The Space Between the Stars

by Anne Corlett

  “Mila.” Lowry gave her a little shake. “We’d never leave you alone. Come with us.”

  “But you’re going to that island, to the religious place. I couldn’t go there with you.”

  “Why not?”

  She gave a convulsive shake of her head. “It wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t fit.”

  “What about me?” Jamie said. “I’m not going to Lindisfarne. I’m just going . . .” She stopped. She’d almost said home. “To the place I’m from. You could come with me. You and Finn.”

  “And what about . . .” It was Mila’s turn to break off.

  “What about what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Mila looked away. “I’d be in the way.”

  “Mila.” Lowry tried again, but the girl took a step back.

  “No,” she said. “I want to stay here. I don’t want to go with you.”

  “You can’t,” Jamie said. “You don’t know what they’re planning.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Mila said. “I can figure it out. And who’s to say it will be so bad? We’re coming at this from different places, you and me. You look at this and think it’s not going to be as good as what you had. But for me, maybe it’ll be better. There might be a place for me. I might be able to do something good.”

  “What’s going on?” Jamie turned to see Callan moving through the gloom of the hold.

  “Mila’s not sure about coming,” Lowry said.

  “Well, she better make her mind up quick.” Callan was walking toward the doors. “We have to go.”

  Lowry put his hand out to stop him. “Rena’s not here yet.”

  “Where the fuck is she?”

  “She needed to pick something up. She said it was important.”

  “It better be. Because whatever it is, she may be staying here with it.” Callan’s lips tightened. “One minute, then whoever’s on board will be coming, and everyone else will just have to take their chances.”

  Lowry turned to Mila, but she was backing away.

  “Take care of Finn,” she said, scrambling down onto the concourse and setting off toward the tower entrance.

  Lowry caught Jamie’s arm, holding her back from following. “Don’t.”

  “Thirty seconds.” Callan’s hand was on the lever.

  Lowry shuffled to the edge of the hold. “She must . . .” His head jerked up. “There she is.”

  An ungainly figure lurched into view, coming from somewhere to the side of the landing site.

  “Where’s she been?” Jamie watched Rena hurrying toward the ship, a small bag clutched in her arms.

  Lowry had no chance to answer as a shout went up from somewhere out of Jamie’s line of sight.

  Callan swore and hit the lever, starting the slow, inevitable slide of the doors.

  “Gracie.” He shouted it into the intercom, then ran for the stairs.

  Security guards were running in from all directions, guns in their hands. There was an explosion of shouting, of threats, but Rena kept stumbling toward the ship. Then a voice rose above the tangle of noise.

  “Stop. Stop or I will shoot.”

  Rena’s gaze was fixed on the ship and its closing doors. The guard lifted his gun and trained it on her.

  He wouldn’t. They wouldn’t.

  But then Jamie saw the cold glint in his eye, and the way his hands shifted on the gun, and she knew what was going to happen, right there in front of her.

  Rena had reached the ship, and Lowry was leaning down to grab her arm as she scrabbled to pull herself up.

  Another voice cut across the clamor.

  “No.”

  Mila was rushing forward, her hands up, as though she could stop what was happening. A gunshot echoed around the shipyard, and the girl cried out and fell to her knees. All the noise seemed to be coming from far away. Jamie’s lips had shaped themselves around Mila’s name, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. Lowry dragged Rena through the closing gap, turning sideways to squeeze inside. Just as the doors closed, Jamie saw Mila lift her head to look at the ship. One hand was pressed to her side, blood welling between her fingers. Then she was gone, and the engines were starting their swift-rising roar.

  A howl went up, and Finn stumbled forward, clawing at the doors. When Jamie tried to push him back toward the seats, he fought against her hold, writhing in her grasp with single-minded desperation. With Lowry’s help she managed to wrestle him across the hold, but it was beyond their strength to force him into a seat. As he threw himself onto the floor, Jamie sank down with him, hanging on as tight as she could, and suddenly he wasn’t fighting her anymore. He was letting her hold on to him.

  It was another hard acceleration, and Jamie had to brace herself against the wall, digging her heels into one of the grooves in the floor to hold the two of them steady against the wrenching forces of the ship’s ascent. Finn was still, with just the occasional spasm running through him.

  Gradually the engines eased back, and Jamie felt the odd shift of gravity that told her they’d leveled off. She suddenly wished she were up front with Callan, or Gracie or whoever had taken them up. Callan, she thought. She didn’t know what made her sure of that, but there was something about the way the ship had moved, a certain exultant leap that made her think of his hands on the controls.

  As the hold lights came on, Finn stayed curled tightly in her arms. She looked up at Lowry.

  “What happened?” She wasn’t sure quite what she was asking. Her head was a tangle of noise and motion: running, shouting, gunshots. And Mila . . .

  “I don’t know.” Lowry had chosen one of the more straightforward versions of her question. “Callan found me and said he’d take us to Earth, if we still wanted to go. I rather assumed you’d had something to do with his change of heart.”

  “It’s a sign.” Rena shook the harness off. Her face was lit up. “We’re right. We’re going the right way. We just have to put our faith in God.”

  Jamie felt a surge of something close to hatred. She disentangled herself from Finn and climbed to her feet. “Pity we can’t put our faith in you. We almost didn’t make it. And Mila . . .”

  As she broke off, unable to find the right words to frame what had just happened, Lowry put his hand on her shoulder.

  “She’ll be okay,” he said. “They wouldn’t have been shooting to kill.”

  “But he wasn’t aiming at her.” Jamie rounded on Rena. “He was aiming at you. Mila saved you.”

  Rena’s expression was serene. “God saved me.”

  “God’s not the one lying bleeding on the ground back there.” Jamie’s anger was a hot blaze in her veins.

  “That’s not my fault,” Rena said. “I just needed some things from my old lab.”

  “What things?” Lowry said, turning to stare at her.

  Rena’s gaze flickered. “Some medical stuff. I thought we might need it.”

  “So Mila got shot for the sake of something you might need.”

  Finn had his hands pressed to his ears, and Lowry stepped over to his side. He said Finn’s name a couple of times, and the lad eventually dropped his hands and looked up at him.

  “Why don’t you go and put your things back in your cabin,” the old man said.

  “Mila.”

  “She’ll be fine.” Lowry sounded certain. “They’ll be helping her right now.”

  Finn nodded, but he was plucking at his sleeve.

  “Go on,” Lowry said, gently. “Go put your things away. You know the way?”

  “Yes.”

  Jamie waited until he was out of earshot before turning to Lowry.

  “They shot her,” she said. “Just like that.”

  Lowry touched her arm. “She’ll be okay.”

  “And then what?” Jamie said. “We should never have left her.”

  “She
made her choice,” Lowry said. “Just like we did.”

  Jamie’s thoughts were too tangled and overwrought for her to argue the point.

  “And what about Callan?” she said. “He’s changed his mind once already. What if he changes it back again?”

  “I said I’d take you to Earth.” It was Callan’s voice, and Jamie looked up to see him leaning on the gallery rail, looking down at them.

  “How do we know you won’t get fed up with us again and dump us on the next place we pass?”

  He gave a slight smile. “Last time I checked there were no habitable worlds between here and Earth.”

  “You were going to leave us,” she said.

  “But I didn’t, did I?” His voice was quiet, but there was something beneath it that Jamie couldn’t quite interpret. She opened her mouth to push the point, but he brought his hand up, cutting her off. “We could argue this all night. You’re here, aren’t you? I’m not going to make you all sorts of promises, but I’ll do what I can to get you to Earth.”

  “Won’t they come after us?” Lowry said.

  “There were no other ships at the landing site,” Callan said. “By the time they get out to the port and get one ready, we’ll be well on our way. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s late. I need to get some sleep.”

  “He’s right,” Lowry said, as Callan walked away. “We should all get to bed.” He looked at Jamie closely. “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer. There was an odd, constricted feeling in her chest.

  “Want to talk about it?” Lowry said.

  She shook her head. “Maybe some other time.”

  • • •

  Back in her old cabin, Jamie sat in front of the little desk, fiddling with a twist of wire. She felt muffled, dull-edged, as though the events of the last twenty-four hours had blunted her emotions.

  Daniel.

  His name brought a brush of . . . something, but she couldn’t quite interpret the feeling.

  Her mouth was dry, but the tap in her cabin always produced a lukewarm drizzle that tasted of metal. She stood up, her chair scraping on the metal floor, and went out of her cabin and down to the hold, where she fished a bottle of water out of the coldbox and took a gulp.

  On her way back, she somehow found herself walking along the passage that led to Callan’s quarters. She hesitated outside his door and then knocked, a quick rattle of sound, overloud in the empty corridor.

  “Who is it?”

  What was she doing? If she moved quickly she could be out of sight before he got to the door, and he’d never even know she’d been here.

  The door opened and Callan looked out, his eyebrows going up when he saw her.

  “Problem?” he said. “Or are you just here for round two of the accusations and recriminations?”

  “Why did you change your mind?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.” Her mouth was suddenly dry again. “It matters.”

  He stepped back from the door, his expression unreadable. “You’d better come in.”

  She felt a rush of light-headedness as she followed him into the cabin. There was something unreal about the situation.

  The door clicked shut behind her. For a moment they stared at one another, not speaking, and then he looked away, rubbing one hand along his jaw. There was a wariness in his eyes. “Look,” he began. “I don’t . . .”

  She stepped forward and took hold of his face, pushing his hand away, spreading her fingers out so that she could tug his head down toward hers.

  “Jamie . . .” He resisted briefly, and then his breath was warm on her face, and he was too near for her to do anything but close her eyes and open her lips. For a moment, breath was all there was, and then she felt the faintest brush of his mouth on hers. A stab of wanting went through her, strong enough to knock her off-balance. She couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before. Or was that how memory worked? The old passions fading, and edging away, self-effacing and trying to pretend they’d never been there at all? Oh no, not us. You don’t need to worry about us. With Daniel, she’d . . .

  No. She wrenched her thoughts away.

  She must have made some inadvertent movement, because he pulled back a little. She opened her eyes to see him looking at her. That wariness was still there, playing about the edges of his expression, but there were other things there too.

  “Jamie, I . . .”

  She shook her head, a sharp gesture. “I don’t want to talk.”

  She wanted him to touch her.

  No, not him. And not her. That was how sex was, when it worked like it should. It wasn’t you. There was just the feel of it, of his hands on your body, and your hands on his, and that great, swelling force inside your chest, driving everything else out, until you stopped being so you, and became something else entirely.

  He moved away slightly. “What do you want, then?”

  She didn’t answer him. Just one step forward and their bodies were pressed close again. She rose up on tiptoe and brushed her lips down the line of his jaw.

  “Stop.” He said it quietly.

  She slid a hand in under the edge of his shirt, her thumb brushing over his ribs. There was a soft line of hair running down his breastbone. She could feel the slight curl of it against her fingertips. She brought her other hand up and eased the bottom button of his shirt through the hole, before moving up to the next one. She felt him take a hard breath in. The next button caught, and she had to use both hands to slide it free.

  As though that snag had brought him back to himself, he made a sudden swift movement, catching both of her wrists in his hands.

  “We’re not doing this.” His eyes were dark, and there was a faint flush across his neck. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “Does it look like I don’t want to do this?”

  “Okay.” He tightened his grip. “I don’t want to do this.”

  When she looked up at him, he turned away, but not before she’d seen what was stirring behind his eyes.

  She gave a low laugh that didn’t sound like her. “Yes, you do.”

  He stood still as she curled her body against his again, reaching up to draw his face back down to hers. His lips parted, and then he was kissing her again, one hand coming up to twine in her hair, the other pressing against the small of her back, pulling her harder against him.

  She felt the briefest flicker of uncertainty, but it was swept away in a surge of heat as their bodies pressed together. She wanted him. The thought carried a faint brush of surprise with it, telling her that this had started as something else.

  He suddenly stepped back, pulling away from her, the back of one hand going to his mouth, as though he might wipe the taste of her away.

  “Are you done?” he said, his voice low.

  “Done?” Her lips felt raw.

  He turned and walked over to lean on the desk, not looking at her. “This isn’t about you wanting me. This is about you not wanting him.” He gripped the edge of the desk a little tighter. “Or maybe it’s about you still wanting him. I don’t know. But I’m not going to be your whipping boy. You’re angry. I’m not quite sure I get what it is you’re angry about, or who you’re angry with. But it doesn’t matter. We’re not doing this.”

  “You wanted to.” The room seemed to have dropped several degrees.

  He laughed, a low, coarse sound, turning to face her again. “I’m a man.” He didn’t quite meet her eyes. “What else do you expect, coming in all guns blazing like that?” His expression hardened. “But I’m not going to fuck you while you think of him.”

  “I’m not thinking of him.” She took a couple of steps toward him and saw him stiffen. She stopped, a tremor running through her body. His expression changed, the anger giving way to something that might almost have be
en a reluctant tenderness. Following the pull of that look, she took another step, and another.

  His hands came up, warding her off.

  “You don’t want to do this,” he said again.

  “I do.” But she could feel a faint chill brushing the inside of her ribs, just where that jagged desire had risen a moment earlier.

  “Why?” He sounded tired. “So that we can hate one another in the morning? Or is that the point?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s how you work,” he said. “Isn’t it? Ticking off everything you don’t want. Everyone you don’t want, until there’s nothing left.”

  “No.” There was a hollow ring to her denial.

  “Really? I found you on a barely populated planet at the ass end of known space. You’d apparently gone there to get away from someone who does a pretty good impression of being in love with you.” He gave her a heavy smile. “There’s a fine line, you know. Between having space and having nothing.”

  That raised a muted flare of feeling. “You would know.”

  He looked at her, unflinching. “Yes, I would.”

  The admission damped down the heat of her anger, leaving just a dull emptiness. “So what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Where are you going? What do you want?”

  He walked toward the door. “You should go,” he said. “It’s late and we’re both talking nonsense.”

  There was nothing to do but nod and follow him.

  Just as she was about to step out, he said her name. When she turned to look at him, he leaned forward, letting his mouth find hers, slow and tender and heavy with regret. Her lips parted in something that was closer to a sigh than a kiss.

  When they pulled apart, he gave her a crooked smile and brushed her cheek with the side of his hand.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night.” She stepped out through the door and walked away.