Free Shooting the Rift - eARC by Alex Stewart

said chattily, “this close to the docks. Shippin’ out, are you?”
    “Maybe,” I said, before the first part of his question properly sank in, then nodded as the implications of his opening remark belatedly did so. “Seen any others?”
    The stallholder shrugged. “Hard to say,” he said, handing me an oblong of warm pastry wrapped in a napkin. “What with all this crowd around.”
    Unable to resist the importunate growling of my stomach any longer, I bit into the pie, finding it hotter inside than I’d expected, and a great deal more appetizing. Gravy oozed down my chin as I chewed and swallowed, and before I could stop myself I’d taken a second bite, and then a third. Almost before I realized it, the snack had gone. I wiped my face and fingers. “Another one, please,” I said, handing over a few more pieces of change. “And a fruit to follow.”
    “Looks like you needed that,” the pie-seller said, distinctly more well-disposed since my evident enthusiasm for his wares had attracted a few more potential customers towards his stall. “Anyone in partic’lar you was keepin’ an eye out for? Or just groundsiders in gen’ral?”
    “My aunt,” I said. “Middle-aged, stocky, brown hair, going grey. Floral print jacket.”
    “Seen her about,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “Not today, though. If it’s the one I’m thinking of.”
    “Thanks anyway,” I said, wiping the remains of the second pie from my fingers, and accepting my dessert. (Which was sweeter than I’d expected, but still remarkably palatable.) I started to turn away, already scanning the crowds, with a distinct lack of hope.
    “You could try down there,” the stallholder said, indicating a gap between two nearby pipes, each with the girth of a mature redwood. “She gen’rally comes and goes from that direction.”
    “Thanks,” I said again, with greater warmth, and set off the way he’d indicated.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    In which I entertain two offers of employment.

    To my relief, the area beyond turned out to be far smaller than the cavernous marketplace, being no larger than the sort of square you might find in a quiet market town; an analogy which struck me as soon as I’d rounded the nearer of the two vast metal cylinders. Every gap and crevice between the excrescences of infrastructure large enough to hold a home or business had been enclosed, using whatever materials had come to hand, to create pockets of living space: sheets of scrap metal, sections of cargo containers, even the odd piece of lumber, which seemed stridently out of place in this defiantly man-made environment. As I tilted my head back, scanning the rising and erratic terraces, I was reminded of the apartment buildings surrounding a central courtyard I’d seen on visits to the cities on the surface.
    Most of the buildings, for want of a better word, seemed to be residential; even this far from the more salubrious quarter I was familiar with, plants and banners provided welcome splashes of color in a bewildering variety of hues. The people living here seemed quieter, more domestic, than the ones I’d seen in the streets and market, chatting easily among themselves instead of rushing about on mysterious business of their own. At least the adults were; for the first time since leaving Aunt Jenny’s apartment I noticed children, running across the central space or clambering on struts and buttresses, chattering happily under the watchful eyes of their parents and neighbors.
    A handful of public spaces were scattered among the living quarters; from the door of one music spilled, the plangent notes of a harp, trailing away in a spatter of applause before resuming after a brief interlude. Others seemed to be selling food, of a far higher quality than the pies I’d guzzled a few moments before, and I felt a pang of regret at having quelled my appetite so comprehensively, before coming to the conclusion that my time would be better spent searching for my aunt in