while the black stars burn (6 page)

“No,” said a voice to her right. Her voice. The lavender double’s voice.

Rhetta ducked and raised a hand to ward off another stunning blow, but the doppelganger tackled her instead. They landed on the couch, the double pressing her down into the cushions with its surprising strength. The smell of lavender was nearly overpowering; it was hard to breathe through the flowery stench. How much had the creature already drained from her?

“You’ll finish it,” growled the doppelganger. Its breath smelled rancid like the undertones in the paints. Rhetta felt an electric prickling where its bare flesh touched hers.

“No, I won’t!”

“You’re nothing but a lefthanded version of me. You’ll do as I say.” The doppelganger pried Rhetta’s mouth open with hard fingers and pressed its lips to hers. The shock was intense but not enough to completely stupefy her.

The doppelganger’s fingers stayed vises but the rest of its flesh turned to a foul gel. It started vomiting itself into the artist. The fluid was greasy and bitter with turpentine, poisonous herbs and heavy metals. Rhetta fought, to no avail; the doppelganger flowed into her, filling her throat and stomach and guts, seeping out into her veins and muscles.

Rhetta felt as though she was being worn like a tight suit. She felt her legs lift her body and walk her to the painting; she saw her hands uncover the palette and pick up the damp, cold brushes.

She shut her eyes, hoping that would confound the doppelganger. It did not. She felt the friction of the bristles on the canvas through the frigid shaft.

“It is finished,” the doppelganger announced in her own voice. “And so are you.”

It marched her out into the dark back yard, knelt beside a pile of autumn leaves, and stuck a finger down her throat.

This time, it was Rhetta’s essence carried on the bitter purge. She found herself vomited from her own body, melting helplessly into the parched rakings.

“There.” The doppelganger straightened up. It frowned down at the old warmup suit it wore, then stripped it off and unceremoniously dumped it beside the leaves. “An important man’s wife would never wear something as frumpy this!”

The doppelganger strode back to the house and shut the door.

Rhetta dried up in the leaves in the moonlight, blind, voiceless, bodiless, but she could still feel everything.

A little after midnight, a wind rose, stirred the leaves, and carried her away into the forgotten places in the night.

Dura Mater

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Dear Mom,

I’m sorry I won’t be there for Christmas, and I’m sorry I left without explaining everything to you, but...I signed onto the Kepler colony mission. It was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up. They were looking for civilians with certain tech skills—I have ‘em because of my coding and quantum networking background—and they’re paying a
ridiculous
amount of money.

Andres has been sick with worry about little Marilu’s brain tumor and the bills, and...I just made the bills go away! She’ll be talking by the time I get back, but she
will
be talking, and walking, and my little brother won’t be bankrupt. I hope that’s worth a couple of missed Christmases.

It’s a four-day shuttle flight to the hyperspace portal, and then I’ll be onboard the
Joliet
. We’ll be in hyperspace for a year, going a hundred times faster than the speed of light. I’ll send messages and (fingers crossed that the tech works right) you should get at least the first ones over the next few months. They’ll arrive less frequently as I get further out. I’ll be home before the last ones ever reach you! But we won’t be able to receive transmissions once we jump; I’m part of the team working on that problem. It’s a tricky thing getting planet-based quantum communicators to link to a ship that’s slipped outside normal spacetime. Being one of the people who figures that out would be
huge
.

So, please let me know you got this, and I’ll write you again soon.

Love,

Deb

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Hi Mom,

I was really glad to get your message. I know you have a lot of questions, and I know you’re worried, but really, it’ll be okay.

First off, the
Bartolomé
disintegrated because of a crack in the engines, not because of a portal malfunction. It was a terrible thing, but they’ve taken every possible precaution to keep that from happening again.

And second, you’re totally right: the first bunch of ships to Kepler carried everyone in hibernation pods. Everything was automated, and all that worked just fine. They don’t
need
live crews working these ships...and that’s a big part of why my crew is traveling this way. They don’t know how hyperspace affects people who are awake and working onboard these ships. Eventually they
will
need live crews, so they need our data. So yes, I’m going to be a guinea pig. Which is why my paycheck is so ridiculous!

Third, this has nothing to do with Mark and Sofia. That was five years ago, and I’ve moved on. This is me still moving on.

And finally, I won’t be gone for ten years. My contract calls for a year out, a year working on-site, and a year back, probably in a hibernation pod unless they need more data. So it’s just three years; I’ll be home before you know it. Heck, I’ll be back before
I
know it; they’re saying a year in hyperspace will feel like just three or four months, but again, that’s something they’re still gathering data on.

So: it’ll be fine. Give that niece of mine extra kisses and hugs for me when you see her, okay? And I guess if you can spare ‘em, one or two for her daddy and Papa, too.

Love,

Deb

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Hi Mom,

We are underway! The jump to hyperspace went off without a hitch yesterday morning. And in even better news, I was able to finally keep some food down this afternoon.

We all went through hours and hours of hyperspace simulation, but honestly the sims were nothing like the real thing. It’s so...
weird
. It’s not just being mostly weightless—I got used to that on the shuttle ride over. It’s...everything’s just
off
. It’s like I don’t know where my own body is anymore, and I keep fumbling around. I have no idea what time it is; if we didn’t have clocks none of us would have a clue. I’m dizzy and nauseated. It feels less like motion sickness and more like being hooked up to a mild electric current. Our medical team swears all that will get better after a few days, and I hope so; meanwhile, they’re going through just as many airsick bags as we are.

We have windows on the observation deck so we can see out into hyperspace. And in its own way, it’s the weirdest part of the whole thing. At first you think it’s this expanse of blackness, just like regular space, only you can’t see any stars. But then the longer you stare out into it...you start to realize you don’t know
what
color it really is. It’s a color, all right, but not something any human being ever evolved to perceive. One guy, a medical researcher named Vince, gave himself a full-on panic attack staring out at it. Doctor’s orders? Don’t look out the windows more than five minutes. And I’m just fine with that.

Love,

Deb

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Hi Mom,

Merry Christmas! I’m picturing you all at the table eating goose and Aunt Ximena’s tamales. Thanks to something Dr. Cedar cooked up, we’re all over being hyperspace-sick and had turkey and ham for dinner. It really wasn’t half bad, although I’m pretty sure it was all soy (I spent a lot of time outgassing in the head afterward).

We had a holiday exchange; the stowage limits were pretty strict, but they told us to bring something light and fun. Team building! So I wrapped a couple of bars of gourmet chocolate in snowflake hologram paper, and I got a pair of little bottles of Grand Marnier from Vince, he of the window panic attack I mentioned.

Mark loved Grand Marnier. The last time I’d had any was at his wake. Funny how the taste and smell of something can bring so many memories flooding back, isn’t it? I couldn’t sleep after the party, and I ended up in the hibernation pod racks staring down at the face of this little colonist girl who looks so much like Sofia. I just started sobbing.

Vince found me back there and talked to me a while. Turns out he’s from Ohio; his folks have a rice farm. He lost his wife in the Lake Shore Bullet Train crash seven years ago; she was pregnant with their first child. He misses her so much, and it’s obvious he still loves her more than anything. I feel for the guy. It was good talking to him, though.

Probably most of the crewmembers have their own heartaches. All of us live long enough, we lose someone we don’t want to live without, but we have to keep going anyhow.

Love to all of you. Make sure you’re hugging my niece! Can’t get too many hugs at her age.

Deb

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Hay Ma!

Hhaspy New Yaer! Hope ur having a gret time! Engneering made a still and whooooa thts some stron stuff!

Vinse sez he cn seee ghosts out th wijndows. Hes such a bobo!

Looooovvvvvvveeee

DEB!

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Hi Mom,

I’m really sorry for the drunk message I sent. I haven’t been that hammered in my life. Not as hung over as I expected; Dr. Cedar was handing out a remedy last night and it seems to have worked. But the dizziness is worse than ever, so I’m staying strapped in my bunk for a while.

I wanted to come clean with you about something. When I told you that I wasn’t doing this because of Mark and Sofia? That was a pathetic and obvious lie. I kept hoping that if I told it to myself enough times, it would become true.

Have you ever been so sad and missed someone so badly that you thought your heart surely would stop? And yet, it never does? I feel hollow inside, and angry at God for taking them away from me. With all the medical advances we have, why do people still die from the flu? And I brought it home to them, God damn it. In my nightmares I see them in the ICU. Especially Sofia. Watching her struggle to breathe like that, fight and suffer and die anyhow...Jesus, that tore me up in a way I’ll never get over. I know it about killed you and Papa too.

The first year I thought, okay, I’m mourning, I’ll get over it. But I never did. If I see something that makes me smile, I’ll turn to tell Mark about it...and of course he’s not there. I’ll do that three, four times a day. I’ll walk down the street and hear a baby laugh and I’ll look for Sofia...and suddenly in my mind I’m watching her die all over again.

And I still love Mark. I’ve tried dating, I really have. I want my family back, I want to try for another baby, but...I just can’t make it work. I can’t bring myself to fake it for someone I don’t care about. As bad as I still want to be a mother, I just can’t get past wanting Mark, and there’s no way I can ever have him again.

A few months ago, I realized that the whole wide beautiful world is full of constant reminders of him and Sofia, and the ten thousandth time waking up and realizing they’re gone doesn’t hurt any less than the first and second.

Solution? Get off the world.

So now I’m somewhere far beyond the solar system traveling 20 million miles per second...and there are still sleeping beauties and tiny bottles of Grand Marnier out here.

But it’s a whole new year, and something has to change.

Love,

Deb

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Dear Mom,

We hit something. Nobody knows what or how. The whole ship rattled around like a carnival ride and I got slammed into a bulkhead. I’m fine but don’t know how long I was unconscious. It looks like all the auxiliary power went out for a while. But we’re still in hyperspace, and all the hibernation pods seem fine, and the nav computer looks okay, but...something’s not right with the clocks. We have two atomic clocks onboard, and they should be synched perfectly but they’re off by months. There should be no way that could ever happen. Nobody knows what it means. On past flights, they found some discrepancies in atomic clocks kept in different parts of the ships, but we’re talking milliseconds there.

The other thing is, I’m getting an error every time I try to access my sent messages, so I have no idea if the system is transmitting properly or not. Another thing we have to troubleshoot. My head really hurts.

More later; Vince is having another panic attack I think. He is screaming complete nonsense. I better go see if I can help.

Love,

Deb

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Dear Mom,

Vince nearly killed himself; he may still die. Dr. Cedar sedated him and we locked him in an observation room. But he woke up screaming and gouged his own eyes out with his fingers and started tearing his face off. He did a lot of damage to himself before they were able to sedate him again. He’s tied down now, his face covered in blood-soaked bandages.

He’s such a sweet guy. It’s so terrible what’s happened to him, but it’s especially hard on his wife Rufina. She told me she’s expecting their first baby.

More later.

Love,

Deb

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Dear Mom,

I found Dr. Cedar dead in the hall outside sickbay. I can’t get her face out of her mind. She looked like she’d been dead a month; she was all dried out and her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a horrible grin. And her eyes—oh God. You would have bad dreams forever so I won’t tell you.

Her sister, the other Dr. Cedar, says it was an undiagnosed aneurysm and she was only dead a couple of hours. I don’t see how that’s possible, but she’s the doctor, right?

I’m really glad Mark is here and we’re patching things up, finally. I had so many nightmares that he and Sofia got sick and died, but she’s safe in her hibernation pod and he’s sitting just across the room. I really missed him, Mom.