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

CHAPTER 5

Ellie awoke with a start. The soft chiming of the alarm beside her pillow had featured somehow in her dream. She vaguely recalled being chased by someone or something; fighting desperately to stay ahead of some closing threat behind her, clambering over rocks and rubble and all manner of unlikely obstacles to keep in front of it. The beep had been some sort of proximity warning coming from a device on her belt, urging her to go faster as it grew louder and more insistent.

‘Go for it, girl,’ Jez mumbled sleepily as she turned over in the cot above, and quickly fell asleep again.

Ellie rolled out of her bunk, pulled herself across the grilled walkway and leant against the sink on the opposite bulkhead. She splashed some cool water across her face.

It did the job. It woke her up.

She sprayed a cloud of ActiBacto under her arms, up her nightshirt to kill the sweaty-socks smell of the cabin that clung to her.

She looked up towards the front of the cockpit to see Aaron dozing in the pilot’s seat, his large legs pulled up onto the arm of his seat, and his cap tugged down over his eyes. Through the windshield, looking forward, she could see the first light of day staining the purple sky with a hint of peach, and the drab ground below raced beneath them still bathed in the violet-blue shadows of night.

Their passengers would be waking up soon and it was Ellie’s job to play the stewardess. Yesterday had been the first day of the four day trip. They had set off at midday to allow their ten paying guests the best light with which to see the spectacle of the port and the exterior of the dome of New Haven and, of course, the encrusted shantytown along the base of it. Ellie had joined them by the recently installed viewing windows in the hold and
ooohed
and
aahed
along with the rest of them. Second time around, it had been just as breathtaking to behold the sheer, awesome scale of the dome.

One of the older ladies confessed it had been several decades since she had last seen anything outside of the city. Ellie wondered how a person could endure living so long in one contained environment without at least stepping outside once in a while. Several uninterrupted decades trapped inside New Haven? She’d go mad.

Ellie had studied the ten passengers they had aboard as they gazed out of the window, watching the city begin to shrink as Aaron eased the shuttle away, heading northwards. There were three older couples, varying in ages from, she guessed, mid-forties to mid-fifties. Ellie had struggled to engage them in a little small talk, something that didn’t come that easy to her, unlike Jez who could effortlessly exchange banalities with anyone, and somehow enjoy it too. Two of these couples had taken on the trip as an anniversary present to each other. For the third couple, the trip was a birthday present from the husband to his wife.

Then there were two brothers, both in their early thirties by the look of them. She had found out that they owned a holo-board advertising business between them. The older of the two, Sam, had proudly told her that thirty-six percent of the floating holographic billboards that floated around the city were theirs. It was a booming business he had assured her, and they were one of the biggest players in New Haven. In fact, Jez had actually been in the process of renting some billboard advertising time from them when she’d decided that Sam and his brother, Ryan, could do with a couple of tickets and a well-earned break from making lots of money.

Ellie shook her head and chuckled.
She never misses a trick
.

The other two passengers were each on their own. One was a young woman, Corin, perhaps a little older than Jez. Jez had referred to her as an
Airbag.
Ellie knew the stereotype well; young woman married to a richer older man, her own air car…usually one of the bigger, chunkier, utility models. Her type lived their lives entirely above the twenty-four storey mark, flitting from one tower-top boutique to the next. Corin was already flirting quite shamelessly with the two bill-board brothers, presumably enjoying the freedom of being off the leash and away from her sugar-daddy.

The last passenger was an old man, probably in his mid-sixties by the look of him. He hadn’t said a great deal so far, but had gazed with an obvious pleasure at the chaotic comings and goings of vessels great and small from the port, and the intricate web of geodesic metal struts that lined the outside of the dome. Ellie suspected he was an old time colonist coming out one last time to see how much the world had changed.

She dressed quickly in the uniform that Jez had picked out for both of them to wear. For once it seemed Jez had been able to exercise some degree of restraint over her more flamboyant taste in clothing, and had selected some navy blue, form-hugging neoprene polo-necked tops, white miniskirts and navy-blue leggings for them to wear. She had also picked out some clothing for Aaron; crisp clean white slacks and a navy blue blazer with white braided epaulettes. But Aaron wasn’t playing ball. He had resolutely refused to wear them, and showed no signs yet of weakening, despite Jez’s constant badgering and nagging.

Ellie ducked and looked into the mirror beside the FoodSmart. She smoothed down her lank and lifeless mouse-brown hair and quickly applied a little liner and lipstick, still feeling a touch self-conscious at the thought of wearing cosmetics. She definitely enjoyed seeing her face transformed into something that looked prettier, more glamorous like Jez, but it still felt…bogus, like she was a child playing at being all grown up.

Ellie took several steps to the aft of the cabin, to a door in the bulkhead that led down into the cargo hold – now known as the
Passenger’s Suite
.

She opened the door and let herself in. The glow strip on the ceiling was turned down, and most of the pale illumination in here came from the growing light of dawn streaming in from the two wide viewing windows.

Curtains…we’ll have to install some curtains for the next trip.

She looked around the suite. She couldn’t see anyone up just yet. The couches, arranged in a semi-circle facing one of the windows, were all closed and being used as individual sleeping pods. She tiptoed quietly in, walked silently across the carpeted floor towards the FoodSmart and started to prepare breakfast.

*

Aaron awoke from his fitful sleep as the smell of freshly made coffee drifted up into the cockpit from the hold. He also detected the savory smell of grilled fagurters and toasted wheat sheets. Ellie must be up already and tending to their guests, he decided. He stretched in his seat, his legs long enough to reach across and nudge the armrest on the co-pilot’s seat next to him.

The jimp, curled up on the seat like a lap dog, stirred briefly and muttered something unintelligible and then was still once more. Aaron wondered whether the creature was dreaming. He wondered if
any
of the thousands of different models of genetic products out there actually dreamed. He cast a glance sideways at him….

Him?

Ellie’s incessant campaign to
humanize
the jimp was beginning to take a hold. But it wasn’t a good idea really. The jimp’s license expiry was only a few months off. That was why Aaron had been able to buy him so cheaply. When it did expire, the pigment in the manufacturer’s logo on his –
it’s
- head would change color to red, and Harvey would very soon after curl up and die. Ellie was going to find that quite hard to deal with if she continued treating the thing like a surrogate child.

Aaron heard Ellie greeting one of the guests with a chirpy
good morning
.

He was relieved not to have to interact with the passengers. In fact, so far he hadn’t once stepped back into the hold to meet any of them, despite a couple of polite requests from one of the couples to meet
the ship’s Captain
. He really didn’t envy Ellie’s and Jez’s role; having to mix it with them, cater to their every whim. Piloting, he had assured both girls, was a
full time
job, and even though the auto-helm was on the case most of the time, there needed to be someone on hand, in the cockpit, who could handle the vessel in case there was a problem.

He wasn’t entirely sure they’d bought all that. But since it was
his
ship,
his
money they had spent converting her into a leisure barge and
his
loss if it all went belly up, he decided it didn’t really matter if they did or not. He wasn’t going to wear that damned uniform Jez had given him, and he doubly wasn’t going to go back into the…
Passenger Suite
….and strut around like a pompous idiot to impress their paying guests and indulge in polite chitter chatter with them.

He’d feel like an utter moron.

Aaron was nervous that this whole enterprise was going to be found out for what it was by those people back there; a quick and corny cash-in. That some bright spark was going to notice that they’d been accommodated in a rusty old freight container, and the ship was nothing more than an ageing tug, splashed with white paint.

Still, so far so good. There had been no grumbles as yet, at least none that Ellie or Jez had reported. And, of course, he noted with a warm glow of satisfaction, the money was already tucked up safely in the bank; four and a half thousand creds of it already.

He settled back in his padded seat and felt the heat of the morning sun as it emerged with a fan-like explosion of rays over the mostly flat and featureless horizon ahead.

*

They approached the arctic line towards evening on the second day. They watched the distant, thin ribbon of white ahead of them slowly thicken as the shuttle hurtled towards it. Jez stood behind the pilot’s seat and gazed, slack-jawed at the approaching spectacle.

‘Oh-my-crud, this is in-cred-ible! I can’t believe I’m seeing this with my own eyes!’

‘Yeah, it’s a breathtaking sight alright,’ said Aaron.

‘I mean, after days of seeing just so much orange mud…it’s, like, I dunno…startling,’ she continued. ‘It’s like the edge of the world, or something.’

Ellie came forward. ‘Great isn’t it?’

Jez, beaming, turned to her. ‘Fregg, you know what Ellie? I’m so totally glad we met.’ She grabbed her in a crushing headlock and planted a kiss on her forehead.

Harvey cocked his head inquisitively, whilst Aaron rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘Sheeesh…let’s ease up on the girly excitement and try and keep things professional back there, okay?’

Jez nodded, still smiling. ‘Don’t worry Aaron. They’ll think I’ve been living out here all my natural life. I’m pretty good at
bluffing it
.’

She had suggested giving the passengers a little tour-guide routine; just some background spiel, a few facts, a few figures and an explanation of why it was all one day going to vanish - just enough that their customers felt like they were getting their money’s worth.

‘Okay so most of the detail is a load of crud I’ve looked up on the GEO channel, or made up, but fregg, they’re not going to know, are they?’ she said.

‘Just as long as it
sounds
correct,’ said Aaron, ‘and they don’t figure that we’re a bunch of rank amateurs having our first go at this.’

Ellie placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Jez’s good at razzing, they’ll believe every little word of nonsense she tells them back there.’

‘It’s all crap,’ Jez smiled and spun round on her heels. ‘But I’ll have them believing I’m an expert,’ she muttered with a flick of her jet black hair, and making her way down the cabin towards the aft bulkhead door.

‘Is she always so sure of herself?’ asked Aaron.

Ellie watched her open the door and enter the passenger suite. ‘Always.’

*

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are rapidly approaching this world’s arctic shelf. If you care to look out of the viewing windows on either side…’

Most of the passengers had been staring lackadaisically at the toob, watching some imported off-world chat-show. With Jez’s loud announcement breaking the fug of creeping boredom, the toob was instantly forgotten and all ten passengers crowded to either side of the suite to look out at the approaching spectacle.

Jez joined the billboard brothers, Corin, and one of the middle-aged couples in one window and stared out at the approaching ice sheet, now as thick as a thumb held out at arm’s length. She had anticipated that the transition from non-arctic to arctic would have been gradual; starting with small patches of ice and snow that gradually grew in size and density. She couldn’t have been more wrong. As they drew closer, hugging the dusty ground below them, she could see they were approaching a towering wall of ancient ice, several hundred feet tall. Its base was littered with shattered blocks of ice, a glittering rubble heap of shards and glistening faceted boulders of melting ice.

‘As you can see, if you look at the bottom of the shelf approaching us, there is a lot of freshly broken ice. That’s ice that has broken away from the shelf as it continues to melt and withdraw northwards.’

Jez had tried to find some information on the arctic region of Harpers Reach on the Toob-GEO Interactive channel. Despite a heroic effort on her part, she had found very little on it. After a long time patiently scanning through the lists of content, and being sidetracked a couple of times by a juicy celebrity gossip page, she had eventually found a menu devoted to natural history and a page of historic notes on the Big Warming of Old Earth. Jez decided the facts and figures she pulled up there, dating from the first half of the 21
^st
century onwards, were probably good enough to pass as data harvested from below.

‘Detailed measurements taken here, over the last twenty years…’

Go on then girl, make it sound authentic and official.

‘…conducted by the Colonial Bureau of Arctic Studies, have shown that the shelf is withdrawing northwards by three miles every year. That the ice-mass of the north polar region is decreasing by two-and-a-half percent every year, as the temperature of the planet warms up,’ she announced, checking out of the corner of her eyes to see whether she was being given any skeptical frowns. Encouraged, she tried to remember some more of the little factoids she had read on the dying days of Old Earth’s polar caps.