Eclipse

by K. A. Bedford

  I was there, Service sidearm clutched in both white-knuckle hands, standing in the viewing gallery above the isolation tank. Ferguson was wrestling with me, trying to get the gun away from me, but I wasn’t letting him. Down there, the feeds from my headware showed me insects as big as some people I’d known, crawling around, and I remembered the way insect legs felt only too well, and the feeling of insects shitting on my eyes in the dark…

  …and I was back to that night in the box. It was an initiation thing at Flight School, in the precursor to the Royal Interstellar Service Academy. The initiation was to see if I was tough enough to join an exclusive elite corps of fellow pilot trainees called the Blue Stars, where I would be able to make contacts that would help grease my way up through the ranks. Already I’d put up with all kinds of awful stuff. I had eaten an entire fresh-killed rat — it was that or have an increasing electric charge shot through my genitals for every time I didn’t take a bite and swallow. I’d been through floggings, canings, had the soles of my feet pounded with a steel bar, and an array of sexual ­activities too degrading to mention, and all in the name of getting ahead in the Interstellar Service. Good grades, good character, excellence in simulations and parade seemed to count for nothing: what mattered was the cadet’s ability to cope with abject humiliation, submitting to absurd commands, and submerging personal integrity and basic personality, all in order to succeed at the larger goal. There had been media criticism that these rituals smacked of cult-like abuse. I would say there was something in that claim, but I also believed it was necessary. Belief was everything. Belief justified anything.

  Tonight, they placed me in a box made of pine wood, naked, with a series of small cuts on my back, arms, legs, face, chest, and, of course, my genital area. My hair was shaved away. I had very limited movement, but I could move my arms and legs a little. I had not been fed in three days; I was ravenous. Even the wood looked tasty.

  They kept me folded up in there for twenty-four hours, my knees in my ears, elbows jammed in my ribs, head pushed forward and down. I could hear them out there, my peers, my betters. All of this jolliness was in my own best interest, that such things had gone with privilege and distinction throughout human history: if you wanted acceptance into the elite, you had to be prepared to debase yourself; to submerge your personal needs in favor of the group, the club, the power. After all, inferior matter would only dilute the power, so it had to be screened out. And this way, since we all do it, and only the best of us survive the process, we know that only the best of the best go on to serve the rest of humanity, providing leadership. We earn our power through the ritual of the ordeal.

  I was so hungry, so ambitious, and so desperate to fit in that I flung myself into everything. I had never felt happy in my life. Nobody gave me any grief about being homosexual, certainly not my family, who accepted it as they accepted my eye color. It wasn’t an issue for them, but it was for me. It felt wrong, and strange. And seemed all the more so because everyone I knew tried to tell me it was perfectly fine and ordinary, part of the normal continuum of sexuality. My family tried to get me to undertake therapy to make me accept it.

  What was an issue with my family was that I didn’t seem to have much promise, that I was a distressingly ordinary son amid a noisy bunch of siblings who were all destined to excel in whatever they did. The parents “understood,” and told me it was fine that I wasn’t as gifted as the others, that they loved me just as much, and that I just hadn’t found my “thing” yet. And I would, they said. I just had to try harder. Even if I had to kill myself to achieve it!

  And the Service was the toughest, nastiest, most difficult, most dangerous thing a person could do. So I went for it, swearing I would show the family what I could do, that I was as good as them. Now, forty years later, I look back on the youth I was then and I think what a stupid fool he was, how much trouble he could have avoided if he’d just relaxed.

  The lid of my box opened. I saw Simons, a young man with godlike looks and a constant sneer, holding a large opaque plastic bag that was heavy with something lumpy. It was hard to see in the low light. I was weak, almost sick with hunger by now, and sitting, swooning, in the warm, stinking fumes of my own waste. But I was made of tough stuff though, or so I woozily told myself. I could take anything these guys dished out.

  Simons began to tip up the bag. I looked up, my neck burning with pain after a day stretched the other way, and I tried to see what was in the bag. He slapped me, ordering me to look down. My face stinging, I looked down.

  He poured the contents of the bag over my head, and, while I was still registering silent breathless shock, he slammed the lid down and locked it. Leaving me alone, covered with thousands of crawling insects.

  I swore I would not scream. But as I sat there, shivering in rigid, mouth-wide-open horror, feeling them on me, I felt some climb daintily, with caution, over my lips and into my mouth. I felt their delicate legs on my dry tongue and against my gums. I felt their waving antennae touching my palate.

  I scoured them from my mouth, gagging, trying not to vomit. I was determined not to scream, but it was so hard, so terribly hard. Screaming was failure: the others would pull me out of the box before the two hours were up, and I would never make it into the Blue Stars; I’d always be just a regular cadet, taking my chances for decent assignments without the nods and winks and personal recommendations of my senior officers.

  So I sat there, scratching at myself until I bled, aware of hundreds of tiny bodies, all scuttling legs, chitinous bodies and inquisitive antennae, hundreds of tiny demons climbing over me, their feet sticky with my blood. They liked my blood; I felt them drinking, clustering around open wounds as though they were the last watering-hole for a long while. They tiptoed over my genitals with countless tiny feet, their tickling antennae against my scrotum. There was no escape from that sticky feeling against my skin; I heard them flying, wings whirring, inside the cramped box, going “thump!” against the walls, and I tried to bat them away with elbows and knees. A couple landed on my teary eyes, and though I couldn’t see anything, my mind supplied the details. My head filled with images of them shitting, dropping tiny specks of noxious faeces into the corners of my eyes. I felt it burning, and I was squinting beyond the point of pain, trying to force it out, squeezing my eyelids as if my life depended on it. The creatures didn’t really shit in my eyes, as far as I could reason, but it felt that way, oh God it felt that way, and I found myself rocking, knowing that I was crushing some, hopefully the ones who feasted down there on my shit.

  And while I rocked, teetering on the brink of sanity, crying silently, I felt another one climb across my cheek and step, gingerly into my mouth. After some time, God help me, I felt something in my mind fuse, and I remember feeling inspired, and I bit down on it. It crunched, and I tasted bitter, room-temperature slime. I was sure I could feel a tiny heart beating fast, and I swallowed it, feeling its struggling feet all the way down. That taste brought me to the point of vomiting. I felt myself choking, coughing, the taste still in my mouth. I was pulling chitinous chunks out of my molars with my tongue. But I didn’t vomit, and I didn’t pound the walls of the box, because that would be as bad as crying out. So I swallowed the beast, and, surviving that, I grabbed another, and then a handful of the things and shoved them all into my mouth, trying to ignore what I was certain was their tiny helpless screams of agony and terror, and I ate the bastards. I ate them, I was starving, dammit, and at this point I had probably lost the few ­remaining particles of sanity I had left, my rational mind a memory twisting in the hell-scented breeze, and all I could do was eat the things, and I felt them scuttling like mad, climbing over my body to get away from my lunging, grabbing hands, which grabbed them anywhere I could find them, whole or not, and I licked my fingers and hands when I was done.

  They pulled me out when my time was up. I remember the light hurting my eyes, how I couldn’t stand for a long time, an
d I heard someone whispering, “Oh damn it all…” and someone else remarking, “Where’s the bloody bugs?” And I remember, despite my delirium and pain, feeling triumphant, hearing that. Where were the bloody bugs? Ha!

  Later that night, lying in my bunk, aware in a fractured kind of way that I had passed the test, I swear I could feel those things crawling around in my intestines, and that when I took my dump the following morning, I’m sure I felt their scratchy little feet and wing-cases tearing at my ass.

  I pulled out of Rudyard’s head. I felt … numb. Sick. Wanting to vomit. I looked around. My internal clock said I’d been in Rudyard’s head a little under two minutes. And there he was, where he had been, now holding his own head, looking bad, his skin pale, perspiration soaking through his hair.

  “Sir,” I gasped, “I’m not feeling … suddenly I’m a bit ill…”

  Rudyard, despite his own evident distress, shot a look at me, a questioning, evaluative stare. “Son? You look like cold shit on a biscuit. What’s the matter?”

  Like a fool, I said, “Bad food, I think. Fabs on the blink again.”

  Rudyard looked at me all the harder. “Bad food, you say? Well, that can happen. You go and take care of yourself. We’ll talk more later.” He dismissed me with a ­gesture.

  I lurched out of his office — and ran straight into the solid white bulk of Ron Ferguson blocking my path.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Ferguson, I’ve got to…”

  “What did he say, Mr. Dunne?”

  I was in danger of vomiting on Ferguson’s beautifully polished boots. “Sir, I need the head, and I need it … now…”

  Ferguson grabbed my sweaty head, pulled my face up so he could see it. “I see, I see. You are a sorry-looking little worm. Let’s take care of that.” He let go of my head and grabbed my shirt collar, and frog-marched me to the nearest head. He came in with me, and stood over me while I spewed my guts out. And every time I closed my eyes, I remembered being in Rudyard’s head, and going through his ordeal in the box. He never saw those bugs he ate. But as the bile came hacking up and out of me, I remembered his memory of their taste, and how their carapaces felt on his tongue. And I spewed again and again, my guts in dire pain, my throat hurting. I was dripping with sweat. My clothes were completely soaked, I realized, down to my black socks.

  “Come on, you stupid wretch, spit it all out, I haven’t got time to wet-nurse twits like you, Dunne.”

  “I’m doing…” I said between heaves, “…the best I … can, sir.”

  Later, in Ferguson’s quarters, I reported the captain’s discussions with me, leaving out the whole sorry business of my intrusion into his mind.

  He scowled, stroked his heavy chin, and looked thoughtful. “Interesting,” he said. “Is that all he said to you?”

  I just wanted to find somewhere quiet and lie down. “That’s it, sir.”

  “Hmm.” He stared hard at me, as if trying to see inside my head. In this mode, he looked like he could do it, too. “And how was the captain today?”

  This was an odd thing to ask, and potentially dangerous. “Sir?” I hedged. “I thought, sir, he seemed quite lucid and thoughtful.”

  Ferguson sneered, “Is that right?”

  I sighed. “Yes, sir.”

  “So he didn’t talk at all about the business in the ­hotel?”

  “No, sir. Nothing.” But he was thinking about it, I knew that much. “Permission to ask a question, Mr. Ferguson?”

  Ferguson pinched his nose. “What is it?”

  “Do you have any idea why the captain might have shot the aliens?”

  “In a word, Mr. Dunne, no, I don’t. He just asked me to join him at the viewing gallery.”

  His response seemed honest, and he probably didn’t feel it necessary to lie to lowly scum like me anyway. So I knew perhaps more than he did about the captain’s past. That was interesting.

  “You’re quite sure and certain he didn’t say anything about the hotel business?”

  “Nothing at all, sir. And I didn’t ask.”

  “All right, so why did the captain pick you, of all people, to spill his guts to?”

  “No idea, sir. Perhaps he senses we’re a bit alike, maybe. I don’t know.”

  I could see that this bothered Ferguson; I was getting access to the captain and he wasn’t. He sat at his desk, hands locked together, thumbs twiddling, looking stalled.

  “Will that be all, Mr. Ferguson?”

  He glanced up at me, scowled, eyes narrowed. “Yes, what the hell.” Then he said, as I turned to leave, “Besides, I’ll need you tonight, as usual. And I will expect you at tea, of course.” He had a nasty laugh. I closed my eyes, not wanting to think about all this. The bastard wasn’t done with me at all.

  The new weapons upgrade should be nearly complete, and ShipMind’s vessel status channel showed our classified cargo, referred to only as “SERVICE CARGO UNITS” — no identifying name or code numbers — was loading at a satisfactory pace. By now Rudyard must have his orders for the ship’s next mission. I wondered, as I left, heading for the Mess, where were we going next, and what we needed this cargo for. Hell, what did we need this weapons upgrade for? That was a better question. Was the Service uprating our guns because of general background rumors of war, or because of some actual indication of trouble coming, or something else? At that moment, it all felt remote.

  My immediate concerns were simpler, more urgent. I wanted something to drink, to replace lost fluids, and then a long shower. I wondered if I would ever feel clean again. It wasn’t just the memory of the bugs, bad as that was; it was that other business, almost suppressed, riding in Rudyard’s mind as he raped that woman. The weird thing was I now felt horribly guilty about it, as if it had been me in that hotel room. I remember how it felt, the profound sense of heat and power, running on pure brainstem, the consuming need to impose order and control, the sheer thrill of it. That was the worst. I had felt Rudyard’s poisonous pleasure.

  In the Mess I grabbed some distilled water and sipped at it. My hands shook. My knees were weak and sore. I felt cold. I wasn’t cut out for this crap.

  It was striking, how the captain’s experiences paralleled my own in many ways. By the time I went through the Academy, the ritualized initiation practices had descended to a level of simple brutal primitivism rather than the elaborate horror of Rudyard’s day, but the effect was the same, to crush the self in the service of joining the elite. The child had to die to let the man live among his peers. It didn’t matter what it took. Details were unimportant. The Service was like that: only the final result mattered. I sipped cold water, watching the ripples in the glass.

  Sorcha came in. She saw me. I felt a giddy thrill go through me, seeing her. And then a shot of apprehension. She beamed a smile and came over. “James, hi! How you doing?”

  Good grief, she actually looked pleased to see me. Last time I saw her, she’d stalked off, angry. I had wanted to apologize, but she’d been down in Winter City, out of contact. Could have sent her mail, of course, but I wanted to wait and see.

  I looked at my water. “I’m fine,” I said, trying to look calm, to hide how traumatized I felt. “How was the city? Do anything fun?”

  She got an orange juice from the fab, took a sip, frowning, and said, “Hmm, almost good!” She sat opposite me, then saw me properly for the first time. “Oh God, what happened to you?”

  Oh well, I thought, let’s see. I went spying in the captain’s head and stumbled on these memories of profoundly disturbing things he did that leeched over into my head and made me feel like it was happening to me, see… “Food poisoning,” I said, not looking at her.

  “Sorry to hear that,” she said, looking sympathetic. “Maybe you should be in the Infirmary.”

  I waved off her concern. “I have to be on-hand for Ferguson’s little tea
ceremony tonight.”

  She didn’t know what that was about, and looked confused. I said, “Ferguson’s playing with me lately, and got me doing all kinds of fun things.”

  “He’s not still picking on you over that business, is he?” she asked, referring to our adventure on day one.

  “No, I don’t know. He’s just being a swine, and there’s stuff-all I can do about it.” I chewed on one of my fingernails.

  “Sorry about the other night, by the way,” she said suddenly, apropos of nothing.

  “Sorcha?”

  She gestured over her shoulder. “When you got back from seeing the admiral. I went and had a hissy fit. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, that’s all. I was still pissed off about the aliens.”

  Not sure what to say here, I frowned, struggling for words, my own feelings impossibly tangled. “It’s okay. You had a right.”

  “Yeah, well. I just needed some think-time.” She ran a finger around the rim of her glass.

  “Come up with anything?” I asked.

  “Came up with all kinds of things.” She flashed me a sly smile.

  “Nothing you want to tell me about?”

  “All will be revealed in due course.”

  “Woman of mystery.”

  “Woman with way too much free time!” She laughed.

  What did that mean?

  For a moment, I noticed that Sorcha looked nervous, on edge. She changed the subject. “So exactly what has Ferguson got you doing?”

  “Whatever he bloody says, mainly.”

  “Can’t you protest to your Section Head? Mr. Janning, isn’t it?”

  “Ferguson has borrowed me from Janning. I get no say in it.”

  “That’s not right!” she said with admirable forthrightness, and I wished like hell I had been down in Winter City with her and not up here with insane intrigues.

  Then I remembered that if I’d been down in Winter City, I probably would have had to spend a lot of my time following Captain Rudyard around rather than having a fine time with Sorcha.