The day finally arrived, five days after Jimox and Teina walked into the sand dunes, when the three Education Service trainees declared themselves ready to read their first drafts.
T’sss’lisss read hers right after breakfast. She presented the idea that everyone in Nebador, even the most highly-trained and honored citizens, helped with the little things, like cleaning toilet rooms. In contrast, she described the civilization on her home planet, advanced enough for inter-planetary travel, but primitive enough for nearly constant warfare and, of course, strict class boundaries. Many of her listeners nodded with understanding, including those from Sonmatia Three.
The snake concluded her essay by proposing that doing the dirty work, willingly and with joy, separated wise people from those who were merely intelligent, and it always would.
Kolarrr’ka volunteered to present his essay that afternoon. He started by talking about something everyone knew, that being invited to work in the Nebador Services only happened to people who had gone through huge challenges and tests in their lives, and almost always a difficult journey of some kind.
Then he went on to consider the requirements for becoming planetary princes and princesses, a job so rare that no written rules existed. After
NEBADOR Book Eight: Witness 201
talking to everyone he could find who knew Jimox and Teina personally, he concluded that it would not be possible for any mortals to do those jobs without first living through a planetary-wide catastrophic event. Only after that, could they possibly love their planet so much that they would gladly be responsible for it’s welfare for the rest of time.
That evening, Ashley was scared.
The last time she had read something aloud to a group of people, it was a silly little story about a boy and a monster. The audience had been her sixth-grade teacher and her fellow ten and eleven-year-old public school students.
Now she was almost fifteen — thirteen in the numbers of her home planet
— and the people listening included the entire crew of a starship, the host of a planet station, a wise and powerful angel, her buddies T’sss’lisss and Kolarrr’ka who she thought were both smarter than her, and about twenty other Nebador citizens, all much smarter.
Ashley felt like she was out on a limb. Both of her fellow Education Service trainees, she knew, had written about ideas that were well-known in Nebador.
The topic of Ashley’s essay, on the other hand, was one she had never heard anyone talk about, nor seen anywhere in writing.
But now it was too late to change her mind and write her essay all over again.
As Ashley looked at the expectant faces around her, she wondered if she was about to flunk out of the Education Service. She took a deep breath.
“Real Recreation Requires Real Risk,” she read with her heart in her throat. “That’s . . . um . . . my tentative title. Rrrrr for short.”
Brora
smiled.
She looked around at her audience. Kolarrr’ka was nodding thoughtfully.
That allowed Ashley to breathe again, as she really liked and respected the bird, even though he was no older than she was.
Rini and T’sss’lisss appeared interested.
Ilika and Mati both smiled.
But what Ashley saw next allowed her to continue reading. Arantiloria was leaning forward, looking at her with respect, and nodding for Ashley to go on.
NEBADOR Book Eight: Witness 202
Ashley took a deep breath and looked at her knowledge pad. “On my home planet, no one is allowed to take risks. The laws are made by old people who are afraid of everything, so taking risks is against the law. We have theme parks, like this planet station once was, but everything is controlled by safety officers. When you finish visiting a theme park, you’ve learned nothing that wasn’t in the brochure, you’ve experienced nothing that isn’t in a video, and you aren’t even tired — the safety officers made sure of that . . .”