Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin (8 page)

CHAPTER 11

Deacon looked up from his notes sprawled across the mahogany desk and stared out at Pacifica. He rubbed his eyes, then the bridge of his nose tiredly. He knew when he’d started that this was going to turn out to be the proverbial needle in the haystack. He was looking for one candidate amongst the tens of millions of paternal applications that had passed through the laboratories during Mason’s tenure as head of the Department of Genetic Analysis. He had hoped the late doctor might have been foolish enough to log somewhere in his private, locked, data directory the details of that child; a reference number, a name….something. But, having combed through the entire contents of his voluminous personal directory, it was clear that Mason hadn’t.

The directory itself was full of writings and commentaries that would certainly have ended his career without question if they had been discovered whilst he was alive. He had found essays condemning virtually everything about the Administration, and, more specifically, about the dictatorial way in which paternity requests were approved, or denied. He had discovered enough material to finish the man.

If he turned up now, washed ashore on one of Pacifica’s man-made atolls, he’d almost certainly wish he hadn’t.

Most importantly, there was the outline of his plan….The Plan. As Deacon read through the notes, it became quickly apparent that he was glimpsing a quite brilliant mind that had gone utterly insane. What Mason had been planning for some time, would bring an end to everything. But, there was nothing in there that Deacon could see would help him find the single Paternity Request that had been dangerously altered.

The
candidate child
.

Knowing of Mason’s distrust for all things modern, particularly digital records, Deacon suspected those crucial details he desperately sought might have been kept close to the old man, on his person, perhaps in an old leather-bound notebook, and now vaporised along with Mason and the other unfortunate passengers and crew aboard the shuttle.

Deacon sighed with frustration.

Since there was no knowing exactly when Mason had released his
creation
into the universe, there was also no knowing how much time they had; whether they had days, weeks, months or years to figure this thing out. The only way he could track down this child would be to look on the laboratory’s main database and view all of the Paternity Requests that Mason had personally checked-out and become involved with.

He’d done that. There were seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-two applications that he had personally overseen over the last two decades.

He decided to apply some logical analysis to whittle the number down. Mason would have been very careful to select the right candidate. Deacon decided to try and get inside the Doctor’s head…

He decided to start with basics. There were approximately thirteen hundred worlds, many of them could probably be ruled out as inappropriate. It was unknown to most of the greater population, but there were at least two dozen worlds right now that were in the middle of their own civil wars; these could be dismissed. There were another hundred currently policed by the Administration’s soldiers where people, soldiers and civilians, were dying in their thousands from acts of terrorism and sabotage and short outbursts of insurrection that flared up from time to time. All of those strife-ridden worlds could probably be dismissed.

Of the thirteen hundred worlds there were approximately two hundred that were in the very early and dangerously unpredictable stages of environmental restructuring;
terraforming
as some people liked to refer to it. Those worlds were again too dangerous, too volatile. But on the other hand he knew Mason would surely want to pick a young world, one recently colonised, where the infrastructure of government was still yet to be fully established; a place where the comings and goings of people were not particularly well monitored. He would also want to pick a world where the process of environmental restructuring was almost complete and no major natural disasters - like those that had occurred on Celestion - might happen. Deacon guessed a stable frontier world was what Mason would have looked for. But one with enough people on it to ensure his child could migrate anonymously, slip through the nets of various government censors.

A frontier world with several large cities, a place in which a person could easily vanish for as long as they would want, that’s what he would have looked for.

But that was still a very generic profile. He knew there must be several hundred that would fit that loose description. He needed to whittle that down still further.

What else? What else?

Some of those worlds could be taken out of that figure for being too remote, too far from interplanetary routes. Mason must have wanted his child to travel, to perhaps even reach the heart of Human Space, the home world of the Administration, Liberty. Other worlds could be ruled-out because of factors such as the star type and gravity which would require the candidate to be too visibly different from the
norm
. He suspected Mason wouldn’t want his creation to stand out in any particular way. It would need to look utterly anonymous, unremarkable, gene-neutral…to pass through any city on any planet and not attract a second glance. A prominent or unusual skin colour, a distinctive physique, might make it noticeable, memorable in some way. The child would have to look utterly average.

What else would Mason have designed into the child?

He would surely have genetically programmed the candidate to have a desperate yearning to travel? Yes. To feel an overwhelming compulsion to be on the move, to never be content with standing still. Perhaps he would have given the child an overpowering suspicion of destiny, of fatalism….something to drive it ever onwards, to feed its nomadic urge. If he were Mason, he would have made the candidate a natural loner, socially uncomfortable, shy….so that it never made strong attachments or friendships that might anchor it to one location. Deacon would have engineered an anonymous, quiet, drifter…a ghost of a child, never noticed as it travelled the universe silently going about its mission. Never happy with where he or she was.

Deacon almost felt pity for this creature, wherever it was.

He stirred from his thoughts and decided to find where Leonard was. The young man had had several hours to study the ocean of data and try to extrapolate some useful intelligence.

He smiled proudly.

The young man was incredibly intelligent, almost a
savant
in the way he could analyze data for patterns, to distil information from chaos. The young man, still a boy really, was edgy and nervous with a mild compulsion for repetitive actions; typical indicators of a mild form of autism. Deacon had worked hard to earn the boy’s trust, mentoring him patiently over several years. Leonard had proven to have an incredibly useful mind which Deacon had exploited shamelessly in his efforts to climb the ranks of Administration bureaucracy back home.

He relied on Leonard Colby, and the young man in return idolized him in an almost pathetically transparent way, as a young boy might look up to a father figure. Leonard dressed to look like Deacon, wearing clothes that aped his expensive Edwardian suits. Even attempting to grow a meagre tuft of a beard and moustache that looked like pencil lines drawn on a child’s face.

Deacon was touched by the boy’s imitation, and that was why it had been with some reluctance that he’d decided to bring the boy along with him.

When Mason’s baby was finally located and terminated, Deacon had been given very specific instructions to ensure that all of the loose ends were tidied up. Regrettably, young Leonard would end up being one of those loose ends.

*

‘Well Leonard? What have you got?’

‘Six worlds, sir. I think it’s got to be on one of these, hmmm,’ the young man said holding out the shortlist for Deacon to study, his pale freckled face, looking up uncertainly at him for approval.

‘Good lad. Yes…yes,’ he replied stroking his chin and scanning the list. ‘They all look suitable. All established frontier worlds, normal class 3 white stars, on scale 1-1 gravity.’

‘They’re all towards the edge of Human Space, but not right out on a limb either,’ added Leonard. ‘Populations vary between two and eight million people. None of these worlds have properly established central authorities; they are chaotic, badly run. Hmmm.’

‘Perfect.’

Deacon reached out and patted him gently. ‘Well done Leonard, I’m glad you decided to come along.’

The young man’s pale face split with a proud smile.

‘We need to go to work on these six worlds. We need to pull up the lab’s database on Paternity Requests from these places and find out which of them Mason checked-out and had some personal involvement in, understand?’

‘Of course, sir.’

Deacon looked the young man in the eye. ‘And listen, Leonard?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Let’s say you can call me Deacon from now on. All right? Only when we’re on our own though, you understand?’

Leonard nodded, his cheeks blotched crimson. ‘Yes, sir. Yes…Deacon.’

He nodded at the young man. ‘Good, now let’s get those details up and see how many applications we’re going to have to sift through.’

Leonard nodded.

Deacon watched his young apprentice working with the display. Once this was all done and dusted, the last thing he would have to do was take this young man’s life himself. Not something he was looking forward to.

‘Good work, Leonard,’ he said once more, patting the boy’s narrow freckled neck. ‘Good boy.’

CHAPTER 12

‘Hi Dad, it’s me.’

‘Ellie? Oh, for God’s sake! Ellie?’

‘Yes Dad.’

‘It’s been nearly a month, we were getting worried!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s these damn call-units are so expensive.’

Jacob Quin smiled sadly at her. ‘I know love, I’m sorry. I…we just worry.’

‘Well… look Dad, things are still okay. We’re both working in a burger bar now, the money’s much better than the old job. I’m serving on the counter, Jez does deliveries.’

‘Jez? Is that your friend you told me about last time?’

‘Yes….
Jez
. We’re cube-chiks.’

‘Cube-?’

‘We share a cube.’

‘Ah…okay. She nice?’

‘She’s great, Dad. Like a big sister. She’s looking after me really well.’

‘I’m glad,’ replied Jacob. ‘I’m so glad you have someone there with you.’

‘Yeah, we’re doing okay. Any news from Sean yet?’

‘Yes. Yes, we did hear from his Dad, he got a vidmail. He’s on the army planet and training hard. He asked after you. So we told his Dad to tell him that you were in New Haven and having a high old time there.’

High old time
? Ellie smiled. She was doing
okay
.

‘You want to speak to your Mum? She’s right here.’

Maria Quin pushed Jacob out of the way. ‘Ellie? How are you girl?’

‘I’m good Mum, really good.’

‘We’re missing you Ellie. Please come home,’ she said. Ellie could hear a tremble in her voice.

‘I can’t Mum, not for a bit. It costs too much by shuttle. But I’m saving, so maybe soon, huh?’

‘I hope so. We all miss you. It feels like you’re on another planet.’

I might as well be.
‘How’s Ted, Shona?’

‘They’re great. I’ll shout them.’

‘No! Mum, no. I gotta hang up any second, I can’t wait for them. Look, give them both a kiss from me. And tell Ted I bought a Podkin.’

‘A what?’

‘He’ll know, there’s a cartoon series with them on.’

‘Oh, okay.’

‘I really miss you too, and I promise I’ll save as much as I can and hopefully I can come out and see you soon,’ said Ellie, realising that was a rash promise.

‘Please do my love,’ said Maria.

‘Okay, I have to go Mum…this is costing.’

‘Yes dear, I understand.’

‘Love you.’

‘We love you too.’

Ellie watched the grainy vid-image of her parents waving frantically flicker and fade as she disconnected the call. It suddenly sounded very quiet inside the cube. Jez was on her shift and the toob was turned off for once. The only noises she could hear were the rumble of airborne traffic outside, the faint warble of a marshal’s siren bouncing off the tenement towers and the distant clacking of someone’s heels in the passageway beyond their cube door.

Not for the first time, she looked at the scuffed plastic walls of their little cube and felt like a podkin herself.

*

Jez gunned the throttle on her d-ped as she sped down the pedestrian walkway en route to her second delivery of four. This one still had just under five minutes on the delivery-promise timer. She had to deliver it to a habi-cube on the fifth floor of New Hampshire Tower.

Jez weaved around several clusters of pedestrians who made little or no effort to move aside for her.

‘Yeah, thanks a freg,’ she shouted out as she whizzed past, flipping a finger at them.

New Hampshire Tower lay dead ahead, a bronze coloured cone that shimmered in the late afternoon haze. She noticed there were several ramps up to a raised pedestrian plaza, approximately twelve stories up.

Take the ramp up, and an elevator down to the fifth…quickest way.

She leant to her left, swung off the crowded ground-level street and took the ramp upwards. The d-ped whined with a higher pitch at the upward incline. Jez cursed the StarBreaks mechanic for equipping her d-ped with a duff thruster unit.

As she climbed upwards along the ramp, by-passing a grossly overweight couple that were wheezing and puffing from the exertion, she cast a glance outwards across the urban carpet sliding away below her. She looked for her next delivery location; Law Marshall Precinct 76. Jez quickly spotted the rotating blue holographic sign, a shield, but couldn’t see the squat precinct building itself. She checked the display on the saddle between her legs; the third order still had twelve minutes on it.

More than enough time.

As she drew up towards the plaza above her, she cast a glance to the left at the bronze semi-reflective portholes whipping past her. She loved snatching a glimpse into other people’s cubes. As each porthole passed, she caught a momentary snapshot of other private lives; a young buck standing naked in his bedroom, staring out. The next window…a family with young children, all of them staring listlessly at their toob; a man and woman fingers raised at each other, clearly in the middle of a row; another couple staring at the toob, and another, and another.

She turned to look where she was going, just as the d-ped came to the end of the rising ramp and rolled onto the plaza. It was just like any other mid-level pedestrian platform; a few shops, a fast food joint, milling people and more importantly, entrances to the tenement towers that surrounded it. She spotted the New Hampshire entrance and weaved across the plaza towards it.

As she drove into the entrance she spotted a sign on the wall forbidding the use of d-peds and other micro-vehicles inside.

‘Yeah, right,’ she muttered as she rolled inside towards a row of lifts within the foyer. She hit one of the lift’s buttons and then checked the saddle display once more.

Three minutes and fifty-five seconds.

Loads of time.

She looked up when she heard the ping, only to see a Law Marshal coming out.

‘Hey! Take that outside, before I impound it,’ he said gruffly.

Jez cursed under her breath. The chances of running into a marshal in the street were pretty damned low, let alone one actually bothering to visit a tenement tower. She spun the bike round and prepared to take it out.

‘Walk it out!’ the marshal called after her.

Jez slid off the saddle and wheeled it outside, muttering through gritted teeth as she did so. She leaned the d-ped against the wall and then opened the warm-box to pull out the order.

‘Hey, marshal guy!’ she called out as the Law Marshal emerged from the entrance beside her. ‘Could you watch this for a minute?’

He turned towards her and walked over. ‘A minute you say?’

‘That’s it. I’ll be right up.’

‘Sure yeah, alright then,’ he said nodding.

Jez slapped his arm, ‘thanks.’

‘Hey chik, want me to wax it for you too?’

Jez stopped, realising there was a hint of irony in his voice. ‘You’re not actually going to watch it, are you?’

‘What do you think?’ he said shaking his head and laughing as he turned to walk away.

‘Well can you just hang around the plaza for a minute? Go get a doughnut or something,’ she called out after him.

The marshal looked sternly back at her over his shoulder for a moment before proceeding on his way.

With one last, hasty look around, Jez took the StarBreaks order inside, ran across the foyer to the lifts and dived into the first one that arrived. She jabbed at the fifth floor button and cursed with frustration as it slowly rumbled downwards. The doors eventually slid open and she ran out into a passageway lined with the numbered oval doors of habi-cubes.

Number 157 was towards the other end. Of course it was. She set off at a sprint, counting down the last minute in her head as she did so. She reached the habi-cube as she hit the last twenty seconds and pressed her palm against the door-chime.

As she counted down the last ten she heard some movement from inside and finally the door hissed open.

‘Your StarBreaks order, ma’am,’ said Jez breathlessly.

The woman standing in the doorway looked at the order with an expression of disdain. ‘You’re late. I’m not paying for that.’

‘No. Actually, I’m not. I’m exactly on time. To within five seconds in fact,’ replied Jez, her face stiffening with irritation.

‘It’s late I tell you. I timed this order on my own clock. And it says you’re late.’

Yeah, like hell you did
.

‘Well according to my clock it’s on time ma’am, and therefore a refund doesn’t apply.’

The woman reached out and grabbed the order. ‘Fregg it, I’ll have it anyway. But I won’t be using StarBreaks anymore.’

Jez tried to contain her disappointment. ‘No?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘You took far too long.’

She sighed. ‘Just to be clear…you really won’t call StarBreaks again?’

‘No! Never!’

Jez smiled.
Good
. ‘In that case, I hope you choke on it you miserable, ugly, fat mother-freggin’ bitch.’

The woman’s eyes widened.

‘That’s right. Enjoy eating that crap. You really wouldn’t want to know what goes into it, but I’ll tell you this for nothing…I spat in it, so did the food-order chef, and several of the other girls in the back kitchen. Enjoy.’

Jez emerged from New Hampshire running as fast as she could. By her calculation she was going to have to make up some time for the next delivery to the Law Marshal’s precinct building.

Relieved to see it still resting against the wall, she jumped astride the d-ped and pushed the joystick down.

Nothing happened.

She tried again, but the thruster didn’t even offer its trademark throaty cough. She turned round in her saddle to give the damned thing a well-deserved slap, only to find the propulsion unit was gone. ‘Ahh, what the fuggin-shizt! I don’t believe it!

Somebody had lifted it.

She looked around for the marshal she’d spoken to earlier. Nowhere to be seen of course. She checked her saddle display again. She still had five minutes left on the next order and twelve on the final one.

If she missed on both of those Noah would chew her out big time. Thrusters were cheap enough, but losing a big order to the local Law Marshal precinct - and those boys in there really enjoyed their fast food - would mean losing a lot of repeat business.

She had no choice.

‘I …I…I…UGHH!!!!’ Jez growled with frustration, smacking her fist against the wall several times, climbed off, went round the back and detached the warm-box. Then she unclipped the saddle display. Carrying the box under one arm and holding the display in her other hand, she jogged across the plaza towards the ramp she had come up only minutes earlier, and began to make her way down to street level.

She reached the street with only four minutes left on the next order and carried on jogging as best she could between the milling pedestrians, anxiously glancing at the display every few seconds.

The Law Marshal building was only two or three hundred yards down the street on the right. As she weaved in and out of the crowd, she caught the occasional glance of the rotating blue holographic display between the flitting aircars and rumbling skyhounds descending down to street level to drop off and pick up.

She looked down once more at the display…
three minutes.

And then all of a sudden, she was flat on her face, the warm-box skittering across the plastimac pavement, kicked around accidentally several times by the passing forest of legs.

‘Oh for f-….what now?!’ Jez howled with frustration.

She looked around to see what she had tripped over. It was a construction jimp. It cowered guiltily on the ground surrounded by a ring of marking tape clearly warning passersby of ‘maintenance work in progress’. It watched her warily, its two all-black eyes nervously darting one way then the other in a face with no nose and a slit for a mouth. Above its eyes, on the forehead, Jez could see the manufacturer’s logo ‘GenIndo’ in a dark blue pigment that stood out crisply from the jimp’s pale corn-yellow skin tone.

Jez angrily made a move towards the creature, raising one leg to deliver a swift, hard kick. As she did so, it curled its four arms around its head and curled into a vaguely foetal position. Jez hesitated. She knew Ellie felt sorry for these pathetic automatons. She hated the way people in the city casually lashed out at them for little or no reason, often just for laughs. Ellie said she thought that was because people like to kick at something they considered to be lower down the pecking order than their selves; jimps fulfilled that role nicely. Jez lowered her foot to the floor. Maybe Crazy-Ellie was right. Maybe these poor little freaks had a tough enough time as it was, without her adding to it.

Jez nodded at the creature, and muttered a chastened ‘sorry’ before dusting herself off and retrieving the warm-box that had been kicked to the side of the street. She cast one more glance back at the creature. It had resumed its task of digging an access hole in the ground to some junction box or other. Jez was bemused by Ellie’s attitude towards jimps. Being a farm-chik she was probably unused to being around them, not really aware that they were little more than genetically-engineered construction tools….organic robots.

She shook her head. Ellie was a funny girl sometimes.

Two minutes left on the order. If she picked up the pace and this time kept an eye on the damned street ahead, she calculated she might just about make it in time.

She barged her way through a tight knot of people waiting patiently to squeeze through a narrow bottleneck in the street, receiving a salvo of curses in return. Finally pushing herself out through the other side and disentangling herself from them, she could see the precinct building directly ahead of her. It was a low box-shaped, dirty, plasteel structure squatting in the shadows of a tower either side and a pedestrian plaza some fifty feet above it. Hidden from the filtered afternoon sun in this permanent semi-darkness, it looked like a forgotten box-shaped toadstool living at the base of some giant trees.

She redoubled her flagging pace, her breath rasping and coarse from the exertion of her four and a half minute sprint down from the New Hampshire tower. Last time she had been this out of breath the man trapped beneath her had begged her to let him go.