Among The Stars

by Robin Banks

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want people to look at me. Not really.”

  “You drag me off to work in showbiz and you don’t wanna get looked at?”

  “Yeah. I guess it sounds weird.”

  “Sounds totally upside down. You gotta think about it. We keep doing what we’re doing, best we can hope for is becoming like Nicky, and he gets no respect here. Bella does fuck-all work and gets all the credit.”

  “I’m not sure Nicky cares about that.”

  “Everyone else does, though.”

  “I’m not sure he cares about that, either.”

  “Maybe he should. People like that even less.”

  “What?”

  “It’s one thing if you don’t succeed at something, but if you don’t even try, that’s disrespectful.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Say you shovel shit for a living. People are going to think you are less of a person than them. But if you’re happy shoveling shit, they’re going to think you’re less than them, and a weirdo. And if you shovel shit and you’re happy and you don’t keep your proper place…”

  “My proper place?”

  “Our proper place. We’re bottom of the heap. There ain’t nobody beneath us.”

  “I don’t see it like that.”

  “I know. That’s what worries me, because everyone else does. And ignoring that is disrespectful. It shows that you don’t share their values.”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “Yeah, well, you might want to keep that to yourself. This is a small place. You go pissing people off, it’s gonna come back to bite you.”

  “So what am I supposed to do, act like I think I’m inferior? That’s not gonna happen.”

  “Then you’re gonna make enemies, is all. You know how that works.”

  “Then I’ll have to live with that. If I have to crawl up their asses to make them happy, then they’re never gonna be my friends anyway.”

  “You don’t know how to have a quiet life. You’re as bad as Alya.”

  “I’m all about the quiet life. And nobody’s as bad as Alya.”

  “True dat.”

  We lie in the dark, lights all around above us. My head isn’t spinning anymore, but I’m still twinkling inside. I like being here with Tom. Even when we don’t agree, we’ve got each other’s back. When all of a sudden the big top lights go off, it makes us both jump. For a moment I think I’ve gone blind. Then my eyes adapt and I can see the faint light of the stars beyond the bubble.

  “Tom? The stars are all wrong.”

  “You what?”

  “They’re in the wrong place.”

  “They’re in the right place. We’re in the wrong place.”

  “Feels right enough to me.”

  “You soppy bastard. Time for bed. Air’s gonna be off in no time.”

  He gets up, stands right next to me, and puts an arm out to give me a hand up. Like a fool I fall for it and reach out to grab his hand, and he kicks me in the ribs instead. That makes me get up double quick.

  “You’re an asshole, you know?”

  “Takes one to know one. Come on. You can hardly stand up straight.”

  We’re stumbling towards our bunks as the life support alarm goes off. Tom pushes me through my door, which is neither necessary nor helpful, and sends me sprawling on the floor.

  “I’ll get you for that.”

  “You’re welcome to try. Listen up. I meant what I said about being careful not to be too happy with yourself.”

  That makes me guffaw. “Weirdest advice from you yet. You want me to be unhappy with myself?”

  “I just want you to be careful, ok? Don’t step on any toes.”

  “I have no intention to.”

  “That doesn’t mean shit.”

  “Should count for something. You need to hurry the fuck up and get to your bunk. Unless you wanna crash here.”

  “What? Can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’d look weird. People would talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Us sleeping together,”

  “You make it sound weird. You’re my best friend.”

  “Even more so. Night.”

  I listen to him securing my door. The twinkling inside me has gone. Instead, I feel a shivering. I love it here, I’m happy here, but I’m starting to wonder how much this happiness is going to cost.

  I don’t mind having to watch out for bad people. I don’t mind having to make sure that they don’t have the means and the motive to come at me. Having to jump through hoops to suit people who’re supposed to be on my side, on the other hand, pisses me off. I know that it doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it is. I don’t mind fighting and hiding and lying to enemies. I’m happy to do whatever it takes to get what I want. But if I gotta do that with friends, then what the hell kind of friends are they? I don’t want to earn my place by crawling. Not here, and not anywhere.

  5.

  The problem with a good party is waking up in the morning. Either I’ve overdone it or I’m badly out of practice, because I feel like shit. Actually, feeling like shit would be an improvement. I’m fuzzy and achy. Everything is too intense. The world is offensively loud and scratchy.

  I must look as bad as I feel, because Alya takes pity upon me.

  “Kid, I’d punish you for being a twerp and clearly ignoring my very specific orders not to touch any drinks not intended for your age group, but there’s nothing I can do to you legally that will hurt you more than what you did to yourself.”

  I could try and think of something smart to say in response, but that would mean finding the parts of my brain that haven’t been stabbed with nails and stomped on by an incontinent horse. I’d also have to cough up whatever’s died in my mouth. And then I’d have to deal with the noise I’d be making. So I just shrug at her. I regret it when I realize that my shoulders are attached to my body is attached to my neck is attached to my head is pounding.

  I still have to go to work – lift and bend and hear and smell and deal with everything I normally deal with, which turns out to be a lot. The animals respond to my plight by being total assholes.

  True to form, so does godsdamned Tom, who woke up bright and cheery. He’s my best friend and he knows I’m suffering, so obviously he spends most of the morning being as loud and energetic as he can be. There’s no point in asking him to have mercy, because he’s being an asshole on purpose. I don’t feel any need to plot my revenge, though, because I realize something that Tom’s apparently oblivious to: the only reason he doesn’t have a hangover is that he’s still smashed. I put all my focus on not throwing up and bide my time.

  It all hits him around lunchtime. I watch the light in his eyes fade as a greenish tinge crawls along his face. The best part of this is that today is a move day. I reckon Tom’s hangover is gonna really hit him just as we start packing up. I think of all the banging and clanging and lifting and carrying and general chaos involved in a pull-down. If it didn’t hurt too godsdamn much, I’d laugh at him.

  The pull-down is harrowing. I’m starting to feel nearly fully conscious, which would be great except that it just makes everything hurt more. According to the clock the whole thing doesn’t take any longer than normal, but that can’t be right. Maybe I ought to check the calendar instead.

  When we finally get into the ship, all I want to do is drop into a corner and die. Just thinking about the acceleration and deceleration we’re about to experience makes me queasy, though, so lying down in a bunk doesn’t seem like an option. I strap myself in one of the seats at the back of the bridge and brace myself for intense suffering and possibly a whole load of vomiting.

  Tom straps himself a couple of seats down from me. I guess he’s not looking forward to the trip either. I’d try to be encouraging and supportive, but there’s a chance that I’d spew in his lap instead, so I leave him to it.

  When our course is stabilized, Alya gets off the pi
lot’s seat, stretches, and yawns. We must still look like hell, because she seems sorry for us.

  “Cheer up, kids. We’re going to Thalia. You two are going to love it there. Hell, everybody loves it there. Best stop on our route. Well, no. Easiest stop on our route.”

  Tom’s only response is a shrug. Right now, I don’t think he’d care if she was flying us into a star. I’m feeling nearly human, though, so I try talking.

  “Which is the best?”

  Her face drops. “Depends on what you’re into, really. I’m biased. But Thalia is lovely. Expensive as hell, but other than that, it’s pretty much perfect. The weather’s warm, the locals are friendly…”

  “How friendly?”

  “Friendly enough for you. Hell, they may even be friendly enough for him. And the best bit is that we don’t move for a month.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t move. We’re staying near a holiday resort. People tend to stay there a week or two. So we don’t have to go anywhere; every week we get a new crop of punters delivered to our doors. It’s glorious.”

  “Sounds like a holiday for us, too.”

  “Heh. Kinda. It almost is, except that it gives us a chance to catch up with all the shit we never get to sort out when we’re moving. And that’s a whole load of stuff. So we’re still busy as hell, but it’s a different kind of busy. Not as frantic, unless Jameson fucks something up.”

  “Not frantic sounds good. And the place is warm?”

  “Warmer than Anteia and Semele. Way warmer than Celaeno. You’re going to be melting. I love it. Though there’s always trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what the hell it is. Maybe people don’t have enough to worry about or are not tired enough. Maybe the heat gets to their heads. I don’t know. But there’s always some hassle. Tempers seem to run hotter. I’d tell you two to watch yourselves and try and keep a lower-than-normal profile, but judging from past performance that would be pointless. Never met two kids able to stir up so much shit doing so little. And the worst of the bunch is you, innocent face notwithstanding.”

  “Innocent?”

  “Yup. For anyone who doesn’t know how to look, anyway. You look entirely incapable of stirring up shit, yet shit is stirred all around you, even though you don’t seem to do anything to cause that. It’s uncanny. From past experience, on Thalia it doesn’t take much for things to blow out of all proportions. So I expect to be either frustrated or entertained. Probably both. Until we get there, I intend to relax. I need to ready myself for whatever the hell you’re going to throw my way.”

  Between the hangover and the move, it takes me a couple of days to feel like I’m back to normal, and then I have to admit to myself that I’m not. I don’t feel ill or tired, but I still feel like shit. I feel like shit about myself in a way I’ve not felt in years. I know why, too.

  I don’t know if it’s taken this long for it to sink in or for me to admit it, but what Meena said really cut me. The problem is that she’s right. She had no right or need to say what she said. It was plain mean, and I won’t forgive or forget it. But it was true, too. I’ve read maybe two handfuls of books in my life that weren’t school books or technical manuals, and a good half of them had pictures in them. I know I can learn stuff, and pretty quickly too, but I’ve never been any good at book learning. It’s never been a problem, really. It’s not stopped me doing anything that I wanted to do. It’s always bugged me, though, and Meena poking hard at it has kicked off a whole bunch of bad thoughts that are now swirling around my brain.

  I could try and stop thinking about it, but that’s not going to stop it being true. I don’t want to feel better. I want to do better, to be better. That’s going to require me putting some effort into dealing with the problem instead of ignoring it.

  Tom knows something’s up, but he’s still recovering and he can’t really help me with this. If he could, he would have done so already. I think Alya can, though. Hell, if she can’t then nobody here can. I still feel awful about asking her, though. I only get the guts to do it when I realize that this is going to be a lot less embarrassing on-ship, in private, than it would be on-planet if people found out about it.

  I corner her in her ATR. At least that way I get a cuddle from Laika.

  “Alya? You know when you said you have a spare reader?”

  “Yeah. You want to borrow it?”

  “If it’s ok. Does it have, like, books in it?”

  “Some. What are you after?”

  This is the hard bit. “I’m not sure. I know the writer, but not the title.”

  “And the name is?”

  “Shakespeare.”

  She pulls a face. “Oh. That makes it a bit more difficult. He wrote a lot. Do you know anything about the book you want? What the story was?”

  “Nah. There’s a bit in it about topping yourself and slings and arrows.”

  “Hamlet. Yeah, I can get it for you. Are you sure that’s what you want to start with, though? I mean, it’s none of my business, but you said you weren’t really into reading. Shakespeare is kind of hard going.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure. I’ll manage.”

  “Ok then. Do you want me to try and get you a version with a modern translation?”

  “Translation? But it’s in English, right?”

  “Yes, kinda. It’s in very old English.”

  “Oh. So it’s too much for me to manage?” I know it’s not her fault, but I’m starting to feel like shit and that’s making me angry. This conversation is going precisely as I thought it was going to go. Everything sucks, and I suck most of all.

  “It’s too much for anyone to manage. The language is just that different. You get used to it, after a while, but you have to learn it. Are you sure you want to read it? Wouldn’t you rather watch the threedee?”

  “Alright, forget I asked.” I’m going to try and forget I asked, too.

  “Luke, can you please do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Can you try to listen to what I’m going to say, and believe that I’m saying what I mean, and I mean only, precisely, exactly what I’m saying?”

  “Alright.”

  “I think you’re bright. Hell, I don’t have to think that: I know you’re bright. I’ve watched you learn stuff. You think for yourself. You connect things. You also have talents I can’t fully grasp and I’m extremely jealous of. I think it’s a damn shame that you haven’t had the opportunity to explore them much. I’m sorry that this is not the right place for you to make the most of them. And yeah, I get that your reading has been left behind for some reason. I’m pretty sure that that’s more to do with the adults around you than anything else, but I may be wrong. Maybe there’s something about your brain that just doesn’t grok reading. That would not make you any less of a person; it would just make you someone who finds reading hard. That’d be a nuisance, maybe, but nothing beyond that. Plenty of people have that problem. But the only reason I suggested a Shakespeare threedee is that the guy wrote plays.”

  “Plays?”

  “Like threedees, before they had screens. Actual people acting in a room in front of people. The books are scripts for the plays. So watching a threedee would actually be more like the original experience. Shakespeare is supposed to be watched, not read, but it’s up to you what you want to do. What really pisses me off is that I suspect this is all to do with that twerp of a girl.”

  “So what if it does?”

  “So… Oh, fuck it. So if you want to get into reading, I wish you did it because there’s a joy in it, not to try and meet some jackass’s criteria.”

  “I’m fed up feeling like everyone knows more stuff than me.”

  “Ok. You know when you started working out with Tom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You started with low weights and few reps, right? And built up?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “So reading and learning are like that. You start easy, th
en build-up. You don’t throw yourself at the hardest thing going, then wonder why you’re struggling. That’s silly. You have to build your reading muscles.”

  I really feel like disagreeing with her just because I’m still pissed off, but she’s making too much sense.

  “Alright. So I don’t start with Shakespeare?”

  “How about this: you watch the threedee and see how you like it. I wouldn’t mind watching it with you. I’ve not seen it in ages. Then you can tell me what you liked or didn’t like about it. I can try and find you a book that may be up your street. If you don’t like the book I find you, you tell me, and I find you something else. You’re doing it for yourself, right? You can try and make it fun.”

  My eyes are feeling really itchy now so I decide it’s best to agree with her quickly, ‘cause then she’ll stop looking at me. If my eyes start watering she might get the wrong impression.

  We watch the threedee together. I still reckon the guy’s grandstanding, though he’s sure got issues. Alya finds me some books to read and lends me a reader so I can have a go when I’ve got some free time. Maybe this whole thing is not going to be as big a deal as I thought. Maybe I’ve got a chance.

  Thalia

  Year 2377

  Terran Standard

  1.

  Alya was right about Thalia. It’s lovely here. There’s something about the color of the light that just brightens the spirit. It’s a bit hot for my taste – I’m not used to feeling sweat roll down my back as I work – but I can live with that. Beats having to work all bundled up, and still sweating. Knowing that this build-up is going to be the last one in five weeks gives it a totally different feel, too. It’s still hard work, but it feels easier, somehow. It feels like when you get to the top of a wall you’re climbing and you know you’ll be able to rest for a while.

  Alya was right about people’s moods, too. Everyone seems more excited than usual. People keep twittering about all the cool stuff they’re going to do, half of which seem totally unrealistic to me as we’re still going to have shows every day. Tom and I will still be shoveling shit as per our usual schedule, so we’re probably worse off than the artists, but they’re going to have to be here at set times too. Everyone’s talking as if our lives didn’t rotate around the show regardless of where we are.