Far from the Light of Heaven

by Tade Thompson

  Fin calls his mother every night.

  They clear Bloodroot’s gs in eight minutes, leaving six hours to dock with the Ragtime – precise work that Fin is glad to leave to the untiring, undistracted Salvo.

  Chapter Three

  Ragtime: Shell, Fin

  Shell dips, then thrusts herself upwards into the cupola, the most fore position on the Ragtime. The sun is in the right position to cast light over Bloodroot, blue-green, with an atmospheric force field. Weird that there was a time when humankind thought only one planet in the universe could support life. Weirder still was when they thought the Earth flat.

  The cupola trip is illogical. She knows Bloodroot is sending someone and she wants to see the shuttle; to do that she’d have to use the external cameras, of course. She somersaults and kicks back down into the bridge. She runs checks for an hour and a half. A ship like Ragtime needs taking care of, and without the Master AI Shell has to make sure the systems are functioning – a task which has to be done by her and the various maintainer bots who take orders. The last thing she checks is the passenger quarters. That’s a lot of real estate to keep sweet.

  Shell is running on the treadmill when the call comes in on the radio, relayed by her IFC.

  “Ragtime, come in. This is space shuttle Equivalence.”

  “This is Ragtime One. Over.”

  “Informing you of abortive six-hour dock. Now attempting two-day rendezvous with Ragtime.”

  Male voice, no sign of panic.

  “Is Equivalence compromised? Over.”

  “Negative. All systems optimal. Ragtime failed docking protocol. Prep for manual protocols in forty-six hours, please. Acknowledge.”

  “Acknowledged. Over.”

  “Thank you, Ragtime. Over and out.”

  Failed?

  Of course, Bloodroot sent an investigation team but doesn’t know how compromised the AI is. That they didn’t send a health team shows they got Shell’s message. They are also keeping comms to the bare minimum, not knowing what lies on board.

  She takes off the “gravity” harness that pushes her into the surface of the treadmill and towels off.

  Why did the rendezvous fail? Shell’s first thought is that it has to be something she missed. She queries the logs.

  The Equivalence started messaging their protocol to the Ragtime as soon as they cleared atmosphere. Mission Control would have sent the rendezvous data to the Ragtime before launch, expecting the AI to sync. The Ragtime had to have acknowledged and agreed before the Bloodroot team set off. From the logs, the Equivalence started transmitting telemetry at Insertion Altitude, 220km. It started the Hohmann transfer into a phasing orbit that would have brought it up to the Ragtime’s 420km. The Equivalence fired engines, triggering the short rendezvous as agreed, then tried to accelerate to match the Ragtime.

  Inexplicably, the Ragtime stopped responding to the data. Shell knows it heard the data because the Ragtime sped up, actively thwarting the possibility of the Equivalence ever achieving the six-hour dock.

  There are pages of the Equivalence sending queries from the phasing orbit, as if the ship was repeatedly saying:

  Are you there, Ragtime?

  Are you there, Ragtime?

  Are you there, Ragtime?

  What the hell is going on?

  Shell’s unease worsens, moving like flood water tendrils. But that is a luxury. The ship still needs to be run. Shell pushes into the next node, moving aft. Most of the walls in all directions are full of attached storage behind netting, but on occasion Shell encounters arachnobots giving way, hanging on by grab rails, noting her, probing her IFC. She stares back as if it is a contest, and when she tires she heads for the science labs to check on the experiments. Not to go in, just to check the door.

  Shell straps herself into the vertical sleeping bag and rests for seven hours because she knows that whatever happens, she needs her wits, and a rested brain functions better. All the yammering of her thoughts fades away as she works her phantom worry beads. She dreams of being on Earth, of being a child, of playing with her brother, her younger brother, on a swing. A few yards away her mother looks on with that vague smile she wears. She has a book from which she looks up every few minutes to be sure the kids are safe, regular as a cuckoo clock. Shell is trying to go higher than her brother. She cannot remember her brother’s name in the dream and feels embarrassed about it. She wants to get off the swing and ask her mother, but she also wants to go higher. Shell is happy and wakes up abruptly, instinctively sure an alarm has gone off. She’s wrong.

  She feels a breeze against her right forearm and looks down.

  There is a wolf right outside her sleeping pod, nose centimetres from her skin, hackles up, ears flickering. The breeze is the rhythmic breathing that matches the rise and fall of the wolf’s belly.

  Shell screams and recoils as much as she can. The wolf looks up into her eyes and launches away, floating as if it has lived in low gravity all its life. It flows aft. Shell releases herself from the sleeping bag but stays in the pod, hanging on to a rail, peeping out.

  “Ragtime,” says Shell, looking from fore to aft and back again.

  “Captain.”

  “What is a wolf doing on board?”

  “Captain, can you repeat your request, please?”

  Damn. Backup AI. Simple instructions, simple queries.

  “Ragtime, playback corridor cams, five minutes.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Nothing. Empty passageways, some floating lint, sickly jaundiced low-power light.

  “Ragtime, get a medbot over here.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Nightmare?

  Seizure?

  Hallucination?

  Am I ill?

  Just what I need.

  Fin

  Fin watches Salvo and maintains comms with Campion. She sounds so contained and controlled that if not for the background file Fin would have thought her an Artificial. Salvo stares intently at the crosshairs from the periscope camera, trying to align for docking with the Ragtime. The distance counters rapidly fall to zero.

  “Contact,” says Salvo. “Confirm capture, please.”

  “Capture confirmed,” says Campion.

  “You should be on your way to the hatch,” says Salvo to Fin.

  Fin half expects something to go wrong, but the hatch opens, and there she is framed in the circular airlock.

  They shake hands as is customary. Quarantine on both sides guarantees contagion-freedom. Small, dry hand, firm grip, fleeting. All business. Fin scrambles a bit and soon floats aboard the Ragtime, with Salvo scant seconds behind him. The ship smells of nothing. They must have excellent cleaning bots.

  Campion seems to clock Salvo as an Artificial right away and focuses on Fin. He does the same to her. She’s small, maybe five-four, five-five, but seems to have a strong frame, brown hair all tucked back, brown eyes like her photo; but enlivened, she is filled with anxiety-fuelled intensity. Fin wonders what she sees when she looks at him. Brown-skinned colonial?

  “So, you guys are cops,” Campion says.

  “I’m a contractor,” says Fin.

  “And I belong to him,” says Salvo, deadpan.

  “No, he doesn’t. But he works with me,” says Fin.

  “Okay. Have you done this before?” A note is creeping into her voice that Fin does not care for.

  “Many times,” says Fin. “On Bloodroot. With aliens.”

  “Let me get this straight. You have never investigated a killing on board a large spacecraft?”

  “Any spacecraft, really. But don’t worry. The principle is the same, except all your culprits are locked in here. With murder, some things never change: means, motive, opportunity.” Fin shifts his weight as best as he can manage. “Tell us what happened. In your own words.”

  Shell looks from Fin to Salvo and back.

  “The master AI failed…”

  Chapter Four

  Ragtime: Shell

 
Ten Days Earlier…

  “Campion, wake up. Wake up, Campion.”

  A cool mist, sprayed on her eyelids to dissolve the rheum. She does not know where she is, but the panic in her mind cannot translate to motion because she is without sensation, and paralysed.

  Not totally, though. After the eye gunk is moisturised, Shell finds she can move her eyelids.

  “Campion, open your eyes.”

  The hell is this repetitive voice?

  She opens her eyes.

  An image of a kindly older woman, blonde, familiar, larger than life, winking at her, filling Shell’s entire visual field.

  Feeling returns. Her mouth is dry and holds a metallic taste, with soreness down the throat when she tries to swallow. She feels tubes going into both arms and one into her bladder. She begins to remember.

  I’m in space.

  The giant face is her mother’s, as is the voice prompting her – choices that Shell made for her emergence from sleep.

  I’m on the Ragtime.

  “Where are my worry beads?” she says, but not really because she can’t move her mouth yet.

  Her mother’s projected face disappears, replaced by a display of her most recent blood results, then her blood gases.

  “Captain, I’m awake,” says Campion. She remembers more. She is first mate, and this is her first long-haul. The Captain does not respond. She remembers he likes to be called Ragtime.

  “Ragtime, I’m awake.”

  There are bands around her limbs, myostimulators to maintain muscle tone during interstellar travel. Weight simulators would have been applied by the maintenance bots to stave off osteoporosis, physiotherapy to maintain nimbleness, and some kind of moisturising routine for the skin.

  Shell can now move her fingers, so she mimes the movement of her worry bead meditation. The Captain, Ragtime, still hasn’t answered, which is concerning.

  “Ragtime, alternative protocol. Untether me.”

  If the Captain is non-functional, Shell has a lot of work ahead of her. The first bots arrive to detach her from life support. She starts with the first awake physio and TENS machines and sips of fluid through a straw. She spits some out to confirm artificial gravity. Confirmed.

  Her first long-haul flight, her first voyage with MaxGalactix, and already the ship malfunctions. She should have gone to NASA.

  “This is a recording for… Michelle Campion. It will require you to respond to prompts. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “To help you recover from the disorientation of Dreamstate, Ragtime produced this recording to tell you where you are, so that as soon as you can walk, you’ll be able to find your way around. The Ragtime is composed of a stem made up of an integrated truss structure. There are two toruses aft, and a cupola with temporary crew quarters fore. Between them, on the outside, a solar array. Can you see the graphic?”

  “Yes.”

  It turns like a ghost in Shell’s visual field, transparent, insect-like, solar panels like wings.

  “Thank you. You are in Torus 1, in one of the passenger pods. Your position should be glowing.”

  “It is.”

  “Thank you. The entire ship is modular so that the parts can come apart and be used on other designs after decommissioning. The toruses are composed of pods like the one you’re in. The truss is composed of nodes, numbered zero to seven. The cupola is on Node 0. To get to the cupola, you would exit your pod, exit the torus through a spoke to the truss, then follow the fore directional arrows through each node till you get to zero. If the node number is increasing, you’re going aft, the wrong way. It’s a straight shot, so you can’t miss it. The route should be glowing on your graphic.”

  “It is.”

  “Thank you. Airlocks and docking ports are off Node 1, as are temporary crew quarters. You would have seen these when you embarked. There are two nodes off Node 5: Node M, starboard, medical bay, and Node E, port, the experimental wing. You are forbidden from entering Experimental. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. Waste disposal is off Node 6. I’m told to warn you not to dispose of waste out of the airlock. Acknowledge.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Thank you. For power…”

  Shell tunes out. She knows this information because she overlearned it on Earth. Power is bioreactor, fuel cells and those solar panels. Limited solid fuel for engine burns. The subroutine requires her verbal responses, so she goes through the motions. Something to do with Legal, no doubt. She puffs her cheeks and blows air out of pursed lips.

  Gonna be a long disembark…

  Day fourteen.

  Shell can walk without support, and jog for short periods. She clearly does not have Bridge Unreality Syndrome. The x-ray comparison shows one of her incisors as worn down since she went to sleep. Bruxism.

  She stands in her pod now, finally ready to take charge, tilting and cracking her neck like a boxer.

  “Ragtime, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Campion.” Why is he calling her that? Doesn’t he remember?

  “In seed time learn, in harvest, teach…”

  “I don’t understand, Campion.”

  That would be too easy, of course. “Ragtime, am I cleared by medical?”

  “Yes, Campion.”

  “Activate my IFC.”

  “Activated.”

  “I’m taking control.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Holy fuck.

  The entire display is flashing red. Not a few items – everything. Outside the pod, emergency lights are on. The maintenance bots are active. Artificial gravity is on, so count that blessing. Shell’s IFC searches and finds a socket into a terminal, and she starts running checks that turn the red to amber and most others to green. Her left hand works worry beads that are not there.

  Many of the problems have already been dealt with by maintenance bots, but they require acknowledgement from Captain: A small leak in the water recirculation. A sensor array knocked askew by space junk or a micrometeoroid, fixed by the Big Dumb Arm and the extra-vehicular bots. It looks less diarrhoea-inducing after a while. Shell finds herself wondering what happened to the primary AI.

  “Ragtime, how long since Captain went down?”

  “You are Captain.”

  Stupid.

  Secondary AI is basic and has trouble recognising individuals. It sees roles; therefore, “Captain” means whoever the captain is at any given time, otherwise it will develop an internal conflict.

  “Ragtime, how long since you have been active?”

  “Five hundred and sixteen hours.”

  Three weeks. So, one week before I woke up.

  “How long since the ship stopped?”

  “The ship is still in motion.”

  God, this is tedious.

  “Are we at destination?”

  “Yes. Stable elliptical orbit around the colony Bloodroot.”

  Thank fuck for that. “How long have we been in orbit?”

  “Five hundred and sixteen hours.”

  So the primary AI piloted the Ragtime to destination, then shut down. Why?

  Shell makes a quick check of the passengers before a planned diagnostic debug of the AI…

  What the hell?

  “Ragtime, I’m only showing 969 passengers!”

  “Correct.”

  That isn’t right.

  Don’t lose ’em; don’t break ’em.

  The Ragtime is like a small town with most of the citizens asleep. The robots are active always, except when they shut down for servicing. Each passenger is in their own pod, similar to Shell’s. Rather than trust sensors, she manually checks and finds thirty-one passengers missing. The pods are not only empty, they are clean – as clean as the day Shell first arrived on the ship a decade earlier. A thousand pods is a lot to check personally, and it takes twenty-two hours, but she can handle boredom. If she couldn’t, she wouldn’t have the job. Repetitive tasks are the norm in space a
nd calming in a crisis.

  Double-checking to be sure the empty pods have the same numbers as those in the sensor readings, Shell finds that all thirty-one unaccounted-for pod vacancies match. The occupants of the other pods are as peaceful as stoned university students.

  Shell sticks her head into one of the empty pods and inhales. Something chemical, maybe disinfectant? A ghost of a smell. In her visual field, one of the flashing amber lights is waste disposal.

  “Ragtime, are there video feeds from the empty pods?”

  “Not available.”

  “What? Check again.”

  “No files found for empty pods, Captain.”

  “Feeds for occupied pods?”

  “All accounted for.”

  There. The detail that tells Shell something or somebody is deliberately giving her a bad day. Her skin crawls, and whatever sense of safety she has begins to fray.

  The disposal unit is thirty minutes away. As soon as Shell enters, she sees the problem.

  The entire space is filled with the chopped-up bodies of passengers.

  She has no memory of how she passed from aft, where the passenger torus is, to fore, Node 1, the bridge, where the waking crew is meant to hang out. Shell has seen the dead before, but not like this. She feels the panic rising like a living thing inside her, bubbling up, starving her of oxygen. She breathes fast, holding on to a handrail and hanging in the low gravity. Nobody trained her for this. Astronaut training anticipates everything one can reasonably expect to come across. A killing spree is not reasonable. A murderer on board is not reasonable.

  And the murderer is still on the ship.

  Shell can see the dismembered bodies with her eyes closed. It’s the tattoo that bothers her, a patch of skin with a picture intact – a fairy, artfully rendered, surrounded by clouds, hearts and feathers – the layers of cut skin showing subcutaneous fat in a marinade of congealed blood. She gags. The fairy, with veined wings, her tiny naked body revealed through the transparent membranes.