Ellie Quin Book 3: Beneath the Neon Sky (6 page)

CHAPTER 9

The next day, Jacob Quin took the girls on a tour around the farm. Ellie was keen to see how well the meat crop was coming along, to be satisfied that, second time around, her father’s attempt to grow them wouldn’t end in another unpleasant bloodbath.

‘So, what are they like to grow? Are they easier than tubweeds?’ asked Ellie.

Jacob looked out across the acre spread of fidgeting meat-bulbs. ‘Yeah, I think so. The big thing to get right is the temperature and humidity in here, which, thanks to Sean’s Dad, we got nailed pretty quickly. The growth period is only four months from planting to harvest. We can get three yields per dome, per year from this.’

‘That’s great.’

‘So, we’ve only set up Booster to take these…and we’ll see how it goes. If it goes well, then I think we’ll turn over Betsy and Buttball to them.’

‘Have you still got tubweed set up in those two?’

‘Oh yeah.’

Jez arced one of her eyebrows inquisitively, ‘tubweeds?’

‘Ahh, the curse of my life, those horrible things. You want to meet them?’

Jez shrugged. ‘I’ve heard so much from you about them, I feel I know each and every one of them intimately.’

Jacob and Ellie exchanged a grin, and then he led the girls through to Betsy, Ellie’s old agri-dome. In the moist warmth of the dome, the tubweeds swayed in silent shoulder high ranks before them.

‘So what is it with tubweeds that you didn’t like?’ asked Jez, recalling on numerous occasions Ellie cursing the memory of those plants.

‘Their attitude.’

Jez looked confused. ‘Attitude? They’re plants aren’t they?’

‘Originally they were an alien species of plant. But not entirely plant. Think of them as being half plant, half animal,’ said Jacob. ‘They
do
have just about enough intelligence to have an attitude.’

‘And their attitude towards me was sheer malice,’ added Ellie. ‘It’s mutual, by the way.’

Jez, curious, walked towards them, ‘so what exactly can a malicious plant do to you then?’

‘You get any closer and you’ll see for yourself,’ cautioned Ellie.

Jez stopped, and then advanced very slowly, one step at a time. The tubweeds nearest her swayed gently backwards as she approached them, wary of the unfamiliar scent. She was amused at their movement. ‘Hey, that’s so weird…cowering plants. I guess they’re afraid of me by the look of it.’ Jez suddenly lurched forward and raised her arms, ‘boo!’

The closest tubweeds recoiled backwards with a spasmodic jerk and they heard a wave of rustling leaves ripple across the field in response. She chuckled and turned back to Ellie and her father. ‘You could sell these as like…’stress plants’ back in the city, couldn’t you? You know, if you’ve had a really daggy day at work and want to take it out on something…just have one of these sitting in the corner that you can scare the crud out of.’

‘I suppose that’s an idea,’ replied Jacob, ‘but the problem is-’

One of the tubweeds nearest to Jez decided it had cowered long enough and that she wasn’t the threat it had thought she was. With a fast and graceful sweep of its pod it swiped Jez across the back of her thigh.

‘Ouch!’ she yelped and jumped backwards. ‘I’ve just been fregging goosed by a goddamned fregging plant!’

Jacob looked down at Ellie with a look of surprise.

‘Yes,’ said Ellie, ‘she can occasionally curse like a trucker,’ she confided quietly with an apologetic glance up at her father. He shook his head and smiled in a way Ellie figured was tacit, unspoken approval
.

Jez rejoined them, rubbing her leg. ‘I can see why you weren’t so fond of these psycho things.’

‘Ted and Shona have no problem with them. It was only really Ellie that had this ongoing grudge-match with them,’ said Jacob. ‘I think it’s to do with height though. They’re the same with me, pull back every time I walk past them, but not Maria who’s shorter than Ellie. I think they view anything tall as potentially threatening.’

‘And probably your smell, Jez,’ added Ellie. ‘No offence, but they don’t know your odor yet. In fact, you’ll smell unlike anything they know - coming from the city an’ all.’

Jez looked hurt. ‘I smell….
urban
?’

‘No,’ she laughed, ‘but you wear perfume, don’t you? They’ve never encountered
Candique
under-arm before. They’re probably petrified by the smell,’ Ellie added with a wink and taking a few steps towards them, ‘but me, they’ll probably still remember my smell and damn well go for me, like they used to.’

As she tentatively approached them she warily watched the pods of the nearest plants for the telltale pullback; the indication that they were making ready to lash out. But instead the plants reacted in the same way as they had to Jez, cautiously leaning backwards, away from her.

‘I’ll be…’ she muttered. ‘They’re scared of me too.’ And then, she recalled one of the last things she had done on the way out of the dome all those months ago; her final act of revenge.

They remember that alright.

‘Oh, there’s something I want to show you Ellie,’ said Jacob. He headed towards the exit hatch. ‘It’s outside.’

He grabbed a couple of O2 masks off the hook beside the hatch, handed them to the girls, then unclipped the one he wore habitually on his belt. ‘It’s not a great oxygen day today, so we’ll take the masks.’

When they had fitted them on he quickly opened the hatch and ushered them through, closing it swiftly once they were outside.

‘So what is it, Dad?’ asked Ellie.

‘Something that’s long overdue. I managed to buy another primer a few weeks ago.’

‘Oh, that’s great Dad, well done you!’

Jez looked at both of them, confused.

‘Sorry Jez, it’s a part for our Cat,’ Ellie explained.

Jez nodded uncertainly, ‘o-o-okay, is it feeling better now…your cat?’

Jacob laughed realizing Jez still didn’t have a clue what they were going on about. He took a few steps along the edge of the dome towards a sheet of dust-coated canvas draped over something large. With one theatrical gesture he grabbed the bottom of the sheet and pulled it away, revealing a weathered old caterpillar-tracked vehicle.

‘The cat,’ he announced.

‘It’s been out of action for quite a while because we couldn’t find…
afford
, a particular part,’ said Ellie. ‘Not having the cat working has been a real drag, hasn’t it Dad?’

‘Yeah, you’re pretty limited out here if you can’t get around.’

Ellie walked over to it and looked in through the plexiglaz blister at the cabin inside. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve driven this old dear,’ she said ruefully.

Jez was impressed. ‘You can drive it?’

‘Of course, it’s not difficult really. Any old gumby can drive one of these things, even me.’

*

‘Why can’t we go too?’ Ted and Shona chorused together.

‘Because you’re too young to be going out there without us,’ Maria explained patiently, ‘and Ellie and Jez don’t want to have to be babysitting you both.’

Ellie nodded. ‘Sorry guys. I’ll take you for a spin when we come back.’

It had been her idea to take the cat and drive across to the old abandoned weather station a couple of hours away. It was a trip the family had done several times together, before the cat’s primer had died on them, that is. The old weather station was one of the first colony outposts on Harpers Reach and had been finally abandoned over two hundred years ago. Ellie found it a fascinating environment to explore; the old metal hulls of prehistoric habi-cubes were welded together into a fascinating maze of dark, dungeon-like corridors and chambers. Much of this dark, forbidding structure was still in a robust condition. She thought it might be fun for Jez to take a look. After all, they had been inside the farm for three days now with only one brief trip outside to walk up the hill to her overlook to see the distant shimmering top of New Haven’s dome. She suspected Jez was getting cabin fever.

For that matter, so was she.

The trip would be a nice antidote for them both, a chance to see a bit more of the desert wilderness of the planet, but mostly, Ellie decided, to provide her guest with some merciful relief from Ted’s clinging adoration and Shona’s incessant questions about the city.

‘Is Harvey staying behind?’

Dad had suggested they take Harvey too. He wasn’t sure about Ellie leaving the creature behind unattended with Ted. Ellie had failed to completely convince him that Harvey was utterly harmless and incapable of doing any damage to someone else. She could understand that. Looking at Harvey’s arms, one could see there was a powerful strength in there, after all, jimps like Harvey were designed for very heavy labor, construction work.

Anyway, she decided, it would be a nice little excursion for Harvey too. ‘I’m sorry, he’s coming with us.’

Ted’s face began to crumple with frustration and disappointment.

‘Not fair, not fair,’ he whimpered.

Ellie looked across at Shona, who also looked disappointed. For a moment, she was reminded of those poor children living out their lives up at the Oxxon refinery, isolated and bored. With only the toob to remind them that there was a world beyond the small bubble of their lives.

She decided now was as good a time as any. ‘Look, I got you two a little present. I was going to give it to you tomorrow when Jez and I go back to New Haven, but I guess I could give it to you now.’

That stopped Ted’s whimpering instantly, and Shona looked up with guarded interest. Ellie fumbled in her jacket pocket for it. She had kept it there, zipped up inside since she had bought it, sealed away from any moisture. Her fingers probed the little pocket and felt the hard, rough nugget within. She pulled it out.

‘This is for you guys.’

Ted looked at it. ‘It’s a stone.’

‘No it’s not. It’s a podkin.’

‘A podkin!’ yelped Ted.

Shona came forward. ‘Oh, I know what those are! I saw an ad on the toob for them. It’s a little creature you grow in the ground, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right Shon’. You put it in some soil, water it and it will grow and grow some more, until it steps out of the soil. And then you’ve got a little pet for a month or so.’

Ted reached out for it and turned the brown lump over and over in his fingers. ‘Cool,’ he muttered staring at it, the trip on the cat forgotten for now.

‘You can share looking after it,’ Ellie added.

The distraction seemed to have done the trick, as both children hurried off to find a spare patch of unoccupied soil in Ted’s dome, Booster, without stopping to say farewell.

‘Come on then Jez,’ she said, ‘we might as well head out whilst the going’s good.’

‘Roger that, ‘ she replied.

‘You’re going to camp out there overnight?’ asked Maria.

‘Maybe. We’re taking something to eat and drink and some sleep-sacks, and then we’ve got the option if we want to,’ replied Ellie with a grin. ‘It’s been a while since I last camped out there.’

‘I know, be careful though.’

‘We will.’

‘And if you stay there tonight, you’ll be back tomorrow morning?’

‘Yes…early. We’re expecting Aaron to arrive with his shuttle later on tomorrow to take us back home.’

Home.
Ellie winced slightly at using the word in front of her parents. It wasn’t as if that city felt like home anyway. If any particular place felt anything like
home
, it was the cramped confines of Aaron’s shuttle, oddly.

She leant over and kissed her mother on the cheek. ‘See you later Mum.’

‘See you Ellie, honey.’

Jez nodded politely to Mrs Quin as they stepped out of the central domestic dome into Betsy. As they passed the tubweeds, the plants leaned warily backwards from them and both girls had a giggle spooking them by lunging forwards. Harvey studied the plants silently, cocking his head on one side as he watched them sway.

Jacob Quin stood beside the exit hatch, one hand on the lever. ‘Just go easy on her. She’s working fine right now, but she’s an old cat that needs treating with a little love and respect.’

‘I know Dad.’

‘I’ve put in another Navset-beacon, just in case.’

Ellie nodded, ‘we’ll be alright. If we’re not back later on today, we’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow.’

He smiled, ‘okay. You two have fun exploring the ruins.’

The girls each grabbed a mask from the pegs and put them on, Ellie fixing the mask onto Harvey’s face for him, and Jacob pulled up the locking lever and swung the door open. They stepped outside and Jacob, with a little wave, quickly swung the door closed again.

If Ellie had known that the fleeting smile from her father as he swung the door to was the last time she would ever see his face, she would have said something more meaningful to him.

‘See you later, Dad.’

CHAPTER 10

The ruin of the weather station was a two hour cat-ride away, approximately sixty miles south of the farm. There were about a hundred and fifty of these old abandoned outposts dotted across the planet, dating from the world’s earliest inhabited days, long before either New Haven or Harvest City were constructed.

The cat rolled across the featureless landscape at an unexciting thirty miles an hour. Inside the cockpit, Ellie steered the vehicle in a relentless line, straight south.

‘So, what do you think?’ asked Ellie.

‘Of what?’

‘I dunno, everything.’

‘Your family are nice, Ellie,’ Jez admitted a little enviously. She felt like blurting out that she had never known hers and that she would have given anything to have had a childhood, to have had a family just like Ellie’s.

‘I really like them,’ Jez added after a few moments. To Jez they seemed like a different breed, almost a different species, to the sheeple that filled New Haven. They seemed more alive, more alert, more friendly…more going on inside them than the dittoheads back in the city. She wondered if she were Ellie whether she would have had the strength of purpose to leave such a warm, embracing environment behind.

‘What do you think of the farm?’

‘Bigger than I had imagined,’ Jez replied. ‘I was expecting something a little smaller, crumpled and battered I suppose. It’s a good home Ellie, you’re lucky to have that.’

They drove on in silence for a moment before Jez added, ‘I can see why you’re not a big fan of those damned tub-thingys, though.’

‘Yes, the curse of my life, those things were. I’m glad Dad’s changing the crop over at last.’

‘Kind of gross those gourd things, aren’t they? I got to say, I nearly couldn’t eat supper last night after I saw your Mum pull one of those things kicking and twisting out of the ground, and then butcher it right there in front of me in the kitchen.’

‘Hmm, yes, but then that’s natural food for you I suppose. A long time ago, people used to actually eat dead
animals
.’

‘Eeeeww,’ said Jez pulling a face. ‘That’s utterly grotesque, thank you Ellie-girl. All I can say is thank crud for protein-paste.’ Jez looked out at the barren terrain ahead of them. ‘So…you’ve been to this weather station before then?’

‘Oh yeah, quite a few times. Dad used to take us kids there. It’s great to explore and really fascinating to see how colonists used to live here in the early days.’

‘Do you know much about that?’ asked Jez.

‘What the early days?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sure. I studied colonial history for one of my citizenship modules. It was rough back then Jez, really rough. They had to make it on their own. There were no regular trade routes delivering essentials. Whatever they needed to survive, they had to produce themselves.’

‘A bit like your family.’

‘Maybe, but they had it much worse. They didn’t have a city they could run to if things went wrong.’

‘True,’ replied Jez.

‘It sometimes amazes me how so many people can allow themselves to become totally dependent on others to provide what they need,’ said Ellie after a while. ‘Take all those people living in New Haven, living on top of each other, all needing oxygen, water and food. But what would they do if, just for a few days, the food, the water and the oxygen supplies stopped arriving?’

‘I dunno. They’d be alright for a few days, I guess. I’m sure the city has stocks of essential things put aside, just in case something like that happened.’

‘You think so? But what if a few days turned into a few weeks?’

Jez thought about it for a moment. ‘Hmmm, they’d be all in deep hooey, I guess.’

‘Yes. It’s something I’ve thought about since moving to New Haven….how vulnerable everyone is in there. And I wonder if it’s the same on other planets? How many people across Human Space know how to do something as simple as find water? Or grow food?’

‘If they’re anything like me, not many,’ replied Jez. Ellie had a point. Even here on this frontier world where the planet had yet to be properly tamed and the people living here were supposed to be of a tougher sort, resilient, capable of looking after themselves - the vast majority of citizens crammed into New Haven wouldn’t last a day without their regular StarBreaks meal and a bottle of sugary pop. If for some reason the freight ships suddenly stopped arriving, it would be a matter of only days before the citizens of New Haven started hungrily biting chunks out of each other, whilst Ellie’s family could carry on quite happily…eating their freshly grown vegetables and meat gourds.

‘I really want to get the fregg off this mud ball,’ said Jez after a while.

‘Me too,’ replied Ellie.

‘If we can make as much money as we did last time, crud….we could have enough within two years to get out of here.’

‘If you can avoid spending it, that is.’

Jez reached both of her hands out to playfully throttle Ellie. ‘Ach!! What are you, my mother all of a sudden?’

Harvey stirred at the sudden movement and watched Jez with intense eyes for a moment, before realizing the gesture was harmless.

‘Oooh, did you see that?’ said Jez, ‘your monkey thought I was going for you.’

Ellie patted Harvey’s head, ‘who’s a good boy then? Knows exactly who’s boss, right?’

They rode in silence for a while, Jez fidgeting after a while like a bored child.

‘Question for you, Ellie.’

‘What?’

Jez hesitated, sucked air through clenched teeth. Ellie knew her noises well enough to guess it might be an awkward question. ‘You….and Aaron,’ she started, ‘so have you…..?’

The question hung in the space between them, incomplete, waiting for Ellie to join some dots. And belatedly she did. Her cheeks turned crimson.

‘Freg! What? No! God, no!’

‘Hey,’ Jez shrugged. ‘He’s not so gaga now I’ve tidied him up a bit.’

‘Jez! He’s…he’s almost as old as my dad!’

‘Hmmm…not by a few years. And actually, you’re dad’s not bad for his age.’

‘Jez!’

‘I mean it. He’s lean…tidy, not all bloated by proto-lard sizzle snacks like most of the homs in New Haven.’

‘Jez! Not my dad, please! That’s totally grosso!’

Jez laughed and gently punched Ellie on the arm. ‘Messin’ with you, farm-chik. Just messin’. He’s out of my goldilocks zone by about five years anyway.’

Ellie made a face. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘Aaron though…’

She turned to look at Jez. ‘Seriously?’

Jez grinned. ‘Much longer…and I’ll be down to using something with a battery.’

Ellie closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I brought you back home to meet my family.’