Far from the Light of Heaven Read online

  Shell starts to feel woozy. “I’m getting… getting…”

  “Don’t worry, that’s the sedative. I’ll wake you when we get to… and…”

  The world fades.

  Ten Years Later…

  Ragtime: Shell

  Shell, sweating, heart thumping, bursts into Node 1, overshooting because she didn’t compensate enough for microgravity.

  “Ragtime, seal the bridge!”

  “Sealing.”

  The door shuts, the reassuring thunk of steel bolts.

  Shell grabs a handrail and rests for a few seconds, then she calls up her IFC. Red, blinking alarms everywhere. She cannot attend to them yet.

  She opens a comm and records a message.

  “Mayday, mayday. This is Captain Michelle Campion of the starship Ragtime. I have a situation. Multiple fatalities…”

  She stops, deletes. She doesn’t know who might be listening to such a broadcast, what harm or panic it might cause.

  Calm down.

  Think.

  She starts again.

  “This is Captain Michelle ‘Shell’ Campion of the starship Ragtime…”

  Chapter Two

  Bloodroot: Fin

  Fin deletes the sentence, starts again.

  Hands poised for typing motion, he peeks out of the window. Still dark, but he can sense dawn without looking at the clock. The desk is littered with layers of hand-scribbled studies of CAD models for printing. They are, for the most part, bespoke weapon designs. A lot of them won’t be made – an intellectual exercise for him, but it keeps Fin’s mind active. Aborted designs lie obscured in scrunched up paper on the floor.

  Two cups of cold coffee sit beside each other. He made one, forgot it was there, discovered it was cold, got up, made another, and forgot that one as well. This happened sometimes when he got lost in thought. Fin thinks of taking a nap, but the bed is covered in paper. He has a workshop, but he never uses it.

  The keyboard shimmers in the air, each letter brighter when Fin hits the key.

  Dear Respected One,

  My name is Rasheed Fin. I am grateful to you for condescending to read my letter. I do not want to waste your time.

  I am not eloquent. I want to apologise for

  No. Too trite, too ass-kissy, too pathetic, definitely not the right tone.

  Fin rises, disconnects his IFC from the terminal and swears. He runs his hands through his hair and recognises that it’s gone bushy. Not been paying enough attention to grooming. He could go Dada, he supposes. Locs are an option.

  A news item drops into his IFC, but the Objectivity Index is less than 50% and Fin has no interest in filling his head with lies. He has lies of his own to atone for.

  Fin yawns.

  He drops to the floor and starts some desultory push-ups, maybe fifteen. He stops counting, then stops doing them. He had intended to stretch, but the failure of his apology threatens to infect everything. He leaves the study, noting the hum of the printer with satisfaction. He snatches his tools and coat, unlocks the door quietly, so he doesn’t wake Mother, then stares at the door. He opens it and sweats as he forces his foot over the threshold. His entire body trembles and he drops the tools, which helps because they roll outside and he has to pick them up.

  This morning the air carries eucalyptus. Not from any of the trees nearby, but Fin knows which copse the scent is from. He walks briskly and in fifteen minutes he’s in his spot.

  He spends an hour planting trees in the Beltane Arm. Others are there with him, giving the tight smile of fellowship, but not talking. Though he works hard as anyone else, and plants more trees than anyone else, in his mind he is considering and discarding apologies. His thought process is sluggish with guilt.

  Bloodroot is surrounded by dense forest as a result of a tree planting tradition which dates back to the start of the colony. The habitat itself is interwoven with endless treeways, thick spirals of alternating woodland and paved road, so that there is no predominance of human constructions. Avoiding the mistakes of Earth and Nightshade, avoiding the insidiousness of land conquest, the colony is built on the principle of land collaboration and ecological integration. Buzzwords from his education. From what Fin has read, he would say the problem of Earth was greed and energy source choices, but who the hell knows? They had the same geothermal energy and nearly the same solar energy that Bloodroot uses.

  Fin returns home. Entering the house is no problem; it’s going out that drives him crazy.

  He tinkers with the printer until it clicks back into the job he set it, making a new firing pin for his oldest handgun. Only then does he wash himself. The shower sputters out when he is covered in soap, then comes back ice cold, startling him, and he bangs his head.

  He is washing the grease off when a call comes in.

  “Hello?”

  “Am I speaking to Rasheed Fin?” asks an officious voice.

  “Yep.”

  “Hold for Director Unwin.” A few clicks. While waiting, Fin realises that he is standing straighter. Gerald Unwin is his boss – or, would be. No, is. Fin is suspended, but still employed.

  “How’re you doing, son?” asks Unwin.

  “I’m fine. Just finished planting. Keeping busy.”

  “Where do you plant?”

  “Beltane.”

  “Ah, I do Innocenti. So, you’re okay?”

  Fin stops to swallow. “I’m fine.”

  “Good. I want you to come and see me.”

  “Yes, sir. When?”

  “Right now.”

  Really? They finally decided to fire him? “Sir, can I ask what it’s about? I don’t think it’s fair to bring me in without warning, without preparation. I—”

  “Fin, just get your ass in here. I’ll send a car.” Unwin cuts the connection.

  Fin exhales. His heart skips and slows, skips and slows. He heads for the wardrobe. He hasn’t been at work for a year and all his clothes are out of fashion. If they’re terminating him, he wants to have some dignity. No time to do anything about his hair, but he shaves and cuts his fingernails.

  He yells in the direction of upstairs. “Mother, I’m going out. Don’t let anyone into my room, I’m working on something.”

  “Rasheed, don’t forget to eat before you leave.” Her voice floats down like a prophecy.

  “Yes, Mother,” says Fin, barely attending to what he says. He is trying to decide whether to go out armed or not. He has no job, so technically he won’t be authorised to carry weapons. And if they’re finally pulling the trigger on Fin’s dismissal, they might confiscate his guns. He goes without.

  On the room door, the last thing he sees before leaving, is a painting of a boy walking across a desert with mud-cracked ground as far as the eye can see. He is facing away from the viewer and seems an incidental figure, with the mud-cracks being the focus. It is the only artistic object in a room full of technological bric-a-brac.

  He hears the car engine and looks outside. It’s like a pod, seating only one. Fin bets the AI doesn’t talk. He zips to the door and stands there for a moment, forcing his hand to move to the handle. Do it. He manages to shove the door open.

  Enough hesitating.

  He squeezes his eyes shut, holds his breath and stumbles outside.

  Unwin is an older man with beady eyes and a thinning pate. He is still most of the time but can launch from stillness into incandescent rage, a reaction that can disappear as quickly as it starts. Fin is glad to have worn a suit even if the suit is threadbare. He feels uncomfortable in the unfamiliar office. Unwin used to have an office with an abundance of wood and leather, resins and oils soothing visitors. This was concrete, glass and plastics. Fin can’t help interpreting it as emblematic of a sterile, hardened heart.

  There’s another man in the room, thin, leaning on the white wall, rolled up sleeves, about the same age as Unwin but seems more cheerful. There are no introductions, and the thin man doesn’t say hello or offer a hand.

  “What’s your health
like, Rasheed?” asks Unwin.

  “I’m keeping fit,” says Fin. He flashes to the push-ups he failed to complete but tamps the memory down.

  “Good. I want you to listen to this.”

  This is Captain Michelle “Shell” Campion of the starship Ragtime. I’m code 4717, repeat: 4717. Contaminant on board, possible contagion. Passengers still in Ragtime Dreamstate. Do not send shuttles for passengers until you hear further. Campion out.

  “Where’s it from?” asks Fin.

  “Earth.” Unwin studies Fin’s face. “What do you think?”

  Fin squints. “I think we should be hearing from the AI, not a human. Don’t the Earth AIs fly interstellar missions?”

  “They do,” says Unwin. “We’re thinking it’s failed and Campion took over.”

  “Ship AIs don’t fail, as far as I know, but I’ll take your word for it,” Fin says. “If that’s the case, they didn’t follow protocol, so they have measles.”

  “No; ‘4717’ isn’t the code for contamination,” says the thin man.

  Fin swivels his chair to face him. “What’s it code for?”

  “Untimely deaths. Multiple untimely deaths.”

  “Untimely death from disease. Like measles.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m sorry, who are you?” Fin looks from Unwin to the thin man.

  “Sebel Malaika. Space Command. I’m friends with Gerald.” He smiles.

  Fin nods and wonders again why he is here. “How experienced is Campion?”

  “This is her first interstellar,” says Malaika.

  Fin kisses his teeth. “She might have made mistakes with the code.”

  “Maybe, but unlikely. That message is on repeat, and it’s a broadcast. We think the ‘contagion’ part of the speech is for others, but the code is for us. She wants to discourage tourists.”

  “Or she’s panicked and made a mistake with the code,” says Fin.

  “Either way, we can’t risk bringing exotic diseases to Bloodroot. We don’t want to become another Nightshade,” says Unwin.

  “It wasn’t disease that did in Nightshade.” Fin leans back in his chair. “Why am I here? I’m suspended.”

  Unwin says, “We’re considering you for an assignment. We want you to go up there.”

  “You what?”

  “Don’t get excited. This is fact finding only. No repatriation involved. No fighting, no shooting,” says Unwin. “Definitely no pyrotechnics.”

  “We want to send you up in a shuttle. You have a look around, talk to Campion. If everything’s okay we come and get the passengers on your signal,” says Malaika.

  “I’m a repatriator, not a spaceman,” says Fin. When they mentioned an assignment, he thought they meant doing an IFC dive to mine for incriminating data, which Fin is good at, and has been doing on the sly as a favour to colleagues. He does not want to fly off into the Brink. “I don’t like space.”

  “You’ve been to space twice,” says Unwin.

  “As a tourist, boss, and I hated it. The first was when I was in school and the second was to impress a girl. I didn’t get good grades in astronomy and I didn’t get the girl.”

  “This time you’ll be just like a tourist with extra duties. You’ll go with a partner who will fly the shuttle, dock with the Ragtime and help with protocol.”

  “Protocol,” says Fin.

  “You’re not good with protocol,” says Unwin.

  “Shouldn’t this be a government thing? Don’t they have departments for this?” says Fin. “This isn’t our… my department. I have to wonder why they’re entrusting something like this to a private company.”

  “Optics. Nobody in government wants to be responsible for releasing a plague on the colony. Better if ‘rogue contractors’ can be blamed. You wanted to get back into investigations, right? To repatriations? This is how. You solve this, you get full reinstatement, back pay and exoneration.”

  I can’t be exonerated when I’m guilty, thinks Fin. But getting his job back…

  “You’re sending me because if I make a mess, you can say it’s because I’ve been away for a year,” says Fin. “And I’m already tainted.”

  Unwin raises his eyebrows. “They do say after some years detectives become paranoid.”

  “But is it true?”

  Unwin nods.

  “I can’t just go into space. My mum—”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “How much time do I have before—”

  “Call your mother because you are not going home. You need training and there isn’t much time.”

  In the spaceport, the first thing Fin notices are the rows of space shuttles that are poised to get passengers from the Ragtime. They run engine tests in series to maintain readiness.

  For the next few days someone follows him about with a clipboard, testing his limits. They are used to younger postulants, and while Fin isn’t significantly older, he is more tired, more depleted.

  He tries, he pushes his body further than he has ever done, and he does want this. Nothing is more important than getting his job back because he doesn’t know what he will do otherwise. He has stared into a gun muzzle a few times over the last year, and not to run a cleaning rod through or check the performance of his printer. Without challenge, his brain has gone to mush, his equipment, like his clothes, out of date.

  He does not bond with his trainer. He wants to see her as an enemy to be defeated rather than a guide with the same objective. He knows this is unhelpful, but he can’t help himself.

  Dear Respected One,

  I know how you must feel about me, and it can’t be worse than I feel about myself.

  It wasn’t my fault.

  No. Too whiny, not taking responsibility. He is responsible and it was his fault.

  Time to rejoin the training.

  In the evenings, when both his body and mind are tired from being taxed to the limit, Fin studies what information they have on Michelle Campion. Comes from a space-faring family, three generations of what Earth people call astronauts. The profile contains a standard image, which is Campion, face and shoulders, in a half-turn towards the camera, smiling. She has brown hair, brown eyes, and the kind of facial creases that make people trust. Or fall in love. This is a publicity photo, though, and she would have been given specific instructions. Her training and flight records are sterile figures. Data from Earth tends to come in bursts bounced from bridge to bridge. It is expensive, tightly controlled, and there is no room for embellishment. The records are routine and don’t shed light on why this rookie is flying an interstellar without AI.

  Fin disconnects his IFC from the terminal and tries to sleep.

  Fin hates space: the cramped living quarters, the weird food, the toilets with their grasping tubes, the forced proximity to others, the smells. This persists despite the best efforts of the spacewoman in charge of training him.

  “Stop fighting it. Work with the limitations,” she says.

  Fin shakes his head like a toddler refusing food. “I’m only taking this mission to get back to what I really do.”

  “Yes, you’re an investigator. I know that. But you aren’t one right now, so start to think like a spaceman, hey?”

  “I’ll never be a spaceman.”

  “You are aware that there are people who live in space all the time, right?”

  “Good for them.”

  “Uh-huh. At least tell me you’re going to trim that hair down to size. That’s not going to fit in a helmet.”

  A few days to the end of the week, Malaika summons Fin. He has documents on his desk that Fin surmises are results.

  “You drink?” asks Malaika.

  Fin shakes his head. “My family is of The Book. Alcohol isn’t permitted.”

  Malaika pours himself a drink. “Your boss told me a story about you.”

  Fin groans.

  “Relax, it’s not the one you think, although I have heard that one too.” Malaika sips his drink. “Unwin says when he first
met you it was in a class of twenty. He was there to introduce you all to criminology studies. He came in with a beaker full of urine. He stuck a finger in and put a finger in his mouth. Then he placed the beaker in front of the first student and told each of them to taste and pass on.”

  “I remember.”

  “He said you were the only one who didn’t taste the piss.”

  “Mr Unwin dipped one finger in the urine and tasted a different finger, sir.”

  “Yes. He does this every year. When you didn’t fall for it, he thought you had promise. He still thinks that.”

  “I failed the spaceflight training, didn’t I?” says Fin.

  “Woefully. Except on intuitive thought, where you failed marginally.”

  Fin sighs. He had really thought this would get him back to work. “I’ll pack my things.”

  “I’m still sending you,” says Malaika. He drains his glass.

  “I don’t understand. Why?”

  “Because of promise. Unwin trusts that promise and I trust Unwin. Also, I pick people for work based on their strengths, not their weaknesses. You can adjust for weakness, but no adjustment will bring strength where there is none. At most, you get mediocrity. Congratulations, son, you’re going to Bloodroot’s first investigation in space. Don’t fuck it up.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The car stops and the Artificial emerges.

  “Salvo!” says Fin.

  “It’s good to see you, Rasheed Fin.”

  Unlike many Artificials, Salvo looks inhuman. No real attempt at verisimilitude, but he is a superficially male, bald android. He has a face and eyes, eyelids that blink, but he is clearly not human. These models are classified as equipment, mainly, and Fin has had him for six years.

  “I have a job and I need an assistant because apparently I cannot be trusted to follow procedure. Tell me, are you rated for space?”

  “Not yet, but there is a station where I can be updated,” says Salvo.

  “Absolutely splendid.”

  In the end, it takes ten days because of problems on the runway on day seven and a fuel line malfunction on day eight. Nothing explodes, though.