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.’
CHAPTER 11
Deacon watched the arid world pass by below. It really was an incredibly dull and ugly landscape, and from what he had seen in the few weeks he had been down on Harpers Reach, it was the same dull and ugly landscape right the way across the entire planet, with no significant features to speak of to break up the monotony. He could almost understand why ninety-nine percent of this world’s population had crammed themselves into New Haven and Harvest City and refused to come out.
The shuttle he had appropriated from the New Haven authorities - with no explanation whatsoever and a mere flourish
of his credentials - was pitifully old and slow. He guessed this shuttle had seen active service on several other worlds before this one; bought in second-hand by the planet’s local law enforcement for the occasional bit of policing outside of the city.
Inside the main cabin, sitting on benches facing inwards, his team looked almost as bored as he felt. Leonard was busy scribbling on a tablet, his mind a million light years away, fraternizing with some mathematical distraction. Nathan sat beside him trying to watch his portable holotoob. He flipped distractedly from one station to the next, glancing momentarily at a steady procession of day time sopa-drams and home-shopping channels; nothing seemed to be holding his interest for long.
Deacon suspected the technician was suffering a mild form of post-trauma stress. Up close he’d witnessed those families butchered right in front of his eyes. The administration’s dirty work carried out with ruthless precision and efficiency. He acknowledged there was once a time that he would have been equally horrified at the sight of children, women being gunned down in their own homes.
What has been done, has been done out of necessity.
And then there were the three hired guns. They sat in silence, two of them appeared to be asleep, the third gazed wearily out of one of the windows at the passing terrain. Professionals, mercenaries….each of them had been used many times before by the Administration to do its most grisly work. They were functioning on only the minimum amount of information required. Like bloodhounds, all three of them had been given the scent of Ellie Quin, and nothing more.
When this job was done, they too, like the two younger men sitting beside them, were loose ends that would need tidying up. When this job was done, there would be only Deacon heading back to Liberty on a star ship to make his report to the committee.
So far, seven candidates and their families had been eliminated. On one unfortunate occasion, a couple of hapless passers-by who had been unlucky enough to witness one of these executions: altogether a body count of about thirty people by Deacon’s reckoning.