These polished mockeries were dead. Every day, the moulded railings remained sanitary faux-white. Even the apparent activity of the visualiser was exposed as no more than a sophisticated projection against a cave wall by the unnatural, petroleum slick motion correction. Another dead giveaway is that earth’s horizon does not come fitted with bulbs and klaxons.
The LED pimples and gosling squawking clapped the lieutenant out of his homesickness and lent him a temporary direction for his fatigued mind.
‘An issue with the guidance system, sir.’
It was the graveyard shift, so only a few dozen crew were on deck.
‘Looks like we lost the signal we were tracking.’
‘Damn,’ the lieutenant muttered into his chest.
Damn, a few dozen weary explorers thought in unison, knowing they would spend the next few hours floating aimlessly in deep space. They found this far less bearable than spending years floating through deep space with purpose.
‘Lieutenant.’
‘Aye sir.’
‘Go check her out.’
The corridor led him to the nearest transporter not in use. Which moved him in silence to the fourth deck, where, like a yarrow stalk floating downstream, he simply found himself at his destination. Without effort or thought he reached the pale humming vault labelled ‘Guidance’.
‘What seems to be the problem?’ he asked of the room. Most of the crew addressed their questions in this way. They couldn’t bring themselves to look directly at the girl reclined against an escarpment of silk pillows, finger-painting shaggy lines into the ash covered floor.
Here he comes. In he comes. I’ve seen this one a few times before. Uniform pressed, nails bitten short. A nervy little boy.
‘What seems to be the problem?’ he asks, pretending to be fascinated by the ventilation system in the corner of the room.
‘The signal was weak to begin with.’ These sailors are a scaredy-bunch. They prefer I use words like “signal” instead of “voices.”’
‘Mmhmm.’
‘But I should be able to pick it up again. They prefer “it” instead of “them.”’
‘A... and how long will that take?’
‘It takes as long as its takes. They don’t exactly work to a clock.’
When the crew ask stupid questions I speak to them more honestly until they leave me alone. When he leaves he kindly remembers to seal the door.
I take my time. They haven’t a clue how gravitephromancy works, what processes are essential for its success, and which are merely done for my pleasure. They fear me. They avoid me. They cross their chests and kiss their hanging pewter idols as they deliver my rations. But without me this ship is merely an empty vessel. Without me they would be left stranded in space, unable to hear the screams.
I return my cushions to their panel in the wall. Each cushion its own trip. Each step its own breath. Slower and slower. Quieter and quieter. Emptying the room of noise. Emptying myself of identity. When the floor is clear of everything except ash I am ready to listen.
The flax-white yashmak protects my airways, the polished onyx visor keeps the ash from my eyes. Reaching to the buttons installed at the height of a full-grown surveyor rather than a teenage girl, I remember some old footage I once saw of an extinct creature called an orcus. No, it might have been an orcas. They were black and white and pristine and were kept alone in boxes.
The even, ethereal lights drone upwards to their maximum brightness, followed by the pulsating turbulence of the power down checks of the gravity systems. I am approaching the apogee of an inhalation when space stops. Sound stops. Vibrations stop. The background hum, only noticeable through the dark matter of its own absence, flees with a final shudder, bouncing a sea of ashen particles silently into the air.
Long, deep breaths. I keep my eyes closed for ten. Twenty. Thirty. When I open my eyes I am blinded to orientation. There is no up or down. There is no sound. There is no ship around me. No other humans. No life of any kind. I am a consciousness, floating in smoke silver nothing, the light filtered by an even body of suspended ash.
The gauze of particles appears to be suspended evenly at first. But the pallid cobweb of dust slowly reveals itself to shift and squirm like a forming galaxy. Without gravity, without resistance, without electrical charge, the tiniest changes can set the particles into motion. A hull vibration two miles away, the rising heat from my body, the combined reverberations of distant sentience. Then in turn, the particles knock and spin into each other and the whole system gains and gains in motion, in complexity. I pity those outside of our order, who only see dancing, grey motes. For the first hour that too is all I see. Two hours. Three hours. I guess. By submersing myself in the smudging ocean of soot I’ve allowed it to flood into me. It’s not enough for my eyes to be drenched in basalt static. My mind must drain and refill. I can’t measure time any more than I can perceive direction in the weightlessness. Only when I look out and recognise no distinction between the particles and me do the swirls begin to sew together into smoky imagery. The confused, grasping tendrils of the pained spectra of a distant system. It is a weak force that attracts the voices to even the most open ears and mind. Just as the pull of gravity only becomes noticeable from a cosmic aggregation of mass, I can only sense the whispers of existence when they combine in their trillions. A number far too great to be expected of the living. But the population of an entire planet’s dead, accumulated throughout a species’ entire history, crying out as one, can reverberate through the universe like a row of kisses down a spiralling arm.
The process is required a few more times over the next fortnight. But eventually I latch onto them for good and we focus in on their position. Even with the gravity back on, even with the ash confined by a whole dimension, I can read the direction of the dead. From here, everything builds and expands like an exhausted star. The voices of the dead, the confidence between jumps, the excitement of the crew. My food pouches get placed on the floor with slightly more care and delicacy. When they attend to me, some younger officers look in my direction, and I catch grateful wonder in their eyes alongside the fear. They’ll be under strict instructions to remember their composure and temper their anticipation. But who can blame them? I too remember how my skin fizzled and stomach warped when we approached the first soul-filled system to which I ever guided a ship. Sweet young soldiers don’t put on the uniform if they don’t a little bit dream of magical, alien vistas accompanied by the outstretched hands, wisps, or whatever this newly discovered species uses to both embrace their newly discovered brethren and reach out into the intimidating totality of space. But it is a uniform nonetheless. They are soldiers, before they are humans.
The jumps get smaller. The time between gets longer as the command deck falls back on primitive, mechanical sensors. Locked on and approaching the system whose dead I have been channelling through the boundless ether for months, the crew now breathe a sigh of relief as they can return to what they understand. Radio-, micro-, any-waves. Receive and send. Check check check again. Tentative messages of peace designed back on earth to be transmitted in the most understandable concepts, symbols, shapes and sounds. Messages intended for the minority living, not the boundless dead.
When the messages of peace are not returned, the radiation signals are checked. Another act rendered nonsensical by historical precedent. If our order of mediums did not prove to be the most reliable method of searching for life in the universe, we would all, with some enthusiasm, be ejected from our respective vessels. But every time they check. And every time radiation within the planetary system suggests advanced life. And every time energy is diverted to shields and anti-ballistics. And every time the officers, new and old alike, secretly believe that maybe this time will be different. And every time, so do I.
The mirrored face visors replace their expressions with my own silvered appearance. Not being acquainted with their names, the ID plates are similarly opaque. But I can tell their rank and youth by the degree of dejected movement in their limbs. Like every other world the great human curiosity has snuffled out from the ether. This one is no different. There is nothing. There is no one. Not anymore.
Maybe the view here once swirled unimaginable. Maybe naturally purple waves broke upon forests of pearlescent mangrove-like structures. Maybe they ran miles thick and housed capitols and libraries and crèches and armouries. Maybe they reached their eyes or stalks or gelatinous papillae to the stars and wondered. But not for some time. All we inherited was chalice silver smog and blasted crevasses. I unclip the seal on the jar and like a child collecting a mustard locust out of a midsummer swarm or a ruby shawled washerwoman kneeling to fill her basin with the inexhaustible water of the Colorado, I scoop up a mere litre of igneous grey ash.
It is trained into us from girlhood. Mediums are in the privileged position to understand that the existence of life is both plutonium rare and disappointingly predictable. But the dispirited others onboard remain gloomy as we steer ourselves back into charted space. Dimmer and more barren than on the approaching journey.
The further we get from the system, the easier it is to de-focus my mind from its ex-inhabitant’s cries and reach out to the dead of other corners of space, a process that the commanding crew believes to take months and for once their beliefs are in step with reality.
I spend my waking hours in communion with mute piles of dust and my sleeping hours dreaming of bone white yucca forests. When I’m in a better mood I remember their artichoke green leaves. But when absorbed with my work, all my sleeping mind can recall is their scarred, peeling bark. The ash inertly sulks for so long that the lieutenant now questions me with bandages round his flayed fingertips.
It comes at first as a tiny murmuration of particles. Splintered and contorting gently, not far off the polished floor. Barely even a whisper. An inkling, a phantom vibration, an echo of a sigh. I hear no more signs from the dead that day. When I eventually permit myself sleep, it is only to prevent delirium from jamming my ability to read real signs from meaningless chaos.
We get closer. I’ve lost it. It’s moved. It’s artery thin. A barely perceptible invocation bubbles into view then pops mockingly every few days. I’m so distracted by my own frustration, I almost swallow the note whole.
Sewn into the pulp of my evening meal I don’t see it, but feel its papery texture scratch against my teeth with the crackle of atmospheric feedback. I pull its coiled length out of my mouth, like shrapnel from a wound. Even I do not know how our order manages such awareness of the comings and goings of military ships and such infiltration of the staff. But they use their web to sense and send, to manage their girls, out in the universe. But this message is different to the ones I’ve received before. Very rarely do the messages contain formally written requests. They’re usually written with bullet brusqueness. Their commanding will is assumed, as is the obeisance of their recipient. This message for instance, would usually only contain the line of coordinates at the bottom. It is jarring to read the clearly spelled out order that precedes them.
‘Guide ship here. Do not stop. Do not deviate from course. For any reason.’
Now my evening meal has been delivered, I will not be bothered again until morning. I have all night to memorise the coordinates. Really memorise them. Even a small mistake is not acceptable for a member of the order. And a single misremembered digit can mean a difference of hundreds of lightyears. In fifteen minutes, I can be pretty sure I’ve got the sequence down, but I spend the remaining hours of the night, napping or distracting then rechecking myself, until with confidence, I can unpleasantly gag down the message. There is no size of paper that is pleasant to consume, but it is the pleading tone of the final three words that unnerve me into praying that my future messages will return to normal.
For several days I perform no rituals. After months of obsessive tephramancy, my body thirstily gulps down sleep. Once restored I begin again, for what else am I to do, even when my direction and destination are predetermined? What else do I know to do?
I am probably mistaken the first time. Maybe I am the next few times as well. But after a month of steady movement in the commanded direction, my searching frustrations come into focus, as though I’ve emerged from being underwater, to see everything in proper proportion. The signal distends and ruptures into two weak but distinct signals, both calling from the same direction. From the position of our last touchdown, one had been hidden behind the other. Only now, moving in the general direction of the far signal, can I more easily differentiate between the amalgam of voices. Like the coordinates I obey, the far signal is distant, in an entirely different quadrant of space. Around six months from now I will have fulfilled my instructions and most likely that far system will be conveniently audible and nearby. There will be no questioning from the crew. The order, the crew and I, will have performed our roles as we always have.
But even from this twinkling distance, the faint gurgle of the dead forms shapes and signs to me which are utterly familiar. If it weren’t for this dull familiarity, I would likely jettison from my thoughts the irregularity coming from the closer system. The system that I am not to deviate towards. Not for any reason. The system that we will slip by, like a shade against the night sky, like smoke against the moon, like snow on a field of ash. The system that teaches me that a medium can be tricked by perspective. The system whose dead cry out weakly as a result of dearth, not distance. No. Not a dearth. I realise my mistake as we pass within just a few lightyears of the system’s outer planets. It’s not that the voices are any fewer or quieter. But they are different to any I’ve sensed before. I am accustomed to the galaxy’s dead screaming outward. Aimlessly, ceaselessly. Like radiation, like light. Unexacting, unprejudiced. An indiscriminate call into the universal abyss. But these voices are not like any dead I’ve ever heard. They are singularly directed not out into the uncaring vacuum, but inward, intentionally communing inside their own planetary system.
All my sensors can detect is hateful, steel-grey static.
