In Between the Stars

by A. A. Ripley

  ‘Escort our guests to their quarters and make sure they have all they need.’

  Before they left, Cochrane gave them a parting glance over his shoulder, making Inan’s scales crawl.

  *

  By the time they arrived, Inan was feeling dizzy and disoriented by yet another walk through the ship. The corridors seemed to twist and turn at unexpected angles, the steel walls feeling confining and oppressive.

  ‘In here.’ Their “guardian” pointed them towards yet another door.

  The “guest quarters” were far from the liner standards Inan was used to. The cabin might have been luxuriously furnished once, but had fallen into disuse eons ago. The grey walls still bore the remains of drapes and ornaments. Now it was sparsely furnished, pure utility and no more than that. There was a table of sorts and weird chairs that had no space for one’s tail. In two corners there were rectangular shapes, probably beds, with two small windows hanging over them like a pair of half-closed eyes. Some consoles were mounted on the walls, silent and dead. Half the lights weren’t working, making it too dark to see properly but too bright for Inan’s heat-sense to work.

  Inan looked to her left, where the dusty and smudged surface of a mirror sprawled coldly along the wall. There were two persons reflected in it. They were dirty, tired, hunched over and in clothes that hung in shreds. One rat-like creature, with singed and matted fur, and one very frightened izara female. The doors closed behind them with the loud sound of a lock engaging. They were alone.

  Inan felt as though she had suddenly grown older by many years. The planets had formed, life had evolved, civilisations had risen and fallen, and stars had expanded and contracted since she had last passed the threshold of her room. Her legs started shaking and her tail twitching uncontrollably. She sank to the floor, with the weight of ages suddenly thrust upon her shoulders, and sat there holding her tail in her arms until Hijinks spoke to her.

  ‘Your people keep slaves, Inan?’ Inan looked at Hijinks. The marsupial looked back at her with a tense, unmoving stare. Was my lie that good? Inan thought, almost amused.

  ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘we employ houseless servitors. But they don’t have to know that, do they?’ Inan lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  Hijinks relaxed and gave a short squeal.

  ‘Clever Inan. You saved us.’

  ‘We’re not safe yet. Now let’s hope they won’t decide we’re more trouble than we’re worth. We have to wait.’

  Hijinks said something, but Inan wasn’t listening.What have I done? Inan thought with dismay. Now, when their lives were no longer in immediate peril, she could see the full extent of the mixture of lies and truth she had concocted. The Matriarch would pay, but that would mean loss, a financial loss to the House. It would save their lives, but for Inan it would all be over. It wasn’t her fault, but by not appearing on Derrar she voided the contract with the Aldass. The Matriarch would not be happy over that lost opportunity. Because of it she would be relegated from a position with prospects and pride to a position tucked in the tail of the House, given only by virtue of her gender. She would never be forgiven. She would no longer be an asset, but a liability!

  ‘Rest now and worry later,’ said Hijinks, interrupting Inan’s morose musings. The marsupial took some faded fabric from the bed and covered them both with it. Inan was glad that Hijinks remembered to stay close, just in case the heating went off in this derelict place. She didn’t think she would be able to fall asleep at all, but exhaustion took over. She dozed off, tucked between her companion and the stars beyond the window.

  *

  The sound of the lock opening broke Inan’s unquiet dreams. They jumped up, startled.

  The doors opened and a new creature entered. It was smaller than those they had encountered so far. Inan could tell that it was no longer a hatchling, but not fully grown yet either. The fur on its head was erratically cut and hung in uneven streaks. It carried a laden tray, nearly spilling it from the skinny arms.

  ‘I… uh, brought you some food,’ he said, and shuffled his feet. He approached the table slowly, never taking wary eyes off them.

  Inan and Hijinks watched him without a word, unsure how to react. Did he pose a danger?

  The human put the tray on the table and moved back carefully.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ he mumbled, and disappeared before they could react in any way. Inan thought about not eating the food, but realised how hungry she was. She would never have thought that generic protein paste could taste so good. There was some kind of infusion of leaves, brown and bitter, but Inan found that she quite liked the taste. She drank it eagerly.

  After they had eaten, Hijinks started to explore the room, examining the inactive consoles and digging under the furniture.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Inan.

  ‘Pirates should not get money,’ said Hijinks. ‘We should escape.’

  Inan joined Hijinks in the search, trying to put a claw in each chink, gap and depression of the wall she could find. She worked persistently, until her hands went numb with continuous strain. There must be a way out of here, she kept thinking.

  Suddenly a part of the wall moved. A hidden exit! Inan’s heart leapt with excitement.

  ‘Inan found the bathroom,’ said Hijinks. ‘Good find.’

  *

  Once again life became a stream of waiting and idleness. The ship moved incessantly through space, the machines murmuring, their vibrations carried through the deck with a constant chafing cadence. Sometimes the inter-ship messaging system would blast from hidden speakers; the bubbling sounds of human speech would spill from it, filling the air with its strange resonances. Sometimes the light dimmed, in simulation of a night-cycle, and the only thing that could be seen was Hijinks’ heat signature and the weak glow of the stars.

  Inan grew accustomed to the young alien that visited them at regular intervals. He would never look at them directly as he brought food. He always tried to keep his distance while busy with routine cleaning, never uttering more than a couple of words. It finally dawned on her that he was probably as scared of them as they were of him. They were those two strange creatures, enemies of his kind, the monsters he was taught to fear.

  ‘What is your name?’ Inan asked once, just as he was about to leave the room.

  He paused mid-stride. He turned around and for the first time he looked directly at her. Inan wished she could read human expressions better. He stared for a moment, and then turned away again.

  ‘I’m Alan,’ he said, just before the doors closed behind him.

  *

  Word by word, gesture by gesture, each time he came she tried to establish contact. Sometimes she got a word in return, sometimes a half-broken sentence. She talked to him as often as she could, about everything and nothing in particular. She talked about her room, her brothers the spacers, the trouble she got into with Ifonly and Kanst. She talked about the sudden rise of the local sun over a “garden” world, as brilliant as a masterfully-cut gemstone, about alien moons hanging low above the horizon like swollen fruits and about planets, ringed and striped, where gaseous storms spin round and round their equators.

  Hijinks scoffed at her attempts.

  ‘Talking is not a way out. Not again.’

  Inan didn’t think she could talk her way out, but what else was there to do except for waiting to be traded in, like a parcel of contraband? Instead, Inan pulled and tugged the communication lines, each catch a little bit bigger. He was ship-raised, but not ship-born. Plundered in some raid or other and made a servitor on board, he too was lost. The details she did not dare to ask. She wished just once to glance behind the façade he had developed while living with his captors.

  One day she asked if they could get something to wear, to replace the ragged remains of their outfits. He showed up out of turn that day, carrying a bundle of cloth u
nder his arm.

  ‘I had to steal these,’ he said, ‘but nobody will notice. I made sure.’ Inan unrolled the bundle. They were clothes, but strange and unwieldy. A shirt made of heavy fabric as grey as a barren planetoid. The fastenings were round and hard to grasp between the claws. The bottom half was even worse. Inan turned it around in her hands, but could not find any way to put it on.

  ‘How do you wear that?’ she said finally.

  ‘You do it like this: put your arms through here and legs in there,’ he demonstrated, pointing to the openings in the fabric.

  Inan tried to follow the instructions. It wasn’t easy. The fabric flapped about her limbs uselessly, the bottom half lacked an opening for the tail and was very uncomfortable. Finally, she thought she had succeeded. She took a few steps and the fabric unravelled about her, exposing her scales, now bright green with embarrassment.

  Hijinks squealed with amusement. How the marsupial managed to deal with alien clothes was beyond Inan’s understanding.

  Even the human laughed while she tried to gather the clothes about her.

  ‘I’ll help,’ he offered, ‘if you’ll let me.’

  ‘Please do,’ she replied, still feeling a bit stupid about her clumsiness.

  She watched in amazement as his nimble, talonless fingers worked their way up the fabric, manipulating the fastenings on her chest and sleeves. Soon all the fabric fell into its proper place, the sleeves shortened, the waist belted. For the first time in countless days Inan had proper clothes on her back and it felt good.

  She realised then, that this was the first time Alan had stood so close to her, close enough to see the colour of his strange irises, brown like the grain of an exotic wood. It was the first time she had been in close proximity to a human without any feeling of apprehension or unease. This lack of dread she used to associate with his species surprised her, but it was not a bad surprise.

  *

  During one of the dark cycles, Inan was shaken awake. A strong light was shining in her face and she started, thinking that the humans had come for them.

  ‘It’s me. Don’t be afraid.’

  ‘Alan? What are you doing? What’s going on?’ Inan shielded her eyes against the brightness.

  ‘No time! The lights will be on soon.’

  ‘Put the light away,’ grumbled Hijinks, emerging from under the cover.

  ‘Yes, sorry. You should have it.’ Alan put the flashlight in the hands of a still barely-awake Hijinks.

  ‘You have to go now. They will be busy with a rally today. There will be fewer guards in the corridors. I’ll show you where.’

  He took them out into the corridor and pointed them towards a corridor that spiralled away from the nearest T-junction.

  ‘The corridor ends in a few metres. The emergency access is shut tight but it can be opened with this.’ He shoved a strange tool into Inan’s hands.

  The corridor’s speaker coughed up some drawn-out sentences.

  ‘I have to go. They’ll notice if I’m not there on time.’

  ‘Wait! Where does it lead?’

  But he was already gone. Inan felt as though they had just lost the only ally they had. There was nothing left to do but follow his instructions. The corridor became narrower the further they went and ended with a round bulkhead. The hatch seemed to be rusted shut, but it opened when Inan and Hijinks jammed the tool under the vacuum seal. The door swung open slowly with a tortured creak from the rusted hinges.

  *

  There was complete darkness beyond the threshold. No light, no heat signature, just the pure undiluted darkness of the forgotten passage. Inan recoiled from the smell of dank air that blew from it. Her heart froze with fear. For a second, she thought, that’s the entrance to the Underwater, where the spirits of all Codex-breakers float eternally in the abyss.

  ‘More dark tunnels. Easy for us. We have experience now,’ said Hijinks and directed the light into the oppressive darkness. The light revealed the narrow passage, rusty and full of dust motes floating freely in the air.

  With anxious trepidation, Inan took the first steps over the threshold and into the lurking shadows. The doors shut behind them with a thump that sounded like a sentence.The flashlight fought the oppressive darkness as they walked the narrow tunnel, conjuring the uneven shapes of pipes and conduits. The passage went straight for some time, turning in a few places, until it ended abruptly. Suddenly Inan and Hijinks found themselves at the entrance to a vertical shaft with rungs built into its wall. They shone the light into it, but couldn’t see the bottom. Somewhere in the depths, the machines mumbled and thumped and the hot air drifted upwards like the breath of a sleeping monster.

  They went down, rung after rung after rung. The shaft seemed as though it was stretching forever, like a tunnel to the centre of a forgotten astarium mine. From time to time they passed entrances to side-tunnels; all closed shut and rusted over. She tried not to look down towards the unseen bottom, and tried not to think about what would happen if she missed a step. After the eternity of the descent, Inan finally felt the floor under her foot. She gave a groan of relief, so happy that there were no more slippery rungs to traverse.

  She collapsed on the floor, panting, rubbing her arms to chase away the pain. Hijinks dropped next to her.

  ‘We cannot stay,’ the marsupial said, but Inan could see the tiredness in the long face. The descent had exhausted him too.

  *

  They continued their march. The passage looked the same as the one at the top, but it curved slightly downwards. A new sound penetrated their surroundings. Was that water dripping?

  It was. The corridor ahead was expanding into a chamber with stairs descending straight into a pool of dark water. Up above there were pipes, ruptured and twisted during an unknown catastrophe. Some condensation was dripping from them, stirring haunting echoes with each droplet.

  ‘Looks like we need to swim from now on,’ said Inan. She took a few steps down the stairs, trying the bottom before each step. The water was cool, but not freezing. Inan thought that she could maintain her temperature for some time before she would have to get out.

  ‘It’s not that bad. I think we can do it,’ Inan called to Hijinks when the water was as high as her waist.

  ‘How deep?’ Hijinks called back.

  ‘I don’t know, there are still more stairs I think…’ Inan stopped her probing and looked back at Hijinks. She could swear there was a change in his voice. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I… can’t swim,’ said Hijinks. Inan had never seen him so hesitant before.

  It took Inan a second to grasp what Hijinks was saying. She had never met anybody who wasn’t a swimmer. Izara hatchlings learn to swim as soon as they learn to walk. She had no idea that could be a problem. She remembered how little she knew about her companion, not even the name of Hijinks’ species. I swear, on the first Codex’s verse, I’ll learn everything about them if we only get out of here! she thought.

  She watched Hijinks’ pathetic attempts to enter the water. Now what?

  ‘Hijinks, grab me by my neck. Try to keep the light below my head. We’re crossing over together,’ she said with force. They had not come this far just to give up. With the marsupial on her back and a flashlight between her horns, Inan entered the cool, dark waters of the flooded corridor.

  *

  It was easy at first. If it weren’t for the ever-present throb and smell of old machinery, Inan would think that she was having a midnight swim in her complex’s recreation pools. But the flooded chamber seemed to stretch forever, its murky waters reflecting the light like a distorted mirror. Inan tried to keep the movement of her limbs steady, but the further she went the more and more difficult it became. Each stroke of her legs, her arms and her tail cost more and more. Finally, Inan started to feel as though she was a swimming contraption, of which the sole purpose was to k
eep afloat at any cost. The water started to leak into her nostrils, bitter, choking fluid invading her throat. She couldn’t keep her head high enough anymore, soon the water would claim her. Her foot grazed against something. Bottom at last!

  She was able to wade the rest of the way, Hijinks still clinging to her back like a furry rucksack. Inan was sure that they were the funniest-looking pair on this side of the galaxy, but she was too exhausted to find even that amusing.

  The flooded chamber ended with dilapidated stairs leading up to higher ground. Inan was able to lift Hijinks just enough for him to climb above the water level and to help her climb in turn. If the descent down the shaft had tired her, the swim had drained her completely. She rolled herself into a tight ball under the wall.

  Hijinks sat next to her and talked, like a nest caretaker to hatching eggs. Inan listened to the voice, saying how brave she was and what a great job she had done. She had never heard Hijinks saying so much or praising her so volubly. She wanted to laugh. She wasn’t feeling great or brave. She was wet, exhausted and miserable. She wanted to be left alone, locked in a sensory deprivation chamber somewhere for a millennium or so, until she stopped feeling as though her muscles were torn from her bones and the air was no longer a liquid fire burning in her lungs.

  ‘Please Inan, get up, get up!’ The pleading voice of her companion pierced the mists of tiredness that embraced Inan’s mind. Hijinks was right, she couldn’t afford to waste time here. With Hijinks’ help, Inan gathered herself back up.

  *

  They started to ascend the stairs, each step ringing dully in the silence of the abandoned passage. They hadn’t gone far when their journey ended abruptly. The rest of the stairs were completely blocked with twisted steel beams, grates and other debris. There was no way they could climb any further. The light from their flashlight licked the nearby walls, until it finally revealed doors, grey and flaking with age. There was a plaque with markings that would probably be illegible even if Inan could read the script.

  ‘I think this is the only way out,’ said Inan.