‘Ell-eeee? You listening to me?’
Ellie cleared her mind. She smiled. Nodded. ‘Okay Jez. Two years…and we’ll do whatever the hell it takes.’
Jez’s smile widened across her square jaw. ‘That’s-my-girl,’ she said as she leant over and planted a clumsy kiss on her forehead.
Ellie grabbed her sleeve and wiped at the smear of crimson lip-grease above her eyebrows. ‘Eewwww, do you have to?’
‘And then of course, there’s thing number two.’
‘Oh yes, thing number two,’ Ellie replied warily, remembering that Jez had announced she had two grand proposals to make. She offered a wan smile, not entirely sure what else Jez was going to sign her up to.
‘I think we ought to do this to give us a taster of the wild and wonderful universe waiting for us out there, Ellie-girl. Something to kick-start our motivation.’
‘I’m not sure I like the sound of this….Do what?’
Jez punched her arm lightly. ‘I think you will. I’m going to take you to meet an alien.
CHAPTER 6
Jez led Ellie across the city to the seedier end of the Service Sector, where the pavement traffic grew almost too dense to move and the shop and boutique windows came with protective wire-mesh grills.
She kept a firm hold of Ellie’s hand as she led the way up a pedestrian ramp away from the crushing soup of humanity towards the foyer of one of the oldest tenement blocks in New Haven. Ellie looked up at the sheer plasteel walls of the gherkin-shaped tower, faded and worn from several decades without proper maintenance. No one lived in the tower any more, except for a few of the more resourceful homeless. Instead, virtually every cube inside the tall phallic building had been illegally occupied by a street vendor. The building awaited demolition. With space at a premium inside the finite domed enclosure of the city, Baldini Tower was scheduled to be dismantled and in its place another tenement block erected – one that that stacked living space far more compactly.
Inside the foyer Ellie’s senses were assaulted by an over-powering chaos of colours, sounds and odours. It reminded her a little of the trade show; the deafening noise of vendors announcing their wares, special deals, or final offers, and customers and traders haggling.
Jez led her past stall after stall, each one filling a habi-cube with a rich assortment of exotic goods, many of them so full their wares spilled out onto the passageways, arranged haphazardly on boxes and crates. Each ellipsoid doorway was a showcase onto the goods from yet another world she had only ever heard about or seen on the toob. Passing one she was stunned by the rich aroma of spices within; an almost suffocating bouquet of bitter and sweet scents; cinnamotta, quamaric, balusian pepper. They were smells that reminded her of home, of her mother, of family meals together sitting in their messy central dome.
‘Baldinis Bizarre Bazaar - this market is a great place to pick up off-world fashions. Here, how about this one?’ said Jez as they walked past a stall that stocked a stunning variety of counterfeited fashion garments.
‘This is one happy-clappy stall. The best in New Haven. You can pick up any clothes you’ve seen on the toob, home grown shows, off-world shows…all those clothes, look…’
She pulled a plastex jacket from a rack of them hanging outside the habi-cube door. It was the puffa style jacket that kids in the city seemed to like. She showed Ellie the label.
‘Hardwicker, a genuine Hardwicker puffa jacket, and what’s the price….o-o-only eleven creds. That ain’t bad!’
Ellie raised her eyebrows with surprise. She hadn’t heard of the label, but clearly it was a big deal if Jez’s response was anything to go by.
‘Crud, that’s cheap. I really, really ought to grab one…but aghh, no! It’s too young for me. Baby-girl fashion. Maybe a few years ago, but not…’ Jez’s voice tailed off as she shuffled briskly through the other jackets.
Ellie spotted a pair of boots that took her fancy. Knee high, a rich, glistening turquoise plastic, with bulging ribbed knee pads that could be folded down inside, or left up, flapping loosely against the knee as one walked. She knelt down and ran her fingers over them.
‘Lovely,’ she muttered under her breath. She knew Shona would be going totally gaga if she had been here with her right now and could see the range of garments, accessories, trinkets, jewellery, shoes and hats.
‘Come on girl,’ said Jez grabbing Ellie’s shoulder. ‘Let’s move on. We’re here for another reason, not shopping…not this time.’
She grabbed hold of Ellie’s hand and dragged her away from the boots, along the passageway towards the ground floor foyer where there was a bank of lifts in the centre of the tower.
They passed a store selling music, movie and toob show clips - all pirate copies naturally. Ellie stopped to watch a holovideo, projecting out into the middle of the passageway of a small bug-eyed character dancing and gyrating to a pounding beat and trilling along to the music with its trademark gibbering catchphrase;
Fibbel-libbel-ring-ding-ding,
oocha coocha eenie feenie, Crazie-Beanie.
‘Oh, I love this tune.’ She giggled as the computer-generated character performed its track, a catchy ditty Ellie had heard snippets of on the toob over the last few weeks.
Both girls paused, nodded along with the pounding beat, mouthing the meaningless words as if they actually meant something.
‘I want to get that tune for my alarm clock,’ said Jez. ‘It’s rinky-dink.’
Ellie nodded. She wasn’t up on the music that street kids liked, but she made a special exception for Crazie-Beanie. For some reason the little character made her all but wet herself every time she heard the noises it squeaked and trilled.
Without any warning the holovid was replaced with another; an off-world track that was unfamiliar to either of them.
Jez shrugged. ‘Come on.’
Only a few dozen yards further down the passageway they passed by a vendor who had stacked wire cages around his open doorway. Ellie came to a halt, intrigued. She stooped down to look inside one of them. There was something furry in there; something furry and alive.
It was enough of a gesture of curiosity to attract the attention of the tradesman, a slim, darkly grey-skinned man with an oriental slant to his eyes.
‘You like them?’ he asked.
‘I can’t see. What is it you’ve got in there?’ she asked. She craned her neck to get a better look inside one of the cages. She could make out several twitching balls of fur, cowering at the far end of the cage, away from her. ‘What are those?’
‘Podkins,’ he replied.
Ellie turned to Jez for a little clarification. ‘Podkins?’
‘Seed pets,’ Jez huffed impatiently. ‘You can buy them as seeds, plant them and add water. They grow. You don’t need to feed them anything, and they don’t poop anywhere. Now can we go please?’
‘That’s right,’ the vendor chipped in, ‘no feeding, no pooping. Perfect city pet for the busy town-chik.’
Ellie tapped the cage gently and made a soothing chirruping noise.
‘They’re so cute.’
She smiled with delight as one of the Podkins pulled itself towards her with one long, furry arm-like protrusion. As it drew closer she could see the small, fist-sized creature seemed to have no face, or any other discernible features.
‘Where are its eyes? Mouth?’
The vendor looked at Jez questioningly. And Jez nodded. ‘Yeah, she’s new to town. You better explain.’
The vendor nodded. ‘They have no mouth Miss-chik, because they don’t eat or drink. You water the little seeds to bring them to life and that’s all you need to do. A pet for a month,’ said the vendor proudly.
‘A month? That’s as long as it lives?’
‘Ya. Then Miss, it go to Podkin Heaven.’
Ellie stuck her bottom lip out in sympathy. ‘That’s harsh.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Is it an alien?’
Jez shook her head. ‘No, of course not. Moron. They’re engineered. That’
s right isn’t it?’ she asked the man.
‘Lady is right. A gene-product by Yoki Inc. Engineered to have all the food they ever need right inside them.’
Ellie had a rudimentary knowledge of biology at best, more from watching daytime nature shows on the toob than from anything else. ‘So, what, it dies when it runs out of the stored protein inside?’
The vendor waggled his thumb in front of his nose, a gesture Ellie had seen over and over in the city, it was particular to New Haven, and meant something like nearly, or sort of, or not quite right.
‘No, not exactly Miss…it dies not because food is gone. It dies because it poison itself with the build up of shit.’ He shrugged. ‘Please excuse…waste product.’
Jez shrugged. ‘Death by poop. Now there’s a really dignified way to go.’
Ellie grimaced. ‘That’s cruel! If this is an engineered thing…a designed thing, why didn’t they think to give these poor little critters an…you know?’
‘Go on. You can say it Ellie, an anus.’
‘Well…yes. I mean, crud, every creature deserves at least one.’
The vendor shrugged. ‘Would you want to go round and clean up after it, Miss?’
Ellie considered that for a moment. ‘I guess not.’
‘There! You see? Perfect convenience, perfect design! A little ball of fur that love you with all its heart for a month.’ The vendor knelt down beside Ellie and pointed towards the Podkin that had pulled itself across the cage towards her. ‘Look, they even design with one little hand so that you have can have something to hold.’
As if responding to the vendors words, the Podkin extended its furry arm and five bald digits, looking disturbingly like the pudgy hand of a newborn baby, reached out towards Ellie. She proffered her index finger through the wire of the cage, gently nudging the pink fleshy folds of the baby-hand. Immediately the fingers wrapped themselves around her reflexively and squeezed her finger with a desperate love – genetically conditioned to do so of course.
‘Ideal for the rejected mother,’ said Jez dryly. ‘Clever design. A cheap baby substitute for those who have had their parental application turned down. That’s the kind of monstrosity you get when you let guys in suits design an animal.’
Ellie looked down at the baby hand squeezing her finger. ‘It loves you for a month, and then the poor little thing just dies?’
The vendor nodded. ‘It take a week to grow full size from the seed,’ he replied. ‘So, want to buy seeds, Miss? I sell very cheap for you.’
Ellie looked up at Jez. ‘Ohhh they are so cute though. What do you think?’
Jez wrinkled her nose. ‘If a disembodied baby hand that disappears into a fur ball full of poop does it for you…why not?’
‘How much,’ Ellie asked.
‘Ten, for a packet of five seeds.’
Ellie winced, it was a little too much for her limited budget. ‘How about two creds for just one seed?’
The vendor shook his head. ‘No, I sell packets of five only…five only.’
Jez sighed impatiently, eager to press on. ‘Well look Mister, I’ll bet these are counterfeit. They aren’t Yoki-gene originals are they? They’re engineered locally. Look, two creds for one, or we’re walking away.’
The vendor took a moment to consider Jez’s offer. ‘Three.’
‘Come on Ellie, let’s go.’
‘Okay chik! You taking food from my children’s plate. But I go with two.’
‘Oh yeah, like you have children,’ replied Jez fishing out two creds and handing them over. ‘You can square up with me later Ellie-girl.’
The vendor pocketed the money and then handed Ellie what looked like a small pebble.
‘This is a Podkin seed, right?’ she said looking down at the misshapen black bean in the palm of her hand.
‘Of course. You put in some sand, or soil, and water when you get home. That’s it.’
Jez tugged impatiently at Ellie. ‘Come on you soppy gonk, let’s go.’
Ellie looked up at her with a gooey expression on her face. ‘Hey, I’m going to be, like, a mum.’
‘Mum to a freak furball. Enjoy. Now can we go?’
Ellie nodded.
Jez grabbed Ellie’s hand once more and led her down the last of the passageway into a crowded foyer towards the central pillar of lifts.
Only three of the twenty-four lifts still seemed to be functioning. Since the building officially was meant to be unoccupied, no municipal engineers had been sent to repair the systems as one by one they’d broken down. When the last of the lifts failed, the vendors occupying the fifty floors above would probably need to find somewhere else to ply their trade.
They stepped into one of the lifts and Jez punched a button on the wall. A metal grill slid across noisily, with a screech that sounded like a desperate plea for a drop of lube oil.
‘So, are we really going to see an alien, Jez? I mean, a real, real one?’ she asked as the aging lift carried them jerkily upwards past a dozen blurred floors of colour and chaos.
‘Yes, a real one. Trust me Ellie. It’s a genuine boojam.’
She flushed with excitement. ‘Crud, I can’t believe it! Where did you hear about it?’
‘That dumbass ship loader, remember? The one from the other night?’
Ellie remembered him. Tall, muscular, sopa-dram attractive with tumbling locks of shoulder length dark hair…and as thick as a bowl of lukewarm proto-paste. Exactly Jez’s type.
When they reached the twentieth floor, the lift came to a halt with an unsettling clang and the metal grill rolled back. Ellie noticed immediately that things were a lot less busy this high up the tower. Only about half of the cubes had squatting vendors in them, and there were far fewer people ambling down the passageways between.
‘And the boojam is up here?’
Jez nodded, ‘I’m told so. The ship loader guy said there was one up here plying its trade as a fortune teller.’
Ship-loader guy. Jez didn’t even remember his name.
They both proceeded down the corridor, Ellie eyeing the boutiques, noticing that this high up the tower, there were far more black market items and illegal goods on offer than down on the first floor where she’d just bought the Podkin seed. With a chill of recognition she spotted through an open doorway a small arsenal of illegal weapons spread out across a low table. The vendor inside the habi-cube, a pale blue skinned man, with hair gelled up into two stiff glistening devil-horns, met her eyes and then swiftly pulled a rag over them and jerked his head at her to move along.
It made sense that the illegal things, the more risqué items, were on sale up here on the twentieth floor. If any law marshals actually bothered to do their job and paid the tower a visit, there’d be a warning and far more time for those up here to pack away their goods, or perhaps even hurl them down the disposal chutes, than there would be down in the foyer.
‘I think that’s the one,’ said Jez, pointing down the passageway towards a habi-cube doorway on the left. Ellie could see a woman sitting cross-legged outside, draped in swathes of elaborately patterned materials.
As they drew up to the opening she could see around the doorway that someone, presumably this lady, had meticulously painted the same ornate swirling patterns on the plastic walls. It reminded her of some religion she had read about, a religion from Old Earth – Eslamic? Something like that. She could smell the rich aroma of burning incense wafting out from the dimly lit cube beyond.
‘Hello miss,’ said Jez. ‘A good friend of mine told me there is a boojam up here, working as a fortune teller.’
The lady smiled pleasantly. Ellie could see she was dark skinned, a sort of dark brown tone. ‘Yes. Here in New Haven only for a short time I’m afraid…until His Excellency’s work here amongst us is done,’ she answered enigmatically.
‘Really?’ Jez replied with a hint of cynicism. ‘His work amongst us?’ she repeated, winking at Ellie. ‘So, can we see him? His Excellency?’
‘Of course you
can. Kazan will see anyone who wishes to see him.’
Jez began to step into the darkened cube beyond, but the woman blocked her way with an arm. ‘That’ll be two credits please, lady.’
‘Two credits, huh?
The lady, still smiling, nodded. ‘Of course. Kazan has to eat just like anyone else.’
Ellie leaned forward. ‘Is that two credits each? Or for the pair of us?’
The woman stared up at her and reached out a hand towards Ellie. She grabbed one of her hands and stroked it gently. ‘So young, you are. Just a child. Why are you here? This city is no place for a young boy.’
‘I’m not a boy!’ replied Ellie, a little piqued. She pulled her hand back. ‘I’m not a child either!’
‘Please forgive.’ The woman studied her carefully. ‘Far, far older than your years I think.’ She nodded towards the entrance to the darkened habi-cube beside her. ‘For you then, lady….you have a good strong karma. I let you both in for three credits. Three, the pair of you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jez. ‘Come on, Ellie.’
Ellie was somewhat baffled by the woman’s words.
‘You ready then Ellie? Your first alien?’
She forgot the woman’s esoteric nonsense about karmas. She nodded. An excited grin spread across her lips. All of a sudden here it was, she was about to do one of the things she had told Sean that she hoped she one day would; to finally meet a real alien. The growing excitement of the moment stole the reply from her mouth.
‘Then let’s go do it, girl,’ said Jez, dragging her friend in through the open door.
CHAPTER 7
Inside the cube the ever present neon-lights of New Haven night-time had been blocked out with more elaborate patterned materials draped over the two round windows. Ellie looked around the small cube. Once upon a time this had been someone’s living space. Stains and marks on the fibre-mat floor told a brief tale of long gone tenants, and long ago spills and mishaps. The modest oval room was illuminated by half a dozen candles burning steadily on a low table in front of a hooded figure, which sat on a pile of scattered cushions on the floor.