The Ardon Experiment
an excerpt

Chapter 1—

More than anything else in the universe, Rinni Antum wanted a little brother or sister. Someone to talk to. Someone to play with. Someone to confide in. And at this moment, someone to share the long, dull ride to school with every morning.
She sighed and led her sleepy eyes to the window where the barren landscape slid by under the bus wheels. Every day, she thought. Waking before the sun, dressing by artificial light and climbing onto the bus where only Mr. Coroshi and the rows of empty seats greeted her. The seats would fill eventually, but not before Rinni held the same conversation with herself as she did every morning. Wishing for someone to make this journey with her.
Her head bounced against the back of her seat and she grimaced as her ponytail holder slammed into the back of her skull. Shifting her weight, she felt the glass of the window pane brush against her cheek and she rested her weight on her left side. Her eyes drooped shut, but she could not sleep. Her mother always insisted that she go to bed early so she could rise alert and ready for the bus in the mornings. Rinni would have preferred to stay up later and sleep on the bus.
The minutes crept along until Rinni could see the back of Mr. Coroshi’s balding head in the early morning light. Now at least she could read if she wanted. Her hands remained clasped and her book bag unopened. She did not feel like reading this morning, but it was nice to have the option anyhow.
Bending her elbow and lifting her arm, she made a crude pillow to rest between her head and the window. She knew from experience that the rocky road could inflict bruises or worse on the unprotected head. The bus gave a particularly large lurch and Rinni almost laughed. The counsel had promised months ago that they would have the road fixed, but nothing more than promises ever came of that.
Because no one ever comes this way, Rinni thought ruefully. Just those of us who live at the outpost. And Mr. Coroshi, because it’s his job to come pick me up every morning. She had never thought to ask if the bus driver resented the fact that his young rider lived so far from town. Through squinted eyes, Rinni tried to read the back of his head, looking for signs of malcontent. She gave up and sighed again, shifting in her seat until her back pressed into the window wall and her legs stretched over the seat, her book bag in her lap.
The bag did not remain there long as she pulled it to her chest and stroked the red embroidered H that crested the blue bag. A swallow traveled from her throat to her stomach where it rested like a rock of burning memories. It reminded her that she had been lonely her whole life.
But this is worse, she thought. Moving was hard. She hated those family meetings where she and her mother would sit on the sofa and her father would announce that he had been transferred and they would leave for a new planet in the next month. She had lived on four planets in her short life time, but Hest held a special place in her heart. Three cousins and her mother’s sister lived on Hest. Even though she had been born on Densai and spent the majority of her childhood on Norda, Rinni would always call Hest home, no matter where she lived in the universe.
Two years had passed since the move to Ardon and Rinni had given up hope of returning to Hest. She clutched the bag harder, a parting gift from the only extended family she had ever met in person.
Moving was hard, but this was worse. Living outside of town with no other children within a reasonable distance. Rinni often thought she would have preferred to move to another planet than to the outpost. At least on a new planet, she would have neighbors younger than her parents.
She hugged the bag tighter, feeling a bulge on the right hand side press into her wrist. With a smile, she caressed the cloth around the bulge and loosened her grip. Today will be a good day, she told herself.
The sun seeped through all the windows now and though still empty, the bus no longer seemed as lonely. Rinni sat up and checked their progress out the window. Though she crossed this way daily, she could not tell one rock or dirt pile from another. But she could feel the bus growing closer and she strained her eyes, searching for the first landmark. A wave of happiness washed over her as the bus rolled past the charred tree, destroyed in an electrical storm long before Rinni had arrived on the planet.
The tree made her happy. It marked the end of the lonely journey and the beginning of the school day for Rinni. Soon a house burst into view and Rinni grinned and waved, though she knew the small figure that stood in front of the building could not see her from inside the bus. The wheels creaked to a stop and Mayla bounded up the steps almost as soon as the door swung open.
She took the seat in front of Rinni and leaned over the back of the cushion, resting her hands and chin on the seat.
“Sit correctly, please,” Mr. Coroshi called from the driver’s seat and the bus lurched forward. Mayla’s blonde curls disappeared behind the seat, and then popped into view again as soon as Mr. Coroshi’s attention returned to the road.
“Did you hear?” she bubbled. “A transport ship came in yesterday afternoon.”
Rinni grinned. That was the way things were with Mayla. They did not need to greet each other each morning. Just jump right into conversation as if they had never stopped. That kind of attitude defined their friendship.
“Anything good?” Rinni asked.
“I don’t know. They hadn’t finished unloading when Dad left to come home. They should have everything in the shops by mid-morning, though. I wonder if we could talk Mr. Coroshi into taking us window shopping before we go home this afternoon.”
“I doubt it. You’d have better luck asking Mrs. Torun to let us leave school at lunch.”
“I’ll ask her,” Mayla promised and Rinni knew she would.
“If I could get a transmission to my father and have him tell Mrs. Torun that I had to pick something up for the outpost, she’d have to let us out.”
Mayla thought about the suggestion. “You know, on Netta, we had these handheld transmitters. You could call anyone from anywhere without going to a transmission site.”
Rinni nodded. “We had those on Hest, too. Ardon’s a slightly less developed planet, though.”
Mayla snorted. “Slightly. It was only colonized 12 years ago.”
“And only discovered 18 years ago,” Rinni reminded her. “We have a test today, you know.”
“I studied all night,” Mayla lied.
“Yeah, me, too.” Rinni rolled her eyes. She and Mayla shared the opinion that studying planet history was a waste of time. Soon, her father would announce another transfer and she would attend a new school on new planet where she would study the history of another culture that she would never truly belong to.
“The test will be easy,” Rinni said, as if to assure herself that she hadn’t really needed to study. “History tests are always easy here. Eighteen years isn’t long enough to create much of a history anyhow. Besides, hardly anyone is a native Ardoni—not eve the teachers. They know we didn’t grow up here.”
“No kidding. On Netta the tests were super hard. I was born there and I still had to study like you wouldn’t believe. I felt sorry for the transfers.”
“That was me,” Rinni said. “I moved to Hest when I was six, so I hadn’t heard all the stories growing up. Sometimes I’d study for hours at night. Of course, I didn’t have to get up so early then either.”
Mayla gave her a sympathetic smile and Rinni couldn’t hide the bitterness in her voice. Even Mayla didn’t really understand. She never rode the bus alone. She never woke in the gateway hours between night and day when the nocturnal animals had said their goodbyes and the rest of the world still lay sleeping. She had never felt the deep seeping loneliness that Rinni experienced each morning.
“Ooh!” Mayla’s exclamation cut into Rinni’s self-pity. “Today’s show-and-tell. I’ve got some eggs I found in a nest behind our house. They’re super hard to find. Crazy birds here put their nests in rock crevices. I just stumbled on them two days ago. I wonder if your dad would know what kind of bird laid them?”
“I could ask,” Rinni offered. “Let me see them and I’ll describe them to him when I get home. He’s pretty good at wildlife recognition, even if plants are more his specialty.”
Mayla dug through her bag and produced a small box lined with soft strips of material. Among the scraps lay three light pink eggs no bigger than a child’s thumb.
Rinni laughed. “I know what those are. They’re not bird’s eggs, they’re lizards’”
“Ew!” Mayla screeched, dropping the box. One of the eggs cracked and a blue slime oozed from the hole.”
The girls laughed together and Mayla scooped up the box, holding it at arms length as she hastened to cover it again. “Oh well,” she said with a grin. “At least I’ll be unique. Did you bring something?”
Instinctively, Rinni’s arm reached for her book bag and she stroked the bulge and nodded.
“Aren’t you going to show me what it is?” Mayla asked.
Shaking her head, Rinni gave a secretive wink. “It’s a surprise,” she smiled.