Far from the Light of Heaven

by Tade Thompson

  “Campion?” says Lawrence. “Shell Campion? I knew her when she was a child.” As soon as he speaks, he regrets it. Beko looks at him as if wondering why he still exists. Lawrence remembers a bright child who played with rockets and Buzz Aldrin action figures.

  “As I was saying before His Excellency interrupted me,” says Beko. “We have a situation here.”

  “I don’t understand,” says Ibidun Awe. “We do not own the Ragtime.” She is always daft. Pretty, ambitious, but stupid.

  Beko, long-suffering saint. “Look at our charter. The Bridge Operational Standards say our job is not complete until the ship AI gives the all-clear. The ship comes through the bridge, gets maintenance at the space station and goes on to its planetary destination, at which point it gives the signal, and we get paid. Did none of you know this?”

  Lawrence does, but he feels it is more important to be in harmony with the room, so he arranges his face into surprise, like everyone else apart from Beko.

  “How can we be responsible for all that? The ship could encounter any number of… incidents before arrival,” says Silas. Tall, thin, eager to please Beko, always polite to Lawrence in the old Yoruba way. He’ll go far.

  “The problem is none of you reads,” says Beko. “Or at least you don’t read what matters. The wording of the contract has not mattered until now because the transport has always worked. The real reason it’s worded like that is because we, the owners of the bridge and space station, own all the space beyond it. Notionally. On paper. This is how we guarantee that the items we manufacture – the ark-ships, the Einstein-Rosen bridge components, the Dyson swarm modules, the ship drones, all of it – are safe; we underwrite any loss in our space.”

  Some guy pipes up. Shittu? Shitta? “So the Colonial Authorities—”

  “Are subordinate to us, yes, but are also our responsibility in some ways. You will not believe the shit I had to eat when Nightshade failed.”

  “I still can’t tell Nightshade from Bloodroot,” says Ibidun.

  “Bloodroot is flat and Nightshade is dead,” says Silas.

  A rote simplification, although, like all such mental shortcuts, it contains a scaffolding of truth. The powers that be may like to dismiss it, but Lawrence would not classify Nightshade as failed. Dealt a mortal blow, yes; dying, but not dead. It follows the standard protocol for settling, an Earthnorm model: Establish safety, build habitats, mine materials, use them to build industry and structures of renown. Bloodroot came later and the first settlers were from Nightshade, not Earth. What most people don’t know, or care about, is that the main difference between Bloodroot and Nightshade is philosophical. The colonists of Bloodroot wanted to work in ecological harmony with the planet, and such a group would find Earthnorm antithetical. Bloodroot grows its habitats using biopolymer substructures and has very few high-rises, hence flat. Nightshade’s biosphere is poisoned, hence dead.

  “All you need to know is that the Ragtime’s distress is our distress. I’m not saying we have to fix its problems and find out why thirty-one of its passengers are dead. We just have to get the AI to send the all-clear message, then it’s Bloodroot’s problem.”

  “Isn’t it already Bloodroot’s problem? They sent a team to investigate.” Ibidun again.

  “It isn’t yet Bloodroot’s problem, but they don’t know that. I’d like us to be in and out of this before any questions are asked.” Beko licks her lips, tongue darting out rapidly, like a reptile.

  Silas says, “Ma’am, in and out of what? What are you saying we should do?”

  “We’re sending a team to fix the AI’s Pentagram, or, failing that, to rig it so that it sends a completion message. We will do this quickly and quietly, in the Lagos way. Naija no dey carry last.”

  She stands, signalling the end of the meeting. Everyone else follows suit.

  Lawrence is the last person to leave the conference room. He adopts the befuddled elder expression and immediately becomes invisible. He takes fifteen minutes to think. He is so still the motion sensors think the room empty and switch the lights off. He remembers Shell. Delightful child, inquisitive, funny. The only thing her father would talk about, even though he had two older boys and one younger son. Lawrence and Haldene Campion had solidified the bridge protocols and structure in their twenties, owning the Brink. They were relativity explorers, fearful but unwavering in their belief that humanity could and should spread to the cosmos and that they should be the agents of this.

  “There is nothing quite like a daughter,” Haldene was fond of saying.

  Lawrence agrees with the sentiment.

  Now Haldene is gone and Lawrence is an impotent bureaucrat and young Campion is in trouble on her first flight into interstellar space.

  He rises and the lights come on.

  “Nobody needs me here, anyway,” he says to himself.

  He gets Awe to fuel a shuttle for him. Awe is Beko’s man, married to Ibidun though much smarter, and his job on many occasions is to keep Lawrence from interfering with the running of Lagos. Otherwise, his team services the Lagos AI.

  “Who’s flying you, sir?” asks Awe.

  “The on-board AI and I can do it together,” says Lawrence.

  “But—”

  “Listen, you are young. When you get to my age you start to wonder if you were ever alive in the first place. I need to do this myself. Glory days. You understand.”

  “But—”

  “Awe. Think. If I’m out there in the Brink, how much trouble can I cause Beko here? I can’t interfere with any Lagos things if I’m in space.”

  Especially if I crash and freeze in space.

  The end of an inconvenience.

  “Yes, sir.” You can almost hear the cogs turn.

  “And I want you to feed the carp on level five, pond eight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fit me for an EVA suit as well. I may be a bit thicker than the last time.”

  They give Lawrence the Decisive, which isn’t bad. It’s sturdy, not new, not fast, a bit like him. He waits in a lounge while it fuels and runs self-tests.

  He files a flight path to one of the outer asteroid mines. Fuck. Space food. Okay. Lawrence hasn’t been in space for seven years. He lives on the outer layer of the station – the best gravity. Even as he sulks, he can feel the old instincts returning. In the Brink you just make do, because the Brink hates humans.

  “What are you doing, Dad? Where are you going?”

  He turns to see Joké, a smile that breaks the heart, posture that is doe-like at times. She looks fragile though she isn’t. She barely displaces air, as if her solidity is an argument between existence and ephemera.

  “I’ve been calling you all day.”

  She squeezes his neck. “Umm, I know. I was ignoring your calls. I saw an interesting mould growth in the mezzanine between four and five on my way to see you. I tried to communicate with it. I read it poetry. Where are you going?”

  “I have to help out a friend. The daughter of a friend. There’s a thing on Bloodroot. I can’t let that young lady deal with it on her own.”

  “What friend? What young lady, and is she cute?”

  “Joké!”

  “I’m kidding. But I’m asking for me, not you. Hmm. I’m not really kidding, then.”

  “I’m going because her father would do the same for me.”

  She plops down beside him. “Good man. I’m coming with.”

  “You are not.”

  “You need my help, old man. You wheeze when you climb three steps.”

  “We have no steps.”

  “Tomato, tomahto.”

  “I’m not going to countenance—”

  “Hah! I know you know you’ve lost when you break out the big words. Action Governor! Let us proceed.”

  The Yoruba say, “If you’re gonna eat a frog, eat one that has eggs,” which means, if you’re going to do something unpleasant, you might as well go large. He hates it when she calls him Action Governor.

&nb
sp; The Decisive AI contacts him and soon it is time to countdown.

  Once more into the Brink.

  Chapter Seven

  Ragtime: Fin, Shell, Fin

  Fin and Salvo make good time. They have, between them, arranged seventeen bodies on the floor, side-by-side. They use Node M, which is roomier than other spaces on the Ragtime and designed for medical procedures. Blood everywhere. Fin is acclimatising to the gore, able to accept the feel of dead human flesh, but he expects nightmares. He has seen bodies before in his line of work, but this is far more than he has ever seen at one time. He knows from study that there are such things as mass murder and war, but Bloodroot has experienced neither. A part of him that he resents revels in this, catalogues the data relentlessly, sifts through Shell’s account looking for flaws and considers the entire affair valuable experience. That part of Fin is like Salvo and his kin.

  Fin looks up as the door slides open. It closes. Opens. Closes.

  Opens.

  A small bot, barely six inches tall, crawls through the door, smearing blood, scuttling towards Fin, and clamps on to his boot with a hook. Fin stares at it and flicks his leg, but to no avail. He drops the head he is holding with a wet thunk! and kicks out, but the bot holds on. Salvo continues his own work.

  “Hey, what the… Salvo, get this off me,” says Fin.

  Before Salvo can react, the door opens again, and a larger bot launches into the sick bay, springing and latching on to Fin’s right hand with six punctures. Minor pain. He finds it heavy and struggles to hold his arm up. The bot fires a tentacle at the wall, anchors it, and pulls Fin towards the spot.

  Salvo moves to help, but a wall-mounted medbot seizes the Artificial’s arm and clamps him against a different wall.

  “This is wrong,” says Salvo.

  “No shit,” says Fin.

  The medbot injects the Artificial with something, but there is no effect.

  Bots stream in the open door now, splitting between Fin and Salvo, each latching on to a different part of the body or a different bot. The detached part of Fin admires how the bots take turns in a strict algorithm deciding on first human, then Artificial. Is this how those passengers died? Was the carnage logical? He finds it difficult to stand under the weight.

  “Salvo, what can we—” Fin screams in agony. One of the bots drills into his leg. Blood spurts out of the wound and mingles with the puddle on the floor. Fin looks to the comm orb. “Campion!”

  “Rasheed Fin, send an IFC distress call,” says Salvo. The bots drill into him as well, trying to take the Artificial apart. His bland face shows no sign of distress.

  Fin sweats and hyperventilates from the pain. He sends an all-points call from his IFC.

  A sturdier bot than any of the others wheels into the room and swings an arm, smashing Fin in the chest, taking his breath away. Is he going to die in this place, cut up like the others?

  A drill excavates Salvo’s side. He does not show pain or confusion.

  “This is not right,” Salvo repeats.

  The bot at Fin’s foot starts sawing at the level of the ankle joint. Fin strains against his bonds but the bots hold fast.

  “Campion, fuck you, get over here! We’re dying!”

  The comms orb stays in place, impassive.

  Fin sends an IFC distress call again, then he takes a gamble. Fuck this, we’re going to die anyway. He sends a remote signal to his supply pack and detonates a fraction of the ordnance. He is too far away to know if it works.

  Shell

  Shell feels the explosion and shudders. She darts out of her sleeping bag and runs into a cloud of debris in the microgravity.

  “Ragtime, what just happened?”

  “Repeat command.”

  “Was there an explosion?”

  No answer.

  Messages pop up on her IFC and she swims through the cloud, aiming aft, for Node M. They’ve been trying to reach her.

  “Rasheed Fin, come back,” says Shell, propelling herself with grab rails.

  No response. What’s going on?

  “Salvo, Salvo, come in,” says Shell.

  “Captain,” says Salvo.

  “I’m on my way. What’s your status?”

  “The bots are taking us apart. Fin is unconscious, bleeding and about to lose a limb.”

  “Understood,” says Shell. She can’t move any faster. “Ragtime, Ragtime.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Reboot all bots now!” Please do it.

  “Rebooting.”

  Fin

  Salvo finishes the suturing on Fin’s leg. It’s numb and Fin feels only the tugging, but no pain. He’s also got an IV line dripping synthetic blood into his veins. Almost finished. He’s not even dizzy any more.

  Campion seems confused. Her hands are smeared with blood from taking the inert bots off Salvo and Fin. The constructs lie in a mess on the floor. Campion stands at the edge of one of the pools of blood. She’s in loose trousers and a white tee shirt with the MaxGalactix logo over her left chest. She has not packed her hair back, so it seems informal compared to before. There is no guilt in her body language, but Fin doesn’t rule anything out.

  Campion says, “When you sent the distress signal, what happened? Tell it to me again.”

  “Nothing to tell. They ignored it,” says Fin.

  Salvo says, “The normal protocol—”

  “I know the normal protocol,” says Campion.

  “Even I felt the urge to drop what I was doing and assist Fin when I received the signal,” says Salvo.

  “Salvo, I get it. All constructs are required to respond to expressed human distress by lending assistance. I know my bots are broken. I’m trying to figure out how and why.”

  “Did you programme them?” asks Fin.

  “No. They came pre-loaded, and that’s beyond my expertise.”

  Fin snorts. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. Because I said so?”

  “Where the hell have you been anyway?”

  “Sleeping.”

  Fin sputters. “What? How could you—?”

  “Captain, what Fin is trying to say is we needed your help,” says Salvo. He finishes dressing Fin’s wound. Fin finds the interaction odd. The Artificial has never finished Fin’s sentences before. This is not the time for odd behaviour from constructs. Or humans, for that matter.

  “I know what he’s trying to say,” says Campion, eyes on Fin. “He wants to know if I set the bots on you both.”

  “Is that unreasonable? The bots attacked us, and you control the bots,” says Fin. Her face is a beautiful blank and Fin cannot get a read.

  “You tried to blow up my ship,” says Campion. “You endangered my passengers.”

  “If I tried to blow up the ship, we wouldn’t be standing here,” says Fin.

  “Yes, we would,” says Salvo. “We don’t have enough explosive material to destroy the ship. We can’t even breach—”

  “Shut up, you,” says Fin. He pulls out the IV line, which has finished anyway, and steps into Campion’s personal space. “I want your IFC logs.”

  “Not without a warrant,” says Campion.

  “‘War-rant’?”

  “Legal authorisation. It means a judge who has jurisdiction must look at the facts and order me, on pain of imprisonment, to give up the last line of privacy humans have. Or maybe you do things differently in the colonies.” Just short of a sneer that time.

  Salvo moves between them. “I’m sure there’s a middle ground to be—”

  “No, fine.” Fin steps around Salvo, back into Campion’s face. “I’ll get a war-rant. Salvo, escort Captain Campion to her quarters and keep guard.”

  “Am I under arrest?” asks Campion.

  “If you want to be. Tell the ship AI to obey us.”

  “No. You’ll need a court order for that.” Campion looks up. “Ragtime, unlimited comm use for Rasheed Fin.”

  Fin looks to Salvo. “What’s a court
order?”

  “You can’t arrest Campion, Fin,” says Malaika.

  “I have to—”

  “You can’t arrest her. Lagos will have our heads, and nobody wants aggro with them.”

  “I want a war-rant, sir. She could be a murderer.”

  “Is she?”

  “Probably not, but I haven’t ruled her out yet.”

  “You can’t arrest her. Didn’t the Artificial tell you this?”

  “How am I supposed to fix this case if she won’t cooperate?”

  Malaika exhales, long-suffering. “Luckily for me, I don’t care, because it’s not my job. It’s your job, therefore you are the one who needs to know. Negotiate, cajole, beg, but fulfil your mission. Understand, Fin, we don’t want to become another Nightshade. The Ragtime cargo has experts in many fields and a boost to genetic diversity that we are keen to integrate into Bloodroot.”

  Fin misses hunting aliens. “I hate working with humans.”

  “The way I heard it, humans hate working with you, Fin. Get it done. Mission Control out.”

  At least he’s had a lot of practice apologising.

  Salvo and Campion have not moved. She is doing that thing with her fingers again.

  “I’m sorry, Captain Campion,” says Fin. “I really am. Can we start over?”

  For a moment she does not react, then she nods. “Ragtime, cool temperature five degrees C.”

  “What do we do about this?” Fin points to the blood seeping out from under the lab door.

  “You two will go in and count the heads, as planned. It’ll be messy work, especially without the bots, which will need individual debugging.”

  “Why were you asleep, Captain? We’re in the middle of a crisis,” says Fin.

  “Because if I don’t rest, I’ll make a mistake and Ragtime will crash into Bloodroot. You investigate. I’ll try and keep us alive, otherwise it won’t matter.” She softens her tone and Fin supposes that is as conciliatory as it gets with her.