The Space Between the Stars

by Anne Corlett

“Not Callan,” Lowry said. “But the other two said they’d be down.” He grinned. “I’m not sure Gracie intended to say yes. I think I just caught her on the hop and she couldn’t think of an excuse.”

  Jamie nodded toward the china. “Where did that come from?”

  “Mila found it in one of the crates.” Lowry’s smile faded. Jamie knew what he was thinking. These had been someone’s pride and joy once. “I suppose it’s better that they’re used, rather than sitting in a crate forever.” He found another smile. “There’s more to see. Mila came across all sorts of things.”

  Mila grinned at Jamie over her shoulder. “Just a second.” She wiped her hands on a cloth and gestured to a space to the side of the eating area. “Finn helped me move some of the crates.”

  At the back of the cleared space there was a large packing case, with the front and top removed to reveal something so out of keeping with its surroundings that Jamie laughed out loud.

  “A piano.” She walked over and brushed her fingers across the yellowing keys.

  “A grand piano,” Lowry said. “And a Bechstein at that. It’s got to be a couple of hundred years old.”

  “A piano,” Jamie said again. “And that china. Someone was taking their whole life with them. You’d have thought they’d have wanted a new start if they were going to the trouble of moving all the way out here.”

  “No one ever starts over,” Lowry said. “Not really. They had their Bechstein. You have your sea glass.”

  A voice spoke from behind them. “What’s going on?”

  Jamie turned to see Rena staring at the piano. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second before the other woman jerked her head away.

  “Mila found it,” Lowry said.

  “Can you play?” Jamie asked him.

  He laughed. “I could probably manage that tune, what was it? Everyone learned it in school.” He pantomimed playing the piano with two fingers. “‘Chopsticks.’” He looked at Rena. “You used to play, didn’t you?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember how.”

  “Maybe you can give it a go later,” Lowry said.

  “I don’t remember.” Rena turned away and walked over to sit down at the table.

  Mila looked around. “We’re ready. Where’s Gracie?”

  Lowry took the seat next to Rena. “We should probably start. She may have been held up.”

  Or she might have thought better of the whole idea. Jamie walked over and took a seat at the opposite end of the table to Rena.

  “We’ve got rice,” Mila said, tapping a battered spoon on the side of the cooking pot. “And a tomato . . . thing. I just mixed the onions and carrots in with the tomatoes and some other bits.”

  “I’m sure it will be lovely,” Lowry said. “Pass your bowls over. I’ll serve.”

  Gracie arrived as Lowry was still dishing up. She made no apology for her lateness and took the seat on the end. As soon as Lowry had served her food, she picked up her fork, not waiting for anyone else.

  “Where’s Callan?” she said, between mouthfuls.

  Lowry shook his head. “He wasn’t too keen on the idea.”

  Gracie gave him a cool smile. “You mean he said he’d rather chew his own balls off than sit down to dinner with the rest of us.”

  Rena gave Gracie a look of intense dislike, but Lowry laughed.

  “He didn’t put it quite like that.”

  “How is he?” Jamie asked. “I was going to find him, give him another shot, but I was . . .” Rena was a heavy, glowering presence at the other end of the table. “I got distracted.”

  “He seemed all right,” Lowry said. “Moving a bit slowly, but that’s about it.”

  They lapsed back into silence. Mila looked strained and unhappy, shooting furtive glances around the table to check that people were eating. Her gaze fell on Rena, who was chewing slowly, her face creased in a frown.

  “Don’t you like it?” Mila said. “I could make you something else.”

  “It’s fine.” Rena spoke without looking at Mila.

  “I’d make the most of it,” Gracie said. “We’ll be on tinned and frozen for the rest of the trip. We’ve got enough fuel to get us to the capital, so we’re not likely to stop again.”

  “What if we come across more survivors?” Mila asked.

  Gracie stopped, her fork halfway to her mouth. “Really? Because our last stop worked out so well, didn’t it?” She finished that mouthful and washed it down with a swig of beer. “Besides, we’ve got no more space. Unless you fancy sharing a bunk.”

  Rena laughed, a vicious bark that she immediately smothered with the back of her hand. Mila flinched, looking down at her lap.

  Jamie felt a surge of hatred. “Well, I don’t think anyone’s going to be lining up to share with you,” she said. “Not that you’d want us.” When Rena turned to glare at her, Jamie held her gaze. “It’s a pity the rest of us survived. I’m sure you’d have been much happier alone, with all us sinners turned to dust.” She found a hard little nub of laughter of her own. It didn’t sound like her. None of this sounded like her. And the odd thing was that she didn’t care. She and Rena would never be able to live alongside one another. Not if they were the only two people in the universe. “That’s the kind of thing they went in for in the Old Testament, isn’t it? Maybe your god sent this plague to sort out the sheep from the goats. Only you got stuck with the goats.”

  Rena stood up, her stool crashing onto the floor, and Mila flinched again. Finn was gripping the edge of the table with both hands.

  “I don’t have to sit here and listen to you mocking my beliefs.”

  “No,” Jamie said. “You don’t.”

  “Jamie.” Lowry reached across the table. “I know today was . . .”

  Jamie pulled her hand away. “This isn’t about what happened today.”

  “Then what is it? Rena? What’s . . .”

  “The virus was nothing to do with God.” A muscle twitched just below Rena’s eye.

  “Really?” Jamie raised an eyebrow, deliberately provocative. “I thought you said he’d gotten tired of waiting for us to get it right.”

  “No, I don’t . . .” Rena put her hands to her forehead. “Maybe . . . I don’t know, I don’t know. But we’re the ones he saved. He must have a plan for us all.”

  Jamie felt a little of the heat go out of her anger, leaving a sharp metallic taste in her mouth. “Then maybe you should get on board with that plan.” She picked up her fork again. “Like it or not, we’re what’s left.”

  Lowry righted Rena’s stool. “Sit down,” he said, quietly. “Please.”

  Rena resisted for a moment, then sank slowly into her seat.

  Lowry looked around the table. “This is new ground for all of us. But we have to make room for everyone. For everyone’s beliefs. That’s the only way this will work.”

  “The space between the stars.” Rena was plucking at her skin again. “The space between the stars.”

  The sound of footsteps broke into the tension, and Callan appeared through the crates, moving slowly but straight and upright. He seemed about to walk past to the galley, but Mila stood up, seizing the distraction.

  “There’s some of this left. I can get another bowl.”

  Callan looked around the silent table, his eyes meeting Jamie’s for a brief second. “Okay.”

  Mila pattered off to the kitchen and came back with a bowl, while Lowry pulled another crate over to the table. Callan lowered himself carefully onto the makeshift seat.

  “Thanks.” He picked up his fork.

  “How are you feeling?” Lowry asked.

  “Fine. The vet did a good job.” He turned to Gracie. “Everything okay with the ship?”

  “Yes, she’s running fine. Enough fuel to get us to the capital in one push.”

 
“Right.” When he spoke again, he didn’t look up. “May need to make one more stop.”

  “There’s a signal?” Lowry said.

  “No. Just a stop I need to make.”

  “Where?” Gracie stared at him.

  “Methuen.” Callan got up and went to the fridge for a beer, which he opened on the sharp edge of the counter.

  “What’s on Methuen?” Gracie asked.

  “Just something I need to check.” He gave Mila a brief smile as he sat back down again. “Good food. Maybe I should give you a job.”

  Jamie expected Mila to return the smile, but instead she ducked her head again, her hands knotting together on her lap. Was it always the first thing she thought of when someone spoke to her? Do they know what I do?

  “When will we be there?” Finn spoke for the first time since they’d sat down. He had separated his food into two sections, not touching one another, and he was carefully alternating mouthfuls of rice with mouthfuls of sauce.

  “On the capital?” Callan said. “About a day and a half.”

  Finn shook his head. “Earth. She said we were going to Earth.”

  Callan loaded rice onto his fork. “We don’t know what we’re going to find on the capital. No point worrying about what comes after.”

  “But you could take us.” Rena leaned forward. “You said you didn’t know where you were going after the capital. Why not Earth?”

  “Rena,” Lowry said, warningly.

  Rena kept her gaze fixed on Callan. “You said it yourself. You want to see the lie of the land. There’ll be survivors on Earth. There’ll be people wanting to get from there to the capital, people needing supplies.”

  Callan raised an eyebrow. “Earth’s a pretty big place. Can’t think they’re going to need anything shipped in from the settlements.”

  “Well, there might be other people wanting to go there,” Rena persisted. “It won’t be overcrowded anymore. Everyone could go back. Anyone who wanted to.”

  Callan laughed. “Oh well, that’s one bonus of most of humanity being wiped out. Pity we didn’t see it coming. If we’d known the population was going to be reduced anyway, we might not have bothered with all those forced-emigration programs. We might have left people where they wanted to be.”

  Rena tipped her head, searching his face. There was something about her contemplative gaze that reminded Jamie that the other woman was a scientist. She’d caught a glimpse of something and was turning it over in her mind, trying to work out how it might be used.

  “Is that where you wanted to be?” Rena asked. “Did you have to leave?”

  Jamie saw her eyes flick to Callan’s hand, and she found herself doing the same. His ID mark circled his left forefinger, its sharp lines marred by a scar just below the knuckle. Funny how he hadn’t had it redone, slightly lower down. A damaged mark generally meant all sorts of holdups and problems every time you had a brush with officialdom.

  It took her a moment to register the meaning of the mark’s positioning.

  Forefinger.

  Lower echelon.

  She’d probably have assumed middle, if she’d given it any thought at all. Someone who’d rejected the steady respectability of that level of the social hierarchy and gone his own way. Perfectly well educated but without the expensive polish of a stint at university. Once again, Jamie was conscious of a faint discomfort. She kept getting him wrong. Not that it mattered. He was just the owner of the ship that happened to be taking them to Alegria. That was all.

  “Lots of people had to leave,” Callan said.

  “Then maybe this is what we’re meant to be doing,” Rena replied, her eyes blazing with a sudden certainty. “Going home. Getting everyone back home.”

  “Everyone?” Jamie’s dislike leaped up so readily that she couldn’t avoid the thought that maybe it was a mask for something else. “Do you really mean everyone, or just the godly?”

  “You don’t have to come.” Rena rounded on Jamie.

  “Don’t talk as though you’re doing me some favor,” Jamie said. “Graciously allowing me to tag along on your great pilgrimage. Northumberland’s not even your home. It’s just something you’re using to convince yourself there’s some pattern, that God’s chosen you. No one’s chosen any of us. We just survived, that’s all.”

  “And that’s enough,” Lowry said. “We survived, and now we have to work out a way to live in whatever this new world is going to be.”

  “We have to shape that world,” Rena said.

  “We do that by living in it,” Lowry said. “Together.”

  Jamie gave a sharp laugh. “That’s working out well so far.”

  Lowry tapped the table with his palm, the first trace of irritation Jamie had seen from him. “I don’t mean we have to live pressed up against one another. There’s going to be space enough for everyone.”

  “There always was,” Callan said. “The problem is that most people seem to want everyone else to believe what they believe, like that will make them more right.” He took another swig of his beer. “Seems to me that a lot of our problems would disappear if people stopped believing in things and just settled for knowing things.”

  “It’s the same thing,” Rena said.

  “It’s not,” Callan said. “When you know something, it’s just how it is. Believing isn’t as certain as that.” He gave a lopsided smile. “People who believe are always looking for proof, always trying to twist the world to make it fit, so they can say, There you go, I was right all along.”

  “Believing means following through.” Rena’s voice was growing high and agitated. “Doing what you know is right.”

  “And you know what’s right, do you?” Jamie couldn’t let it go.

  “There was too much in the way before,” Rena said. “I couldn’t see clearly. But now . . .”

  A line from an old song floated incongruously through Jamie’s mind.

  I can see clearly now, the rain has gone.

  “What can you see?” she said. “What’s God showing you?”

  “The pieces of a puzzle,” Rena replied.

  “Really?” Jamie raised her eyebrows. “That’s got to be a puzzle with a fair few broken pieces. And missing ones. You’d have thought God would give you better stuff to work with.”

  “He doesn’t show you everything.” Rena’s hostility had given way to a sudden fervor. “Just enough to figure it out yourself.”

  “Why?” Jamie thought of her grandfather on the beach, talking to a woman with a handful of sea fragments and faith. “If there were a god, why wouldn’t he want you to be sure?”

  “He tests us.”

  Jamie laughed again, a tight, humorless sound. “So how are we doing?”

  Finn was gripping the edge of the table again. Callan glanced at him, then turned to Mila.

  “Well, this is all very lovely, isn’t it. Bet you’re glad you came up with this idea.”

  “I’m sorry.” Mila’s voice was low. “I just thought . . .”

  “Hey.” Callan tapped his fork in front of her. “This.” He gestured around the table. “Not your fault. Some people could do with calming down a bit.” His gaze flicked to Jamie, who felt another surge of anger. It was duller this time, with the heat gone out of it. She could fan it as much as she wanted, but it was going to go out sooner or later, leaving her cold and guilty.

  “Fuck you.” She shoved her stool back from the table and walked out, her feet overloud on the metal floor.

  • • •

  Callan caught up with her outside her quarters.

  “What was all that about?” He was looking at her with detached curiosity, as though she were some malfunctioning part of his ship.

  Jamie shook her head. “All that crap about God’s will, and destiny, when she’s the one who’s built a career out of fiddling with nature.” It
was a weak excuse for such a vicious exchange, but she wasn’t going to tell him about the conversation in the shower room. “I’m not sure even she knows what it is she believes. It seems to change every day to fit with whatever’s going on.”

  “Isn’t that what people do? The world around us changes, and we have to change to keep up?”

  Jamie shook her head again and didn’t answer.

  “You could have let it go,” Callan said. “It might all have calmed down if you’d just shut up.”

  She felt a last shove of anger, ragged and limping. “Don’t tell me what to do.” She sounded ridiculous, like the stereotypical teenager she hadn’t been. Her father and stepmother would probably have preferred her to scream and break things. Anything but that impenetrable silence; any conflict met with a sharp withdrawal.

  “For fuck’s sake.” He ran an impatient hand through his hair. “Want to tell me I’m not the boss of you while we’re at it? It’s my ship. I’m not exactly enforcing martial law, but if I do tell you to do something, I expect you to do it. We’re all cooped up in a glorified tin can, with an awful lot of space around us. Even more than there used to be. I’ve seen shipboard arguments go very badly wrong. I don’t need someone going space-crazy and trying to eject us all into the void because you and she can’t sort out your differences. It doesn’t matter who believes what.”

  “It’s not just about what she believes,” Jamie said. “She looks at Mila like she’s something the cat’s dragged in, and she doesn’t look at Finn at all, if she can possibly help it.”

  “And what happened between the two of you?” Callan went straight to what she wasn’t saying. “I’d have thought you’d be just her cup of tea. Upper echelon, respectable.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Callan stood up straight, his hand going to his side. “You’re right. It doesn’t. There’s no room on a ship this size for all that clutter and baggage. It’s exactly why I rotate my crew regularly. Clean things out before they can turn bad.”

  “Isn’t that hard?” That idea distracted Jamie from the main thrust of her anger. “Living so closely with people, then just moving on?”

  “Much easier than living with the consequences when it all goes wrong.”