'Well I'm afraid you won't get very far,' said Shelby. 'I presume you've been checking the headlines on the system's NewsNet? The Administration's ordered a lockdown on the Seventh Veil.'
Ellie nodded. 'We heard that. Some kind of quarantine or something?'
'Indeed. Hmmm. They're not saying what kind of virus or pathogen is out there, but the news is that, whatever it is, the outbreak ground zero is on Harpers Reach. The city of New Haven, to be precise.'
'Where've you girls come from?' asked Gray.
'Holstein,' said Jez. Ellie glanced at her and Jez made an 'oops' face. Why the freg did she just come out and say Holstein? That planet was populated by religious retro-nuts who all liked to dress old-earth style in straw hats and linen bonnets. Plus they talked funny; a coarse rustic accent that neither of them was going to be able to mimic easily. Great choice, Jez.
Of course, that's why. Ellie remembered Jez had been watching something on the ship's toob a couple of days ago; some syrupy roma-dram with a dimwitted, straw-chewing farmer from the planet falling in love with a sophisticated dome- chik from Celestion.
Crud. Talk about say what you see, Jez.
'Oye,' said Jez trying to ease in a hint of the accent. 'It's a proper dull place. Just fields n' fields n' more fields.' Neither young man queried her bad accent.
'Don't they cultivate modified bovarines there?' asked Gray. 'For, like, real meat?'
Ellie had to recall that gloopy dram. Yes. The opening scenes had featured those huge lumbering hairy, dull-eyed creatures grazing on endless fields of stalky things. Just waiting to be slaughtered and rendered into juicy blood-red slabs of meat.
'That's…that's right. Their poo smells awful though. Ughh. Everywhere you go, that horrible, horrible smell.'
Gray laughed at that. 'Well, beats eating that synthetic gloop they serve up everywhere else in this system.'
'Indeed,' added Shelby. 'We have real food here. Real food, grown naturally in properly maintained and ph-balanced soil. No FoodSmarts, no protein paste.'
Jez perked up. 'Real food? Like what?'
'We have…oh, look, actually you'll see.'
Frasier had emerged from beneath an awning, pushing a serving trolley before him.
'Yo! Fraze,' called out Gray. 'How's it goin', monkeyman?'
The chimp nodded courteously at him. 'It's going perfectly fine, Graham.' He put out plates and covered serving bowls that leaked tendrils of steam into the air.
'Wow, looks like you really went out of your way for us,' said Ellie.
'We have our first ever guests,' shrugged Shelby as if it was no big deal. 'It's the appropriate thing to do, even if you aren't paying guests.'
'Well, anyway…it's really very kind of you.'
Gray leant forward over the table and inhaled the fragrant steam deeply. He slapped his stomach and made a yummy sound. 'Thing is, me an' Shelbs don't really ever eat together much. I don't know why I don't eat here. The food over in this biome is doublestar-A.'
'Of course we don't eat together.' Shelby lifted the lids off the serving bowls one after the other. 'I find your table manners truly appalling and I suspect you find me a trifle boring.'
'Ooh,' Jez's eyes lit up at the steaming food. 'What have we got?'
Shelby reached for a serving spoon and pointed in turn to each dish. 'This is poached fungymen in a white wine sauce.'
Ellie had heard of fungymen; although she'd never eaten one. An expensive and difficult to grow fibrous, meaty, mushroom that she'd heard a connoisseur say tasted like pork. They were grown underground, was all she knew about them. That, and they grew in the shape of fat bellied little men with wrinkled and concerned-looking 'faces' that made them appear as though they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. Little worried fungus men. Hence the name.
'We have crisp bimmel sprouts, from our water garden. Mashed nartihokes garnished with nuts, berries and spices. All of those grown here too by the way. And finally, thinly sliced and lightly fried meat bulbs in a dark chilli goyball sauce.'
Savoury flavours drifted into range of Ellie's nose and she found herself salivating at the rich aromas. Gray didn't wait on their guests. He grabbed a serving spoon and started hefting heaped spoons of fungymen onto his plate. 'To be honest I mostly eat the crud that comes out of the FoodSmart in my biome. I'll give you this Shelbs, man, you eat like a king over here.'
'I really don't understand why you don't live in this biome.' Shelby turned to the girls. 'He insists on spending all of his time in World 2.'
'That's because I've got it just how I like it over there. Plus I don't have to listen to you waffling on like an old woman all the time.'
Ellie served herself some of the fungymen and some of the mashed nartichoke and now speared one of the worried looking little fungi with her fork and tucked it into her mouth. First impression - chewy, a bit like rubber, but then after the slightest elastic resistance the meaty flesh gave way and spurted a rich rare, meaty, bloody flavour across her tongue.
'S'is really nice,' she mumbled and chomped at the same time.
'Of course it is. This facility was designed to cater for the richest people in the system.'
'What I want to know is…' said Jez, chewing with her mouth wide open, both elbows planted firmly on the table, mirroring Gray's crass table manners, (Ellie noticed Shelby shake his head disapprovingly). '…why there were all those dead things piled up in that world. You said something about a game?'
Gray laughed. 'Oh, yeah, Shelbs, fap-it, man. I forgot. It was my turn to clean up after and reprogram, wasn't it?'
Shelby nodded. 'Hmmmm. Yes, indeed it was. I've left everything as it was. The products are beginning to decompose by the way. It's getting quite smelly in World Three.'
Gray shook his head apologetically. 'You're right, man, it was my turn to clean up. I'll get onto it.' He turned to to Jez to answer her question. 'Once every few months me and Shelbs use World Three for, like, war games. It's not just us goofing around you understand? It's a chance for us to do a routine check on the terrarium's material matrices, to make sure the environ systems are all functioning optimally.'
'Hmmm…now that's the first time in quite a while you sound like someone with a modicum of education.'
Gray ignored Shelby. 'Our brief's to keep this place ticking over. I guess the corporation are kinda hoping to dust it off again sometime in the distant future.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, we make it a bit of fun….okay,' he grinned at Jez, 'so we goof around a bit.'
'You goof,' said Shelby. 'That's your problem. I, on the other hand use it as an opportunity to further my understanding of historical battlefield tactics.' He tossed a fork laden with bimmel sprouts into his mouth and crunched down on them noisily. 'I see it as an opportunity to rerun historical skirmishes and analyse how and why generals of the past made their decisions-'
Gray laughed. 'That's a load of fap, man. You're just getting a nerd-on for all the guns and uniforms.'
'Oh, puh-lease!' Shelby looked appalled. 'Please excuse him. He can be such an uncouth oaf at times.'
Gray grinned.
'I have a fascination with the military history of Old Earth. The war games give me a chance to explore various hypotheses and theories I have been developing about the art of warfare. Unlike Graham, who seems to spend all day and every day in his world indulging in vulgar fantasies.'
'Why the hell not? If you can be king of your own little world?'
'Fantasies?' Jez chuckled. 'Like what?'
'I'm a guy….what do you think?'
Jez nearly choked on her food. 'You…don't…actually….?'
'Look, we can design and grow pretty much any life form we want. We can programme their organic minds to be as intelligent as we want, and we can even upload personality templates into their minds, memories…life histories.' He nodded at Frasier as he emerged from the doorway with a watering can and started tending to some baskets of hanging flowers. 'Frasier, for example, he's one of Shelby's designs.'
/>
'Why did you make a monkey?' asked Ellie.
Shelby pondered that a moment then shrugged. 'I like monkeys.'
Jez seemed keen to get back onto the subject of Gray's biome. 'Don't tell me you've gone and made some kind of, I dunno…some smutty pervo world?'
Gray laughed. 'No! But hey…it's….pretty, how do I describe it…pretty intense.'
'Pretty intense, huh?' She turned to look at Ellie and winked. Ellie knew exactly what that wink was. Shall we go see? She wasn't going to wait for an invitation though. 'So Gray, why don't you show us around your place?'
He narrowed his eyes. 'Weellll….'
'Hey, I'm pretty hard to shock, you know,' said Jez.
Ellie nodded. 'That's true. She is!'
Gray looked at Jez, then her. 'What about you, Ellie?'
She pressed her lips. 'I…uh, I suppose I've seen a thing or two.'
Shelby sighed. 'I must warn you ladies…stepping into his world is like stepping into his head. Messy, and unpleasant.'
Gray sat back in his chair and stretched his arms. 'You know, you have a real winning personality, Shelbs.'
Shelby nodded. 'Thank you. I think so too.'
CHAPTER 12
'Okay, I'm just gonna come right out and say it…'cause I know we're both thinking it,' said Jez. She looked at Ellie, who seemed, at least to her, to be considering the exact same thing.
Jez wandered across the warm tiled floor towards open shutter doors, out onto the balcony of their hillside villa. She leaned against the ornate iron railing and inhaled the intoxicating scent of night-blooming jasmine. She turned to look back over her shoulder, grinning at Ellie like an excited toddler.
'This place has seriously got to be the frooviest, droolest place in the whole fregging universe!'
Actually, it wasn't what Ellie was thinking. She joined Jez outside. The regular, clockwork-like cheep-cheep-cheep of insects was a soothing sound. She wondered whether the noise was actually being created by genetically engineered insects, or was simply some ambient soundtrack being played by hidden speakers outside. Above them the projected night sky was a pleasing panorama of a full moon shining down on feathered clouds that chased each other playfully across a star-filled sky. A warm - no doubt artificially generated - breeze teased their skin and stirred the plants in the gardens below to whisper like an audience hushing themselves before a performance.
'It is lovely,' Ellie said. 'And so, you know?….so convincing.' That felt like a stupid thing to say. What would she know if a place like this was a convincing facade or not? All she'd ever experienced was mum and dad's farm and the claustrophobic and crowded confines of New Haven and Harvest City.
It felt real though, if you could ignore the one or two black triangles hanging in the sky. (Easier to do at night). Although, every now and then a drifting cloud seemed to vanish behind a solid black border and reappear moments later.
'It's my considered opinion that we should stay here,' said Jez. She turned to Ellie. 'For a while, that's all I'm saying, Ellie, girl. Just for a while.'
'I don't think we've got much of a choice anyway. We're going to have to wait for that supply shuttle.'
'If the whole system is locked down by The Administration there's no way we're going to get through the jump point at Gateway', said Jez. There was that. Jez was right. It seemed the best course of action was to lie low for a while. Give them a few months and maybe The Administration would find someone else to hunt down. Weren't there enough of those Awoken terrorist types around for them to worry about, anyway?
'This place is totally rinky-dink. I mean, imagine having a whole mini-world you can make look exactly how you want!' Jez nudged Ellie's shoulder with hers'. 'Come on, what kind of world would you make?'
'I don't know. Maybe…'
She looked down the slope towards the entrance that led to World Three. A world…if it could be anything? Perhaps some kind of arctic wilderness? Snow, lots of it. She'd loved the north polar cap on Harpers Reach. The endless glistening white of powdery snow, breath that curled out of your mouth in fleeting plumes, that pleasing muted crunch sound beneath each footstep. Or perhaps it would be a tiny desert island surrounded by coral pink sand, and a gently lapping bath-warm sea?
Yes.
And real palm trees, not plastic ones like dad had bought at the Traders Show and stuck in their central dome. Real ones that dropped those big hairy nut things that sloshed with liquid inside.
'Me, I'd make mine a mega trance-dance dome. Just like totally huge…with a holofloor like Dantes. Crud! I guess it could be real lava, couldn't it? With a plexglass floor over the top? And the sky would be that swirly green blackhole effect like the gas cloud around the baddie's base in Spacers And Racers? Then I'd just fill it with these floating dance platforms, a big fregging boom-boom system playing some Betsy and beautiful people…hundreds of beautiful people all dancing and partying.' Jez nodded with satisfaction. 'And it would be my club. Mine.'
'You'd fill it with fake people?'
'Yeah. Why not? Everyone that's famous on the toob. Like…' Jez proceeded to list names, only a few of whom were familiar to Ellie. Flicker actors, sopa-dram stars, ad-faces, muzos, dancers, brand-shills, sportjacks. She wondered how the heck Jez managed to keep all that frivolous crud in her head and have space for anything else.
'You'd have to programme in their personalities and everything, Jez. I imagine that wouldn't be easy to-'
'Nah,' She hefted her shoulders. 'They wouldn't have to say anything clever, or convincing, just dance and look sexy and famous. When I got bored of any of them I'd just zap 'em and replace 'em.'
Zap them?
Ellie wondered about these products. Did they actually have feelings? Were they self-aware? All those bodies of dead Sugar Beanies and Chocco Chop Bars? Did they feel pain? Fear? Or were they just simple-minded play-things, automatons that looked and acted convincing? Certainly Shelby's chimpanzee, Frasier, seemed to have real thoughts and feelings, although they appeared to be limited to a one-note tone of irritable sufferance.
'Zap them? Jez you can be so cruel!' No internal morality filter, that was her problem. Actually, to be fair, she had a heart. But she had a tendency to blurt out stuff first then consider much later on whether it was inappropriate or hurtful.
'Hey, Ellie?'
She stirred from her thoughts.
'Uh?'
'What do you think about Gray?'
'He's….he's quite-'
'Fit?'
Ellie pursed her lips thoughtfully. His well-defined features reminded her just a little bit of Sean Eltwood; her first and so far only crush. 'He looks quite nice, I suppose.'
'Oh, isn't he? Definitely my type. I like hump-buddies to be athletic. Muscles on muscles, but not too much though.'
Ellie sighed. 'I'm sure he thinks you're equally gorgeous. You'd be perfect together.'
'You think?'
Jez wasn't so thick skinned she didn't register a tone of resentment from her friend. 'You know, you're actually not that bad, chick. You just….need to work on it a bit. Put a bit of effort in.'
'Yeah, thanks so much.'
'Hey, we could maybe do a foursome thing. You know, while we're stuck here? Me and Gray, you and Shel-'
'No!' Ellie squawked suddenly. 'No! Thank you!' Shelby seemed friendly enough, and oddly likeable in a stiff formal sort of way, but….no. Uh-uh. Nope. Not likeable in that way.
'I'm fine as I am.' She smiled. 'Seriously, if you want to go off and frolic around with Gray, while we're waiting for our lift away from here, it's okay. I'll be all right. I won't be bored.'
'You gonna come with me and check out Gray's world?'
She was vaguely curious. But if it really was going to be as, Shelby suggested, nothing more than a tacky and testosterone-fuelled fabrication of a bored technician's smutty mind, then she was probably going to turn right round and head back out again.
'Maybe.'
They watched the last of the sun's light
drain away on the lowest sky panel, through the silhouette of an oak tree with a circling flock of swallows dipping and soaring around it.
Ellie's thoughts returned to something she'd been puzzling over before Jez had started gushing like a child about this place. Puzzling over something Shelby had mentioned earlier.
Shelby had definitely mentioned there'd been a caretaker team of twelve left to run this place. And she was pretty convinced there was something about them that the young man didn't want to discuss.
The number one question in Ellie's head was…where the hell did they go?
CHAPTER 13
'Look at them, running around like bloody headless chickens,' said Deacon. He led Leonard and Karl across the busy intersection, through a swirling morass of foot traffic and impatient d-peds weaving their way perilously through them.
News of The Administration enforced quarantine had finally been officially announced on all the news streams yesterday evening and inevitably, a herd-like panic had spread among the population of New Haven overnight.
Deacon shook his head derisively at them. Look at them rushing out this morning to spend whatever spare creds they have to stock up on that protein crap and drinking water.
'You see, Karl, this is the problem we have with most of the colonised systems in Human Space. On every planet there's too much over-reliance on cross system distribution networks. A properly colonised planet should be able to stand on its own two legs. To feed itself. Not panic like this. Isn't that right, Leonard?'
'Yes, Deacon.'
'A world should be able to produce the essentials it needs instead of relying on everything being delivered to it.' He supposed this planet would last no more than a few days on whatever it had if it wasn't for a steady convoy of supply ships feeding it like a fat cuckoo in a nest.
They pushed their way through the squirming mass of people, many of them already shouldering shopping carryalls and rollbags laden with protein products.
'I blame commercial interests. Corporations sponsoring the cost of terraforming then dictating the economics of the planet. There are too many worlds, Karl, and far too many that specialise in producing just one thing. Holstein exports just meat, Rama…the minerals cerium and uranium. Celestion used to export water. And this place?' Deacon laughed.