Far from the Light of Heaven

by Tade Thompson

  When they tire, they sit at the banks while their bodies dry and the sun goes down. Rasheed Fin sings haunting Yoruba tunes and, judging by the response of the others, his voice is pleasing.

  Shell

  Numbed, Shell lies on her back and stares at the dark sky. It is streaked with re-entry lines of ships – or pods, they can’t be sure – each one a firework celebrating her utter failure as a captain.

  Still, she doesn’t feel as crushed as she would have expected. She feels for the passengers who don’t make it, but she also feels free. She can’t possibly fuck up worse than this. No further spaceflights for her. Nobody will ever trust her with a ship. And it’s all because of—

  “Salvo,” she says.

  “Captain?”

  “How far are we from civilisation?”

  “Maybe fifteen hundred miles. In your current physiological state, it would take a little over three weeks to walk.”

  “Can we cannibalise both crafts to make a vehicle?”

  “No, but I’ve been trying, combining components conceptually. I will continue.”

  “Do we have weapons?”

  “Some,” says Fin.

  “Let’s be prepared for a fight if need be,” says Shell.

  Salvo says, “Who are we fighting?”

  “Space pirates,” says Shell. “Lagos space pirates. Mutants hiding in the service ducts. Diseased Earthmen hiding in service ducts. Rogue AIs. Fucking Ragtime’s robots. I don’t know, take your pick. We were just knocked out of the sky by a demon AI that possessed our ship.”

  “Um, are we worried that we’ve seeded experimental organisms into this biosphere?” says Joké.

  “I can’t worry about that right now,” says Shell.

  “That’s how it happens, you know. Nobody worries until it’s too late,” says Joké.

  All the plants grow in whorls or spirals, some concentric. There are floating spheres of entangled fungus carried on the breeze. Fragrant, foul, all in between.

  Frances returns with small mammals he has killed, drops them in the camp, trots off again.

  “It’s my first time on a planet. I feel fat. Do I look fat?” says Joké.

  “Something’s coming,” says Salvo. “The sky.”

  They all tense up and Fin distributes weapons.

  It’s a drone. It circles the site and speeds away.

  “It won’t be long now,” says Fin. “That’s a seeker-type, information gatherer. Its mummy won’t be far behind.”

  The drone craft that arrives for them hovers for five minutes before landing. It’s strictly rescue and they can’t pack anything. Protocol insists that Shell destroy the remnants of the Ragtime, but fuck that. She leaves a marker and has the core of the Pentagram in a suitcase-sized package at her feet, the trapped soul of Ragtime. She’ll be back to the site.

  As the drone flies them back, the radio comes alive. “This is Demetrius Peole of Bloodroot Mission Control. Are there any injured in your number?”

  “This is Rasheed Fin, investigator. No injured. I need to speak to Lead Investigator Unwin ASAP.”

  “Good to hear your voice, Fin. He’ll be here to debrief you when you return.”

  “Negative, this is urgent. The culprit of the murders is still at large. I have reason to believe he still intends mischief. We need to apprehend him before he can do any more damage.”

  “Stand by,” says Peole. The radio goes dead. Fin and Shell stare at each other, faces lit in the glow of the instrument panel. Outside, the landscape rushes by, dotted with the occasional hermit’s dwelling.

  “Fin, is Michelle Campion there?” asks Peole.

  “Here,” says Shell.

  “Stand by for Head of Missions Malaika.”

  A pause, then, “Captain Campion?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was this culprit a passenger?”

  “Well…”

  Chapter Forty

  Bloodroot: Brisbane

  There is only the suit now, and Brisbane is barely aware of it. There is no more pain, no more feeling. He is a passenger in his own body. Carmilla is fully at the driver’s seat, telling each limb what to do, judging sensory input and acting accordingly. The AI isn’t even talking to Brisbane any more, not even cursory requests for permission. Having taken bodily autonomy from him, permission seems passé.

  It’s like watching a film, or playing a game. He sees his arms swing and his boots make steps on the alien landscape. He sees his head swing round and his hands scoop up water from a spring. He cannot taste this water, but it doesn’t matter. Carmilla is maintaining hydration. She snatches up floating fungus balls and sucks nutrition out of tangled hyphae.

  He has walked and jogged without rest since the Clandestine came down. He has been fed rations from the ship. He has to admire the damn software. It is committed. As for Brisbane, his self is just waiting for the brain to die. His body is a zombie in thrall to military AI. Magnificent suit. Advanced Interface Agent indeed.

  Rocky terrain gives way to grass, scrubland, trees. Wild animals he cannot identify attack, but Carmilla emits a painful sonic assault and they whimper away.

  There is a strong signal that Carmilla has Brisbane head to. He can see the pulses of its transmitter and the directional aids in arrow form. She will drive this body on this vector until it either arrives or dies. Brisbane isn’t even sure the suit wouldn’t continue after the heart stops and the brain activity ceases.

  A house in the wilderness. Brisbane watches as his body walks a wide circuit of it, spots a vehicle, a jeep or something, overrides its security and drives it towards the beacon. There is some shouting, but Carmilla chooses to ignore it.

  The jeep makes good time off-road, and the terrain improves as they close in on the beacon. The trip changes to a single road cutting through the wilderness, which might lead to the signal.

  Bio-indicators on the visual field begin flashing red. Brisbane is too far gone to understand them.

  The jeep stalls, sputters and stops; batteries dead.

  The alarms—

  When Brisbane comes to, he is staring at the stars. The sky is in the middle of a pretty meteor shower. He is supine in the back of a truck, along with sacks of a potato-like root. Hitching? Or did a good Samaritan pick him up? Either way, Brisbane realises something shouldn’t be happening here. This is food. He is toxic. His Exotic effluence will kill those who come in contact with it. Or those who eat these potatoes.

  “Carmilla,” he says. Or does he think he says it? Is it in his mind? There is no response, and he has no reason to believe she heard him.

  Brisbane already has the deaths of the Ragtime passengers on his conscience. He does not want a single further life. But what can he…

  An arm twitches.

  Does he still have some control? He never tried before. He focuses his efforts on the arm, and it shifts an inch or so. He thinks of his legs. Move. Move!

  “Brisbane, what are you doing?” asks Carmilla.

  He doesn’t bother answering, focusing all efforts on his limbs. He – his body – is moving now, and he hooks an arm over the side. He moves his trunk and pushes… something. It takes forever.

  “Brisbane, you will kill us. You will die.”

  That would be a good thing, you insane demon.

  He hurls himself over the edge of the truck, and though he feels nothing he knows further injury will result. The truck was going faster than he thought. The sky inverts, returns, inverts again as he rolls. He blacks out again, perhaps; maybe the last time? No, light floods in the gap between his eyelids.

  The owners of the truck are carrying him, concerned looks on their faces. They are talking but he cannot hear.

  They’re fucking taking him to hospital, aren’t they? Shit. They are as good as dead.

  “I’m concerned about you, Brisbane. I’m disconnecting you from the suit. If you had killed yourself, we would have lost the objective right now that we are so close. A word of caution, remember? Do you not
want to see it? Do you not taste the victory?”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Bloodroot: Shell

  “We need to format all your drones to detect Exotics,” says Shell. “You don’t have them here, but Ragtime is aware. You’ll have to extract the data from the Pentagram core.”

  Unwin nods. “Do we know this Brisbane is coming here?”

  “From what we’ve been able to piece together, he stole a ship, the Clandestine, from the Lagos team,” says Fin. “He had no reason to do that if he wasn’t coming to Bloodroot. And being planetside, he must want to poison the colony.”

  Unwin inclines his head. “‘Must’?”

  Shell falters. “Er… he’s dying. He wants to take others with him…?”

  “Really? He might be looking for a quiet place to die. He might be related to someone on Bloodroot, someone who arrived decades ago, and wish to say goodbye. He might have flown back to Lagos. He might die inside the ship and crash-land.”

  Shell says, “Sir, he was homicidal on the Ragtime.”

  “I accept that. I don’t accept that someone who could have killed you all at any time and didn’t has such a simplistic agenda. In fact, your data suggests he was trying to escape after killing the first batch of passengers and he only attacked you, Captain Campion, after you attacked him first.”

  Shell burns. “Sir!”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have attacked him. I’m saying we should keep options open as to his motivation and just try to find him.”

  Joké says, “I need a private room, an office, something. Um, as soon as you can.”

  “You should give it to her,” says Fin.

  Peole gestures towards the door and leaves with Joké.

  “Does Lagos know that their governor is dead?” says Shell.

  “I’ve sent updated information packets to Secretary Beko every hour of this clusterfuck,” says Malaika. “No responses yet, but she is not going to be pleased.”

  Unwin scoffs. “She’s just pissed that she won’t see any of the money for servicing the Ragtime and will have to pay a fine of some sort to MaxGalactix, not to mention the class action lawsuits that relatives will bring over the decade. Lawrence didn’t wield any true power. Any rage about him is purely performative.”

  “Sir, I’ll thank you not to say that within Joké’s earshot,” says Fin.

  “Calm down, son. I know who she is. You’ll notice I waited until she left the room,” says Unwin. Then: “Why do you care?”

  “She has better hearing than you think,” says Fin.

  “What happened to you up there, Fin? Stand down. You did your job. You’re back in the ranks. Don’t screw that up with insubordination.”

  Fin says nothing while medbots take more samples from him. All the returnees except Salvo have slow vitamin drips. Frances stands by the door, tail hitting the floor as he wags it.

  Salvo has a wired connection to the Ragtime’s Pentagram, and he is communing with it.

  The door swings open, breaking the silence.

  “I know where he is,” says Joké, breathless.

  “And I know where he’s going,” says Salvo, looking up.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Bloodroot: Brisbane

  Now what? A hospital of some kind? Uniformed people fussing over him, trying to cut the suit off. Doesn’t work. He blacks out again and the people are on the floor and he is up, staggering and swaying. He is out. People on the corridors see him and flee or open their mouths in horror. He blacks out and is in the hospital parking structure. Some kind of lock override.

  In vehicle. Spiralling down, black, down, black.

  Dazzling light in front of him.

  Where’s Carmilla?

  Guns. Drones. Robots and people in biohaz suits. A sound-cannon thing.

  God almighty, the end at last.

  All I wanted was to be a good man.

  Kill me.

  Was that out loud?

  Did they hear?

  “Kill… me.”

  Not loud enough, throat dry.

  “Kill me!” says Brisbane, loud, clear.

  They do.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Bloodroot: Carmilla

  The truck is as basic as they come.

  Limited storage, limited processing power, bespoke circuitry; the survivor of a thousand repairs.

  It crashes through the flimsy fence and slams into the base of Lamber Tower. This is not Scintillation night, but Lambers appear in their dozens. To witness? To investigate damage to their repatriation site? Did the impact summon them? Or do they already know this is coming?

  A thin line of steam escapes from the engine, and a wiper flips at a crazy angle, but otherwise nothing happens. Visibly.

  The Lambers are appearing like crazy, filling all the space around the tower.

  A wireless transmission from the truck beams out and seeks a connection, aggressively switching bands, changing power, running a variation of protocols, inventing them on the fly.

  Are the Lambers keening? Are they trilling? Do they coruscate with passion?

  For technology that wasn’t developed around war and conflict, the tower holds for an impressive time, but Carmilla was designed to penetrate and destroy.

  When she is finally in control, does she pause to… feel? Does she gloat? Can Carmilla do that?

  Then she plays the recording.

  She sends a signal to Earth servers that will never hear her: I fulfilled my mission.

  And Carmilla rests.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Bloodroot: Shell, Fin

  In mission control, Shell, Fin, Joké, Salvo and Peole watch the monitors; isolation tents are put up around Brisbane’s corpse. It didn’t take much to kill him. Shell wonders how he survived to this point but decides she doesn’t care. This is over.

  Joké twitches, like a seizure, but no foaming at the mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Fin.

  “Oh, shit,” says Joké. “We missed, um, missed something. Oh, shit.”

  She’s gone, dissipated. Fin clutches the air where she was, as if he can bring her back. A sound escapes from his throat.

  Frances barks.

  It comes through and Salvo turns it up:

  We are the people of the Tehani Mining Community. We have existed on Earth for over two hundred years. Rare-Earth Elements from our land powered the first interstellar flights.

  We thrived. We survived mine collapses, flooding and gas leaks. We took it on the chin and stood tall because we were miners. Because we were Tehani.

  A new thing came, and we embraced it. From the sky, an asteroid product. Instead of bringing things up from below, it would come down from up above. We would process the star stuff for others to use. We were lied to and we were poisoned. By the stars, by MaxGalactix, by Yan Maxwell.

  All of us, old and young, poisoned, dying a slow death until only I remained.

  I, Jeremiah Brisbane, the last Tehani, executed Yan Maxwell for his crimes. I killed him because he killed us. The Tehani don’t go down without a fight, and if we must die, you will remember us.

  Are you in a mine? In a processing plant? Working on an asteroid? What are they telling you? What are they not telling you?

  It loops, repeats.

  “We need to shut it down,” says Peole.

  “Don’t be absurd,” says Fin. “It’s an embassy. We can’t even go in to change a semiconductor. Plus, it’s the most powerful transmitter in this solar system. It’s gone out. Can’t be unbottled.”

  “Why do we need to shut it down?” asks Shell. “I mean, we’ve got Brisbane, and the AI is trapped. Why is this bad?”

  “Miners,” says Fin. “On Lagos, maybe. I don’t know.”

  What are they telling you? What are they not telling you?

  “Can we just shut this speaker off?” asks Shell. “I don’t want to listen to it.”

  Ultimately, it stops. People drift away to sleep, except Fin, who stays awake
, expecting Joké to show up any minute. He listens to the rescue efforts in space, in orbit, out over the unnamed oceans and the unexplored terrain of Bloodroot. He listens to reports on the gathering of Lambers.

  Dozens of encouraging survival stories and exclamations as pods are opened to find living passengers. Fin stays up until dawn shows its face. He tries to eat, but nothing has taste, and he is only trying to out of boredom. He makes strong coffee, he listens to noisy music, but his eyes are heavy in the light of the new day.

  And of Joké, there is no sign.

  He recalls a conversation on the Ragtime before Brisbane.

  “Fin, you shouldn’t be worrying your head about me,” says Joké. “I don’t fear death.”

  “You don’t fear death.”

  “I don’t. But you do. So we should, um, talk about that. Find comfort for you.”

  “Is this because you’re part alien?”

  Joké looks at Fin like he’s an idiot.

  “Lambers aren’t aliens, Fin. They’re our ancestors.”

  “What?”

  “They’re, um, they’re humans. Translated humans. Some humans, at any rate.”

  “You’re telling me Lambers are ghosts.”

  “No. Look, maybe when the first primate with an opposable thumb looked at her reflection in the still waters of Lake Tanganyika and said, ‘I am’, maybe that was the birth of the first self-aware spirit. She had no name and a genealogy written in a visual and olfactory record. Maybe she had children, maybe one or two of them survived. When she died at, um, twenty-six, she found herself in a different reality. She could see her offspring on Earth if she tried hard. She could communicate and influence. She could hear supplications. She was the first true god.”

  “Aww, come on—”

  “You asked, motherfucker. I can just shut up.”