The Space Between the Stars

by Anne Corlett

  Jamie leaned back against the door. Her anger had given way to curiosity. And something more. An unsettling sense that she needed to understand him, to make another connection, like that brief moment in his cabin when he’d seen more than she’d meant to show. But wasn’t this exactly what he was talking about? They were just traveling together. When people started pushing too close, filling the spaces between them with their own beliefs and hurts and needs, that was when things went wrong.

  “Why did you pick us up? Why bring more people on board when you don’t seem to think that much of people in general?”

  He gave her a faint smile. “I don’t mind people. As long as they keep all their peopleness to themselves and don’t try to make everyone else buy into it.”

  “That seems to be the problem,” Jamie said.

  His smile fell away. “Well, it better stop being a problem.”

  Her resentment flared again. “Is that another order?”

  Frustration flickered across Callan’s face, and he looked away, as though feeling for what he wanted to say. But when he turned back to her, his expression was cool. “Yes,” he said. “We’ve only got a day and a half till we get to the capital. Shouldn’t be too hard to keep the peace.”

  “And then?” There was a hollow forming behind Jamie’s ribs at the idea of what came next. Callan hadn’t committed himself to the second leg of their journey, but she realized that she’d assumed he would agree to take them on. Perversely she found herself wanting to push for confirmation of her suspicions that Alegria would see him discharge his responsibility for them. “I suppose you’ll be glad to see the back of us and get off on your own again.”

  Callan stared at her for a moment, then shrugged, a bare hitch of his shoulders. “Probably for the best,” he said, then turned and walked away.

  Jamie watched him go, aware of the urge to call him back and say . . . what? He’d never wanted them on his ship. That much was clear. Whatever impulse had led to him bringing them on board, it was spent, and there was no reason for him to offer them any more of his time or thought. If she wanted to get to Earth, she’d have to find another way. There were other ships out there. Gracie had seen traces. Someone would be going to Earth, sooner or later. This was just a step on her journey.

  Nothing more than that.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Jamie stayed late in her bunk the following morning, and when she finally ventured downstairs, she found the galley area deserted and all signs of the dinner party cleared away.

  She took her coffee back to her cabin, settled in with her e-reader, and tried to forget where she was. She heard the occasional echo of footsteps, but no one knocked for her.

  She finished one book without much of its meaning sinking in, and started another, picked out at random from her unread list. She had to read the first page three times, and she still hadn’t finished the chapter when the intercom crackled, the static giving way to Callan’s clipped tones.

  “We will be setting down on Methuen in approximately fifteen minutes. Get ready for landing.”

  Down in the hold she found the others already in their seats. Lowry nodded to her and Mila gave her a small smile, but Rena kept her gaze averted.

  “Has he said why we’re stopping?” she asked.

  Lowry shook his head. “He hasn’t been down this morning.”

  It was a rockier landing than usual, and the ship pitched slightly before setting down. Callan arrived in the hold before they’d finished undoing their harnesses.

  “Sorry about that.” He barely gave them a glance as he headed over to the door release. “Ground looked smoother than it was.”

  “We’re not on the landing platform?” Lowry said.

  “A couple of miles out of port.”

  Weak sunlight washed in as the doors creaked open. Callan didn’t bother with the gangway, sitting down on the edge of the bay and dropping to the ground.

  “I won’t be long,” he said. “There are stores in town if you need anything, but bear in mind we’ll be on Alegria soon.”

  Jamie walked over to the doors and looked out. The ship was resting on an expanse of grass beside a well-maintained road. A fairly sizable town lay to the right. Callan was walking briskly in the opposite direction, toward the open gates of a large, institutional-looking building set in expansive grounds.

  “Shouldn’t we look around?” Lowry joined Jamie at the open doors.

  “There were no beacons.” Gracie appeared behind them. “I checked the comm on approach.”

  “Still worth a look, surely,” Lowry said.

  “Fine,” Gracie said, sitting down and swinging her legs over the edge. “I might see if I can find the comms station anyway. I’ve tried a couple of times, and there’s some static, but our set isn’t strong enough to reach Alegria.”

  “Anyone else?” Lowry looked at the other passengers.

  Rena spoke first. “I’ll come with you.”

  Jamie shook her head.

  When the others were gone, Jamie sat down on the edge of the cargo bay. The sky was overcast, with the odd patch of sun breaking through. The grass had that slight bluish tinge that characterized all the worlds in the central part of the system. It had taken her a while to get used to it when she first came out from Earth. You didn’t notice it so much up close, but when you looked out across the hills, the blue grew more acute, and more alien.

  The town was the usual mix of modern buildings and old-world nostalgia. The buildings on the outskirts were detached residential properties, with wooden porches and well-clipped lawns, just starting to grow out. Beyond them Jamie could see a few higher-rise structures, in the usual glass and clean steel lines. Funny how the tower block had become the symbol of overcrowding on Earth, with the emigration infomercials promising open vistas and spacious living; yet still they built upward, even with all the space they had out here. Perhaps it was something instinctive, the need to go higher, see farther.

  Mila came and sat next to her, tucking her dress up around her knees.

  “Sorry about last night,” Jamie said.

  Mila shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. I just thought . . . I don’t know.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “I thought people might find they liked one another, if they gave it a chance.”

  “Everyone’s very different,” Jamie said cautiously. “I don’t think any of us would have been spending time together if this hadn’t happened.”

  Mila looked down, her fingers twining in her skirt.

  Jamie felt an awkward flush rising in her cheeks. “I mean . . . we just all had very different lives.”

  “It’s okay.” Mila gave her a small smile. “It’s true. You, Lowry, Rena, you’re all upper echelon. You’re from Earth. I was born in a brothel on an outer-world colony. We would never have met.” Her smile faded. “And if we had, you’d have thought I was trash, selling my body to anyone who wanted it.”

  “That’s not true.” But there was a prickle of unease at the back of her thoughts, telling her that Mila probably knew more about those invisible divides than she did.

  “It is true.” Mila shook her skirt out and looked across the settlement. “I could have stayed on Gelta.”

  “What?”

  Mila met her gaze levelly. “Why not? They didn’t want anything I’ve not been selling since I was seventeen. I would have had a place there. What am I going to do on the capital? Or on Earth?”

  “Anything you want,” Jamie said.

  Mila shook her head. “I think there’s a place for all of us, somewhere we fit better than anywhere else, even if it’s not what we want. We’ve got to belong somewhere, haven’t we?”

  “Not there,” Jamie said. She wanted to touch Mila, put an arm around her, but she didn’t know how to shape herself against somebody else’s need like that.

 
Not there. Callan had said something about that, just after she’d taken the bullet out. Not there and not there and not there. Our desires shaped by the negative space around them. She hadn’t started wanting Daniel again until he might be gone. She hadn’t missed Northumberland until it might be out of reach forever.

  “Maybe not,” Mila said. “But I don’t know where.”

  “Things will be clearer when we get to Alegria,” Jamie said. “There’ll be more people there, and then we’ll know . . .” She hesitated. She’d had a vague but persistent idea that the capital worlds would be full of people who’d know what to do. But now it occurred to her that they could equally be full of other people who couldn’t even get through dinner without falling out. Or maybe everyone would expect them to have the answers.

  Mila tucked her legs underneath her and climbed to her feet. “I’m going to go check on Finn.”

  When Jamie was alone, she leaned back on her elbows and tilted her head up. The heavy bank of cloud was fraying into ragged tatters, with more blue showing through. But that blue felt like a lie, after so much time spent up above it, in the black of space. It was just something to hide beneath, to avoid seeing how wrenched and scattered among the stars they all really were.

  A movement caught her eye. Callan was closing the gates of the building behind him. He didn’t look around as he walked back to the ship, and when he drew closer Jamie could see that there was something tight and shuttered about his expression. She expected him to climb past her, straight into the ship, but instead he swung himself up to sit beside her.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  Stupid question.

  “Fine.”

  “Were you looking for someone?” She kept her gaze on the distant hills. It felt less personal if she didn’t look at him.

  His eyes were also fixed on the horizon. “I just needed to be sure.”

  Jamie shot a surreptitious glance toward the building. There was lettering above the gate, but she couldn’t make it out. A hospital? Some sort of care center? It had that look of something kept neat and safe and neutral by people with no stake in making it any more than that.

  An elderly parent?

  A sick child?

  She dismissed that idea as soon as it formed, but there was a more intimate thought ready at hand. A wife. A lover. Sick or injured, and he’d had to carry on working. But there’d been no photos in his cabin, no incongruous little touches that might have indicated someone else’s taste, tolerated in gifts or tangled up in a pile of possessions left behind after a visit.

  “Did the others say how long they’d be?” he asked.

  “They only went to the store. And Gracie was going to try the comm.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes until they saw the other three returning.

  Callan stood up, stretching. “Better get ready to go. We may make Alegria late tonight if we push on.”

  She nodded, expecting him to turn and walk away, but he didn’t move.

  “My brother,” he said.

  “What?”

  He nodded toward the gated building. “That’s who was in there.” A pause. “In case you were wondering.”

  Those last words were delivered with an odd inflection. Jamie couldn’t quite work out whether they were a jibe, or a warning, or whether he simply needed to say it to someone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not quite sure at which of those interpretations she was aiming her apology.

  He acknowledged it with a small smile as he turned and walked away. Just as he reached the stairs, he stopped and looked back.

  “I’ll take you to Earth,” he said. “If you still want to go.”

  When she twisted around to stare at him, too surprised to respond, he gave her a quick nod and then headed up the stairs.

  • • •

  Jamie stayed where she was until the others had reached the ship. Rena still looked sullen, and she kept her gaze averted from Jamie. Lowry swung a canvas bag up onto the bay floor and leaned against the ship.

  “We got through to Alegria.”

  Jamie’s pulse picked up. “And?”

  “There are survivors,” Gracie said. “A few hundred or thereabouts. The operator didn’t have an exact number.”

  “He said people are starting to drift in,” Lowry put in. “A ship arrived yesterday, and they’ve had contact from another.”

  “A few hundred?” She felt a sudden chill. “Is that all?”

  So many lost. Her survival estimate for Alegria had been in the thousands.

  “The capital was too full.” There was more disapproval than sadness in Rena’s voice. “People crushed up against each other.”

  “I gave him all our names.” Gracie scrambled up into the ship, then reached a hand down to Lowry. The old man took it, gratefully, and with her help managed to heave himself up onto the bay floor.

  “Thanks. I would have felt a bit daft having to ask for the gangway to be put out just for me.” He grimaced as he climbed to his feet. “Old age. It’s supposed to be dignified.”

  “Who was on the comm?” Jamie asked.

  “No idea.” Gracie walked over to the door lever. “We need to get ready for takeoff.”

  • • •

  The day passed slowly. Jamie read, wandered down to the galley and back again, read some more, tried to sleep. Later, she sat with Finn, watching him sort through the sea glass, laying the fragments out in ever more complex patterns. Spirals and loops and things that looked like manifestations of mathematical formulas. When she asked him what they were, he shrugged. “They’re in my head.”

  She ate dinner with Mila and Finn and Lowry. Gracie joined them for a little while, but she ate fast and said little. Rena was lying down in her cabin. A headache, Lowry said. He seemed distant, barely reacting to the news that Callan had agreed to take them on to Earth. Perhaps it was just the proximity to the capital, to the moment when they’d know what their world had become.

  After dinner, Gracie disappeared, but the rest of them lingered. There was no point going to bed, and Jamie doubted she’d be able to sleep anyway. She played poker with Mila and Lowry but couldn’t keep track of her hands. Eventually she put the cards down, shaking her head at Mila when she tried to deal her in again.

  “I’m not concentrating.”

  “Not long now,” Lowry said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  Lowry held her gaze. “You sure? You lived here, after all. There might be people you know who’ve survived. Is there anyone you’re hoping to see?”

  “No one here.” Then she realized how that sounded. “I mean, there are people I knew. I’d be glad to see them, of course.”

  “But no one in particular?”

  “Not here.”

  “On Earth, then?”

  She hesitated. She’d kept Daniel from them for reasons she couldn’t articulate. Perhaps it was just that she only had that blank message to go on, and she didn’t want to see the sympathy in other people’s eyes when she told them how she was sure it meant he was alive. But somehow it felt more matted and complex than that. Callan’s closed face flitted through her thoughts. He’d kept a secret too. But then he’d told her, unasked and matter-of-fact, that he’d had a brother, and that brother was gone now.

  “There is someone. I mean there was . . . I don’t know. We said we’d meet on Earth if the world ever ended.” She found a smile for the memory, but it was brief and quick-fading. “I know it’s stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Lowry said. “Hope is never stupid. It lets us work things through, and figure out all the what ifs.”

  “Isn’t it worse?” Mila put in. “Hoping for something and not getting it?”

  “I don’t think it is,” Lowry said. “Hope isn’t the same as having. There’s room in it for all the ways
things could be.”

  But this didn’t feel like hope. It was nothing but a thin thread of almost-longing stretching out before her, and a tangled mess of regret trailing behind. The urge to honesty had passed, and she felt as raw as if she’d scraped a layer of skin away.

  Just then the galley speaker buzzed, and Callan’s voice came on. “We’re here. Everyone strap in.”

  Jamie felt a lurch of something like vertigo. They’d gotten here too quickly. She hadn’t had time to think about what they might find.

  All the what ifs, Lowry had said.

  She wanted to find Callan and ask him not to stop, just to keep flying. She needed more time out here, between the unknowing stars.

  She wasn’t ready.

  • • •

  It was a slow, steady landing, the engines straining to hold the ship in whatever entry pattern Callan was following. After an interminable period of shifting and turning, there was a final surge of engine noise, signaling the last effort, and then they juddered and sank onto the ground.

  Everyone seemed slow to undo their harnesses. Callan and Gracie were already down by the time they’d gathered in a loose knot by the bay doors.

  “Where are we?” Lowry asked, as Callan pulled the door lever.

  “The dock at the administration headquarters.”

  “Why not the main port?” Jamie asked.

  “This is where they told us to come in. Presumably no one wanted to trek all the way out to the port at this time of night.”

  As the doors slid open, the bay was lit up by the hard glare of the floodlights on the side of the administration headquarters. All steel and glass and carved marble panels, sweeping up some fifteen floors, the administration building was the beating heart of humankind. As she looked up, the floodlights flared in her eyes and she blinked away a blur of tears. There were voices outside the doors. Callan was walking forward, with Gracie at his side, Lowry falling in behind them. Mila was hanging back with Finn, while Rena hovered off to one side, her face tight and drawn. As Jamie moved to follow Callan and the others, her toe snagged on the edge of one of the cargo rails, and she stumbled and almost fell. Lowry caught her arm, steadying her.