I didn’t want him to see my lip trembling. Like a little kid. “You’re the psychiatrist. Make something up.”
“I hear the voices, too, Moremi. Maybe they’re the stars. Maybe they’re a projection of my unconscious mind. My temporal lobes constructing a presence to block out the emptiness that’s really out there. How can I know? And if I don’t know, how can I give advice? Won’t I simply be repeating what the stars tell me? How can I say anything?”
“People are writing on the walls in blood. How can you not say anything?”
“I can’t say anything.” I expected him to show some emotion, to start waving his hands or trembling. He just sat there. Repeated it over and over. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
I stormed out. I cried in my cabin for a minute or two.
But so what? He showed me what not to be. I refuse to sit there, expressionless, while things fall apart. Even if my memory’s going and the stars are loud in my ears, I have to do something so we survive until Barnard’s Star. I have to, so I can.
I am going to have a talk with Captain Hao.
It will be delicate. I can’t do it when someone else could be watching. And her door isn’t open, anymore. When I come by, she waves pages of Mandarin paperwork in my face. I have to wait for the right moment.
It’s awful, waiting. It drove me to distraction all day. Finally, I gave up and went to Henri.
He smirked the way he always smirked. “Ah, yes, love. I’ll give you something else to think of.” He pulled me close without waiting to see if I liked the idea or not. Half of me hated him for it and half of me wanted to kiss him until speech was not an option. I went with the kissing. Henri’s not all bad. His jaw is a good shape. His skin tastes salty, alive.
I’d kissed halfway down his neck before I realised I wasn’t thinking of those things. And, this time, not about Captain Hao, either. I was thinking of the pulse in his throat. Strong, heady, rhythmic, saltier than skin. The red, the life, hiding inside him. I wanted to touch that. To taste it.
I pulled back abruptly. Henri raised an eyebrow, not moving. He’s learned not to push.
You are ours, said the stars, suddenly loud in my ears. We can use you.
I put my hands over my ears. Henri tilted his head. “Moremi, what…?”
I shoved him away and ran back to my room.
I’m not crazy. Captain Hao’s the crazy one. I’ve always had these little uncomfortable moments. One time, I had a girlfriend back in Johannesburg who—
I don’t remember her name. I don’t remember what she did.
I remember it was awkward, though, and I came home and told Onalenna about it. Once told, it was funny. We laughed and laughed, and Onalenna said—
What did she say?
I can’t picture my sister’s face, anymore. I don’t know what she said. I don’t remember our mother’s name, only the stick of her wrist as she hugged me goodbye. I remember Onalenna’s last words to me: Don’t look back, Moremi. I’ll miss you, but….
But what?
I think I remember her voice. I think I remember it cracking. But I don’t remember my sister.
I don’t remember what I said when I got Captain Hao alone. Just the feeling of blood pounding in my ears. I felt sick, but I had to say it, or be like Mesfin forever.
She stared at me. Not a caught-in-the-act stare. Not a repentant stare. She stared like she’d never believed an African cleaning lady could be so stupid.
“Dr. Maele.” Her voice was ice. “Can’t you read?”
I’d pictured her screaming, attacking me in a blood-writing homicidal haze. This was worse.
“Not Mandarin,” I said helplessly, my eyes frozen to hers. “Not very much of it. I can speak Mandarin and read English and, for a non-Chinese citizen, that was enough for—”
“I know the personnel requirements of my own ship, Moremi. Fine. Since you’re so concerned, let me educate you. The words I’ve been writing on the walls? They say, Keep out.”
I stared.
Captain Hao clasped her gloved hands and spoke the way you’d talk to a brain-damaged 12-year-old. “The stars speak to me most of all, as is fitting. They wish to use me, and my ship, for their own ends. I will not let them. They understand blood more than anything else. So, I use blood to let them know they are unwelcome. Haven’t you noticed that, when I do this, the voices lessen, if only for a while? Or does the University of Johannesburg give doctorates to those who don’t understand covariation?”
I was frozen down to my belly. She was right, and I hadn’t noticed.
We will use you, said the stars. We will use her. Soon, you will see.
“Captain?” I said. “What do the stars say to you?”
She pointed. “Out.”
Call me a coward, but I left.
I stewed all evening and all morning, all through my cleaning time. I couldn’t calm down. When the Harmony I was spotless, I collapsed into Henri’s bed.
He didn’t seem surprised. “Your little panic attack is over, then?” I was past caring. With him, at least, I could stop thinking for a minute.
The voices slithered into my ears. I kissed him and kissed him. He pinned me against the cabin wall. His skin grew hot with surface blood. The voices sang. I didn’t care.
Kisses. Blood. The stars. Captain Hao. Blood. I was past thinking. I still saw them.
Henri was already inside me when the voices coalesced into words. Too loud to ignore, not even there and then. So loud they drowned out Henri’s moans.
He is ours. His blood, his life, they are ours. You will give him to us.
For a split second, I could see it: His limbs splayed, his eyes glassy, red everywhere. The stars laughing.
My stomach turned to ice. The vision, and the voices, went away. He was alive and moving, kissing me, cursing in French. Should I have told him to stop? Should I have pushed him off of me?
He took a few minutes of afterglow before he realised I still wasn’t moving. “Love? Are you all right?”
I managed to make my mouth work. “I think so.”
“Come here.”
I sat on the cot beside him and he wrapped me in his arms. They were not comforting.
“It’s the voices, oui?”
“Ee,” I agreed. He knew as many words of Tswana, by now, as I did of French.
“Poor thing. They speak to me, too, you know.”
It was the sort of inane thing Henri would say. Did he think there was anyone who didn’t hear them? But, out of some perverse impulse, I asked, “What do they say?”
“They say that I am not worthy of them. That I must die and my blood will consecrate the ship.” His fingers tightened in my hair. “But it is foolishness. I have never been suicidal, even out here, and I find them easy to ignore. If they want me to kill myself, they will have to try harder, hmm? So, what do they tell you?”
I was silent.
“Poor little Moremi. Don’t think of the stars. Think of home. Old lovers, drinking companions, colleagues, that sister you love so much. Remember we are doing this for them.”
I thought of them. Or I tried to.
I could not think of anything. At first, I thought I was still paralysed from the vision. But I could think of Henri, Captain Hao, Mesfin, Suardana, all the rest of them.
I could not think of my sister. Nor my parents. Nor anyone on Earth I had ever known. I could not remember my alma mater, my hometown, my religion—if I had one. I could not remember veldts or rivers or cities. And I had not even noticed them go.