Ellie Quin Book 01: The Legend of Ellie Quin (3 page)

‘But I’ve got to say something. Running away over there,’ he gestured in the direction of New Haven, ‘is going to be a hard deal. Life is harsh and expensive. I’ve been there a few times with my Dad. If you’ve got money, yeah, it’s a playground. But if you don’t…well, it can be rough. There’s all sorts living there, non-humans, off-worlders. There’re a lot of bad areas, a lot of people who will happily take advantage of you, rip you off.’

‘I know it’ll be hard at first. But I can’t
not
do it.’ She looked at him. ‘Does that make sense?’

He nodded gently. Of course it made sense. But he was worried that Ellie would walk into New Haven looking like the perfect target for every lowlife there. She was young for nineteen; looked young, behaved young. Add to that the instantly recognizable hick-naivety of some poor soil-scratcher from out of town looking to find her fortune. She’d be a walking target.

‘I know you’ve probably thought a lot about this, and think you’ve thought this all through and have some kind of perfect plan to get yourself sorted out quickly and-’

‘At least I’ve got to try.’

‘Sure, but maybe if you were to talk this through with your Mum and Dad, they’ll be able to help you.’

‘They’ll just try to talk me out of it Sean. You know that.’

‘Uh-huh. Of course they will. They at least deserve the chance to do that. Your Mum and Dad, they’re good people Ellie…they love you.’

‘I know, but don’t you think I’ve considered everything you’ve said just now? Crudge, I can see how my cruddy life goes…staying on here farming indefinitely and watching everyone else my age disappear off to the city or even leaving this world. And me, slowly growing old, alone in my own three-square-acre universe. If I don’t go soon I’ll find myself getting sucked into running Dad’s farm, and then I’ll never get the chance!’

He knew there was nothing he could say in response to that. Because she was quite right.

‘Please don’t tell them,’ she asked.

An awkward silence.

‘I’d better head back home, it’s getting late.’

‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone,’ Ellie pleaded.

‘I told you. I promise,’ Sean replied solemnly. ‘I’ll let myself out.’

He headed towards the entrance to the domestic area then found himself turning back to look at her. Ellie was gazing up again at the stars.

‘How much chore money have you managed to save?’ he whispered.

‘Three hundred and fifty-six creds.’

He winced. He guessed that was enough money to rent a room in the city for a couple of weeks, a seedy one at that. He could see a disturbing range of future scenarios ahead for her, the best-case one being her returning to this farm, her dreams of escape in tatters, broken-hearted and penniless.

‘I’ll see you same time next week; remember to bone up on that dom-tech module.’

Ellie didn’t reply. He thought that maybe she was crying.

OMNIPEDIA:

[Human Universe open source digital encyclopedia]

Article: Harpers Reach - The birth planet of Ellie Quin’

Harpers Reach was a planet in the Seventh Veil that was first charted and surveyed in 3041, seventy years after the Colonial Wars had come to an end. As a consequence, this new frontier planet had never, mercifully, experienced first-hand - unlike established worlds caught up in that conflict - the horrors of post-fusion warfare. It was, however, a planet on the very edge of Human Space, away from the densest trade routes and the prosperity that that brings. It was also woefully short of valuable, tradable natural resources that might have attracted commerce towards it. It’s only merit was that it offered a sizeable surface of seismically stable real estate.

Harpers Reach was always destined to be a poor, under-achieving, uninteresting frontier world. Doomed, like most of its inhabitants, to irrelevance from birth.

At the time of Ellie Quin’s childhood, Harpers Reach was in the middle of an extended economic recession. It was a planet that was still too young to have matured out of its two domed cities to establish extensive industry across the planet’s surface. In addition, the principal city,
New Haven
, a sprawling and squalid metropolis, was becoming swollen with ecological migrants from the nearby failed colony world of
Celestion
.

User Comment > SpingleBrick

I herd Harpers Reach wuz never real. Itz all mad up conspirisy by the govvyment cuz they like to make liez an stuff.

User Comment > BiiiiiG-Boy

Helloooo gentlemens! Is your sex drive failing you? Do you wish you could make love all night long like a true God!? Then try
CosmoRod Stim-Shakers
. Three strokes and your partner will be in seventh heaven!

User Comment > Anonymous

To the complete ditto-head above - Harpers Reach is real. And it’s still there you idiot. They do archaeological tours there. Look it up. (Why do all the stupidest people in the universe have to post here on Omnipedia? There’s plenty of other places uniweb for you vegetables to gather.)

User Comment > XXX-come-buy-XXX

want to buy black market alien sex tapes?

CHAPTER 4

Dr Edward Mason stared out of the window of his dark study, down at the azure panorama below. He loved this view. It would be the one thing he truly missed.

He turned his back on the blue vista of Pacifica, the ocean world, above which the labs hung in static orbit. There were things to be done. He was due on the mid-morning shuttle down to Pacifica, to all intents and purposes to embark on a long overdue two week sailing vacation, away from his work. But in actual fact Mason was quietly preparing to disappear for good; to leave behind his tiresome, largely managerial, role here at the Department of Genetic Analysis.

For thirty years Mason had been in charge of the enormous cluster of laboratories floating above Pacifica; three decades running the department for the Administration. And in that time, dutifully doing his job, overseeing his staff as they collated genetic data from the
millions
of paternity requests that flooded in from all corners of Human Space. Playing God; deciding which hopeful citizens would be granted permission to have children, and which would be denied.

Mason recalled the line from a popular song from a few years ago:
it’s was all down to them genes, groovy-oovy genes, bay-beee!!

Playing with our genes – vetting, approving, editing, rewriting precious passages of genetic data for convenience, to suit central government’s - the Administration’s - needs.

Oh yes, the department did a hell of a lot more than just collating the DNA of eager parents to-be. The ready-to-grow embryos that Mason’s department returned to those hopeful parents around the universe were
mostly
the product of their blood – with a few tweaks added for good measure.

Meddling,
enhancing
, along guidelines provided to Mason from the Administration. Small things of course; enhanced bone structure for embryos due to be returned to hi-gravity worlds, UV-resistant skin pigments for those returning to weak-atmosphere worlds. But also subtle behavioral adjustments to ensure these precious little embryos grew up to be reliable, compliant little citizens.

It had been like this since natural fertility had been bred out for practical reasons, many hundreds of years ago, each new generation was grown to order now. Each new generation tinkered with.

Mason sat down at his mock-mahogany desk and continued the task he had been working on all morning. He waved his hand over the desk sensor and his holo-screen display flickered on before him. His personal data space was full of essays and notes he had written during his long tenure here, essays that had grown more hectoring and worrisome in tone as the years had passed. Essays high-lighting the growing occurrence of serious congenital disorders, mutations. Little by little, the inevitable genetic errors, an unavoidable result of so much
editing
, were mounting up. And Mason was seeing the laboratories producing more and more freaks in-vitro with each passing week.

They were destroying the human genome.

Mason had long ago given up sending these essays of concern back to the Administration. He knew there was little they would do even if they wanted to. Population distribution within Human Space
needed
to be tightly managed. There were too many fragile young worlds in early phases of terraforming that could barely sustain their small populations. The paternity requests approved to those places
had
to be only for children of healthy, hardy parents who contributed in some way to that process. And even then, they needed tweaking to be that bit more healthy and productive than their parents.

Tough life forging some remote colony on a far-flung world. Any little extra help; firmer bones, thicker UV-resistant skin was a good thing.

And let’s not forget, deciding who shall have children and who shan’t is a very useful chokehold.
Rebellious planet? Not a problem, just don’t let ‘em breed. They’ll die out soon enough.

Mason suspected that the bureaucrats of the Administration were all too aware that every year the mutation levels were getting worse. But they had no choice, not if they wanted to hold on to the way things were. This system worked for them. For better or for worse.

Mason dragged his notes, his essays, his digital scribblings across to the DELETE icon in the corner of his workspace, then had second thoughts. Deleted files were compressed and kept in a central ‘pending’ archive, sometimes for several weeks before being automatically wiped. They could be easily retrieved before that happened. And read. He couldn’t afford for that to happen.

Oh, if only delete actually meant delete.

Instead he dragged all of the collected files into an obscure data folder, one protected by a password and innocuously named ‘Stats-Temp’. He knew his assistant, Rowan Brown would dutifully and respectfully clear out his old files, purging all of his personal data space after he’d spent all of five minutes mourning his boss’s death. Brown so-o-o wanted this office cubicle, this desk, this view and wouldn’t wait to get started making this space his own.

Mason dropped the files into the directory and nodded with satisfaction. Brown would erase it. And that was fine. Just as long as there was nothing lying around related to file L-239-HR-2457709. Nothing at all…that would lead anyone to that child.

He smiled.

L-239-HR-2457709. She would be approaching twenty years of age by now. Emotions would be stirring within her, the desire to spread her wings and fly overpowering. He wondered what she looked like, what her parents had named her. Above all else, Mason wished he knew that – what her name was. He had the surname of course – Quin. And the citizen ID numbers for L-239’s parents - enough information to locate the family easily enough. He had those two crucial little items of information written by hand in his personal note book. That was the beauty of his old fountain pen and paper, there was no digital trail left behind them.

He closed down the data terminal and the holo-screen vanished.

It was time to go find her and watch over her; to look out for her. She was more precious than
anything
else in the universe, so incredibly precious. Mason allowed himself to think of L-239 as
his
child. In a way she was as much his. Twenty years ago he had selected one particular paternity request out of the millions. The gene-stock was good, the family well away out of harm’s way, anonymous and healthy folk, perfect. And with great care he had authored this creature to be the very beginning of the end…of the way things are.

If the Administration knew she was out there, if they knew something this dangerous to them, to all they held dear, was somewhere out there, they would destroy entire star systems to get their hands on her.

To kill her.

Mason patted his jacket and felt the subtle form of his notebook nestling snugly in his inside pocket. He looked once more around his desk and his cluttered study. If there was anything at all incriminating left behind, something that he had somehow overlooked then at worst he’d be leaving behind evidence on non-approved genetic work. The only possible information that could lead them to her…was what was written by hand and sitting in his pocket.

Good. Then it was time for Dr Edward Mason to go and ‘die’.

CHAPTER 5

The central dome of the Quin farm was roughly half a square acre of rubbertex-covered ground. It was filled with a scruffy looking arrangement of several habi-cubes; the prefabricated alloy cabins that were an ever present eye-sore on any hard-scrabble colony world. They arranged in an approximate circle around an open middle, a space the family liked to call the
courtyard
. It was an apt name for this patch of ground beneath the apex of the central dome, with a matt of plastic brush that was meant to be ‘grass’ and a selection of large potted plants, some of which were actually real. It had the vague feel of a cloistered garden. Or that was the point anyway.

The courtyard had, by default, become the ‘flop out’ zone for the Quins, and was littered with deck chairs, Ted’s lazily discarded toys, a number of Dad’s Jacob’s half-finished furniture repair jobs and a family sized hammock strung between two dome support rods painted and tricked-out to look a bit like palm trees trunks.

On the toob they were watching a documentary on the ecological disaster that happened on Celestion a few years ago. Today, in fact, was the seventh anniversary of that horrific event. It was a program on the toob that Dad particularly wanted to see, announcing that fact this morning over breakfast. Ted had predictably whined when the set had been turned from the toon channel, but he’d given up pretty quickly. There was an unspoken protocol within the home that if Dad wanted to watch something on the toob, then Dad got to watch it. From the first mewling cry of frustration Ted had known the exercise was futile. He’d stormed off to his habi-cube stamping his feet heavily.