Ellie Quin Book 01: The Legend of Ellie Quin (11 page)

Ellie continued to study the dark world out in front of her unsure what she was meant to be looking for. But this time she saw something that wasn’t there before. A thin, almost imperceptible, pale line along the horizon to the north separating the ground from the sky, so faint it only registered towards the periphery of her vision and faded to nothing when she focused her eyes back on it.

She looked towards Aaron. ‘I see a pale line.’

He nodded, saying nothing.

Ellie watched as the faint line slowly grew thicker and brighter. It was a pale blue line presently, and as wide as her little finger. She looked at him again, an expression of dawning realization betrayed her. He nodded and smiled, taking pleasure in the look of growing wonder on her face.

‘We’re approaching the arctic belt. We’ll be over it in a minute or two.’

‘Snow,’ she said aloud.

‘Yup, it’s pure virgin snow and ice, untouched by man from here all the way north to the refineries. I’ll take her down low when we get over it so you can get a closer look.’

Aaron watched her as she leant forward and pushed her nose against the glass to get a reflection-free view of the rapidly approaching arctic landscape ahead.

It still caught his breath after so many years. The suddenness of the change, after so much bland rustred, arid terrain, the transition was simply astounding. One second you could be flying over pre-terraformed Mars, the next you could be flying over New Europa’s untouched arctic continents, the transition between two worlds in the blink of an eye.

He took the helm, switched off the autopilot and pushed the shuttle’s nose down. She quickly dropped altitude and was soon skimming fifty feet above the ground. Ahead of them, the pale white line became a shelf of ice that loomed towards them. At the last moment Aaron pulled the shuttle’s nose up and they swooped over the top of the wall of ice and all of sudden the world below was polar north.

The snow glowed luminescent by the light of the stars and the Veil. Ellie couldn’t suppress a whimper of delight.

‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’ he said.

‘It’s…it…I just can’t believe there’s a place…’

‘…on Harpers Reach as wonderful as this?’ he finished her words.

Ellie nodded vigorously, a smile stretched across her small pale face.

‘Check it out.’ He hit a switch and floodlights beneath the shuttle’s delta-wings suddenly kicked in. The arctic world below exploded - an impossibly brilliant white, and the reflected glare filled the cockpit.

‘Oh my,’ was all she could manage.

‘Enjoy it, because one day soon, maybe in ten or twenty years, it’ll all be gone, and the only people who will have seen it will be you, me and the hundred or so people who work up here.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s so sad.’

‘Terraforming is pretty depressing crap, Ellie. We take a unique world, with its own amazing eco-system and environment full of things you’d never ever see again on any other world….and we trash it all to produce yet another homogenized, 35-degree, O2-rich trailer park. It’s not like anyone even bothers to survey new planets any more, to record how they once were before we wade in and redecorate. We just see another ball of real estate around a star and, before you know it, there’s a bunch of enviro-domes thrown up and several million brain-dead dome-drones moving in.’

‘But I guess we need more room…you know for more people,’ she offered half-heartedly.

‘Maybe we just don’t need any more people. Isn’t three hundred billion enough in this Universe?!’

They watched the dazzling snow scape race beneath them for a while then he snapped off the floods. The cabin was once again dimly lit by the amber glow of the data screens.

‘Many years from now, you can tell your grandchildren that there was once snow on Harpers Reach. And after they’ve finished nodding politely, they’ll cart you off to the laughing-house.’

Ellie smiled gratefully at him although in the faint light she was sure he would only be able to make out her silhouette. ‘Thanks for not letting me sleep through this.’

‘That’s okay. Hey…maybe I’ll put her down on the snow when we head back this way in a couple of days. We can have a snowball fight or make a snow man.’

‘Snow
man
?’

Aaron sighed. ‘It’s what people used to do a long time ago with snow, back in the days before we got used to living like lab-rats.’

OMNIPEDIA:

[Human Universe open source digital encyclopedia]

Article: Ellie Quin - Sub-space Resonance

In the mid-twentieth century mathematicians discovered that the five different Superstring Theories being discussed were in fact one, but appeared to be five thanks to minor discrepancies caused by an unseen and, at that time, undiscovered phenomenon. It had been widely accepted for some time back then that ten spatial dimensions could be mathematically calculated. The discrepancies in Superstring Theory could be explained only by
hypothesizing
the existence of an eleventh.

Today we know that to be true, and it is this dimension that is used as a transmission medium for Sub-space Resonance signals. This is the process of exciting
cunarks
through the eleventh spatial dimension; a process that requires an inordinate amount of energy. The result is a vibration that can travel any distance instantly and be recorded and decoded at the other end.

Since its discovery eight hundred years ago, Sub-space Resonance has only ever been used sparingly by a few of the most senior executives of the most powerful corporations in Human Space. It was also used on extremely rare occasions by the Administration to relay matters of utmost urgency.

To understand the amount of energy involved in having a short Sub-space conversation, it would take the energy required to propel a battle cruiser at maximum speed for one year to transmit a five second message. Thus, as a mode of communication, it was then, and still is now, highly uneconomical. But, perhaps even more importantly, it is a very insecure communication medium. You see a Sub-space Resonance wave never diminishes. The wave, or as it is often described, the echo of the wave, will exist forever once it is formed. This being the case, it would be possible, hypothetically (with an almost infinite supply of energy to hand) to surf through the oceans of naturally occurring resonance wave frequencies today and hear snatched moments of conversations held over the last eight hundred years. Many such conversations being held between the wealthy and the powerful, the rulers and the power-brokers of the last millennium, and every one of these conversations about matters of paramount, history-altering importance. These conversations would have been held briefly with no time for courtesy or small-talk; brief exchanges of facts, information, and decisions made.

The ether of the eleventh dimension must be a historian’s treasure trove.

It is known that around the time that Ellie Quin left her home for New Haven, the eminent Genetic scientist, Dr Edward Mason was killed in an unfortunate accident. In the aftermath of his death a very disturbing discovery was made aboard the Laboratory facility of the Department of Genetic Analysis. A discovery so profoundly disturbing that records show a Sub-space Resonance communication was made between two senior members of the Administration, in different parts of the galaxy, only two days after the death of Dr Mason. Understandably there are no records of what was said, but the timing of one such event so soon after the death of Dr Mason can only lead a curious mind to assume the dead man was the subject of the conversation.

Somewhere, vibrating on a string of particle matter, exist the echoes of that conversation made many hundreds of years ago. We can only guess at what was said in this conversation…

…

..

.

CHAPTER 14

.

..

…

….Who knows about this?

Only ourselves on the ruling committee, and the man who worked as Dr Mason’s assistant, Rowan Brown. He’s the one who made the discovery.

Has he been taken care of?

Rowan Brown has been dealt with.

Why do you think Mason has done this? He was one of us.

He had concerns.

This could destroy us all, the Administration, order…everything. If this child is out there, it could already be happening.

Yes, we need to move quickly, but discreetly. I have arranged for someone we can trust to go to Pacifica, to study Mason’s notes. If this…
creature
has been released, he will find it.

He’s good?

The best we have.

Give him any resources he needs. Anything at all…

He knows he has absolute authority to act on our behalf in this matter.

How long do you think we have to find it?

It is impossible to say. It could be years, it could be days. It might even be that Mason never got round to releasing it….that it was merely a fantasy of his.

And we’re certain Mason is dead?

There was no body of course. His shuttle disintegrated on entry. In fact, no bodies were found. It is reasonable to assume he is dead.

But we can’t be certain.

No, quite.

Mason was insane.

I agree……

…

..

.

CHAPTER 15

The stay at the Oxxon refinery was for one night only.

Ellie would have liked to have stayed much longer to give her time to explore the extraordinary surroundings of the accommodation building and the enormous towering nuclear powered converters. The accommodation building looked like a large cluster of dark-grey cubic crystals that had grown over time to overlay and bisect each other. It was a chaotic construction of much larger, old-fashioned reinforced steel habi-cubes that had been bolted together over a hundred years ago, and expanded upon over time.

Inside it was a labyrinth.

There were many areas of the building that had been abandoned and were now no longer used and reminded her of the remains of an old weather station not too far from home that she, Ted and Shona had explored many times with their Dad. Although there were nearly a hundred people living up here, at its peak the complex had housed nearly five hundred, and it had expanded piece-meal to accommodate them over the years. Now that the refinery was approaching the last few decades of its usefulness, the team of engineers, technicians and support staff was being reduced. As they retired, or died of old age, there were few new people hired. Gradually, through natural processes, the head count was being whittled down.

Ellie had been surprised to find a few of the engineers had their families living with them, and had spent some of the evening talking with a couple of girls of Shona’s age.

She agreed with Aaron to keep things simple and pass herself off as his younger sister. Both girls assumed, being Aaron’s sister, that she lived in New Haven and quizzed her endlessly for details of the place. She had found herself easily concocting fabricated answers to all of their questions. Most of her knowledge about New Haven was gleaned from the toob, and she guiltily described the city with eyes closed, recalling scenes from the various dramas and soaps she’d watched over the years. Both girls spent the evening lapping up every detail hungrily, and had whimpered pitifully when their father had called them to bed. Ellie felt sorry for them as she bid them farewell. It seemed likely that the two girls, and the dozen other children living up at the refinery, would spend the majority of their natural lives there, only having the chance to move away when their parents retired or sought other employment, or perhaps even died. She hoped that at least some of them would have the opportunity to leave the refinery before they were middle-aged.

Aaron spent the evening ticking off the supplies with the Quartermaster as they were unloaded from his shuttle’s freight bay. It took five hours before they were through.

They were each allocated a visitor’s bedroom, a small tidy and spartan space with little more than a bunk and a washroom. Ellie spent a full hour enjoying the hot-water spray-pod.

Early the next morning, they had a breakfast in the refinery’s canteen and Ellie caught a glimpse through the canteen window of the two girls making their way across the snow between buildings, wrapped up in thick coats and gloves. There was a small school unit that had once taught much larger classes with a dedicated teaching staff, now one or two of the mothers were fulfilling that role for the remaining children. She guessed both girls were on their way to this make-do school. She waved a couple of times hoping to catch their attention, but decided it would be best if they didn’t see her once more, and trigger another explosion of tears. She felt terribly sorry for them, their lives anchored to this place for perpetuity.

They were in the air shortly afterward and heading south. By the time the light was fading from the sky and dusk was approaching, Aaron had decided to treat Ellie and had put the shuttle down gently onto the ice. He handed her a spare coat of his that swamped her completely. They both took O2 masks with them as a precaution and then Aaron led her through the back of the cabin into the freight hold and outside via a ramp down onto the ice.

As she stepped off the metal of the ramp she felt a crisp surface of ice break and crumble beneath her boots. Her feet sank slightly into tightly packed powder-snow.

‘Ohh, this is so wonderful!’ she cried. She sucked in a mouthful of air, savoring the icy coldness of it inside her. She held her breath for a while. It was dense, oxygen rich.

‘I bet you’ve never sampled O2 that pure, eh?’

Ellie shook her head and then let her breath out. She immediately giggled with surprise and delight at the cloud of condensation billowing out of her nostrils.

‘I’m a dragon, look!’ she said, doing it again.

Aaron laughed at her.

He bent down and with his big gloves he scooped up a handful of snow, patted it into a loose ball and threw it with unintended accuracy at her head. It smacked on her forehead between her eyes and showered her face.