The Space Between the Stars

by Anne Corlett

  • • •

  The task took longer than she expected, and by the time she returned to the hold, Finn was gone and there were signs of people having already eaten and dispersed. The sea glass had been placed back in the jar, and the makeshift table dismantled. She made herself a quick dinner, then returned to the sleeping quarters, where she knocked first on Finn’s door, then on Mila’s. There was no answer from either of them. She was about to go into her own cabin when she heard the scrape of another door and turned to see Rena peering out. The other woman’s eyes looked red and scuffed, and she was picking at the skin of her forearm.

  “I looked for you earlier.” Rena’s lips twisted into a tight rictus that was probably supposed to be a smile. “I couldn’t find you.”

  “Callan asked me to catalog the medical supplies.” Jamie reached for the door handle. Conversations with Rena were like some sinister obstacle course. One minute you’d be ambling along on solid footing; the next moment the ground had opened up and you were being sucked into a dark underworld, where fate and the gods waited to harangue you with their own version of why things were.

  Rena took a couple of uncertain steps out into the corridor. “I could have helped you.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a big job.”

  “But I’d like to help.” Rena crossed her arms across her chest. “You’re helping, and I’m not doing anything.”

  “You could try not upsetting Finn.” Jamie opened her cabin door. “That might help.”

  Rena looked down at the floor, her arms tightening around her thin frame.

  “I’m sorry.” She sounded brittle. “I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you.” She moved her hands in a nervous gesture. “People like you. You can talk to them and they understand what you mean. I don’t . . .” She twisted her fingers together, then continued in a rush. “I always get it wrong. Say the wrong thing. People don’t . . . I can’t make them understand. I can’t make them like me.”

  “It’s not about making things difficult for me.” Stiff with discomfort, Jamie decided it was safest to ignore the other woman’s halting confession. “It’s about Finn. It must be hard enough for him without . . .” She caught herself before she could finish with the accusatory you. “. . . people making things worse.”

  “It’s not . . .” Rena stopped, nipping at her lip with her teeth. When she continued her tone was edged with something that sounded almost like defiance. “I don’t understand why he survived.”

  “I don’t know. I guess he must have been fairly isolated.”

  Rena shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. So many dead. Those of us who survived . . . it must have been God’s will. He has a plan for us, a place for all of us in his new world.”

  Jamie stared at her for a moment, and then understanding dawned. “You don’t think Finn’s good enough for this new world of yours. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Rena gave another shake of her head, a quick, spasmlike movement. “You don’t understand. It’s not that simple.”

  “Seems pretty simple to me.” Jamie’s dislike was a sour taste on her tongue. “Brave new world, but only by your invitation.” She deliberately let her lip curl. “Or your god’s.”

  “I don’t . . . You see? I never make people understand.”

  “I understand perfectly.” Jamie turned away. “I’ll leave you to your plans for the perfect world.”

  “Jamie.” Rena took a step toward her, her voice almost pleading. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Jamie went into her cabin. “Good night.”

  As she closed the door behind her, she heard the other woman say something else, but she couldn’t make out the words. She stood still, waiting to hear the sound of footsteps, but it was several long moments before they came. Her heartbeat was a dull, resentful thud, and she took a steadying breath. She was conscious of the faintest edge of guilt to the outbreath. There’d been something vulnerable about Rena in the first moments of that exchange. What would have happened if she’d been gentler with the other woman?

  She walked away from the door, undressed, and climbed into bed. It wasn’t up to her to bring Rena into the fold. She just wanted to get where she was going and find Daniel. Then she’d know what all this was about. They could start again, just the two of them.

  As her thoughts began to splinter into sleep, three words echoed through her mind in a mocking tone that sounded like Rena.

  Brave new world.

  It’s summer, and the birds are singing at her mother’s funeral.

  She feels nothing. She’s felt nothing since the two policewomen came to her father’s house and had that low-voiced conversation behind a closed door.

  Or that’s what she tells herself. The truth is that there is something hidden deep inside, but it’s the wrong shape for grief, and she can’t risk letting it out, because then everyone will see it and they’ll know.

  So she stands at the graveside and watches other people mourn. She’s off to one side of the proceedings, with other people taking the central places. Her mother’s sister has stepped into the role of chief mourner, although the two of them hadn’t spoken in years. But somehow she ended up in the car behind the hearse, and somehow she was the one standing at the church door, draped in black and welcoming the mourners in. She shook Jamie’s hand too, holding on for a moment too long, as though she had just remembered not to say Thank you for coming, it means so much to us to the daughter of the deceased.

  Some of Jamie’s classmates are there. It’s the popular crowd, mostly. They’re wearing black dresses and black eye makeup and their hair is loose and gleaming. They cry when the coffin’s carried in. One of them has to be held up by her friends. Jamie doesn’t remember if she ever met her mother.

  After the service, her headmistress, a blunt-edged nun who’s never spoken to her except to say Walk, or Quiet in the corridor, takes Jamie’s face in her hands and asks, Have you cried yet? When Jamie shakes her head, her headmistress asks, Why not? Jamie doesn’t have an answer, and her stepmother steps in.

  Thank you for coming. It means so much.

  The burial’s not like in the films, where a serene-faced priest intones Ashes to ashes, as the mourners stand around a neat grave against a backdrop of blossom trees. The ground’s uneven, with a pile of soil beside the open grave. There’s another fresh mound to the side, so the mourners have to stand at the end like a disorganized bus queue, while the priest totters around the edge of the grave with a bucket of soil for them to throw. Jamie’s near the back. Her stepmother tried to get to her, but the places at the front were already taken by then, and she’d have had to fight her way through the ranks of mourners. She stands behind a couple of her classmates and an elderly neighbor, and by the time she reaches the front, the bucket’s almost empty. She scrabbles around for a moment and manages to scrape together a pebbly handful of soil, which she throws, overarm, into the grave. As it clatters onto the coffin, she wonders if it was too forceful, if her headmistress will find her and take her face in her hands and say, Are you angry?

  People are coming back to the house afterward, but she doesn’t think they’ll notice if she isn’t there. She can slip away down the path to the beach, and when she gets there she can run and run and run—until she’s too far away for anyone to touch her, or ask her questions she couldn’t answer even if she wanted.

  CHAPTER

  8

  It was still dark in her cabin when she was woken by a knock on the door. As she sat up, fumbling for the switch, the knock came again, sharp and peremptory.

  “Okay.” She scrambled down the ladder and scratched around for something more suitable than the shorts and tank top she’d slept in. She found a sweater and threw it over the top before opening the door.

  Callan stood outside, leaning on the door frame. As his gaze flicked over her, she was suddenly cons
cious of her bare legs beneath the baggy hem of the sweater. She resisted the urge to tug it down.

  “I need you up on the bridge,” he said, with no preliminaries. “We’ve made contact with a settlement on Gelta. A fair number of survivors, apparently. They’re willing to trade for fuel. I’ve offered medical supplies, but they want to know exactly what we’re carrying. You did the inventory yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He pushed himself off the door frame. “Get up to the bridge as soon as you can. Better if you talk to their main man, rather than me relaying it.”

  Jamie forced away the instinctive resentment. The request might not have been framed in the most graceful of terms, but it was a perfectly reasonable one.

  When she made her way up to the bridge, she found Callan on the comm, talking to a middle-aged man. He gestured for her to take his place in front of the screen.

  “This is Jamie, our medic.”

  Jamie gave him a sharp look, but he just shrugged and handed her the stock-reader.

  Vet, medic, whatever, she could almost hear him saying.

  “Morning, Doctor,” the man said. “Name’s Garrett. I seem to have wound up in charge of this settlement.” He gave her a quick smile. “For my sins.”

  “How many survivors are there?” she asked.

  “Thirty-one.”

  Jamie’s heart gave a hard thud. Gelta wasn’t a particularly densely populated world as far as she knew, so that survival rate wasn’t zero point zero zero zero one. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

  “How did so many people make it?” she asked.

  “We’re a mining settlement,” Garrett said. “Mainly male laborers living in single workers’ quarters. It was fairly easy to enforce a quarantine. Also, we had a delayed supply run, so we got hit a fair bit later than most places. If we’d gotten the news a day earlier we wouldn’t have let the ship land at all.”

  “You’ve done better than most,” Callan put in.

  “I’m sure. But thirty-one out of around fifteen thousand. It’s taking a bit of time for us to feel lucky, if you’ll forgive me for saying.”

  “I understand you need medical supplies,” Jamie said.

  He nodded. “The last delivery was light of a few things. We were due a shipment of Eripex. You got any on board?”

  Jamie consulted the stock-reader. “We’ve got two boxes. It has pretty limited uses, mind. It’s primarily a skin cancer treatment.”

  “We’ve got a high carcinoma rate here,” Garrett said. “Low ozone and strong sun. If we didn’t have so many people working underground, we’d have far more cases. It’s a good growing climate, mind, and we’re fairly self-sufficient. Can’t have everything, I suppose.” He looked down at a list. “The rest is fairly standard stuff,” he said. “Oxynril, Diadrin, and we could probably do with some Paxinell as well. If you’re good for all that, then we can do business.”

  Callan glanced at Jamie, his eyebrows raised. When she nodded, he turned back to the screen.

  “You’ve definitely got enough fuel stocks? I don’t want to land and find we’re stuck.”

  The man smiled. “Trust me, Captain. We don’t want you stuck here either. We’ll need other supplies in due course.”

  “I should have mentioned we’re at capacity in terms of passengers,” Callan said. “I’m happy to carry messages, but if anyone’s wanting off-planet . . .”

  The man shook his head. “We’re not in any hurry to leave. The administration’s never bothered much with us, beyond paying for what we dig up. We’ve got a decent enough setup here. No point haring off hoping for a better deal somewhere else.”

  Callan nodded. “Okay. We’ll be with you in less than an hour. We’re running on standard time here, so early morning. What clock are you on?”

  “Right now we’re at central plus five,” the man said. “A twenty-six-hour cycle, so plenty of daylight left. I’ll see you at the landing site.”

  The screen flicked off and Jamie got up, expecting Callan to take her place, but he was looking toward the doorway. Gracie was standing there, arms folded.

  “Do you have something to say?” Callan asked his engineer.

  Gracie unfolded her arms and shoved her hands into the pockets of her slacks. “Is there any point me saying it?”

  “Gets it out in the open.”

  “Okay, then,” Gracie said. “I don’t think we should land. I’ve run some calculations and we’ve just about enough fuel to get us to the capital—if we take it easy and don’t make any more stops.”

  “Or we could refuel here and not have to worry about eking out our tanks until we’re running on fumes.”

  “We’ve got enough,” Gracie repeated. “We don’t need to take the risk. You heard him. There are more than thirty stranded down there. You’re assuming they’re going to be happy to refuel us and wave us on our way, not knowing if they’ll ever see another ship.”

  “Thirty-one’s a decent-sized community,” Callan said. “And if they’re mainly self-sufficient, they’re in a far better situation than most survivors.”

  “That’s assuming he was telling the truth,” Gracie pointed out.

  Callan sat down in the seat Jamie had vacated. “Your comments are noted.”

  Gracie didn’t move. “Why?” she said. “Why are we suddenly hell-bent on being the conquering heroes?”

  “What else are we going to do?” Callan said. “Sit on the ship, twiddling our thumbs until we’re about ready to kill each other just for something to do? Fly about until we fall out of the sky? Like it or not, we’re part of whatever comes next, so we might as well get on with it.”

  Gracie regarded him contemplatively. “I thought you didn’t want to help build a new world.”

  “Well, it’s going to be built, whether or not I choose to throw a few bricks in, and we’ll have to figure out our place in it.”

  “I thought that’s why we were heading to the capital,” Gracie said.

  Callan turned back to the helm. “I don’t think there’ll be any big surprises waiting for us there. Okay, we don’t know how many are alive. But there’ll be stocks of food and medicine, same as everywhere. And the infrastructure’s still working, for the most part. This isn’t some nuclear wasteland. People and skills are the things that will be in short supply. As settlements are reestablished they’ll need us. They’ll need our goodwill.”

  “Or they could just take the ship. Cut out the middleman.”

  “No one’s taking anything of mine.”

  Gracie shrugged and turned away. “It’s your ship.”

  When she’d gone, Callan glanced at Jamie. “You better go wake the others. Tell them to get strapped in.”

  Jamie nodded slowly but didn’t move.

  Callan gave her a sharp look. “What?”

  She fiddled with a piece of loose casing on the comms console. “I just wonder if Gracie might be right.”

  “Really? I seem to remember you being all for setting down and saving the day back on Pangaea.”

  Jamie ignored the edge in his voice. “That was different. That was someone asking for help, someone who might be alone. These people aren’t alone.”

  “So it’s a numbers game, is it?” Callan hit a quick-fire sequence of buttons on the helm. “How many people on a planet before they pass your they’ll just have to cope test?”

  Anger flickered up inside Jamie. For a moment she considered just walking away. But for some reason she needed to make him understand.

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “It’s . . .”

  “We need to refuel,” Callan said. “If we hadn’t landed on Pangaea, we wouldn’t. But we did. Partly due to your insistence. So we need to set down here.”

  Jamie tried to keep her tone level. “Gracie said we didn’t.”

  “How com
e Gracie’s suddenly the font of all wisdom as far as you’re concerned?”

  “I just thought . . .”

  Callan gave a faint smile. “Well, thanks for the thought. Good thing I’ve got so many people to do my thinking for me. Now if you’ll go and wake the rest of them, we’ll get down, get fueled, and get on our way.”

  • • •

  The landing site was a wide concrete space, built for the vast cargo ships that served the industrial settlements. The port seemed to have been absorbed into the surrounding settlement, with narrow alleys and service roads leading off in all directions. To the west, the town had spread up onto the foothills, and beyond the edge of the built-up area a dirt road led off to where the mines crouched against the rising ground, ragged and bulky.

  Garrett was waiting on the concourse, flanked by a couple of young lads. Jamie and the others waited at the entrance while Callan disembarked. After the two men had spoken for a few moments, Garrett nodded to his companions.

  Callan walked back up the gangway. “The lads will unload the goods. You’ve checked it?”

  “It’s all there.”

  Callan turned to Gracie. “You good to get on with the refueling? He offered to find someone to help if we need it, but I’d rather not have anyone messing about with my ship.”

  Gracie nodded. “I’ll get started.”

  “Is there a store?” Mila asked.

  “I expect so,” Callan said. “You need something?”

  “A few bits and pieces.”

  “You could see if there’s any fresh food.” Lowry was looking out across the settlement. “I’m going to take a walk. See how people are doing.”

  “Planning on holding a prayer meeting?” Callan said.

  Lowry smiled. “If they want one. But I was just thinking they might be glad of a chance to talk to someone from off-planet. Being a preacher’s sometimes like being a pressure valve. People see the collar and suddenly find they want to talk about things they’ve been keeping bottled up. Even the ones who don’t believe in anything.”