The New World - By Patrick Ness Page 0,2

I like my mum and dad.’

She sneered at me. ‘Not after five months you won’t.’

‘Steff, you used to brag about how your father-’

‘And then when you land, you’ve got to live there with who knows what kinds of scary animals and hoping your food rations last and there’s going to be weather there, Viola. Actual weather.’

‘We’ll be the first people to see it.’

‘Oh, whoopee,’ she said. ‘First people to see a deserted mudhole.’ She twisted her hair a little harder. ‘First people to die there more like.’

‘Steff Taylor!’ Bradley said from the front of the class. All the other kids huddled over their interactive art vids were suddenly looking up.

‘I’m working,’ Steff said, running her hands over her artpad.

‘Is that so?’ Bradley said. ‘Then perhaps you can come up here and show the rest of us what you’re working on.’

Steff frowned, hard, a frown I knew covered the latest grudge she was adding to her long, long list. As slowly as she could get away with, she got to her feet.

‘Thirteenth birthday,’ she whispered to me. ‘All alone.’

And I could tell by the satisfied look on her face that I reacted just exactly how she wanted.

***

‘120 seconds to orbital,’ my mother says.

‘Ready here,’ my father says over the comm, and I hear the engines change their pitch as we prepare to stop falling out of the black beyond and power our way through the atmosphere of the planet.

‘Ready here, too,’ I say, opening up screens that I won’t really use until we’re closer to the ground, looking for a clearing big enough to put down. A clearing, if I’m good enough at my job, where we might actually grow our first town.

‘90 seconds,’ my mother says.

‘Engines opening,’ my father says, and there’s another change in pitch. ‘Oxygenating the fuel.’

‘Buckle up,’ my mother says.

‘I am buckled,’ I say, then turn my chair so I can buckle into it without her seeing.

‘60 seconds,’ my mum says.

‘One more minute and we’re the first ones there!’ my dad shouts over the comm.

My mother laughs. I don’t.

‘Oh, come on, Viola,’ she says. ‘It really is exciting.’ She checks one of her screens, dials on it with her fingertips, then says, ‘30 seconds.’

‘I was happy on the ship,’ I say, quietly but so seriously my mother turns to look. ‘I don’t want to live down there.’

My mother frowns. ‘15 seconds.’

‘Fuel ready!’ my father says. ‘Let’s go atmo-surfing!’

‘Ten,’ my mother says, still looking at me. ‘Nine.’

And that’s when things go really, really wrong.

***

‘But it’s a whole year,’ I said to Bradley in one of my training tutorials less than a month before we left. ‘A year away from my friends, a year away from schoolwork-’

‘And if you stayed,’ he said. ‘It would be a year away from your parents.’

I looked back into the empty classroom. It was usually filled with the other caretaker families’ children, learning our lessons, talking to our friends. But today it was just me and Bradley, going over some of the science tech for the trip. Tomorrow, Simone from the Gamma – who I think Bradley secretly fancies – would be teaching me emergency survival skills, just in case the worst happened. But it would still just be me and her in this room, separated out from everybody else.

‘Why does it have to be us, though?’ I said.

‘Because you’re the best ones for the job,’ Bradley said. ‘Your mother is probably our best pilot, your father is a highly skilled engineer-’

‘And what about me? Why do I have to pay for what they’re good at?’

He smiled. ‘You’re hardly just some girl. You’re tops in maths. You’re the younger ones’ favourite tutor in music-’

‘And for that, I should be punished by being dragged away from everyone I know for a year?’

He gave me a look, then he dialled so quickly on the training pads in front of us that I could barely see what he was doing. ‘Name this,’ he said, in a teacherly tone that made me answer immediately.

‘Hardpan,’ I said, looking at the simulated landscape he’d chosen. ‘Good drainage, but dry. Irrigation for at least five to eight years before suitable for crops.’

‘And this?’ he said, dialling again.

‘Temperate forest. Limited clearing needed, potentially good for cattle, but strong environmental concerns.’

‘This one?’

‘Near desert. Subsistence farming only. Bradley-’

‘You’ve got skills, Viola. You’re bright and resourceful and even at your age, you’ll be a vital part of the mission.’

I didn’t answer because for some stupid reason, I could feel my eyes getting wetter.

‘What are you