Ellie Quin Book 3: Beneath the Neon Sky (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

Ellie and Jez packed up and quit their cube just before the end of the four week rent-cycle, still owing a month’s rent. But, hey. Jez knew if they stayed another night they would be paid a visit by the tower’s security guards and tossed unceremoniously out into the street.

Ellie was surprised at how much
stuff
they had accumulated between them in such a small living space. Most of it of course was Jez’s; clothes and shoes mainly. She was glad they had brought Harvey along to help with the carrying.

‘I don’t think Aaron’s going to be pleased if we turn up with all of this you know Jez.’

Jez was in a testy mood. ‘I’m not going to throw all this stuff away. This is quality clobber, girl.’

Ellie shrugged. There was that tone of finality in her voice. It was up to Jez then. There was no way Aaron was going to let her fill up his cockpit with her stuff; she would just leave it to the pair of them to debate the matter later on.

‘And what about the toob, Ellie?’

Ellie looked at it with a hint of distaste. Frankly she could live without it. The endless sopas, and bleating commercials promising her everything and anything if she’d only buy this, that or the other, had begun to irritate her. Back on the farm, the toob had been her only real window on the world. Living aboard the shuttle, the cockpit’s large scuffed, plexitex windscreen would make a much better one.

‘Let’s leave it. It’s only a cheap one anyway.’

Jez’s eyes widened with horror.’ Leave it!? I’m sorry Ellie-girl, I need my fix! You can’t expect me to miss Shuttlestop 7, and Sons and Daughters, can you?’

‘I suppose we’ll need to put one in the cargo hold with the passengers,’ Ellie mused aloud.

‘Exactly! They’d expect at least
one
toob aboard.’

They quit the cube late in the evening, both girls and the jimp laden with plastic bags crammed to bursting point with clothing and bedding. Harvey carried the toob projector under one arm, the much heavier FoodSmart in another two, and his fourth strung through the handles of half a dozen more bags.

As Ellie prepared to close and lock the oval door on their cube for the last time, Jez cast one final, doe-eyed glance back inside. ‘I’ve lived in that cube for the last five years of my life,’ she said with a wan smile on her lips. ‘I’ve had six cube-chiks live there with me - you were the sixth, Ellie. And you were the one to finally get me off my butt and move out of it.’

Ellie smiled. ‘Job done, then.’

Jez laughed away any thought of tears. It was, after all, just a cruddy little habi-cube in one of the more squalid towers in town.

‘Thank you for rescuing me Jez.’

‘Bah, don’t get gloopy on me. I only took you in because I needed someone to clean up after me.’

They rode the skyhound in relative discomfort. There were few people travelling across the city at that time of night. Ellie noticed one or two glances towards Harvey from the scant passengers aboard. Although jimps were a common enough sight on construction projects, they were expensive enough that only the top-dwellers in New Haven could afford them one as a
domestic
. Ellie supposed it looked odd that the pair of them should appear to have money enough to own their own jimp, but not enough to travel privately in their own air car.

Harvey looked nervously out of the window as the busy, twinkling city passed by below them. His eyebrows were furrowed deeply with a look of concern and she noticed his slitted mouth quivered slightly.

Nervous flyer.
That was definitely an expression of anxiety on his little face.

It was an often stated claim made by all gene-imp producers universe-wide that these creatures were genetically designed to lack the capacity to feel
any
emotion whatsoever. It was that specific assertion that ensured no-one need feel guilty about how they treated these poor things. Looking at the subtle ticks and movements on Harvey’s face right now, Ellie wasn’t entirely convinced they understood their genetic products.

‘It’s okay Harvey, we’re perfectly safe.’

Jez sighed and shook her head. ‘Ellie, you’re such a butterhead.’

‘He’s scared.’

‘He’s a machine….that’s all. He’s a meat power tool, that’s it. Aaaggghh - look, you’ve got me calling it
him
now.’

Ellie smiled, she nudged Harvey gently. ‘See, you’re slowly winning her round.’

They arrived at the port exit in the Industrial Sector as it approached midnight. The usually crowded immigration hall was deserted and passing through, flashing their ID cards and their landing-pad passes, they arrived via the service tunnel at their submerged black pad hanger half an hour later.

Aaron was sound asleep in his bunk as they tiptoed inside the cabin and both squeezed awkwardly into the lower bunk together, Harvey curling up on the floor beside it.

*

The next morning, over breakfast, they sat on the floor of the cargo hold, which was now, encouragingly, looking a lot less like the inside of a large rusting skip.

‘The fitters are coming in today to put in the viewing ports,’ announced Aaron as he slurped a scalding mouthful of stewed coffee. He pointed to each of the long walls of the cargo hold. ‘There and there, they’ll cut out a panel about eight feet long and four feet high, and then install reinforced, double-paneled, plexitex viewing blisters.’

‘Oh good,’ said Ellie, ‘because it feels like a psycho-cube right now.’

‘It actually looks a lot better than I thought it would, now you’ve painted it, Ellie,’ said Jez, looking around.

‘Yeah,’ nodded Aaron. ‘Although you missed a bit over there,’ he said pointing towards the roof.

Ellie sighed an oh-ha-ha sigh.

‘Tomorrow, I’ve got some ship-fitters coming in to install a toilet pod and then, they’re also running a power feed through from the front cabin to here somewhere so we can power the FoodSmart and heating, O2 system and other bits and pieces. Any ideas where we would want to put those things?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ Jez got up and walked across the hold towards one of the long walls. ‘One of the viewing windows here, right?’

Aaron nodded.

‘I think if we place the FoodSmart here, beneath the window, along with the water dispenser and coffee-maker, so this little area becomes sort of like the galley. And then over towards the back, there…’ she pointed towards the rear of the hold, where the large exit door was open and ramped down to the pad outside, ‘we could put the toilet pod.’

Aaron nodded casually, ‘okay, that seems sensible enough.’

‘The passenger seats could be arranged in a rinky dinky semi-circle facing the other viewing window, and maybe we can install the toob in the middle of the seats. What do you think?’

Aaron shrugged, ‘I guess, if you think that’ll look nice.’

‘Trust me, I know all about look-nice,’ smiled Jez.

Ellie smiled.
Jez, the frustrated interior designer
.

Aaron got to his feet and walked across to where Jez had indicated where the FoodSmart would go, and studied the route the power cable feed would have to take, plus the feed-offs for the other powered utilities. Ellie watched as both of them discussed the best way to route the feed, and smiled with a belated sense of satisfaction.

She had wondered whether this odd little team of theirs would work out. She had considered Jez and Aaron to be opposites in many ways. Jez was loud, brash, extroverted, impulsive and impractical, and he in turn was laid back, quiet, sensible and very practical. Ellie had expected them to dislike each other on sight. Chalk and cheese. Maybe they had at first, but there seemed, despite a cautious wariness of each other, a growing mutual respect. She had expected friction, sparks even, but so far, thank crud, there had been none. Even the issue of Jez’s small clothes mountain had been resolved painlessly. Instead of Aaron going ape when he’d seen what she had brought into the cabin from their recently abandoned cube, as she had thought he might, Aaron had simply found a storage locker in the cargo hold and had told her she could toss her things into that.

Ellie watched them as they walked along the metal wall, discussing, gesturing. It felt strangely like some new unorthodox family had been magically squeezed and shaped like clay, from the solitary forms of three lonely people. Jez and Aaron though, were more like an older brother and sister, than a mum and dad. It was an odd and comforting sensation that she savored as it pleasantly passed over her.

She lay down on the floor, propping up her head with one skinny hand as she finished off her bowl of Solar Nuggatz, Harvey sitting cross-legged beside her and chewing on his bowl of dry, brown protein pellets.

What a peculiar family we make
, she thought.

CHAPTER 3

‘So, for only four hundred creds you’re getting a once in a lifetime trip up to the last arctic wilderness of this world. In ten, twenty years it’ll all be gone.’

The couple stared at her in disbelief. ‘We really have
snow
on Harpers Reach?’

‘Oh yes! Thousands of square miles of beautiful virgin snow, untouched, unseen by any other humans.’

‘I can’t believe it. I thought it was all just orange mud and rock out there,’ said the woman.

Jez spread her palms with shared disbelief, ‘I know! It’s amazing, isn’t it? And this is
your one chance to see it
. We’ll set down on the snow, and provided the O2 conditions are right, we can camp out overnight on it.’

‘That sounds really rather primo. Wonderful. Four hundred creds you say?’

‘Yes that’s right, four hundred per person. That buys you four nights aboard the
Lisa
, a comfortable, spacious, pleasure cruiser with all the facilities you’d expect.’

‘You have holovideo entertainment aboard?’

Jez smiled, ‘of course we do…with all the usual channels.’

The man turned to his wife. ‘Well?’

‘Oh lumpkin, let’s do it! It won’t be around forever,’ she turned to Jez, ‘will it?’

Jez shook her head sadly. ‘No ma’am. Before you know it, it’ll all be gone forever. And this may be your only chance to see it for yourselves. There is no other shuttle service like this on Harpers Reach.’

Jez leant toward the woman, and looked cautiously around before adding quietly, ‘and best to book now and enjoy it, before the unwashed plebs below catch on and ruin it,’ she said nodding towards the plaza’s balcony, and the city below. ‘If you get my drift. Get it while it’s
exclusive
.’

The woman nodded, ‘I know what you mean,’ she replied with a hint of distaste in her voice.

‘Okay, so do we book a trip through you?’ asked the man.

‘Yes indeed. We can swipe your cred-card right now and I can then book you onto our next flight, which is scheduled to leave in five days’ time.’

‘Five days? Hmm that’s a little short notice. When’s your next trip after that?’

Jez pulled out a tablet and carefully scrutinized the complicated spreadsheet of data that scrolled down the glowing screen. She sucked in breath sharply and clucked uncertainly.

‘Well now, hmmm. We’re down to the last two seats for this next trip. That was full but we had a late cancellation, and then sadly, the trip after that is already fully booked-up.’

‘Oh, well what about the trip after that then?’

Jez shook her head sympathetically, ‘booked up as well, I’m afraid. Can I give you some honest advice?’

The couple both nodded eagerly.

‘I’d take these last two spots for the next trip. I know it’s short notice for you, but the way things are going, it could be weeks, even months before we might be able to get you up there onto that lovely snow. And you’d want to be one of the first to visit it, right?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the woman. She looked at her husband. ‘Lumpkin?’

‘Okay, okay…let’s have those last two seats. You will be able to get us on won’t you?’

Jez nodded, ‘yes, let’s not waste any time though. One of the other girls on our sales team might book that slot if we’re not quick enough.’

The man’s eyes widened with a growing sense of panic. He hastily fumbled for his cred-card, pulled it out of his jacket and thrust it urgently at Jez.

Jez smiled, took it and deftly swiped it across the optical reader at the top of her tablet. ‘And there’s another fifty creds booking fee per person on top of that,’ she added with a look of concern, ‘regretful the cost of red tape in this damned city, isn’t it?’

Neither the man nor his wife seemed to care too much about that as she totaled up the credit charge and processed it electronically.

‘Well? Did we get those last two places?’ the woman asked anxiously.

Jez looked down at the display, pleased that the
very first
two ticket sales she had just made on behalf of
Goodman Tours
had been such a cinch.

She offered them a sigh of relief, ‘yes, it looks like you got there just in time. Lucky you!’

She handed them a printed slip. ‘Here’s your boarding details, and the time of departure. You’ll need to arrive at least an hour before our departure time to be processed by the port authorities.’

‘Oh lovely!’ the woman replied.

‘You two are going to have the trip of a lifetime,’ said Jez beaming at them, her voice rich with warmth and sincerity, as if they had been friends for a lifetime. ‘Just don’t forget to bring some thick and cozy clothes.’

She bid farewell to both of them, and watched them walk away across Devinia Plaza towards a row of off-world jewelry shops.

Like taking candy from a baba.

She grinned.

Oh this is going to be so-o-o-o easy.

CHAPTER 4

The old man watched from afar. Watched Ellie Quin eating heartily, smiling, laughing, in good spirits.

Good
.

He wondered if she had the slightest inkling yet; if her mind was telling her at a subliminal level, that there was something inside her, something so very important, something that would irrevocably change all of humankind.

Behind those delicate features, he wondered what this creation of his was really thinking about as she smiled and appeared to listen to the banter of her two friends. He studied the girl as her attention momentarily wandered and she casually cast a glance upwards to the sky. She was watching a stream of cargo tugs servicing a distant freighter hanging in low orbit.

Edward Mason smiled.

Yes, that’s my little girl. Following her programming - dreaming of escape.

He knew that was what she must be thinking about. He knew that because he alone had engineered her very psyche; he had engineered that powerful nomadic desire into the very core of her personality. She was built to be that way. And for a moment, for a fleeting moment, he felt a shred of pity for his creation. For however long she lived, and it wouldn’t be for too long, she would probably never know true contentment, she would never feel at peace with her environment, she would always be pushed by that basic, artificially enhanced urge to press on to pastures new.

You were designed that way, my dear. To want – to need - to travel. To spread your wings. No different really to the homing instinct of a pigeon. Or the up-stream desire of an Old Earth salmon to return to its breeding grounds. Programmed instinct.

He noted her attention returned to the animated conversation going on around her. Ellie’s female friend looked to be a few years older, and the man, at least another ten years older. They seemed very close; a strong bond between the three of them.

Very interesting. She has managed to make friends.

Which was indeed curious. Mason had designed her to be introverted, shy, secretive; to find establishing relationships difficult. That was an important characteristic that had been built into her personality so that she would instinctively seek anonymity, obscurity - so that she would habitually avoid drawing attention to herself. That she would never have her instinct to travel compromised by a friendship; torn between moving on and leaving behind someone she’d grown attached to. He had assumed that, when he finally caught up with her, he would find her utterly alone, without any friends at all. But it seemed that, to some extent, her personality had reached a little beyond its programming.
Very interesting. An example of nurture over-riding nature perhaps?

Perhaps her parents had managed to teach her how to reach out and find friends. It was so fascinating. He smiled as he acknowledged that there was no way for sure that one can totally predict how a human life can develop. Despite her DNA virtually being authored from scratch, designed in a petri-dish, it appeared as if the environment of her childhood had found a way to change her, just a little.

What a fascinating creature you are, Ellie Quin.

He wondered, though, whether these two friends of hers would present a problem. It was hard to tell just yet. They could be a help or prove to be a hindrance. The time was coming when Ellie would need to be guided off this world and out into the universe to do what she was designed to do. There was always the remote possibility that the Administration had caught wind of this, and that even now, their agents might be en route to Harpers Reach or, worse still, be here on the planet already and beginning to close in on her.

He had been thorough in ensuring that nothing had been left behind him when he had faked his death in the upper stratosphere of Pacifica, and then disappeared. The extensive notes he had made on her in his personal journal had disappeared with him. All that had remained were his digital notes, locked away in that non-descript directory, and even then, he had been careful never -
never
- to reveal the name or whereabouts of his precious child.

He was certain the Administration had no conceivable idea of the fate that awaited them.

After so many years of patience, decades of patience, things were finally beginning to happen. The end of it all was in sight, and he was here to ensure that
his
little girl spread her wings and flew away with the minimum of fuss.

With, or without, her friends.