Ellie studied Noah, and realised looking at him, and then casting a glance over his rounded shoulder at the other staff, busy serving a lunchtime crowd, that she knew the answer he was after.
‘Because we look pretty normal, right?’
Jez cocked an eyebrow. But Noah nodded slightly.
‘Quite right.’
Ellie had noticed that coming into the city; so many of its inhabitants seemed to be genetically varied in some way. Mostly, what differed were the skin colours. She had seen so many natural colours ranging from a zombie-like white, to an almost lemon yellow or a bright citrus-orange…to the darkest midnight black. That kind of diversity was mostly a result of engineering; skin hues toned to best suit the rays of the varied stars in Human Space. There were, of course, many other noticeable traits she had noticed; people hairier than normal, taller, thinner, thickset, lean. A well known characteristic of citizens from much larger planets was that they were engineered to be shorter and more muscular in order that their bodies could cope better with a higher gravity environment. It was no secret that the Administration made sure that babies were best suited to the worlds they were destined to live on. Common sense really. What it did mean was that on a world like Harpers Reach that seemed to attract drifters from other worlds, it made for an interesting mix of genetically modified people.
But there was something else she had noticed, mostly from watching the toob. There was a perceived norm, a preferred look, that most, if not all, the celebrities and presenters on the toob conformed to. The look was referred to as ‘gene-neutral’.
Looking at Noah and his staff, she could tell he preferred his workforce to look as gene-neutral as possible. Not too fat or thin, not too tall or short, not too orange or yellow or black; not too far off the ‘normal’ coffee-to-cream skin colours that most people were used to seeing on every advertising holoscreen in the city.
Gene Neutral.
‘Yes,’ he added. ‘No place in StarBreaks for some of the odd-looking drekks out there. No one likes a freak handling their food for them. Not even another freak, I can tell you.’
Jez nodded. ‘Yeah, well no way we’re freaks, Mr Noah.’
Ellie noticed something else too. No male staff, or at least none that she could see right now.
‘And they got to look nice too,’ added Mr Noah. ‘No one wants their StarMeal handed to them by somebody with a hair-lip, or a mono-brow, or spots or dry skin. Nice looking people, if you know what I mean,’ he said. His eyes travelled quickly over Ellie’s narrow frame, and lingered long and lecherously on Jez’s more pronounced contours.
‘It’s a busy StarBreaks here, one of the top five outlets in New Haven,’ said Noah cracking his large knuckles. ‘I hire only the best girls here. The best looking and the hardest working.’
Noah stood up, his wide frame jiggling beneath his loose-fitting shirt. He pointed through his plexiglaz office door at the bustling activity outside. The twenty-foot long service counter was manned by half a dozen young girls, many of whom, Ellie guessed, were probably young farm girls like her.
She noticed they were all far prettier too.
‘People come here for their StarFagurter because they get served quicker than anywhere else, and they get a pretty smile free with the food. I don’t do Happy Meals, or novelty plastic toys, or two-for-one promotions. I don’t need to. My StarGirls bring the customers in,’ he said continuing to address them - Jez in particular. ‘So that’s the blah-blah-blah bit. Now here’s the deal; I pay six and a half creds an hour. You want the job?’
Jez turned to Ellie and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Actually, that’s not bad,’ she muttered.
‘Uh….I’m afraid the offer’s only for you,’ said Noah to Jez.
Jez shook her head. ‘That case, no. We come as a pair Mr Noah. If there’s no job for Ellie too, then I’m not interested.’
‘Plus,’ he added quickly, ‘you get to keep one percent of your till takings. The more you convince them to up-size, the more you take home.’
Jez did a double-take. ‘You do a commission on top of the pay?’
Noah nodded, ‘you notice all my girls are smiling out there?
‘That’s pretty good money, Ellie.’ Jez said. She squirmed with guilt as she considered the offer for a moment.
‘Crud! Jez, take the job. I’ll find something else easily,’ Ellie replied forcing a wan smile. ‘You should go for it.’
Jez pursed her lips while she wrestled with the dilemma. She had encouraged Ellie to chuck in her last job. It had been her Big Idea for them to both go hunting for work together, offering their services as a team. She felt responsible for Ellie, especially now she didn’t have any job at all. But then, the money here seemed pretty damned good. Jez knew she could effortlessly flirt her way to making customers double up their orders; earning a nice helping of till commission on top of what was a pretty decent pay package.
Dilemma-dilemma-dilemma….
Finally she turned back to him. ‘No, it’s both of us or nothing doing, Mr Noah.’
Noah put his hands on his wide hips and clucked and whistled whilst he studied both of the girls. His eyes darted from Jez to Ellie, and then back again. Ellie found herself subconsciously straightening her back, thrusting her slight chest forward and pouting her thin lips ever so slightly at Noah. Hating herself for doing that and then slumping back in the chair. She gave up. She knew she couldn’t do that flirty kind of thing as well as Jez.
‘Are you a smart kid?’ he asked Ellie.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You pick things up quick?’
Ellie nodded, ‘sure.’
‘And you’re a hard worker?’
‘Yes, a very, very hard worker, Mr Noah.’
He shook his head and smiled wearily. ‘Okay, I’ll take you both on. But you,’ he said pointing at Ellie, ‘I think I’ll put you on the call-ins cubicle.’
She sighed with relief, pleased that she wouldn’t be walking away on her own, still looking for a job out there without Jez beside her.
‘Yeah, you can take the call-in orders. Think you can do that chik?’
‘Yes sir, I’m sure I can,’ Ellie answered cheerfully.
‘Of course you can. It’s not rocket science.’ Noah gestured for them both to stand up. ‘Alright then, interview’s over. Tomorrow morning at seven sharp, I want you here, and in uniform.’
The door slid open with a soft swish, and the chaotic noise of the service counter outside flooded in. He reached down towards a locker and pulled out two bundles of shrink-wrapped clothes, each bearing a large golden ‘S’.
‘Your uniforms,’ he said, ‘come wearing them tomorrow morning.’
Ellie and Jez headed out of the door. Noah lightly patted Jez on her butt as she passed by. ‘See you at seven, don’t be late,’ he said with a wink. Jez gritted her teeth as she followed Ellie from the StarBreaks fast food restaurant onto the pedestrian walkway outside.
‘Ugghh. What a complete slime ball,’ she said pulling a face.
‘We got the jobs! We’re working together!’
Jez smiled. ‘What did I tell you? Think Big, Smile Lots.’
They wandered to the edge of the walkway and Ellie leant against the guard rail, looking down at the churning city below. They were on one of the highest pedestrian zones in the city, a plaza of shops and eateries that filled the empty space between three large, closely clustered towers. ‘It’s an amazing view from up here.’
‘Yeah, doobie view,’ replied Jez distracted, studying the shrink wrapped package in her hands suspiciously.
‘Let’s see then,’ said Ellie as she tore open her package and pulled out the uniform. It was a pair of navy blue trousers and a sky-blue shirt, the yellow ‘S’ proudly displayed on two breast pockets, and the collar.
‘Hey, that’s not so bad,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Could have been worse, I guess.’
Jez looked back at hers with a wary expression as she opened her package. She pulled o
ut a navy blue ultra-mini skirt, that was clearly barely going to cover her crotch and a skin-hugging sky blue lycra top. She studied them with disgust.
‘Oh, please,’ she said. ‘These are so cheesy.’
‘What’s that?’ said Ellie pointing at something else in the package. Jez looked down and pulled out the final item of the StarBreak uniform; navy blue knickers with a fluffy white pompom on the rear.
‘Oh for fregg’s sake,’ she muttered holding the garment up in one hand and staring at it with disgust. ‘I didn’t notice any of the counter staff wearing these.’
Ellie cast her mind back and recalled a flash of white as one of the girls behind the counter had bent over, almost double, to pull out a tray and sauce cartons from a low shelf facing the service counter. No doubt a contrived design of the restaurant’s layout to ensure a teasing glimpse of white bunny-tail for the waiting customer.
A sky car roared past, momentarily bathing them both in its brilliant headlight beams.
‘Oh well,’ Ellie patted Jez on the shoulder, ‘just think of the money. All that extra commission a good-looking girl like you can earn.’
Jez nodded. ‘It’s not the ogling from losers like that I mind,’ she nodded towards the queue of customers leading out through the restaurant’s doorway onto the plaza. They were mostly male, of course, standing silently in line as they waited for their fast food lunch. ‘I’m used to seeing their kind at Dantes. I can handle a bit of eye-fondling Ellie-girl. It’s this cheesy-peasy uniform, I’m gonna’ have a problem coping with. That and Mr Noah undressing me every time he looks at me.’
Ellie smiled sympathetically. ‘We don’t have to take this job. I’m sure there are others.’
‘Crud…let’s give it a go. The money sounds good enough. And we’ve got ourselves a goal now anyway. The sooner we can buy our way off of this poo-stack the better.’
Ellie couldn’t have agreed more, although she wasn’t the one that was going to have to wear the bunny tail knickers.
CHAPTER 9
‘So that’s one Star Fagurter, one Star Chopper-double-proto-slab with a side of synthicheese, two orders of StarRings and a couple of StarMega-gloops?’
‘Yeah,’ the young man replied lethargically over the holo-vid display.
‘That’ll be ten creds, point fifty-five, please,’ said Ellie. She looked up at the dummy-card on the wall beside her in the booth. ‘Oh yeah, if your order goes over fifteen creds, you get the twenty minute delivery promise,’ she added with a smile and a well deployed tone of infectious enthusiasm.
‘Yeah? What’s that then?’
‘Oh? The promise? You get it within twenty minutes, otherwise you pay absolutely nothing.’
The man on the end of the call shrugged casually. ‘Oh, Right. Stick another couple of side orders of rings on then.’
‘StarRings, sir?’ Ellie said, remembering Mr Noah’s dictum that if it wasn’t Star-food it wasn’t on the menu.
‘Rings?, StarRings?…whatever, chik. Just stick another two orders on. What’s that make it now?’
Ellie kept her till-smile firmly in place, as she added the side-orders to the rest and checked the total. ‘Fifteen credits and ten, sir,’ she beamed cheerfully back at him.
‘Fine.’ The man swiped at something out of sight and the till instantly registered the payment.
‘Your order will be there in twenty minutes or less. Thank you for eating with-’
‘Whatever,’ the man replied before disconnecting the call.
Charming.
Ellie looked up at the delivery roster display and saw the order appear on the end of the list, and alongside it the timer displayed nineteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds left. Already valuable seconds were ticking away. The previously placed orders in the queue were busy counting down too and already dispatched and on their way through the humming airspace of New Haven on the back of a delivery d-ped.
‘Despatch order 997, another with the twenty minute promise,’ said Ellie into her throat mic, knowing that almost immediately, one of the delivery-girls would be hopping on a d-ped, gunning the engine and anxiously waiting for the order to slide through and be placed into the warm-box on the back.
Noah stuck his head into the order cubicle and looked at the delivery roster display. ‘Everything all pukkadoo?’
Ellie nodded. ‘Yes Mr Noah.’
‘Good, you’re selling the delivery deal?’
‘Yes, sir. Every order so far has been over fifteen creds.’
Noah reached out a large flabby hand and ruffled her hair. ‘Atta-girl,’ he said. ‘None of those suckers out there actually bother to clock the time the order takes anyway. Good girl,’ he muttered as he closed the door of the cubicle again.
Ellie patted down her messed-up hair and smiled with a vague sense of satisfaction. Four days on the job and already she felt like she had it pretty much nailed. Mr Noah seemed satisfied with the way things were going. Okay so she might not be a big crowd-puller on the counter, but she was doing an efficient job taking the orders, she hadn’t made a single mistake yet.
The call-order cubicle was a solitary plexitex blister on the side of the StarBreaks building that overhung the edge of the pedestrian plaza. As she waited for the next order, she cast a glance downwards past her feet, through the plastic bubble to the city below. The first morning she had settled into the cubicle she had suffered a terrible, dizzying bout of vertigo as she studied the tiny dark dots of milling people on the ground far below, and the larger swooping blurs of airborne traffic passing by beneath her. But now she had grown accustomed to it, it was a spectacular distraction to fill the few slack moments in the day between taking and despatching orders.
*
Jez looked the two young boys firmly in the eyes. They were perhaps only a year younger than Ellie. Scruffy young street-shavs, both of them grinning, showing gemstone teeth implants and countless pigment-swirl arm tattoos.
And they were also taking the piss.
‘I already gave you some StarSauce cartons,’ she replied icily pointing to the tray. ‘There? See them?’
The bigger of the two young lads, winked at her. ‘Well, I’d like another, miss.’
Jez turned round reluctantly and bent down to grab another few cartons from the dispenser. As she did, she heard both of the young boys snigger.
‘Hey StarChik, nice tail.’
She gritted her teeth as she stood up again and slapped the sauce cartons down on the tray along with the other ones they had already asked for.
Just keep your cool, girl. She dug down deep and pulled out her best over-the-counter-smile. ‘Is that everything?’ she said flatly through her teeth.
The tallest of the two young boys leaned casually against the counter taking his best shot at appearing sophisticated and cool. ‘So, you got a tug-friend? You want to go love-pup with me, chik? One-on-one date-action?’ he asked, his adolescent voice warbling up and down awkwardly along with his bobbing Adam’s apple.
She sighed.
Although this StarBreaks outlet turned out to be conveniently close to home, it seemed unfortunately, to also be one of the principle gathering points for New Haven’s young bucks. More specifically, the young lads who skulked around in the daylight hours in their hooded puffas, and at night raised a racket surfing the various tower’s thermals on their carbolite-boards.
‘Sorry…I’m betrothed,’ she replied drily, ‘anything else?’
‘Uh?’
‘Anything else?’
‘That’s it.’ He turned to his friend and flicked his wrist.
She took the boy’s money and then turned to the auto-chef and voiced-in the order. As she waited for the StarMeal to be restructured on the other side behind the fascia of the machine from raw blobs of protein paste, she looked across the kitchen to the order cubicle. She saw Ellie taking another call-in. Her friend looked up and they shared a grin and a wave.
‘Hey! Chik!’
Jez cursed quietly and slowl
y turned round to face the boy. ‘How about my mate?’ he said, pointing to the kid standing beside him, who, despite the off-world scarlet hue of his skin, had managed to go a tone more red.
Jez ground her teeth. The cheeky little jerk was a determined little sod. She leant forward across the counter. ‘Not in a million years,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘not if either of you dick squirts were the last pulse on this planet.’
There was a soft ping from behind her and, with a sense of relief, she turned round, picked the steaming-hot meal up, placed it on the tray and pushed the tray across the counter.
‘Thank you,’ she said with hooded eyes and her lips turned up into a sneer. The boy turned away with a victorious smirk on his face, no doubt convinced by some nuance in her reply that he had successfully arranged some sordid little group activity for her with him and his friend.
Jez continued to grind her teeth as she watched the boys swagger outside to join several of their friends, hanging around the entrance to the restaurant in a surly group. She watched the jerk who had placed the order tell his tale of conquest, pointing in her direction once briefly, and then watched them as they laughed and cast several furtive glances her way.
If she wasn’t wearing this bloody degrading uniform and on StarBreak hours, she could quite happily go out there and knock a few of their little coconut heads together.
Think of the money girl.
She prepared her composure for the next customer in line; a scruffy looking old man who smiled with a lecherous twinkle in his eyes.
She mustered her best Miss Cheerful singsong voice.
‘Good morning, how can I help you sir?’
‘Can I have some more sauce, please, love.’
*
Their lunch break was mid-afternoon, after the usual midday torrent had settled down to a steady trickle of business. The restaurant was just ticking over with one or two of the counter staff still serving whilst the rest of the girls hurried out to enjoy their twenty minute break.
Ellie and Jez wandered across the plaza and found a street vendor selling coffee and meatie-flasties. They sat down on a bench towards the edge of the plaza to enjoy a view of the hazy city as they ate their lunch. The sinking afternoon sun from the baking clay-orange world outside, cast a strong peach hue through the foggy dome and across the shimmering urban skyline. Every now and then, the flash of reflected sunlight off the hood of an aircar, or the metallic flanks of a skyhound.