Among The Stars

by Robin Banks

  “How did you get over it?”

  “I didn’t. Not really. You were there in Anteia. You saw how that went.”

  “Bullshit. You’re close to Nicky.”

  “I decide to trust Kolya every day. Every day I have to decide it again, and every day it gets harder. The more I feel like leaning into it, like trusting that it’s real, the more it seems like a giant build-up to a giant betrayal. Like a really long con. Something inside me believes that the day I truly, automatically, fully trust him will be the day he turns on me, because that’ll be the day he can really hurt me.”

  “Does he know that?”

  “We haven’t talked about it. But he knows that it’s not about him. He’s good with damaged animals.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Long enough that it ought to be over. But it isn’t. I decide to trust Kolya. I decide to consider trusting you, too. And I decide to let myself care some. I don’t like the idea of you doing something that would hurt you. But I can’t stop that. I just hope you won’t.”

  “I don’t know what to say about that.”

  “This isn’t a saying thing. It’s a doing thing.” She nods to herself, then gets up. “Sorry to have troubled you. Thank you for telling me. You didn’t have to, but you did.”

  “I was trying to hurt you.”

  Her face breaks and her eyes fill with tears. “You managed. All the same, thank you. I’ll catch you later.”

  She’s up and out, tears rolling down her face as she climbs down the steps until I can’t see her anymore.

  The talons in my chest and throat are as tight as ever. When time comes to get out for the afternoon shift, I still feel as if I can barely swallow. I can’t tell whether it’s all in my head or whatever I caught that night is coming back. I don’t really care.

  When Hugh gets to the stables, I collar him again.

  “So, what’s the story now?” He looks at me in abject fear. I feel like a bit of an asshole about it. “Come on. Whatever it is, it’s not your fault.”

  He doesn’t look reassured, but he still tells me.

  “That you nearly killed a guy for touching Alya. That you and Alya and Nicky have some kind of permanent thing going on now, because you went psycho and wouldn't settle for anything else. And you had a falling out with Tom because he wanted you to save yourself for him or something.”

  I nod. “That’s not a bad story.”

  “But is it true?” he frowns.

  “Does that ever matter around here?”

  I go and find my shovel. There’s a dark smear on it. I don’t know if it’s blood or shit. I guess that doesn’t matter either.

  When I get back to my bunk after shutting up the stables, Hugh’s sitting on Tom’s steps, shivering. I’ve had about enough of playing this scene this week, so I ignore him and go home, where the world can’t fucking follow me. When I turn around to shut my door he’s still there, though, drooping over the steps in total dejection. Last week I might have felt sorry for him. Now he just pisses me off.

  “What is it now?”

  He whirls around to look up at me, big blue eyes full of fear and sorrow and a whole selection of tender feelings. All I want to do is hit him squarely in the face to make them all go away.

  “I live here now.”

  “You what?”

  “Tom took my bunk. He’s gone to be a ring boy full time.”

  “Huh.” I don’t know what I expected. Working with Tom wasn’t going to go smoothly. I bet he’s not told Alya and Kolya: they would have told me straightaway. Unless they thought I was going to go psycho on them. Or they don’t care.

  The rage that has been powering me since… Since all that, evaporates all of a sudden. My blood’s freezing in my veins and my guts are cramping and I feel so fucking alone and scared and I know I can’t deal with it, it’s too much and I’m too small and too weak and the universe is too damn cold. I want to go and throw myself at someone who gives a fuck about me, to let them show me that there’s more to life than pain and isolation and betrayal, but just imagining that makes me feel all the pain I felt when I realized what Tom had done. If I can’t trust him, how can I trust anyone? How can I trust myself? That sounds like what Alya told me, she knew this was going to happen, she knew it before it happened, and she tried to give me a way out of it, she cared enough to do that even though I was flinging wild punches at the world, and I don’t want to be like her, I don’t want to run away from the good stuff forever just because it’s scary, so I choke down the pain in my chest and get out of my bunk and down my steps and past Hugh and towards her ATR, and she’s there, she’s chatting with Kolya by her door and she’s clearly about to turn in, but when she sees me she comes towards me, and I don’t know what to tell her because everything’s too big and too sharp and I couldn’t speak over the talons in my throat anyway, but she knows somehow because she opens her arms and I stumble into them, and she grabs me tight and makes soothing noises into my chest because that’s as high as she can reach, and I swear this is the worst hug I ever got in my whole life but it feels so good that the talons in my chest and my throat let go and my heart explodes into chunks that come out my throat as I sob, I sob so hard it scares me because it hurts and I can’t stop myself, but eventually the sobs just run out.

  I can talk again, just about, so I try to tell her about Tom moving. She walks me over to her ATR door and sits me down on the step and squeezes next to me with her arm around me, and listens to me as if I were making sense, which I know I'm not. Kolya stands there, solemn and silent, as if this were a funeral, which I guess it is, in a way. When I’ve run out of words and chunks of heart to cough out I feel hollow and really fucking embarrassed by this whole thing. I do feel better, though. But I don’t know if I’ll ever feel good again.

  Kolya puts a hand on my shoulder. It weighs a ton and nearly makes me keel over sideways, but it makes me feel better, too.

  “This was a bad business. Very bad business. Better like this.”

  “But how the fuck are we going to do all the work now? We’re moving tomorrow.”

  Alya strokes my back. “We’ll manage. I’ll just have to come out of retirement. It will do me good. Right now I’d rather work harder than have you working with him, anyway. I’d rather not have to see him at all. If he spent any time on my ship, I would have been sorely tempted to chuck him out the airlock. I’m sure he had reasons to do what he did, or that he thinks he does, and he might be sorry, but right now I just don’t care. Maybe I never will. This is easier. I would have struggled to kick him out. I hate his godsdamned guts, but I still feel responsible towards him.”

  “Shit. If he signed that fuck-awful contract…”

  Alya cuts in. “Whether he did or didn’t, it’s not your problem. He can make his own decisions and his own mistakes. He has a right to choose his path and we have a right to leave him to deal with it. Ok?”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s nearly curfew. Are you going to be ok sleeping on your own?”

  I want to tell her off for daring to ask that, because I'm big and strong and tough and all that. But I have an awful headache, my stomach is cramped up, my throat is killing me, and I’d give the world to sleep on her floor again, knowing that she’s there to look after me, like Tom used to do. But I am big and strong and I better be fucking tough because the alternative is way too dangerous, so I nod instead.

  She gives me a big squeeze. “Kid, I really wish none of this was happening. Maybe if I’d left you on Celaeno…”

  “No. Don’t play that game. Maybe on Celaeno I would have found myself in the same situation and I wouldn’t have been able to say no.”

  “All the same, I wish things had worked out differently for you. For all of us.”

  Kolya pushes me along the step to sit to the other side of me. He’s so big that we can barely fit, but we make it work. “I remember when this was good. Hard, but good. You miss the good days. It is a shame.”

&n
bsp; Alya leans forward to talk to him. “Do you remember the build-up parties?”

  “Yes!”

  She squeezes me. “We used to throw a party after every build-up. To celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “That we had a good build-up. Or that we had a bad one and it was over. That we were all still there. That we were alive. Just, yannow, general celebrating. Maybe we celebrated that we didn’t need a special reason to celebrate.”

  “It was good,” booms Kolya. “Good food, good drinks…”

  “Shit food and worse drinks, actually. We never had any credit. But the music was good. Kolya used to play for us.”

  That sounds great to me. “How comes you stopped having parties?”

  Alya shrugs. “I don’t know. People went and people came and the mood changed, I guess. Or maybe we just forgot what we had to be grateful for. We forgot that making ourselves happy is a good enough reason to do things.”

  I’m so busy fantasizing about how good that might have been that when the life support alarm goes off it makes me jump.

  Alya gives me a squeeze. “You sure you’ll be ok on your own?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “That was never in question. Goodnight, then.”

  I walk to the bunks with Kolya. I feel awkward as hell saying goodnight to him after the scene I just pulled. He doesn’t seem much more comfortable than me. That really doesn’t help.

  After we’ve stood by the bunks looking everywhere but at each other and scuffing the ground for a bit, he coughs. “I hear what happen with Alya and that boy. She is like a daughter to me, and I am not there.”

  “You can’t be everywhere. You have a job to do.”

  “Yes. But she needs me, and I am not there. And you are.”

  “It was luck, really. It happened right under my nose.”

  “It is not luck that you do something. Many people here, maybe they see but do not do anything. You do something. Maybe you do too much, maybe not. I do not know. I am not there. Maybe Alya does not say thank you. She is not so good with that. But I say thank you now. You help my daughter. You are a good person.”

  He thumps me on the shoulder and walks off into his bunk.

  I’d probably stand there forever trying to make sense of today, but the life support is about to go off, so I lock myself in my bunk and try to stop my brain spinning. Today has been too long. I feel like I’ve been trampled by events. I’d give anything to be able to rewind back to the point when everything started going to shit and take a different route, but I can’t even tell when that happened.

  Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better that I found all of this out, that I know where I stand, that I know what Tom and I are capable of. It’s vital information – literally. But it still sucks and I still wish it all went away.

  The first move without Tom is hard, and not just because we have to do his share of the work. It’s hard to feel Tom’s absence and realize that it’s permanent, that it’s the way things are going to be from now on. It would have been bad to have to work with him, for sure, but the hole in my life where Tom used to be is even harder to deal with.

  I should be grateful that the work keeps me too busy to think, but I can’t. Doing the same amount of work with one less person really sucks. Hugh’s no substitute for Tom. He’s cut out a lot of the moaning since he got scared of me, but he’s still the kind of guy who’ll drop something if he thinks it’s too heavy without giving a fuck about whether you’re holding on to the other end of it. He’s a fucking liability.

  Alya, on the other hand, is a beast. A tiny beast, admittedly, but a beast nonetheless. The woman does not stop, ever. She’s so damn stubborn that the more tired and sore she gets, the harder she goes. Everything seems personal to her: how dare this thing be so heavy? How dare this bolt be stuck? It’s nerve-wracking. At some point something’s gonna give, and with Alya’s size it could well be her. She gets the job done, though.

  When we get on the ship, we’re all shattered, bar Hugh who’s hardly exerted himself. He seems to interpret our silence as a cue to start twittering at us. Alya’s in no mood to deal with it and barks him down. I’m glad of that, because I feel too tired to strangle him. He retires to the bunk in a huff that nobody gives a toss about, so I take the co-pilot’s seat. I could really do with a nap, but I don’t want to be in the same room as Hugh. I’m also worried about Alya falling asleep. She shouldn’t be piloting after all the work she did. Kolya has to keep an eye on the animals, so keeping an eye on her has to be my job.

  It’d be an easier job if my eyes were willing to stay open.

  After the umpteenth time I’ve nodded off and jolted myself back awake, Alya snaps at me.

  “Kid, go the fuck to sleep already. There’s no point in both of us suffering.”

  “I don’t want you flying on your own.”

  “I’ll do my best not to crash the ship, I promise.”

  “Still not right.”

  “Yeah, well. You can make me some coffee before you do the animals. I’ll rest after build-up. We’ll be fine.”

  “Will we?”

  “We have to be. Until we find someone else to join our merry crew. It’s not impossible. It’s not even unlikely. You turned up.”

  “Huh. Never thought of that.”

  “It’s easy to forget about alternative options when you get stuck in emergency mode. You get so focused on dealing with shit that you forget to look for ways of not having to.”

  “Is it ok if I just nap here for a bit? I really don’t want to be in the bunk room with Hugh.”

  “Is it because he’s too irritating for words?”

  “Partly.”

  I don’t have to say anything else. I like that about Alya: she gets things.

  “Every time I look at where Laika should be, I feel like someone’s punched a hole through my chest. Every time. I don’t know how long it will take to get used to it. You settle yourself there and have a snooze. You’re not half as good company as she used to be, but you’ll do.”

  “Was she a better conversationalist?”

  “She was the only person I’ve ever met who liked my singing.”

  3.

  Building up with only the three of us isn’t any better than pulling down. It takes me a whole day to recover from the move. Alya and Kolya don’t look much better than I feel. I’ve gotten used to a lot in the last few months and I’m sure I could also get used to this, but I really hope I don’t have to. I wish I could hope that Alya’s right, that someone will come along and fill Tom’s spot, but I can’t. If someone turned up wanting to join the show, they’d go to the front office, like Tom and I did. I can’t see Sean referring potential workers to us. It’s not as if he wants to help us out.

  Alya is definitely right about something, though. Ever since that thing happened with Tom, I’ve let stuff slide. I’ve stopped exploring the nearby bubbles, I’ve avoided people, I’ve hardly touched my guitar, and I’ve not done any working out. Going exploring on my own on this fucking planet doesn’t tempt me in the least, and I can’t force people to spend time with me. Tom and I shared a tight social circle. A bunch of those people scarpered, but even if they hadn’t they would have been his friends first. He’s getting to meet the new people and I’m not, so I’m not precisely swimming in potential new friends here. Playing guitar is just a matter of either getting my head right, or deciding to plow on regardless. I may not be feeling creative, but I don’t have to feel anything at all to practice scales and picking patterns. I still can’t be bothered, though. Working out is the easiest thing to get back into and also the one with the greatest potential to perk me up. I could do with feeling buzzed, instead of dragging myself around.

  I always worked out with Tom. On-ship we messed about in the cargo bay. On-planet we used to go under the seating in the big top, where there are plenty of handholds, relative privacy, and enough room to move. As long as I don’t go at our normal time, I should have
the place to myself. If I go while they’re serving lunch at the café, that’s almost a guarantee.

  Or it would be, if Tom hadn’t had the same idea.

  When I lift up the curtain to get to our spot, he’s already there, shirt off, sweating even in the chill. When he sees me, there’s such naked hostility in his eyes that I find myself reaching for the blade I’ve not carried since I left home. As my hand fumbles around my empty pocket, his hand disappears into his. For a moment I think how funny it would be if this is how it ended, me getting shanked by my brother because I let myself get so spooked that I spooked him, but his hand comes up empty too, and my brain goes blank.

  I have no idea how it ever came to this and I have no idea how to undo it. So I just drop the curtain back down, turn around to walk away, and nearly give myself a heart attack by walking right into Kelly, who’d been standing just behind me.

  I’m coming apart at the seams and I really, really need to cut this shit out before I make something bad happen.

  Kelly doesn’t look pleased to see me, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. It sucks, but it’s understandable. I’m just about to walk away from her and add her to the list of people I’ve lost in this train wreck, when she turns around to walk with me.

  “If you’re looking for a training partner, I could do with some help.”

  “Say what?”

  “I have some weights. Not many, but enough for me. Probably enough for you – for now, anyway. I like to train. Not as often as you, from what I’ve seen, but I don’t know if that’s a problem. I could do with a spotter. And company, too. Mostly the company. None of the girls train like me and none of the guys take me seriously.” She says this all in a rush, as if she was worried about it getting stuck in her throat.