Stephen always made the bed, even though he knew she was going to wreck it. Berthe went and lay down on it, felt the cool material of his pillow against her face, and concentrated on that scrap of comfort through the pain.
When she woke up, there were more scars on the walls, but she had not ripped the mattress apart this time. It still looked as if there had been a beast inside the room, but just a little more controlled this time.
She dressed slowly, getting comfortable with being back in her own skin, went downstairs, and opened the door to find her tea on the table beside her cookie, her Stephen in the corner shutting his book as soon as he saw her.
He had reached out when they met, she thought, taken steps with her she could not have taken alone. She could do that now, when he might be paralyzed from being in hiding, from years and years in the dark.
Berthe crossed the floor, and the sunlight was no bar to her. She approached Stephen and he rose politely to meet her approach, and she did not try to say the right thing.
She took his face in her hands and kissed him. He moved in toward her at once, a little awkward and seeming so glad, and she was so glad, too. It felt like a different kind of moonlight moving through her and changing her.
He was a little shorter than she was now, and he hadn’t been a few months ago. She was growing up, and he was not. This moment, his narrow chest against hers, could not be kept. She smiled against his mouth: a little sweetness in the cup of her life and his, having this moment and the next, and being unafraid of change.
“I was wondering,” Berthe said, soft as her own breath. “What are you doing tonight?”
Beth Revis
Night Swimming
We don’t have “night” on a generational spaceship. The solar lamp in the roof of the Feeder Level goes dark, but it’s no more night than the clouds painted on the metal ceiling are sky.
Nevertheless, everything important that has ever happened to me has happened at “night.”
For once, Harley isn’t painting. I lean over his shoulder—he’s doing some sort of math, never my strong point. Never Harley’s, either.
“What are you doing?”
“Shut up,” he says genially.
“What is he doing?” I ask Kayleigh. She shrugs and returns to the digital membrane screen she’s reading. Math is her specialty, but she’s reading scientific articles on physics and propulsion. Probably something to do with whatever crazy invention she’s going to work on next.
I resign myself to silence, staring out the window. No one else is in the common room of the Ward. The others have long since gone to their rooms. The solar lamp will be covered soon, washing the Feeder Level of the ship Godspeed in darkness for exactly eight hours, the precise amount of time we are allotted to sleep. My mind plays with words—darkness, sleep, night-that’s-not-night—maybe I can form them into a poem or some song lyrics later. It has been a while since I’ve written anything new, and the urge to create itches me from the inside.
But I can’t think of anything now.
Instead, my mind is filled with the words Doc gave us when it was time for our meds. The blue-and-white pill stuck in my throat as Doc entered the common room. Even the nurses stiffened. We never know what to expect from Doc, but none of us thought that his announcement would be that the Elder of the ship, the boy who will one day grow up to become the leader of us all, was moving into the Ward.
We all know what Elder looks like: thirteen years old, scrawny, with a hollow expression in his eyes and sickening devotion to Eldest, the current leader. Eldest is a kind, old man . . . on the outside. We here at the Ward are loons, marked crazy almost since birth, as far away from normal people as possible. Eldest mostly ignores us, letting us fill up the Recorder Hall with art that no one cares about and spending our days being the only inefficient crew members as the ship crosses the universe.
But sometimes Eldest doesn’t ignore us.
Only last year, Selene, a girl who sang beautifully, was sent away from the Ward. Doc was the one who led her out to the farms. He left her there to spend the rest of her life in dull labor, working on food production for the ship’s crew. But I don’t think any of us doubts that the order really came from Eldest. Selene had been determined a threat to productivity, someone whose art was deemed less valuable than manual work.
I swallow the lump in my throat. Selene wasn’t a friend of mine, not exactly, but we spoke together. I miss her. I miss the sound of her, the way her voice could change the way I saw things.
It’s not right, how Eldest silenced her.
The way he could silence any of us.
“Twenty-four thousand,” Harley says triumphantly, breaking my concentration, “and three hundred eighty-seven frexing days.”
“What’s that?” Kayleigh asks without taking her eyes off the screen she’s reading from.
“That is exactly how long it’ll be before the ship lands.”
She looks up now. We both stare at Harley, gaping.
“Twenty-four thousand days?”
Harley repeats the whole number.
“We’ll be so . . . old,” Kayleigh mutters.
“Just over eighty,” Harley replies. He sounds almost cheerful about it, but the days feel like stones in my stomach, weighing me down.
“Twenty-four thousand three hundred and eighty-seven days,” I repeat, unable to comprehend a number so large.
“Isn’t it great?” Harley asks, jumping up and tossing the screen he’s been working on to the chair.
“Great? That’s forever away!” I snap back.
Harley shrugs.
I’m in the mood to pick a fight, but Kayleigh laughs, stopping me and my argumentative words. “He has a point. It’s a long time from now—but it’s not forever.”
Harley whistles as he meanders away, the sound drifting from the hall and wrapping around the common room for several moments before I hear his door close.
Aroo! Aroo! The sirens blare from the ceiling: the solar lamp is going dark in a matter of minutes.
I stand up. “Come on,” I say to Kayleigh.
“Nah,” she answers, rolling her shoulders and letting the screen she’s been reading drop down on the table beside her chair.
“Time for bed,” I say again, confused at her response.
Kayleigh stands languidly. “No it’s not,” she says.
“But—” My eyes drift to the big windows that line one wall of the common room. There is light now, but once the shade descends, the entire level will be far darker.
“Just because it’s ‘night’ doesn’t mean I have to go to bed,” Kayleigh says. She strolls over to the elevator.
“Where are you—”
“You can come,” she offers, pushing the button. “I don’t care. I just don’t want to be bossed around by some siren.”
By the time the elevator doors open, it’s dark. Kayleigh walks out of the lobby of the Hospital with confidence though, not even slowing as she bounds down the steps and veers toward the path that leads to the garden.
“Where are we going?” I ask. It feels dangerous to be out here, even though there’s no express rule against it. But often, on Godspeed, the most important rules are the unspoken ones.
“I am going to the pond,” Kayleigh says. “You can go wherever you like.”
She doesn’t say this in a mean way: she means simply that she intends to spend this night on her own terms, and she won’t stand in the way of me doing the same.