In the Dark Spaces Read online

  TO ALL YOUNG PEOPLE

  SEARCHING FOR A KINDER FUTURE

  IN A HARSH WORLD.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  LOOK FOR RAINBOWS

  IRON CORE

  IN THE SOFT DARKNESS

  AIN’T NOTHING SO ALIEN AS THE LIKES OF US

  KILLER WAVE

  SHE’S ALL WE HAVE

  PERFECT MASK

  I’VE LET HIM DOWN

  THE PINK SCAR TWITCHES

  SEEMS WRONG

  THREE SPIKES OF PAIN

  THIS IS HOW I’LL DIE

  HIS VELVET WINGS

  PART TWO

  CRAZY WHISTLING

  TWEETOO!

  WEKU?

  PIECES OF ME

  TWA (WATER)

  WHAT KEEPS ME SAFE

  TEENOS WI KOOLOO (BEANS AND ALGAE)

  TOOR (GO)

  TZAAR (HIVE)

  TEWO WOEN TA (SHE IS MY HEART)

  WOUL TOOR (COME OUT)

  TSO DEE (DID GOOD)

  TOOTOOPNE KWEE SWAL (TOOTOOPNE KNOWS EVERYTHING)

  SWA TU TZAAR (FOR THE HIVE)

  SWOOLTOOL TA (MY SISTER)

  NOOTU TOOTE (YOU’RE DEAD)

  WOA TSO TEE (WHAT DO YOU SEE?)

  WA ZAA WOONAN (THE BIG HUMAN)

  WOELLEOL (TEACHER)

  NOOL ZAAL WA TONDEE (NOT THE HEAD OF THE BEAST)

  PART THREE

  TUWA SOOSULSOL (THIS ONE IS TROUBLE)

  WA TOSON NONEE (A SLAVE TO MONEY)

  WA TOSANE (THE THIRTY)

  WOELLE DEE (GOOD TEACHING)

  SOOLWO TOSONOO TA (WORDS WILL KEEP ME PRISONER)

  TU TAOLALA! (YOU STUPID!)

  WOEN SOOTSOONE (LOVE NEVER-ENDING)

  TOOANA TUWUUOSO (THE SQUAD NEEDS YOU)

  TOORWOO (KEEP MOVING)

  TSO WA SOOL (DO THE WORDS)

  SUTU TOOANA (I AM SQUAD)

  TOORDOO! (GONE!)

  SWAL WA ZAAN (ALL THE CAPTAINS)

  DESERTED

  THE WEKU CALLS

  PART FOUR

  SMALLEST VULTURE I’VE EVER SEEN

  MY SECOND LANGUAGE

  BREAKABLE THING

  YOUR BEAUTIFUL WINGS

  A SMILE SO FAKE

  FOR THE HIVE ONCE MORE

  COMPLETELY VULTURE

  THEY ALL KNOW

  DIE EASY, DIE HARD

  HIDING HIMSELF FROM THE WORLD

  THE TRANSLATOR, THE MASTER AND THE MERCS

  STABS ME, RIGHT IN THE HEART

  TRANSLATOR

  THESE COLD METAL WALLS

  CRAZY TALK

  BRINGING GUB BACK

  WHISPER

  PART FIVE

  THE PULSE OF MOVEMENT

  OVER THEIR HEADS

  THE TINY DARK SPACES

  PUPPETS!

  ONE FAT CAT

  I AM THE WEKU

  SHIPPING COMPANY BUSINESS

  EVERYTHING ENDS IN BLOOD

  JUST MAKING IT WORSE

  YOUR WINGS STILL DIDN’T GROW

  WHERE DID YOU GO?

  THE HUB

  SHOUT YOUR NAME TO THE WORLD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  LOOK FOR RAINBOWS

  Gub’s silent giggles escape in little puffs. Tiny hands wrap around my neck too tight, his dinosaur toy digging into my skin. Gub’s legs cling at my hips as I mama-monkey him up and down the cabin on my back. I keep his feet tucked in with my hands so we can dance without bumping the walls, never mind how hard that is in a cabin this small.

  I love his little feet, all flesh and chubby lumps for toes cos they’ve not been flattened out by walking yet. I love how they fit into the curve of my palms like two parts of something belonging together. The tiny toenails scritch and I should cut those before my aunt gets back from the kitchens and says, ‘Why ain’t you taking better care of bub? Look at his snaggy toes!’

  We stop in front of the wall mirror so we can pull monkey faces at each other. We make our lips fat and pouty, flash our eyes big and goofy round.

  I blow out my cheeks, do a wobbly head, and my little cousin cracks it. Silent puffing giggles shake his belly and he grins, mouth open wide, tiny square teeth lined up neat and perfect in pink gums.

  A thump hits the door, then a knocking, and a deep voice yelling for my aunt, ‘Lazella! You there?’

  I drag Gub around to my front and hold him tight. He knows not to cry, but he pushes back and looks up, to read my face maybe, to know I’ll keep him safe. His bottomless brown eyes, so big on his tiny face, shine and fill and spill over. My hand slides up over his mouth, never mind he’s well-learned never to make a sound. Now he’s all eyes with my hand over half his face, and he stares at me like I’m his whole world as the knocking starts up again.

  Did we make a noise in our monkey game? My dancing feet touched down light as.

  With Gub held tight, I back away from the door, toes feeling for the floor behind me, cold as on my bare feet. Up and over the ledge into the bathroom, reaching for the door and stopping, cos dragging it closed will make a noise. But I keep my hand on it. If the guy out there has a pass and comes in, I’ll slam it. Better he thinks Lazella’s on the loo. Better he don’t know she’s smuggled us on board.

  ‘Lazella?’ And footsteps pad away, leaving silence, ’cept for Gub’s tiny heart fast-pattering against my chest. Our hearts, side by side, beating together.

  I step back into the cabin and hit the screen, switch it to door-cam. See the back of Chef Santos taking the stairs out towards the kitchens where my aunt is. I throw my head back and let out my held-in air. Santos is okay, he lets Lazella off early if she’s tired. Someone in kitchens will tell him Lazella’s gone to fetch something from Stores or whatever.

  Gub blinks up at me. I smile and pull his nose and monkey-face him, so he knows for us to be normal again. Well, normal as two silent kids can be.

  He ducks his head and hides his face in my shirt. I spin him around a couple of times and plop him on the bunk.

  Gub shakes his head and points to the floor, but I pat the bunk. I point at the screen, then flick it around to the movie channel, and he looks at it and back to me and back to the screen like maybe he’s trying to guess how serious I am. I’m deadly serious. I got things to do, soon as this cheeky baby of my aunt’s goes to sleep.

  He pumps his thumb up and down, wanting for me to turn on the sound, and I do, just a little, not enough to make more than a murmur. Not enough that anyone with an ear to the door might hear.

  Gub grabs the pillow and pulls it under his head. I flick through the channels and stop on a movie about a family. I never understand these happy Earth-family movies, but when I look at Gub, he nods and pumps his thumb again. I flick the sound button just one time. Then flick it back down when he looks away.

  Gub’s stubby fingers swipe at the pillow and he shuffles across the bunk to the corner. I lie beside him and when his tiny hand flops on my face, I plant kisses in his palm and push it against his cheek so he can keep them when he’s sleeping. Same as Aunt Lazella does for me.

  ‘Tamara-mawa?’ he whispers. Our heads are so close, forehead to forehead, it’s safe.

  ‘Yeah, Tamiki-miki?’ I whisper back. I love how our names are almost the same, even if I do call him Gub mostly. I like that my aunt, loving just me alone all those years, almost couldn’t imagine a different name for her baby.

  ‘Who dey?’ he asks.

  On screen is a nicely dressed family, standing on perfect green grass under a bright blue sky. ‘The yellow hair, she’s the ma,’ I whisper and point. ‘And him, eyes so blue, he’s the da.’ I never seen a place could grow grass like that, or a perfect sky. No planets out in dark space are the least bit like Earth in the movies
. And no hope for us to ever get back and see if Earth’s really like that.

  We have a saying in dark space: ‘The only aliens out here are Earth-born.’ Lazella says she met a guy, says he was real old. He told her he was Earth-born and been running ninety years of his life in the wrong direction. He taught Lazella a real Earth saying: ‘When it rains look for rainbows, when it’s dark look for stars.’ Stars, we seen plenty of. Rainbows, not so much.

  ‘Where my ma?’ Gub whispers and yawns. A prickle hits my jaw, cos he never used to ask. Not till that time he woke up and found me gone.

  I smooth a wisp of dark hair off his face. His beautiful hair, soft and straight like Lazella’s, not all dry and curling every which way like mine. ‘In the kitchens. Back soon,’ I whisper.

  He nods. ‘Headiss,’ he whispers and pushes his tiny plastic dinosaur toy to my lips. I kiss Headless and Gub goes back to watching the screen, sucking on the chewed-on toy’s neck, with me watching his dark lashes blink slower and slower till his eyes close.

  I sigh and wait for his breaths to get regular, planning my plans to leave, then I slip off the bunk, pull Gub’s shoulders up enough that I can slide my hand under, and hook the other arm under his knees. He’s light as, he could do with protein shakes too. Pair of us been living on leftovers too long.

  I carry him to the humidicrib. The same crib my parents stole from some clinic. The same one I slept in, hidden and quiet, till I was four. The same one I folded myself into a year ago with a much smaller Gub bundled tight against my chest, and a pile of heat packs to warm us against the frozen food packed around us and on top of us, so we could be smuggled on board. That’s why I need protein shakes, cos when this voyage is done, I’m never gonna fit in the frozen food again. I’ll have to pass for an adult if I wanna get on a ship hauling back from the arse-end of dark space, with my little Tamiki and Aunt Lazella.

  Looking at how Gub can’t hardly even lie straight in the crib no more, and how he tucks his knees up, makes me not want to shut the lid on him. But two is two and he can’t help waking up whimpering, never mind he’s never said a word out loud in his little life. I lay the plastic dinosaur on the mattress beside his head, tuck a blanket around him and rub his little chubby arm sticking out, skin so much lighter than my own. Light enough even that it don’t ever get dry-looking in the cold air of this freighter. Lazella says her grandparents came from the land of the Sultans, and sometimes I like to think of us living there, cooking food with chilli, coconut and herbs and serving up in fancy gold dishes under a warm sun. Course, ain’t none of us pure anything no more. All a mix of off-worlders, all speaking whatever. Earth ways left far behind.

  The humidicrib lid clicks. The vents are open. I check them twice.

  ‘Sleep sweet, little Gub,’ I whisper as I pull on my too-big second-hand boots and soft-step to the bathroom. I slide the door shut behind me.

  ‘Doan you be leaving my bub alone,’ Lazella’s always saying. ‘Doan you be swiping stuff Stores will notice. They jus’ gonna come looking for you. Last time was bad ’nough. Almost died of worry for you,’ she says. But still I pull out the one bolt holding down our wet-wall panel and, just like in all the ships and all the days before Gub even got born, and every nap time since, I’m off.

  IRON CORE

  This class of freighter is shaped like a flat-as frisbee, with floors ringing the centre, circles outside of circles. The frisbee spins as it travels, so gravity is zero at the centre, and hardly anything at the landing bay that circles it, where shuttles gotta be tethered to keep them still. The next rings out are Levels One and Two, where there’s just enough gravity to keep the giant tanks of helium-3 and phosphorous grounded and stacked. The gravity gets stronger and stronger each level out, until it’s Earth-normal on the big outer ring, Six.

  Those rich-arse Sixers living there can’t hardly even see the curve of the floor in their main corridor. That’s where they dragged me to the captain that time I got caught, and the gravity change had me dragging my feet heavy as, never mind the weight of trouble crushing in on me too.

  Lazella says the captain himself can run a full lap of Six in the time it takes me to brush and floss my teeth. I wonder what that’s like, jogging along the main corridor of Six like you own it, doing a whole loop not even puffed out from all that gravity?

  The pipes are clammy on my fingers, slippery under my boots, and muscles pull across my shoulders as I haul myself up into the vents of Level Three – Stores. I’m crawling, silent as, what weight I have on the edges of the venting so it don’t creak, but a voice below stops me at the vent grate.

  Istanbul from Stores, dark eyes and colourful tatts that I been wondering what’s the story behind, tool belt on his waist, is lighting up a tiny-as cigarette. He lifts his head, eyes closed like he’s kissing the cigarette pinched between his finger and thumb, me sliding back into the shadows when he puffs smoke my way.

  He’s not talking. It’s another voice, smaller, from up the corridor.

  Istanbul stubs the tip of the cigarette off on the heel of his boot and slides his hand behind his back.

  ‘Tahi, how far away are you from checking the seals on container 677? We got phosphorous coming in today and we need to get it cleared.’ It’s Mella, talking into her comms unit. She’s young and small and I’m thinking if she can boss around people bigger than her, I can make it one day too.

  I don’t breathe while the smoke snakes past me up the vent. Istanbul’s flapping air round below. He leans back against the wall, one foot flat against it, all casual.

  ‘Do it now!’ Mella yells. She flicks out her earbud, takes long bouncy steps, light in the low grav, and leans against the wall next to Istanbul.

  ‘Yoisho,’ she sighs, like she’s had enough of the day. She looks at him a moment and holds out her hand. Istanbul pulls out the cigarette from behind his back, straightens it and hands it over.

  ‘Light it. I’m not gonna flick you for a sneaky duzz,’ Mella says.

  ‘Heh!’ Istanbul says and relights. He passes the cigarette in pinched fingers to Mella.

  She mutters, ‘Makasih,’ sucks on it. That’s a word straight from the land of the Sultans, but the Sixers don’t use it. They say ‘thank you’ like they got nuts and bolts in their throats. Mella, she switches depending on who she’s talking to. I’m gonna learn to speak like Mella does to Sixers too.

  ‘Hard day in Stores?’ Istanbul asks.

  ‘How do you do it, Isty?’ Mella asks, her words puffing out smoke. She coughs and passes the cigarette back to Istanbul.

  I get my ear down to the vent. If Mella’s got worries, then me always wanting to be like her is losing some grav.

  Istanbul shrugs like it’s a question he understands, never mind I don’t, as he sucks on the end of the cigarette. He breathes out smoke, then says, ‘I guess you just gotta find your iron core that can bend but never break. Your ikigai.’

  ‘You found yours?’ Mella asks.

  Istanbul waves his hand up and down his muscly body. ‘Check it.’ He and Mella laugh. Then Istanbul gets serious. His face gets soft and he leans forward.

  Mella pushes off the wall, slips her hands inside Istanbul’s open jacket and kisses him long and gentle like a movie kiss, then pulls back. ‘Wrong time, wrong place,’ she whispers and turns away, never mind Istanbul is reaching after her, saying, ‘Mell, wait. Ain’t none of us know how long we got out here.’

  ‘I got two years onboard, and being boss lady’s hard enough. Slut boss lady’ll get me a whole lotta hate.’ Mella looks back a moment at Istanbul’s pleading face as she bounds up the corridor. ‘Sorry, ja’im, ya know?’ she says, like her image is all that keeps her being the boss.

  When she’s gone, Istanbul whisper-swears, ‘Tāmāde! Could be dead tomorrow,’ and kicks the wall hard enough to make a dent. He strides away, leaving me wondering if his iron core just got dented bad as the wall.

  In movies, nothing’s confusing as real scenes. This crew are my unfinished mov
ies. Jumbled stories. Nobody ever answering anyone the way you expect. Mystery plots I might never get to figuring out before we hit the next port and the characters scatter, all looking for a freighter heading back across the dark night to some place where grass grows green under blue skies. A place half of them are named for. All looking for a happy life in that place ninety years away, at least. Some give up and settle on Dios or a mining planet cos no freighter heading back will take the poor, the unskilled, the old, when better people are asking to crew for them.

  Me and Lazella don’t wanna head back to Earth. What’s the point spending a lifetime travelling to be old somewhere we never been before? Who knows if the sky would look as blue through a pair of hundred-year-old eyes, anyway. All we want is to have enough money to live all together on Dios, never mind the dust. Once I’m cooking with Lazella, we can both be earning and we’ll be on our way. Then I’ll be part of the freighter crew stories below me, but my story won’t be confusing. It’ll be iron core, ikigai, straight up working hard for the ones I love.

  IN THE SOFT DARKNESS

  When I get to ship’s Stores, I pull the grate up into the vent and drop down to a stack of boxes, light as, cos this is Level Three. The protein shakes I need to get bigger are in the racks, where they keep special food for special Sixers.

  I’m hunting through packets, trying to read words I’m not so good at reading, when a boot scuffs and the tonk of metal on metal sets my stomach crawling.

  The storeman, McVeigh, face scrunched like a bag of rags, creeps along the front of stacked cartons. He holds the short pole with the hook he uses to drag cargo on overhead runners. It hovers behind his leg like he’s hiding it. Then he lunges, stabs the pole into a gap between the cartons, groans, stands up and looks around.

  I duck down behind the crates of dehydrated veggie packs.

  ‘Come on out, darlin’!’ the storeman shouts. His foot thumps again and the pole clunks on the grated floor. ‘The captain ain’t mad no more. He’s just worried for you. Little girls shouldn’t be climbing round places that ain’t safe.’

  Lies. The captain negged on me bad as that one time I was caught. Made out he was gonna flush me if I didn’t tell him how I got here. But my aunt would be in so deep for smuggling me on, and all of us left starving at the next port, so I stayed quiet as. Dark space is no place to be broke. That’s one thing we know for sure.