Petra's Diary

Celestis - Day Four

Four days have dragged by since our voyage on Celestis began. Ten days since I last saw Fenan. I'm writing his name all over this page, as if I'm scoring it upon my heart. Fenan Lee. Fenan Lee. Fenan. Why should I bother writing anything else?

I feel a heaviness, despite being up so high. This airship drifts more slowly than the clouds, nothing but ocean underneath. The airship Angelus flies ahead of us. It's an impressive sight but I stare at it unmoved. Angelus will veer north first, up the west coast of the great continent. Shortly afterwards we will follow, taking the east coast. Solarus, flying behind us, will continue on across another ocean, the longest journey of all. We will soon lose contact with Sealand, our home. In days of antiquity before the Great Extinction, there was a network of satellites all around the globe and communication was as easy as my truevoice. On our journey, we'll be quite alone.

Things are still tense, even with my mild-mannered father. He is patient with me but something in him has withdrawn. I can feel his disappointment and it's worse than Mother's anger. There's an iron frost all over her. I caught her looking at me and it was like she was looking at a stranger.

Day Five

How will I stand it, stuck in this cabin with my parents? Five months until we return home.

The only possibility of privacy is this little book. Fenan pushed it into my hand at our last meeting and said words I won't forget, beautiful mouth-words with his gentle voice.

'I can't change the way things are. Our lives will be on separate paths,' he said. 'But write your thoughts, Petra. That way, I can read them, even if we're far apart. Think freely.'

'I will,' I said. And I kissed him, lovingly, wholeheartedly.

Mother caught us. She sacked Fenan as my language teacher and in her screeching truevoice, she called the Division Enforcers - how I HATE HER; she didn't need to do that. I was screaming at her, pleading, but she wouldn't listen. She told me to SHUT UP, I was giving her a HEAD PAIN. Now she and Father have forced me to come on this STUPID VOYAGE.

MY HEART WILL BREAK. I want to be with FENAN, back in Sealand City.

I LOVE HIM.

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO HIM? HOW WILL HE BE PUNISHED?

Day Six

I'm avoiding the rest of the crew. I talk to them at mealtimes but spend most of my time in the cabin. When my parents come in, I hide this diary under my mattress. At night, Father fills the silence, talking about his work with the cartography team. He's kind to me but everything he says is unbelievably boring. I stare out of the window at the clouds below.

I hardly see Mother, THANK GOODNESS. She's mostly on the viewing deck, looking at pictures of extinct ocean animals, drawing boring diagrams, making boring plans. Tonight she came back looking all self-satisfied.

'This is the first global assessment that we eximians have made in generations,' she said, mistaking me for someone who cares.

I have earplugs at night because my parents snore.

Day Seven

I have picked up my language work again but nothing pleases Mother. She has had another rant at me, telling me I am letting the family down with my morose behaviour. I must be prompt and smiling at evening communion. I was late yesterday and almost ran into Air Admiral Xalvas, our commander, as he was entering to begin the thought-share. He said 'Good evening, Petra' but I could sense his affront. If I'm late again, Mother will slow-roast me. She said Xalvas is a man of first merit from one of Sealand's sovereign families. She went on and on and after a while, all I could hear was blah blah blah.

I concentrate on the ancient sapien languages that Fenan was teaching me. When Mother sees I'm working, she leaves me alone.

I'm not the only offspring on this voyage. Xalvas has brought his son, three years older than me. He's training him for leadership. Charlus. I instantly don't like him. He's too tall and looks a bit like a mantis. I'm the next oldest at seventeen - but not old enough to be treated like crew, as Charlus is. Perhaps that's why I feel I don't belong. Mother says I'll get treated like a child if I act like a child and I want to tell her to GO AND JUMP.

Day Eight

Dear Fenan,

I want to pull your lips to mine and press my body close to yours. It felt as if both our spheres of being were pulled into that kiss and all our differences dissolved. What does it matter that you are not eximian? Fenan Lee, I want to kiss you and hold you, listening to your sapien heart. Because how different are we, really?

Day Nine

This afternoon, I walked the whole length of Celestis, staring down at the blue, up at the blue, feeling so small in this cruel blue world. Sky and ocean. They have brought me on this trip to punish me. Or save me.

Day Ten

In communion this evening, I spoke for the first time. Xalvas asked me to describe the ancient sapien audio I've been studying, voices coming down the veins of history - our ancestors. I am practising their grammar and pronunciation, mouth-words, as Fenan taught me, in one of the old global languages. I told the crew that although millennia had passed since those tongues were spoken, some of the word roots and structures might endure. If we do find sapien civilisations of any kind, it will give us a starting point for communication. Air Admiral Xalvas remarked how interesting that was.

Beautiful view of the stars tonight. The Southern Cross is the brightest constellation. Celestis is a tiny ship, crossing a small planet, on an outer spiral of a commonplace galaxy. We are insubstantial small fry and our existence is a second in time.

Day Eleven

We started passing over atolls and islands mid-afternoon. It was such a relief to see land down below. The airship Angelus has left us and turned north to explore the western coast. We will not see her again for many months. I watched until she disappeared and Garena came to join me. She's our archivist, only four years older than me, and I feel kindness emanating from her. I helped her to capture images of an ancient sapien town - a tumble of ruins, poking through the snow. No one has lived there since before the Great Extinction. Celestis has slowed to a snail's pace now, while Father's cartography team maps the coast.

Later

I wonder if Garena might be the kind of person I could talk to about Fenan? I asked her if she's ever been up to the sapien quarters and she said no. She would need written permission from Commodore Bradus, our Division Enforcer. The sapiens do everything for us. But no one seems to think it's weird how separate we are.

Day Thirteen

Father lost his patience. He told me how lucky I am to be on this mission. He said, 'We're here making a new future.' He says everyone is sick of my low spirits and I'm letting him and Mother down. He made me cry.

He said Garena needs an assistant in the archive and I am to work with her from now on. I arrived at Garena's desk, hardly able to communicate. But she was kind and after a couple of hours she was making me laugh. I wonder if she knows why I am here? Does Air Admiral Xalvas know?

Thinking back to that awful day when they discovered me with Fenan. My mother's truevoice was full of shock and pain.

'How could you think we'd let him be a match for you?' she had cried.

'Don't you understand?' cried Father. 'We'd have to cut you off; we'd never see you again.'

Day Sixteen

Huge excitement today. We saw our first wild sapiens, down below. There was talk of sending a landing party, but Xalvas urged us northwards. 'This voyage is for reconnaissance,' he said. 'The next will be about contact.'

Charlus asked if I wanted to see the scouting crafts. He took me down to the hangar and showed me how one worked. He acted like he could fly it, but I know that he's still training. He's only flown the simulator.

Day Twenty

Garena has seven brothers and three sisters. Her parents used sapien surrogates, like mine did. It's nice that our bodies will never be stretched and ruined by childbirth. We talked about how messy and awful it must have been. It's made me think about the sapien who carried me. That woman looked after me until I was three because my parents were away doing an off-planet tour of duty on our Martian colony, Terra Nova.

There's a hole in my memory about my surrogate. I suppose I must have called her mama and I remember the feeling of her tight hugs but I never knew her name. What did she think about me,...