Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn (10 page)

‘You were paid to take them to GateWay. Why did you not do this?’

‘I got nervous. I p-panicked, okay? We…we heard the Administration were locking everything down. That they might be l-looking for someone!’

‘So where did you drop her?’

‘It was
after
Holstein. We stopped there, took on our load…then started heading for GateWay…’

‘And?’

‘That’s when we heard about the lockdown. I…I decided the girls m-might be too hot for us. T-trouble…so..’

‘So?’

The box sitting in his lap lurched. The worms inside were getting increasingly agitated, squirming up against the mesh, pressing against it, eager to get to him and begin feasting.

‘I…I looked around for s-somewhere nearby, somewhere
safe
. You know…I…I…could just have thrown her out of an airlock…b-but…’

‘Perhaps you will soon be very grateful you made that decision, Captain. Now…where?’

‘A…an unregistered in-installation.’

‘Be more specific.’

‘I c-can’t! It…it showed up on our near-scan. It’s…it’s…I don’t know what it was…a m-mining station maybe.’

‘Did you not see it?’

Tez shook his head. ‘We sent one of our freight barges to-’

‘You didn’t even check if it was derelict? You did not check to see if it had life-support?!’

Mistake. A very big fucking one
.

‘It…it…look…we were in h-hurry! This place was beaming an ident signal…it…so, we knew it w-wasn’t completely powered down!’

‘Yes, it might have power. But oxygen? Water? Food? You didn’t check for these things first?’

Tez clasped his eyes shut and shook his head. ‘I…I didn’t have time. I…was s-scared!’ He realised this conversation was beginning to head the wrong way. ‘They’re alive! I’m absolutely fucking sure! Please….not the worms! The Kalma! Please..!’

‘Give me the sys-nav coordinates.’

‘I…don’t h-have them. It was…it was near Celestion…half a day out.’

‘Your ship’s log will have the coordinates?’

‘No…n-no…I h-hacked the log. Deleted them, just in c-case….’

The man stood up and pushed back the stool he’d been sitting on. ‘You took a great deal of our money and our trust, to carry a very sacred cargo. And you jettisoned her just like human waste.’

‘No…no! Like I said…it was a powered installa-’

‘You have no idea who she is…do you?’

Tez shook his head. ‘No. N-no, but, I…I know, I get it…she’s i-important to y-you!’

‘Important?’ The man shook his head. ‘You really have no idea of how important this girl is to us. One day soon, something
wonderful
will happen. She will change all of Human Space.’

Tez nodded vigorously. ‘I…would…like to b-believe! I want to j-join you. I want-’

The man walked around behind him. Tez felt his hands resting gently on his shoulders. Then, he felt the man’s beard tickling his left ear. ‘My friend…it’s not
fear
that opens a man’s heart to the voice of God…it is
love
.’

‘I…I…want to learn. I want to-’

‘We don’t frighten people into believing. We invite them. That is our way.’

‘I w-want to believe! I want to join you-’

‘Shhhh…for you, my friend, I’m afraid it is far too late. Are you ready to die?’

‘Oh G-god…! Please! Please…not those th-things!’

‘The passing from one state to the other is brief in the span of time. Your pain…will give way to oblivion. There’s your consolation my friend.’

The man reached down, pulled up the mesh on the end of the box and Tez began to scream.

CHAPTER 14

Mason was mentally 'wool-gathering'; dreaming about being a much younger man; a time when he believed in the Administration’s purpose, it’s firm but fair control of this vastly sprawling human universe.

The ‘safe house’ that had been provided by one of the church’s Awoken sympathisers was a two room habicube beneath a raised pedestrian plaza. One of many habi's stacked like sugar cubes placed precariously on top of each other, right up and nearly scraping the plasticrete belly of the plaza above. An illicit tower block that gently leaned against, or more likely was held upright, by one of the plaza’s thick support stanchions.

‘Teacher! Teacher!’

Mason stirred, bleary eyed. Exhausted. The thoughts of his naive youth blown away like scented smoke from a tookah-pipe.

It was almost impossible to get any sleep in this cube. Its wafer thin plastic walls kept little of the city’s incessant noise out; the boom-boom of that awful street music, the warbling jingles of holo-board adverts floating by like released party balloons, the echoing whoop of Law Marshal sirens. Worse than that, he was kept awake most nights by the clopping backwards and forwards of somebody in the cube directly above his. He suspected there was a freelance flesh-worker up there, taking in clients at all hours of the day and night.

He’d been stuck in here for nearly a week now. Not daring to step outside. There were soldiers everywhere, at almost every intersection and pedestrian level ramp, all of them equipped with DNA scanners. Illegals - those that weren’t registered by immigration records as being allowed in New Haven - were being rounded up and held in detainment camps.

‘Teacher,’ whispered the young man. ‘There is someone here to talk with you!’ The young brother initiate, visited twice a day with food and water, the only person he’d interacted with in days. He left Mason to get dressed.

Mason looked out of the small porthole window. From the sickly cyan tone of the pallid light leaking in from above he guessed it was officially ‘day’. He pulled himself up off the cot, threw a loose shirt over his vest and pulled on some baggy pants. He slipped his bare feet into a cheap pair of gaudily coloured gel slappies.
He licked his palm and made a go of patting down the tufts of his thinning grey hair.

Dammit. Good enough
.

Mason emerged from his sleeping quarters into the main cube; a small space in which there was a pull-down wall table, a stool, a broken FoodSmart and little else. The young man had gone. Sitting on the stool was an older man with grey-looking skin, his jaw and chin blotched with scratches and razor-burn.

He must have wet shaved his beard off that morning. it made sense…the colonial marines would be looking out for terrorist-looking types, men with beards.

‘Mason?’

‘Yes?’

‘I have a message for you.’

‘From who?’

‘From the…top.’

No names, of course. The ‘top’ could mean anything from another cell leader, to one of the senior Teachers….to The Leader himself.

‘What’s the message?’

‘They’ve located the girl.’

Mason reached out for the curved door frame beside him. He took a deep breath. Not wanting to hear the answer, but
needing
to know. ‘Tell me, is she okay?’

The man nodded. ‘She is alive.’

Mason closed his eyes and sighed with relief. ‘Thank God.’

‘Great God be praised,’ echoed the man.

‘They have her? She’s safe, right?’

‘They…they know
where
she is.’

Mason opened his eyes and looked at him. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘I only know what they have told me.’

‘I…I have to go to her!’

‘They…are intending to retrieve her themselves.’

‘No!’ Mason stepped forward into the small room. ‘It’s got to be me. It has to be me who reaches out to her.’

The man shrugged. ‘I only know what I have been told.’

‘You have to tell them…she’ll be frightened. The only person she’ll trust is me!’

‘They have only told me that-’

‘Listen to me! I’m the only face she knows! Anyone else….she won’t trust. She’ll panic.’

The old man shook his head. ‘This is not up to me. I’m only the messenger.’

‘Can you get a message back to them?’

He stared back at Mason, his face noncommittal.

‘Can you make contact with them!?’

‘It was not easy getting here.’

Getting here?
‘Where’ve you come from? Offworld?’

The man looked uncomfortable revealing any more than that.

‘You have, haven’t you?’ Mason stepped toward him. ‘Look…if you have a way to get off this planet…you’ve got to help me! I need to be taken to where she is, it has to be
me
that approaches her. She’ll be in a very fragile state of mind. If they frighten her, if they alienate her…then everything I’ve been…’ he corrected himself. ‘Everything
we
’
ve
been working towards will be ruined. It’ll be for nothing!’

The man shook his head. ‘I cannot help you. I am just a messenger.’

‘But you can make contact? You can get a message back to them?’

He nodded reluctantly. ‘That is possible.’

‘Then tell them this…tell them they have to get me to her first.’ Mason decided his best option was to exploit their superstitions, their beliefs. ‘She has no idea what she is yet. She believes she’s just a normal teenaged girl.’

‘She is the final prophet, Mason. She has come directly from God to us. How can she
not know
what she is?!’

‘You have no concept, your leaders haven’t the first idea how carefully she has to be introduced to what she is! I created this human vessel…I created a being that could contain the power, the energy of God’s spirit. But…they have to understand, The Leader,
has to understand
, this vessel is tissue thin. She’s so very fragile…she’s breakable. Her mind will collapse if they handle her incorrectly. Collapse into madness.’

Inside, Mason winced at how this nonsense might sound to any normal rational person. But to these people, these
radicals
, this spiritual gibberish was their language. It was the framework of how they thought, it was all they understood.

‘Tell them…there is one last key, to make her ready for this. One last important key that only I can give to her. And this will prepare her properly for the role she has to play.’

‘What is this…
key
?’

‘Like you said…you’re just the messenger. Pass the message along. Tell them they’ve got to get me off this world and take me to her immediately, or it’s all over. We
all
fail.’

The man looked uncertainly at him. ‘I will pass along to them what you’ve said.’

‘Do it. Quickly! And make sure you make this clear to them…they must not go to her first. It has to be me! Is that understood? It has to me that makes first contact with her! Is that absolutely clear?'

He nodded.

‘Go, then!’

The old man got off the stool, opened the round door of the habicube and stepped outside onto the metal steps. He quickly closed the door behind him and Mason listened to his hurried ringing footsteps recede into the throbbing hum of city noise.

He settled down on the plastex stool, still warm from the man’s behind. He looked out of the small round window and watched a yellow Skyhound slowly descend to street level amid a cloud of roaring propellant gas.

She
’
s alive. Thank God. She
’
s still alive
.

He wondered just how much of this spiritual bullshit he could use as leverage. That was the one angle he could play on them, that was the angle he’d been using
from the very beginning…but surely there’d come a point, even with these poor deluded fools, when they would wonder if he was scamming them.

To use an Old Earth aphorism, he felt like the Emperor wearing his new clothes, baring all to see…and waiting for someone, one of Them, to call him out.

I just need them to believe me a little longer. Just a little longer
.

CHAPTER 15

Ellie emerged from the medipod, still woozy and lightheaded from sedation.

‘How are you feeling?’

She looked down at the bumps and ridges of knitting flesh around her waist. ‘Do you think I'll have scars?’

‘I dunno. Maybe. At least they’ll be concealed scars, as long as you don’t wear a crop-ee-top.’

Jez helped her across the infirmary to a gel-bed and sat her down on it. ‘How do your ribs feel?’

Ellie’s attention was entirely elsewhere. She gazed, stupefied at the large pink blob on the end of her left arm. ‘What’s that? Where’s my….’

‘Hand? Don’t you remember?’

Ellie recalled being crushed, fearing she was about to be scissored in half by those vicious claws, but nothing after that.

‘My scorpion,’ Jez shuffled guiltily. She looked down at her feet. ‘It…sort of took your hand off at the last moment.’

‘I’ve…got. no. hand. It’s a stump!’ whimpered Ellie. ‘I’ve got a stump instead of a hand!’

‘Hey,’ said Jez, ‘it doesn’t look that bad. Kinda drool in a piratey sort of way, I guess. Remember Captain Jessica Hook from Shuttle Stop 7? Her cyber-hook was pretty
shting
.’

She gazed at the rounded pink bump on the end of her slim wrist. It reminded her of a giant earbud. The wall screen next to the bed blinked and Mother’s avatar appeared. ‘How are you feeling, my dear?’

‘My hand…I’ve lost my hand!’

‘The gel on the end of your arm is a sealant and an antibiotic,’ she explained. ‘It will take a little while to harden to a resin casing.’

She raised it up to her face an stared at it. ‘That’s it? I’m only going to have one hand and….
this
….for the rest of my life?’

‘No, Ellie, of course not. We have the facilities here to do a number of things for you. Whatever option you choose, there would be no cost incurred, of course. On behalf of the company I would like to offer a full apology for-’

‘What are the options?’

‘Basically, Ellie, there are three options. One…you could choose to have a cybernetic enhancement.’

‘Yeah!’ said Jez. ‘You could make it, like, a fashion accessory!’

Ellie glared at her. ’I don’t want a robot hand!’

‘I understand,’ replied Mother. ‘Well then the other two options are pretty straightforward. We have several complete gene-neutral human cadavers in cold storage. They’ve yet to be used at all. We could take a hand off one of them and programme the medipod to attach it surgically. There would be no tissue rejection medication required’