‘I’m really not sure I can do this counter job,’ said Jez after her first bite.
Ellie wasn’t entirely surprised. Every now and then, when things were a little less busy she had been checking to see how Jez was doing. And it seemed every time she had looked across, Jez had her back to the counter, was scowling furiously and was muttering something under her breath.
‘I’m used to being ogled at. I can handle that, Ellie. It’s just this stupid daggy pompom that’s really getting under my skin. I feel like a complete cret’.’ Jez turned to her. ‘You know how I look is important to me, don’t you?’
Ellie nodded. ‘I know.’ Jez was singularly the vainest person she had ever met in her short life.
‘Did you know, they don’t wear this kind of crud at any of the other StarBreaks? Did you know that?’
Ellie shook her head, ‘I thought that was standard counter uniform.’
‘Yeah, well, what you’re wearing is. But the skirt thing and the pompom thing is Noah’s big idea. Dirty old sod. It’s…it’s…’ Jez took another bite out of her meatie-flasty, barely tasting the soyo-tang filling.
‘Demeaning?’ offered Ellie.
Jez’s eyebrows furrowed, ‘if that means it makes me look like a complete idiot, then yes.’
They watched a skyhound approach the plaza and then disgorge several dozen people onto a bubble-stop nearby, before sailing gracefully down to join a traffic stream below them.
‘I’m going to ask Noah if he can move me to some other job. It’s those shavs that gather outside; those cocky young boys that get under my skin the most. Little…little runts think they can hit on me, just because I’m dressed like a fregging bunny rabbit.’
‘Well, you could see if Noah will let you work in deliveries. You know they get paid a commission per delivery, so the more you can deliver, the more you’ll get.’
Jez nodded unenthusiastically. ‘Yeah, I suppose I could.’
‘And you get to wear the normal version of the uniform.’
‘Bonus,’ replied Jez.
Ellie thought about it some more. ‘Actually, I could cherry-pick your orders.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Give you orders grouped closely together…so that you can take more than one at a time. You know this part of the city like the back of your hand, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You know all the shortcuts. We could really stack your deliveries. I’ll give you all the ones in the same area, and you could do two or three customers with each run. I think it’s like a cred per delivered order that Noah pays out in delivery bonus. You could be earning two or three creds every twenty minutes, that’s another nine creds per hour.’
Jez sat upright and stared at her. ‘On top of my basic pay….that’s…that’s-’
‘Fifteen and a half per hour,’ replied Ellie. ‘Not bad, uh?’
‘Ellie-girl,’ Jez said, grasping her narrow shoulders with both hands. ‘You may not be a cutie-chik, but you are most definitely the brains of our little team. Crud…I’m going back right now to talk to that big lump, Mr Noah. He’s going to transfer me, girl. Or I’ll pull his stubby little nose off and serve it up with the next order.’
Jez finished her meatie, and swigged the last few gritty mouthfuls of coffee before turning and striding defiantly back across the busy plaza towards StarBreaks. She pushed her way nonchalantly through an idling crowd of offworlders, several of whom wolf-whistled her as they watched her bunny tail swing with each angry stride.
Ellie watched her go and smiled with admiration at Jez’s natural, antagonistic, self confidence. She envied that quality of hers more than anything else. Only someone like Jez could casually push her way through a pack of rough-looking men like those, dressed the way she was, without a single shred of humility. If Ellie could exchange one characteristic with Jez, it wouldn’t be her beautiful, some might say, striking face, nor her curvaceous frame, nor the husky tom-boy voice that men seemed to find so attractive; it would be none of those things.
It would be that ability of hers to effortlessly front-out everything.
She seemed to have an air of assurance that made her appear almost invincible. Nothing or no-one was ever going to best Jez. She wore confidence like an impenetrable force field.
CHAPTER 10
Jez breezed into Noah’s office without knocking. ‘I need a word,’ she announced sternly.
Noah glanced up from his data screen, a look of irritation spread across his face. ‘I’d like you to go outside, knock, and then try again.’
Jez ignored him. The door swished closed behind her and she took several intimidating steps forward. ‘I want a transfer off the counter.’
‘What?’ he uttered, thrown off balance momentarily. Noah recovered his composure quickly and offered her his best we’re-a-team-here smile.
‘Hey…You’re my number one looker out there on the counter!’ he said. ‘I think you just got to get into role a little more, eh?’
‘Get into role?’
‘Yeah, you know, a little flirty-flirty, shake your tush a bit. The customers just love that kind of thing. Makes ordering lunch a bit of fun for everyone.’
Jez shook her head. ‘No, I’m not shaking my tush. Not with this stupid fluffy white thing on my ass.’
Noah pointed towards the counter outside his office. ‘Take a look at Jules. She gets the biggest till bonus on the counter. Look…see? See…she’s grabbing some sauce cartons…there…see the little wiggle? That’s earning her money, girl. Every little wiggle is a bit more money in her pay check each week. That could be you, the top earner here at StarBreaks. You’re my best-looking girl. You just need to grow a sense of fun.’
Jez’s jaw dropped open. ‘Grow a sense of fun?’
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s….demeaning.’
Noah roared with laughter. ‘Demeaning?’ He slapped his ample belly mirthfully then swung a thick arm around her shoulders. ‘What? Did you go eat a Bill of Workers Rights for lunch? Girl, it’s a bit late to be worrying about that now. You’re already wearing my uniform. You’re already demeaned. All you need to do is give a little more. That’s all I’m asking. Turn it around, and make some money from it.’
Jez stared silently at him, wondering whether to lamp him one and storm out of his office with her pride intact and her head held high. Or, on the other hand, eat a little bit of pie. She knew it had to be the latter…the money at StarBreaks was too good.
Noah grew impatient with the silence. ‘So, you gonna wiggle that bunny for extra money?’
Jez clenched her fists, ‘hmmm, well see, the bunny tail…that’s the bit I don’t like, Mr Noah. I look stupid with that thing on my-’
Noah waved his hand at her irritably. He decided it was about time to wrap up this little tete-a-tete. ‘Okay Jez, I’m all done being Mr NiceGuy. You either do it my way or you take the sky-way. Understand? There’s only room for one loudmouth around here, and that’s me.’
Jez decided to make her bid. ‘How about I go and work on the deliveries?’
Noah looked bemused. ‘You want to be a ped-jockey?’
‘Yeah.’
Noah studied her intently. It would be a damned shame to lose a real looker like her from the counter, but then he had seen her being a little too snappy with the customers once or twice, showing them some attitude. And that wasn’t being too helpful. The other girls might just pick up on that, and before he knew it they’d all be hurling their bunny tails at him.
On the other hand, that attitude of hers might better serve her down in deliveries. You needed to be a little sassy to push your way through this crowded city on a tight deadline. This girl Jez seemed like she could more than hold her own on that front. Despite being a bit of a stunner, Noah was beginning to suspect she had wa-a-ay too much attitude to be serving behind the counter. Out there delivering StarFagurters, and giving everyone else on the street some grief, she’d be a natural.
??
?Hey, if you’re happier doing that, Jezabel, then fine.’
‘That’s not my name. No one calls me that,’ she replied. ‘It’s Jez.’
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 s
uitable. 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.’