by Alex Scarrow
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.
The rest of them sat in the comfort of the courtyard. Mum had brought out dinner, set it down on several unfolding plastic tables and dimmed the lights; the only illumination being the flickering glow of the holo-toob itself.
Ellie remembered watching the tragic event unfold live on the toob seven years ago. She had only been twelve back then. Old enough to fully understand what was happening on the nearby planet. The whole universe must have tuned in to watch the news as every available surface vessel on the planet converged on Casares - the planet’s one, doomed city - to try and evacuate as many of the denizens there as time would allow. As it happened only a few thousand managed to get out before a tsunami of truly apocalyptic proportions slammed into the fragile city.
Amongst the city’s trapped population, a news team had been down there and they’d filmed the phenomenon as it raced towards the city. Its horrendous approach was described by news anchor Henry Marlett, a well-groomed middle-aged man Ellie recalled had at one time been a regular newsreader on Harpers Reach. She remembered being chilled to the bone by the sight of what appeared to be a mountain range on the move. It was as it drew closer and rose high enough to brush the base clouds in the sky that she realized it was a tidal wave. The cool matter-of-factness of Marlett’s narrative as the final moment arrived had stuck in her mind all these years.
She remembered thinking how bizarre it was that anyone could remain so calm with something like that bearing down on them. How a person could even manage to string a sentence together, or operate a camera, or carry on holding a boom mic while knowing they were only seconds away from a violent end. The Quins watched in silence as the oft-aired and all too familiar minute-long sequence played out the awful drama once again. No matter how many times Ellie saw this piece of film, it still managed to make the hairs on her forearms rise and her skin to goose bump like a chicken drumstick.
‘It’s now…it must be a mile away…but its moving fast. You can see from these pictures that the height of this wave must be nearly a thousand feet…’
A dark undulating horizon, featureless at this distance, slowly rises menacingly. In the background can be heard many different, tense voices. This must have been the news production team, kept from the very cusp of panic by having the important job of documenting their own deaths.
‘It’s quite awe-inspiring. There is no doubt now that this wave will completely engulf Casares. There had been a hope that the energy of the would have been reduced by the time it reached us here, but clearly this is a wave that will leave no building standing and probably no-one alive…’
The sound of somebody crying. Too much now for one of Marlett’s team.
‘It looks like it’s about half a mile from me now…maybe even closer. I can see some surface vessels, shuttles, and boats even, caught in its grasp. They’re turning over and over, r
olling down the front face of the wave like discarded toys. My god…this is an incredible and terrifying sight.’
The image is beginning to wobble. Marlett looks at someone off screen…the cameraman? He mouths ‘you want me to take it?’ A moment later the camera changes hands and Marlett is now holding it. From now on only he can be heard.
‘The wave is now, I guess, less than a quarter of a mile away. We only have a few seconds left until it hits us. When it does, the building I am standing in will simply cease to exist, everyone here will die more or less instantly. The camera may survive a little longer and successfully transmit images to you. I am placing the camera on a table…’
The image pans wildly and then it is perfectly still and facing a broad bay window looking out on to the metallic-colored water of a shallow cove and the churning wall of black water beyond. There is no longer a sky, just a wall of water. Marlett appears in the shot again a few moments later beside the bay window. He places his arms protectively around the shoulders of a couple of younger people. A fatherly gesture for his loyal broadcast team. Together they stare out at the approaching wall. In the final second before the wall hits, Marlett turns back to the camera and smiles. A goodbye to someone close.
In an instant the image is mottled with white frothing water. It lasts only two seconds before transmissions ceases.
Ellie shuddered.
‘Cool,’ said Ted enthusiastically.
Ellie and her parents turned towards him.
‘I thought you were meant to be sulking in your bedroom dipweed?’ snapped Ellie.
‘I was, dogface,’ he said irritatingly, flicking his wrist to click his fingers.
Shona sniggered.
‘That,’ said Ellie pointing towards the toob, still emotionally charged by the clip, ‘was not cool you simpleton dwarf boy. It was horrific.’
‘Nah, it was triple cool. Imagine surfing that monster wave…’
Dad stepped in, ‘Ted…you should know better. It wasn’t a cartoon. A lot of people died when that happened. Normal folk, just like us. Would that be cool? A huge tidal wave wiping us away?’
Ted shook his head sheepishly.
‘Right. So I don’t want to hear ‘cool’ right now.’
Ted pouted under his father’s withering gaze, but once Jacob Quin turned back to continue watching the toob Ted discreetly stuck his tongue out at Ellie.
‘Ted, stop winding up you sister,’ said Maria spotting his sly gesture.
Ellie smiled. Mum: Queen of Peripheral Vision.
Ted headed back to his cabin pretending to surf when his parents were not looking.
Ellie shook her head. ‘He’s such an idiot…are you sure we’re related Mum?’
Maria smiled. ‘Oh, we found him in the recycling bin as a baby. He looked far too pitiful to throw away. So we kept him.’
CHAPTER 6
They were at the Traders’ Show.
The Traders’ Show was where the farmers in the region went to buy equipment and haggle over the next season’s crop prices with the distribution and shipping agents. It was a big deal for the local farming community and it happened once a year. The whole thing had started out twenty-three years ago as a simple rendezvous arranged between a dozen farmers and the only agent from New Haven who was prepared to travel out of town and deal with them. Over the years the rendezvous had grown and attracted other agents, wholesalers and distributors as well as the usual motley assortment of traders and dealers, importers and exporters, trinket sellers, fast food stalls, travelling salesmen, side shows, fair rides and con men. It had snowballed rapidly over the last seven years according to Jacob and now, with all the things there were to see and do, it was almost inexcusable for a farmer to turn up and leave his family behind.
Originally, the event had taken place in a shuttle station sixty miles west of the Quin’s farm. But it soon outgrew this venue and now was housed in a large, twenty-acre plexitex dome beside the station.
It was the One Big Thing that the spread-out and isolated farming families in the area looked forward to all year; a chance for everyone to scrub up and put on their best clothes and step out. But for Ellie, it felt like getting a whiff of the big city; a try-before-you-buy sampler of what it might be like in New Haven.
She loved it.
Ellie and Shona were taking their time deciding how to spend the five creds Dad had given each of them that morning. He called it ‘fun money’, actually it was more like leave-me-alone money.
Jacob Quin was going to be spending the entire day down at the exchange, mostly haggling next season oxygen-crop prices with his current agent. But Ellie also knew that the day would be spent shooting the breeze with other farmers, acquaintances, friends and possibly - no probably - sinking a few beers.
Shona was humming and clucking over whether to splash the lot in a single moment of consumer madness; to indulge in the mindless pleasure of a spending orgy on a variety of trinkets and baubles or purchase a single plastic jacket with a counterfeit off-world designer logo on it she had spotted on a stall nearby. The desire to own one of these over-priced, poorly mass-manufactured designer garments was eating her up inside.
Ellie spotted some Crazie-Beanie merchandise. Crazie-Beanie was an amusing high-pitched warbling voice-over for an anti-bacterial wipe advert. The voice and the catch-phrase had caught on over the last year. And, of course, now a little character existed to go along with it. Despite the fact it was a kids thing, Ellie loved Crazie-Beanie. The trilling, gibbering nonsense he spouted during the advert for anti-bacterial wipes, and the other dozen or so products he now endorsed, made her giggle. She was browsing through some Beanie-bangles when she heard a voice.
‘Hi Ellie, hey Shon’…how are you guys enjoying the show?’ It was Sean.
Shona flushed self-consciously looking down at her shuffling feet in a futile attempt to hide her crimson cheeks.
‘It’s alright, same as last year and the year before that…and so on,’ said Ellie casually, she hoped. ‘Same guff, different year.’
He smiled, ‘I guess you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’
‘Something like that. You here with your Dad?’
‘Yup, he’s probably the same place as yours right now, haggling with the agents.’
‘Or trying to persuade my Dad to change over the crop again.’
‘Makes sense though, Ellie. Every year the atmosphere grows a little more O-rich, that can’t be doing your Dad a favor when it comes to negotiating the best sell price.’
Sean, of course, was right. Although the last few years had seen an influx of off-worlders to New Haven which had driven up demand for O2 supplies to the two domed cities, the trend was definitely a downward one. Ten or twenty years from now the price of oxygen per canister would be half its value.
‘The word amongst the agents is meat crops. Or so I’ve been told,’ he added.
Ellie curled her lip in disgust. They had once tried growing a small plot of these some years back as an experiment. The heat in the bio-dome had been too much and the entire batch had died and gone off overnight. In death, the plants derma-husks had ruptured spilling offal and a bloody, rancid soup over the floor of the dome. The Quin family woke up the next morning to find the dome resembled an abattoir.
Sean turned to Shona and handed her some creds. ‘Listen Shona, can you do me a favor?’
She nodded enthusiastically, ‘sure.’
‘Can you buy us some fagurters? No sauce for me… and anything you want for yourself, okay?’
Shona was thrilled to have some bonus creds to spend and was immediately gone, pushing through the milling crowd of people towards the nearest food vendor. Sean waited until he saw her join a queue before he began.
‘I wanted to talk to you Ellie, alone.’
Ellie felt her skin prickle in anticipation. She guessed he was about to say something that was going to make her feel utterly shitty and hate him. Given their last conversation, she fully expected him to conf
ess that he’d told her Dad about her plans to run away to New Haven.
‘I’ve thought about last week-’
Here it comes, thanks Sean, thank you so very fregging much.
Ellie turned to him. ‘So?’
‘So…I’ve decided that if you insist on running away to New Haven, then maybe I’ll help you out. I’ll take you there myself.’
Ellie stared in silence at him, unsure whether he was serious or not.
‘Ellie? You okay?’
She swayed slightly, feeling light headed, ‘you…you’re serious? You’ll go with me?’
Sean nodded.
‘Go with me? You mean…stay with me?’ A rush of fantasies momentarily filled her head; the pair of them, together, an item, in New Haven. She closed her eyes and saw a fleeting image of them together locked in a passionate embrace on the balcony of some luxurious apartment overlooking the most spectacular cityscape imaginable. A forest of glistening metal and glass structures descending into a bustling urban carpet beneath them, and the sky around them buzzing with sky-cars and shuttles, the whole scene bathed in a rich golden sunset. In her mind’s eye, she felt the firm, taut body of Sean pressed against her, his strong arms enveloping her and protecting her from the world outside like a force field. She felt his soft lips against hers and stroked his delicious jaw as they kissed, feeling the gentle rasp of his closely shaved skin…
‘I don’t mean I’m going to stay.’
Pop. That little fantasy bubble burst too easily.
‘Listen Ellie, I’ll take you to New Haven with me a few weeks ahead of the Freezer’s scheduled arrival, so I can help you find a place, get a job…you know, get started. Okay?’
‘You…you’re still going off-world then?
‘Yeah, I’m still going. But you should be settled in by the time I leave, maybe found some work, someplace to live and-’
‘But…but won’t we be living together in our own place? For a few weeks? Living together…just like…just like-’