Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin by Alex Scarrow Read Free Book Online

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