Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin Read Free

incessant rumble of sky-car traffic, the bass throbbing of music from some street levels below, the irritating repetition of slogans and catchphrases from the larger advertising screens and the floating billboards, the half-hourly rooftop call-to-prayer of Chrislamists; all of that was absent at this peaceful hour.
    She sheltered inside the bubble stop from the gusting, cool winds that blew around the tops of the towers. The people who lived up here at the top called it the ‘hurling’. It was New Haven’s own, unintended, weather system; convection currents of the warm air from street level gusting up and displacing the cooler air at the top.
    From here she could see a sizeable portion of the city. Many of the tall tenement towers were dark twilight pepper-pot silhouettes; a few round habi-flat portholes glowed with other early risers. But in the large the buildings were dark slabs. A couple of hours from now, the billboards that encrusted them would flicker and stir to life; become a patchwork quilt of neon coloured commercials.
    Far below at street level, the pedestrian walkways were empty. Here and there bathed in weak pools of cyan coloured from the night-light globes, She spotted the faint stirring of some poor homeless bastard, pulling a rag blanket over himself to stay warm.
    That so could have been me.
    She heard the whine of a single sky-car pass over, its headlights flickered over the bubble, momentarily dazzling her. It passed by smoothly, untroubled by airborne gridlock and she watched it become a mere dot in the distance, and disappear as it dived down steeply to the cityscape below. Ellie wondered what it must be like to be one of the rich few who could afford to drive those inside New Haven. The purchase tax alone on those vehicles was as much as buying a decent sized habi-flat. She spotted another one far away, its twin front lights twinkled like two faint stars tethered together.
    Now
that
was something she missed…seeing the night sky clearly; the infinite glittering of stars, the golden slash, the rich purple of the sky, the movement of interstellar ships out there beyond this world’s thin atmosphere. The little porthole of her own bedpod was angled downwards so that her limited view was of the streets far below. The same with most of the other habi-flat windows. Like a million beady eyes, all of them gazing downward. A design feature; people like to gaze down on the homeless; on the heaving stew of life below.
    Who wants to look at boring fregging stars, right?
    Another beam of light flickered across the bubble-stop and Ellie saw the large yellow drink-bottle shape of the skyhound descending as it approached her. Thrusters hissed as it decreased speed, gently bumped against the walkway, and locked itself against the bubble stop with a gentle thud. An opening appeared in the plastic as a passenger door slid open on the side of the hound and she stepped in, displaying her ID card to a scanner. A holographic display indicated a deduction of 1.25C.
    The skyhound was empty.
    She stood towards the back of it, where the carbo-steel hull gave way to a plexitex viewing blister. Watching the city pass beneath and recede smoothly was normally how she preferred to spend her journey across New Haven to the Industrial Sector. This morning, however, she was on her way to the South entrance, only a couple of stops beyond where she normally climbed off the hound and made her way down to street level in order to complete her journey to work on foot.
    I wonder how Sean is doing?
    That one came entirely out of nowhere; she realised that she hadn’t spared him a thought since she’d moved in with Jez. She felt a puzzling mixture of guilt and something like pride.
    Guilt.
    She owed him more than this; more than just dismissing him from her mind like she’d done over the last three weeks. But then she knew Sean would be so proud of her.
    She guessed that the Freezer would be well on its way out of the Seventh Veil and