The Space Between the Stars

by Anne Corlett

  Unexpectedly it was Finn who replied. His voice was flat, his words delivered without intonation. “There’s the bad man.” He had dropped his gaze slightly, so that he was staring at the flanks of the ship.

  “The bad man?” Callan said.

  Mila tried to smile. “It’s nothing. Just a joke I made when I thought . . .” She broke off, reaching up to wrap a strand of hair around her fingers. “I keep thinking there’s someone here. Someone’s moving things. Or maybe I did it. Or Finn. I’m never sure.”

  There was a shrill note in her voice, and Finn went up on his toes again. Mila instantly turned to him, dropping into a soothing monotone. “It’s okay, Finn, it’s okay.”

  Callan glanced around the landing site, then looked back at Mila, regarding her appraisingly. As Jamie moved farther down the gangway, she could see what he was looking at. The girl had a mottled shadow of bruising along her jawline and a healing cut in front of her ear. There was also the faintest suggestion of a fading black eye hidden beneath her careful makeup.

  “What happened to you?” Callan asked.

  Mila flushed. “Someone hurt me.”

  “I can see that,” Callan replied. “Is that someone your bad man?”

  “No. It was before.”

  Callan nodded, his expression still contemplative.

  Mila’s face creased in an anxious frown, and then her expression changed, and she lifted her hand to push her hair back from her face. It was a slow, deliberate gesture, and when she smiled at him, there was a hint of practiced coquettishness about it.

  “So,” she said. “Here we are.”

  The words sounded too old for her. They didn’t fit with her child’s dress and her thin frame.

  Callan gave her a long, level look. “Here we are. What now?”

  Mila glanced away, her mask slipping a little, as though she didn’t have the right script for this. When she looked back, she was herself again, young and uncertain. It was as though she’d shrugged on someone else’s skin for a moment, but it hadn’t fit.

  She chewed at her thumbnail. “Can we come with you?”

  “If that’s what you want. We’re going to the capital.”

  “Anywhere with people,” Mila said. “I don’t care where it is.”

  She glanced over her shoulder as she spoke, and Callan followed the direction of her gaze. “You really think there’s someone else?”

  Mila shook her head slowly.

  “What?” Callan’s voice was sharp with impatience. “What are you not telling us?”

  “There were gunshots,” she said, after another long pause. “A couple of nights ago.” Her brow creased. “At least I think there were. Maybe I dreamed it. I don’t know.”

  “Did he hear it?” Callan jerked his head toward Finn.

  “He sleeps really deeply.” Mila’s tone was defensive. “But I know what I heard.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t sure.”

  “I . . .” Mila bit her lip. “I didn’t dream it. I just told myself that. I know what it was.”

  “Shots.” There was a hint of skepticism in Callan’s voice. “From a bad man who’s hiding and doesn’t want to be seen. Maybe he decided to end it all, and that’s what you heard.”

  Mila’s expression darkened. “No. I think there was someone else. The bad man . . . he’s still here. Sometimes I hear him at night, scratching around, as if he’s trying to scare us.”

  “He?” Callan said, as though it had just occurred to him.

  “That’s what it feels like.”

  “And you haven’t gone looking for him?” Callan said.

  A hint of anger sparked in Mila’s eyes, but Callan held his hand up. “That was a question, not a criticism. I’d have thought you’d want to find out if someone else was here, and what their intentions were.”

  “I didn’t think . . .” Mila looked down. “I was scared. He felt . . . it felt wrong. Like I said. Bad.”

  Callan regarded Mila for a few more seconds, then turned away. “Well, if there is someone here, he’s got half an hour to present himself. If he does show up . . . well, we’ll see. The two of you, go get your things. I need to check the fuel situation.” He turned to Jamie. “Can you find the port depot and see if there are some medical packs we can load easily? It might be a good idea to have something worth trading.”

  As he walked away, Jamie followed him.

  “Are you sure we should be wandering about the place?” she said. “You heard what she said.”

  “I heard her say she might have dreamed it.”

  “She sounded pretty scared.”

  He stopped walking and looked at her. “They’ve been alone here for days. Of course she’s scared. She’s probably jumping out of her skin at every bit of rubbish blowing in the street. If there really was a bad man, why wouldn’t he have shown himself? They’re not exactly much of a threat. And . . .”

  He stopped abruptly.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Just thinking there are some things that probably never change. A girl like her, alone. There’ll always be someone out for what he can get.”

  “She’s not alone,” Jamie said.

  “The boy’s hardly likely to be much protection,” Callan said, setting off again.

  Jamie fell into step beside him. “You really think she was imagining things?”

  “I do. I can’t see any reason why someone would hide from them, but I can see a whole load of reasons why someone wouldn’t.”

  There was a dark logic to his words, and Jamie nodded. “I’ll go check the depot. Anything in particular you want me to look for?”

  He gave her a faint smile. “You’re the vet.”

  • • •

  Jamie found the depot easily enough. It was a wide-fronted prefab building, with the main entrance on a service lane leading off the landing site. Inside, Jamie checked the signs on the end of each aisle until she found the medicines, her footsteps echoing between the shelves, as if someone were keeping pace with her in a parallel aisle.

  She loaded a stack of portable med kits onto a cart and pushed it around to a roll-up shutter at the back of the warehouse. When she tugged at the bottom edge, it didn’t move, and as she adjusted her grip, her knuckles scraped against the concrete floor. She yanked her hand back. There was a puckered graze across the back of her fingers, with a couple of tiny speckles of blood beading on the skin. She was about to turn and push the cart the long way around when she felt an irrational flare of certainty.

  There was someone else in the building.

  It wasn’t a sound exactly, but a particular kind of silence, like someone holding their breath.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounded high and thin. “Is someone there?”

  Was that a footstep?

  Her pulse was beginning to thud. Mila’s nerves had infected her. There was no one here. But somehow she didn’t want to make her way back through the empty, echoing warehouse. She turned toward the shutter, reaching down to scrabble at the lower edge again. As she turned, feeling for a better grip, she caught sight of a lever just to the side of the door. When she yanked it down, the shutter clanked and strained, then slid slowly up into the roof. Jamie grabbed the cart and shoved it out onto the sunlit landing site.

  By the time she reached the ship, her pulse had steadied, and she was uncomfortably relieved that no one had witnessed that irrational moment of panic.

  Mila was sitting on the edge of the gangway, next to Lowry. There was a clutch of small bags around her feet, clothes spilling out their tops, speaking of hasty and indiscriminate packing. Finn was pacing nearby, his steps careful and precise. A small backpack sat high up on his shoulders, with the chest strap pulled tight, like he was a child on a day trip from school. Rena was standing a little way apart, watching the pair of them through narrowe
d eyes.

  “Are you sure you need all that?” Jamie nodded at the bags. Reds and golds, chiffons and satins. From one bag a blue sleeve hung limp, covered in sequins, some of which had pulled away, leaving trailing threads. “The ship’s pretty basic.”

  “These are the only clothes I have.”

  Jamie looked out across the rooftops. Callan had said that the settlement was wealthy, but the port didn’t look like the sort of place where women would have much call to float around in sequined chiffon. It was solid, industrial, and flanked by the scrubby slopes of a miserly hillside.

  “You’re a prostitute,” Rena said suddenly. It was a pronouncement, not a question, and her tone was blunt and accusatory.

  Mila flinched and reached out to touch the sequined sleeve with her fingertip. After a moment, she lifted her head, another of those bright, artificial smiles pinned on her face.

  “Why not? Money’s good, and it’s not as though work’s easy to come by in a place like this.”

  Rena stiffened.

  “Rena . . .” Lowry began, but Jamie cut in, preempting anything the other woman might say.

  “I don’t think we need to worry too much about money.” She tried to keep her tone light, but the girl’s smile faded.

  “Is it like this everywhere?”

  “I think so. But there might be more people on the capital.”

  Mila dropped her head to her knees and began to cry. Finn stopped his pacing and turned to look at her, his face puckering in the first emotion Jamie had seen there. One hand clenched into a fist, the knuckles rubbing on the back of his other forearm, as though he was trying to scrub something off his skin.

  Mila gave her face a hard swipe, knocking the tears away. She scrambled to her feet and moved toward Finn, stopping a couple of feet away, hand raised but not touching him.

  “It’s okay,” she said, in a low, singsong voice, like a mother talking to a troubled child. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Jamie was assaulted by an image that was both brutal and oddly tender: Mila, in her chiffon and sequins, lying back on a bed, a male head on her breast, her hands soft on the stubby hair. It’s okay, it’s okay.

  Finn was still rubbing at his skin, and he’d started to rock a little. Mila stood up on tiptoe, trying to catch his gaze.

  “Look up,” she said. “Look at the sky. Look how blue it is. And look at the ship. It’s going to take us up there.”

  Finn shook his head violently, but he lifted his gaze to the sky. Gradually his rocking slowed and stopped. The rubbing continued, but with less force to it, slowing until it was just an occasional pluck at his skin.

  Mila said something else, her voice barely above a whisper. Finn tipped his head, listening, although he kept his face turned up toward the sky. After a moment he nodded, turned away, and resumed his careful pacing.

  Mila turned back to Jamie. “He’s okay.”

  “How did you know what to do?” There had been something simple and instinctive about the way Mila had soothed the lad.

  “I just figured it out. He likes the sky, and open places. He doesn’t like being touched. And he doesn’t like people getting angry or upset.”

  “How did you survive?” Jamie said, then hesitated, not sure how to clarify her meaning with any sort of delicacy. The disease had been spread and respread through human contact. And Mila was . . .

  “I wasn’t working at the time.” Mila lifted her hand to touch the bruise beneath her eye. “I had a client who got angry when I wouldn’t . . . Well, it doesn’t matter. They told me to keep out of the way until I healed. He was someone important, and they didn’t want trouble. I stayed upstairs and someone brought my meals up. When I got sick no one came.” She looked down, fingers twining together. “I thought I was going to die. I tried to get downstairs. I could hear people. Some shouting. Someone crying. But I couldn’t walk. And anyway . . .” She gave Jamie a swift look, as though assessing how much this stranger might understand. “I thought if I was going to die, maybe dying alone would be okay. Being with someone isn’t always better, is it?”

  Jamie didn’t reply. What would have happened if she’d still been with Daniel when the disease struck? They didn’t touch as casually as other people they knew. There were some couples who brushed one another’s arm when they spoke, or leaned against one another, as though they had to keep reminding themselves that they were one of two. Daniel had learned when to touch her and when to let her have her space. So maybe they would have made it, the pair of them.

  Callan and Gracie appeared around the side of the ship. The engineer was shaking her head, and Callan looked irritated. Another dispute over this fresh set of survivors, no doubt.

  Callan came over, casting his eye over the stacked cart. “That the medicines?”

  She nodded.

  “Is there likely to be any Lycidine in there?” Lowry said.

  “Probably not in the multipacks,” Jamie said. “But there were some more specialist supplies. Do you need some?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got a rather irritating little heart condition that surfaces at times of stress. If you tell me where the medicines are, I’ll go and look.”

  “Quicker if I do it,” Jamie said. With the moment of their departure growing closer, she had an irrational urge to go back to the depot, to prove to herself that there’d never been anyone there.

  That they wouldn’t be leaving anyone behind.

  • • •

  As she stepped through the door, Jamie could feel the back of her neck prickling.

  It was just the sudden chill of the place. That was all.

  Her gaze fell on a doorway tucked into the alcove at the side of the shutter. She could see through it into a small office. A desk was tipped on its side in front of the door, as though to form a barrier of sorts. Jamie walked over to look inside, stopping dead on the threshold. The little room had been converted into something resembling a bunker. There were crates stacked around the walls, and a mattress was pushed into the corner, with a tangle of blankets on top.

  And the body of a man lay facedown on the floor.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Jamie suddenly seemed to be breathing ice, fear crackling inside her lungs.

  The man looked to have been about fifty, with thinning hair and a muscled frame. Now he was slack and gray-skinned, the only color about him coming from the rusty stains on the concrete floor, where the blood had seeped from the ragged wounds in his head and side.

  For a moment the implications of the scene failed to register. There was just the utter shock of that lifeless form. In all the days since she woke from the fever, Jamie had never once seen death. Just dust. Just emptiness. But this was death in its most solid, undeniable form. As she took a stuttering step backward, her foot twisted and almost gave way. She grabbed at the door frame as a scatter of flies leaped up from the body with a buzz of noise that echoed the sudden ringing in her ears. She twisted around, her breath catching in her throat, utterly certain that she would find someone there, watching her from the shadows.

  The depot was still and silent but for the buzzing of the flies, but there was a sense of menace so palpable that she could almost feel it pressing against her skin.

  The bad man.

  Mila’s voice echoed in Jamie’s thoughts as she broke and ran, ducking out of the door and onto the concourse. Her legs were just fractionally heavier than they should have been, the planet’s unfamiliar gravity registering for the first time. It was like one of those dreams where you try to run and your body only half responds. As she reached the ship, Callan and Gracie stepped out onto the gangway. The engineer suddenly stopped and pointed, not at Jamie, but at something behind her.

  Jamie looked back over her shoulder and saw smoke rising from somewhere beyond the surrounding buildings. Her feet clanged on the metal gangway as she stumbled toward Callan and Gracie.r />
  “The depot . . .” she began, but Callan cut across her.

  “Forget it. Let’s go.”

  “Tank’s not full yet,” Gracie said.

  “We’ve got enough to be going along with.” He looked across at the smoke. “I’m not inclined to hang around.”

  “It could be a signal,” Gracie said.

  “You think?” Callan gave the engineer a blistering look. “Let’s get going. Maybe the girl wasn’t so far off the mark with this bad man talk.”

  “She was right.”

  They both turned to stare at Jamie.

  “The depot. There’s a body. A man. Someone shot him.”

  Gracie hesitated for a moment, then scrambled down the side of the gangway and jogged over to detach the fuel hose.

  As Callan turned to watch her, his eyes suddenly widened and he spun back toward the ship, shouting his engineer’s name.

  Fire. Licking up in the corner of the shipyard, close to the great fueling tanks, the reflected flames dancing in the muted rainbow surface of a slick of spilled oil.

  As Jamie stood frozen, there was a misleadingly quiet thump of sound, and that shimmer disappeared in a leap of flame, almost as high as the tanks.

  “Gracie.” Callan yelled it again, grabbing Jamie’s shoulder and shoving her toward the doors.

  The engineer yanked the fuel hose free, then slammed the panel closed and ran for the gangway. The doors were already closing as she reached them, and she pushed through the narrowing gap, knocking Jamie aside.

  There was an acrid stench in the air, and Jamie’s throat was already starting to itch. Then the doors closed and the sharp sting of smoke gave way to the familiar, slightly stale taste of the ship’s air supply.

  Callan ran for the stairs, ignoring the other passengers, save for a swift “Get strapped in” thrown back over his shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” Rena stared after him, one hand going to her throat.

  “Fire.” Jamie stepped forward.

  Mila’s eyes widened. “The bad man?”