“’Course.”
“Just bring that to me tomorrow, and I’ll get one out of storage and put them on. Really, it’s easy. It’s fine.”
I wasn’t lying to placate her. I really thought I had a backup. I remember saying goodbye to my family, hugging my sister like a vise and holding my mother more gently, afraid of hurting her. Trying to memorise the smell of the earth, even though it was just asphalt and fuel out there on the launch pad. Walking stiffly onto the ship, praying the photos and letters and music I’d packed onto the thumbtop would be enough. I’m sure I was smart enough to make a backup.
But I’ve trashed my room. Every space-saving drawer. Every pocket. If we were allowed to keep personal files on the ship’s mainframe, I’d have trashed that, too. There was no backup. Finally, I gave up and took out this paper.
I keep glancing out my little window, daring myself to look at the stars. I’ve only realised just now how much I’ve kept on my thumbtop and not in my head. I had a diary from Earth, but I can’t remember any of what I wrote. I had letters from all my friends, all my extended family, even a few ex-lovers. I can remember a few of their faces but only one name. I didn’t know it was possible to lose so much.
I wonder if I’ll remember the percussive beat of a kwaito song, nine years from now. I wonder if I’ll remember Johannesburg. Or the moles on my sister’s face.
I slept with Henri last night to block out the stars’ whispers. To think about something else besides cleaning, blood, and loss. It wasn’t our first time.
I like Henri and I don’t like him. He has nice hands and nice legs. His hair is going prematurely grey. He’s nice to me, in a smarmy sort of way. He’s better than being alone.
I don’t like trying to cuddle on his little cot. We can do it if we try, but once the endorphins wear off, it feels sweaty and squished. So, when we were done, I sat on the floor, wrapped myself in a blanket, stared into space. He ran his fingers through my hair.
“You can take the spare Suardana offered,” he said, when he’d run out of sweet nothings. “You can borrow my music. Borrow everyone’s. Better than doing your oh-so-menial job in silence.”
Henri gets to tease me about that. He’s an organic chemist, so he has one of the only jobs lower on the totem pole than mine: He repairs the composting toilets.
“It’s not the silence. You know what it is.”
“Oui. And the lost files, of course.”
“It’s the sounds.”
I glanced at the window. I’d been hearing it more and more since my thumbtop broke. We were here when you were prokaryotes, said the stars. We will be here when you are dust.
There was a nervous smile in Henri’s voice. “Oui, Moremi, but don’t say it out loud. Ssh.”
I closed my eyes and focused on his fingers in my hair. Normally, I don’t like closing my eyes with Henri. Not in the afterglow, when it’s only his fingers. I always end up realising, with a start, that the hand I’m imagining in my hair is Captain Hao’s.
Henri’s music doesn’t help. It’s all breathy chanteuses and tinkly pop. It doesn’t grab me and move me like kwaito. I keep drifting off and hearing the stars.
We were here when you were dust. We will be here when you are vapour. And you, in the meantime, will serve.
I’m not sure I have all the words right. I try not to get them right.
I keep finding messages in blood. I don’t want to know what they say. I left the second one up for Captain Hao, but after three days, I couldn’t stand it, anymore, and scrubbed it off. She didn’t say anything about it, good or bad, but the stars got louder. The third one, I scrubbed right away. Too much crazy on this ship, already. We don’t need blood.
Last night, I woke up sweating from a nightmare. I couldn’t remember anything. Just the terror. Instead of going back to sleep, I started cleaning early. No one gets up early on this ship. The mess hall should have been empty.
But there was Captain Hao, with a razor blade and a calligraphy brush. One glove pulled off, one hand dripping red, the brush redder. Writing a word on the wall.
She turned her head and looked at me. I’ve never seen emotion in Captain Hao’s face before. Today, her eyes went wide; her lip trembled. I think it was fear.
If she hadn’t looked scared, I might have stormed in, demanded an explanation. But with that look in her eyes, half of me wanted to hug her, kiss her straight black hair, tell her it would be okay. Half of me wanted to run screaming.
I split the difference. I bowed my head and backed out politely. Hours later, when she was gone, I scrubbed the bloody wall until it shone.
I almost didn’t tell anyone. I lay awake, tossing and turning, trying to shut out the stars. Told myself it would make no difference if I did. She’s the Captain. Even if she weren’t, what could we do? Send her home?
We will be here when you are dust, said the stars. You will serve us. She will serve us.
I got up and paced, as much as you can pace in a room the size of a closet, taking one step and turning, step and turn, step and turn. I leaned on the poster I’d smuggled up from Earth, a big view of a herd of kudu in Marakele National Park. I stared at it and wondered if I’d been there before.
I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen kudu. I couldn’t remember if I’d been to a national park, at all. I tried to think of it and only saw blood.
That was the last straw. I had to talk to someone.
“Someone” means Mesfin Biniyam, the ship’s psychiatrist. At Mission Control in Beijing, when they told me psychiatry was one of the most important jobs in space, I laughed. I wrote an eye-rolling letter back home to Onalenna.
Nowadays, I don’t laugh about it.
We each had a weekly session with Mesfin for the first few months. When Henri and I started fighting over whether to call ourselves a couple, Mesfin smoothed it over. When Suardana reported anxiety, he taught her some deep breathing, which helped her keep an even keel—for a while.
But when I first told Mesfin about the stars and their whispers, he got this gazelle-in-the-headlights look. Like, all of a sudden, here was something he hadn’t read in a psychiatric journal. Nowadays, he wanders the ship with nothing to say.
When he stopped holding weekly sessions, I just grumbled and wished he’d help with the cleaning. But today, I needed him.
Mesfin’s office doubles as his cabin and it’s one of the bigger ones. He and I can both sit down and close the door and, if we’re careful, our knees don’t touch. He’s decked out the walls in inspirational posters mixed with traditional Ethiopian art.
I sat down and explained. About Captain Hao. The blood on the walls. The whispers. How I felt like a traitor just talking about it, but worse if I said nothing. How beautiful she was, even writing with the blood from her own wrist. How badly I wanted her to be sane.
He let me h. He asked the usual headshrinker questions. “How does that make you feel?” Then he closed his eyes. “I can’t help with this, Moremi. I’m sorry.”
I pulled away a half-centimeter, which was all I could do without plastering myself against the wall. “What do you mean? You’re the one who deals with the crazy. You’re telling me there’s no entry for this in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual? No little page of instructions in Mandarin, somewhere in the ship’s handbook? ‘By the way, if the whole crew goes batshit, here’s what you do….’” My voice cracked. That surprised me. I held my hands up to hide my face.
Mesfin’s voice had the kind of calm that you only get by doing a real good job of pretending to be calm when you’re not. “What do you think, Moremi? Do you think there are instructions for this?”