’d packed everything in such a hurry, the night before we left forever.
    My last memory of my Aunt Juanita is watching her pack the clothes.
    She was folding Élita’s favourite red coat, ready to lay it on the top of the pile. I’d ridden back to the storage yards on my bike to get it, as I’d promised, and found it neatly folded, lying just outside the fence. Looking around to see if it was some kind of trap, I stuffed it into a plastic bag and slung it over the handlebars.
    Anyway, Aunt Juanita was standing there smoothing the satin collar with the palm of her hand, when she told me she loved us both, and that she’d promised her sister, our mother, that she’d do the best for us, which was the only reason she was letting us go.
    But we’d never needed the clothes. For forty years of the trip we were in stasis, and during the other eight we were crew, and all crew-clothing was recyclable – for obvious reasons. And now, at eighteen, I’d outgrown them. And so had Élita.
    When Mrs Gough opened the bag, the first thing she picked up was the coat.
    â€˜It’s beautiful,’ she said, rubbing the smooth collar against her cheek. ‘But it’ll have to get a whole lot colder around here before Simone can wear it.’
    I had to agree, as it was around 45 degrees that afternoon.
    That was the last time I saw her. It was only a couple of days before things changed forever, and we lost track of most of the people we knew – even the ones who survived.
    I guess the worst part of the camp – in the early stages, at least – was the knowledge that we were so close to everything the dream had promised. So close and yet it was still out of our reach. For everyone on the Pandora Deucalion was the Promised Land, offering a future undreamed of on Earth.
    Every morning, before the heat of the day, I stood and