The First Wrangler

This is the way of it among ghosts. The nkpuruk-obi may go a-wandering, but it must always come back or the body will die. A sour prank to pull upon a ghost for doing what to ghosts comes naturally: the penalty for ghosting is death. For the genuine haunting, for the true quill, a spirit is wanted. This is a far more serious and permanent a thing than a mere ghost. The maw is eternal and, if it pleases the Eze Ala Maw, will reincarnate after a time in some suitable form. The Ghost King is frugal and nothing good is wasted.

In the mean time between death and birth, the spirit must abide as a shadow or a reflection; perhaps pooled in some corner or glimpsed for a moment in shining brass. And yet there may be more than one sort of shadow. That which Nkieruke Okoye saw was neither dark nor featureless.

She knew that her own ghost was a-wandering, for she could look down upon the cot into which her body had been strapped and watch the shallow rise and fall of her own breasts under the sheet. The perspective was oddly elongated, as if her point of view were from much farther off than the dimensions of the cutter would allow and yet so close that each clot and stitch in her scar stood out with the clarity of electron microscopy. She had watched herself in this wise for some time, although the actual tally of days eluded her. She knew that she ought not to linger, but it was an academic knowledge and carried with it no urgency.

That another watched with the same regard became clear, although it was only after some effort that she saw him. At first, he was only a white blur, indistinct in outline and coloring, such as is often seen in the complementary negatives of shadows. Such brightness hides features as easily as does darkness. And yet, as one’s eyes may become adjusted to the dark, so too may they become adjusted to this luster.

And luster it was, for the first feature to grow distinct was the indisputable maleness of the figure. Okoye stared with fascination at this swollen manifestation. O shame! where is thy blush? It may have been the weakness of her eyes that shaped the monstrous apparition, or the weakness of her heart, the which organ throbbed, but only as the siren of some distant vehicle, for the heart was in her body and she was not.

“Rave Evermore!” she said and, as if conjured by the words, the gleam coalesced into the shape and form of her quondam berthmate, although whether his form was evoked or invoked is a fine point of debate. She may have discovered Evermore’s maw, but she may also have invented it. When dealing with ghosts, it is often difficult to tell.

The maw turned to her at the sound of its name and it seemed to Okoye that its countenance was one of vast surprise. There were wounds upon it, but these were indistinct against its glowing skin, saving only one especially terrible mark upon the groin of his right thigh. “What,” she said to it, “have you then swallowed a cold-light?” This remark did not alter the maw’s expression, but it reached toward her arms like bands of white as if from a great distance away. Why, it be only a tropism, Okoye told herself as the pale fog enveloped her.

He was directly before her now and the surprise may have shifted into a mute appeal. “Oh, now you be coming to me naked,” she said, “when it does neither you nor me any good.” The shape had neither texture nor temperature—one needs a body to feel such things—but Okoye reached into it, into its very fulcrum. “Why you be bringing this to a poor ghost? It is better suited, I am thinking, to that body lying there upon the cot. It is my body you were always wanting anyway, and now you can have it without having me in the bargain. But you had better hurry.”

And still the tropism kept the maw focused on her ghost. Its eyes slowly took on color until they were the same woodland hazel that she had seen so often before. “Don’t think me such a fool as that,” she scolded the spirit. “Don’t think it was Nkieruke Okoye you wanted and not the sweetness between her legs. I am no such a fool, and neither should you be.”

The maw turned slowly to face the dying body and as it turned, Okoye turned with it until she was oriented head to its head, feet to its feet. She suddenly recognized that she herself was as naked as Evermore, save that her dark glow possessed a more definite boundary.

With enfleshment came sensation: First, the warmth and firmness of that which she had earlier grasped; then, the gentle moistness of his lips upon hers. That might have been a memory, however, from the time he had kissed her before going out with Ratline. She pulled him toward herself and into herself so that a part of him seemed to shine within her. She was not an innocent; she was not ignorant of the mechanics of the act. She had dreamed of them at times. Perhaps she dreamed of them now.

Nor was she ignorant of the wonderful immanence that grew within her and which spread like honeybees to every part of her, sweetening the taste of her, poising on the brink of a great abyss, tumbling her over so that she fell and fell, her senses erupting within her, escaping with a single phrase, “Oh!”

 

Twenty-four deCant, who held the watch on board the cutter at this fell time of night, shivered at the sound from the back cabin and turned a little in the copilot’s seat to look over her shoulder. “’Kiru’s moaning again,” she told Akhaturian. “She must hurt terrible.” But Akhaturian was asleep in the pilot’s chair beside her, his face twisted into an expression of unnatural worry. It seemed to her that, under the cold-lights from the console, his hair had even gained a touch of white. She laid her hand over his and settled again into the copilot’s seat. “I don’t think she’s gonna make it.” And it sickened her to realize the irritation she felt at the resources the Igbo girl was so uselessly consuming. It was not right to feel such things. Ivar had told her the load on the air-plant now had a six sigma margin, though she did not know what he meant by that.

What she had really meant was that she didn’t think any of them were going to make it. The Ship’s AI had tried to jump into the lifeboat and had swamped it. Ivar had said that the core functions were still validated and both Grubb and Fife had concurred, but none of them were trained sysops and so none of them really knew. DeCant did not like not knowing. Not knowing whether they would live felt too much like knowing that they would die. “I worry too much, don’t I?” she told her sleeping husband. The night watch oppressed her not least because of the silence that filled it. She was prone to speaking her mind—she said so now to the sleeping boat—but the chatter of others was a palliative. “I miss The Lotus Jewel. I don’t know if I ever made it up to her for palming the cat like I did.”

Akhaturina mumbled something in his sleep. Perhaps he was listening subconsciously, and answering the same way. “I’m sorry,” deCant said. “I don’t want to wake you.” But of course that is a silly thing to say under the circumstances; that is, it is silly to say it rather than to retreat into silence. She wanted to upload a song or a morphie that she could enjoy under the privacy of a cap. “But Cutter may be unreliable, so we can’t depend on automatic alarms.”

That reminded her of the checklist. “Oh, I’m late again!” But when she checked the clock she was not. She picked up the ’puter, already opened to the checklist, and started as she always did with the engine. Beam collimation, boron—within limits…Beam collimation, hydrogen—within limits…Beam synchonization—within limits…

She worked her way down the list from engine to bearing to life support, being careful not to thumb any square until she had actually verified the readout. Ivar had been delighted to realize that with the cutter’s equipment he could ping the Fixed Point Observatory. DeCant was not sure what that meant, only that it worked in their favor and there were few enough such favors that she did not spurn this one. She confirmed that Cutter had conducted the ping on schedule and that the dead ahead still fell along the projected bearing. Akhaturian would review the pings in the morning for internal consistency and possible skewing. He was not very practiced in this art. Corrigan had taught him some few things, but he had been unable to rehearse or drill. DeCant wished that Ivar had Rave Evermore’s ability to seem knowledgeable even when he was not, for it was often the seeming that mattered. Yet, as long as she wished for what was not, why not wish that Ivar had the foundations of knowledge rather than the facade of it?

DeCant unbuckled from her seat and climbed down into the next cabin. The cutter’s acceleration was greater than what the ship’s had been, so she could not safely let go of the ladder and drop to the next deck, but it was not so much greater that a sudden move might not send her caroming into a bulkhead or ceiling. She had made her way to Okoye’s cot and had reviewed three of the nutrient readings on the medical support frame (the second one giving her some concern) before she noticed that the Igbo girl’s eyes were wide open.

They were open, but they were not looking at anything in particular, unless that thing were on the far end of the universe. “’Kiru?” she said and, receiving no response, repeated more sharply, “’Kiru!” The she fell slowly into the seat beside the cot and said once more, though now in despairing tones, “Oh, ’Kiru…”

There were no sounds save those of the medical support frame, which continued to hum and beep as before. So deep was deCant’s sorrow that it was some minutes before the rhythm of those sounds impinged upon her senses. Then, even while the young wrangler searched in sudden hope for the heart and breathing rate indicators, Okoye said in a distant and scratchy voice, “I shall miss Rave a great deal, I am thinking. Oh, Death can boast to have such a boy in her arms!”

“’Kiru! You’re awake!”

The Igbo girl frowned as if the sound of her name had called her back from somewhere else. “It is possible,” she allowed, “though one cannot be certain of it.”

“We was so worried about you…”

“I believe I married Rave Evermore.”

DeCant had more she had started to say, but this comment knocked it all askew. “What? Married? When?” And she could not help but think of the time when she had imagined Rave while making love to Ivar.

“I’m not sure,” the injured girl replied. “Perhaps it was this very night.”

“You’re…You must still be feverish.”

“It is such a vexing thing to be wed to a dead boy. There are all sorts of complications. You have it so much easier with Ivar.”

“You’re making me afraid, ’Kiru…”

“Everything looks different from the inside,” Okoye said. She studied her arms, peeked under her sheet and touched various things, expressing surprise and delight at what she found. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “My throat feels like concrete.”

Pleased to find a fragment of the conversation that actually made sense, deCant rushed to fill a milly bottle with water. “Sip it slowly,” she said when she held it to the other girl’s lips.

When Okoye handed the bottle back, she said in a clearer voice, “I think I shall have a scar.”

“Oh, no,” deCant assured her. “Dr. Wong told us the doctors at Galileo could fix that.”

The remark puzzled Okoye and she slowly raised her left hand to touch her face. “Oh. That. Perhaps I should keep it, as well.”

“No, don’t do that,” deCant pleaded. “You’re much too pretty.”

“You lie as sweetly as he did. Come, give your ’Kiru a kiss.”

It was Miko’s kiss that she passed on the younger girl and it scared deCant as much as her mad ravings had. “Oh God, ’Kiru,” the Martian said.

“I suppose it is traditional for one such as I to ask at this point, ‘Where am I?’ I do not recognize this place.”

“No,” deCant told her. “We’re on the cutter, headin’ for rendezvous with Georgia Girl.”

“The wound to the ship was too great, then? Mr. Grubb had thought so before I…Oh, she was a fine old ship; but finer as she was than as she became.”

“Bhatterji couldn’t save it. The rock opened too many compartments.”

Okoye fell silent and closed her eyes and DeCant thought she might be going to sleep once more. “You rest for a while now,” she advised without thinking that it might be superfluous advice to a girl but lately awoken from a coma. But when she began to rise from her seat—she intended to awaken Akhaturian and tell him the good news—Okoye reached out and held her.

“Where are they all?” she asked. “This place feels empty.”

So DeCant told her what had happened. How the cutter could not carry everyone in safety, so her mother—she meant Satterwaithe, but Okoye understood—and a few others had stayed behind. How Bhatterji never really believed the ship was lost. How Dr. Wong had sacrificed herself. How Miko had chased after a cat and Corrigan after Miko. How Corrigan and The Lotus Jewel had tried to jump across in suits, but had never arrived. “We don’t know what happened to them,” she concluded. “They just never showed. Ivar picked up signals from their suit radios, but nothing he could read through the static.”

“And so,” Okoye announced to no one in particular, “only a remnant were saved.” Her eyes traveled the tubing that had kept her body alive. She touched the framework that tracked the medbots so busy within her body. She tried to remember each one of the others, so that they should not fade from her memory. Strict, humorless Corrigan. The poor, confused doctor. The harsh sailing master with the numb heart. The cheerfully unhappy Lotus Jewel. Ratline. It was hard for her to think about Ratline.

Yet to toss a few adjectives over their memories were an act of contempt, for how could words so scant begin to clad decently their nakedness? Could a few like words cover her? Stuck-up. The Lotus Jewel had once said of her (or had said that others had said). And shy and a dull stick. Was that indeed Nkieruke Okoye? She had always taken pride in her reserve—or had until meeting Miko, beside whom mere reserve seemed ostentation—but perhaps she ought to have had a little less pride in it.

DeCant did not think it was right to withhold anything from Okoye. “A remnant? I don’t think we’re ‘saved’ just yet.”

“You love Rave too don’t you?”

DeCant stood up so suddenly that she arced a few feet back from the bed. “I wish you won’t say his name no more! I still look behind me sometimes ’cause I think he’s back there checking out my butt.”

“Yes, he was a persistent boy. Being dead won’t stop him right away.”

“’Kiru, you’re talking crazy.”

Okoye smiled, though the smile was six parts sad to one part happy. “Don’t worry, Twenty-four. That old common arbitrator will one day end it. Rave will be our memory, but maybe not so active a memory; and after a further while, even that will fade. The fading will be a sad thing, I think, for he was a better boy than he was.”

Night passed and day came and with the day, the others on the boat came too, to sit with her and pass the time. Fife commented that her revival was a good thing, as one of the nutrients in the frame had been running low. It was a logical comment and no less logical for expressing his deep concern. She thought that the passenger was a different man than she remembered and almost asked to see his identification papers.

Grubb was still Grubb, only more so; though he spoke a little less often than before, having withdrawn a bit into himself. He had the air of one who had lately put away childish things, which is an air both oppressive and refreshing. It was well that he had grown up a little more, but the thought of abandoned toys pressed upon the heart. Okoye told him that she hoped he would not forget how to sing and he confessed to her that he had been intimate with The Lotus Jewel and missed her laughter. Okoye might have told him what she had told deCant—that time’s passage would eventually soften the hurt—but she sensed that he treasured the wound and so she left it to him.

“No, he will not kill himself,” she told Akhaturian when the captain came to visit. “Mr. Grubb does not love the pain, but he will not run from it, either.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘captain’,” Akhaturian said. “I’m just Ivar, remember?”

“Oh, you were never ‘just’ Ivar. And you must be our captain, for who else is there? If you are only a cadet, none of us are even that much.”

Akhaturian bowed his head over his bunched hands. “Sometimes I can’t sleep.”

“Foolish boy! That was only because I was using up all the sleep on the boat.”

Akhaturian laughed and then started at his own laughter. He shook his head. “I didn’t think I would ever laugh again.” And then he stared at her with more understanding than he ought. “I’ll need your advice.”

“Only if you promise to ignore it from time to time. The boat must not have two captains. You are ‘Ivar the Terrible, Scourge of the Spaceways!’ and you carry air for no man.”

“Listen to ‘Scarface Okoye, Queen of the Belt!’” Then Akhaturian clapped a hand over his mouth and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“Don’t worry. The scar on the face is the easier to bear.”

Later, Okoye heard Grubb in the galley below singing an old ballad. “I’m thinking tonight of my blue-eyes/Who is sailing far over the sky…” And she smiled a little as the notes wound their way up the stairwell. So did Akhaturian, on the deck above, who turned to his copilot and said, “I think Grubb is snapping out of it.” Fife only shrugged. “He does sing well,” he allowed. DeCant, asleep in one of the close-beds, did not hear the song; but Akhaturian did have blue eyes and she did think of him.

Cutter performed its last download to Ship that evening before passing out of range. There were better targets for its lasers than the lifeless hulk skating far behind it. Grubb had the watch at the time, but he barely noticed the transmission. He stared mournfully at the viewscreen where The River of Stars receded from him into the Void and he wiped away a tear, for he did love beautiful things, and wept to lose them.