Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

Henri’s music doesn’t help. It’s all breathy chanteuses and tinkly pop. It doesn’t grab me and move me like kwaito . I keep drifting off and hearing the stars.

We were here when you were dust. We will be here when you are vapour. And you, in the meantime, will serve.

I’m not sure I have all the words right. I try not to get them right.

I keep finding messages in blood. I don’t want to know what they say. I left the second one up for Captain Hao, but after three days, I couldn’t stand it, anymore, and scrubbed it off. She didn’t say anything about it, good or bad, but the stars got louder. The third one, I scrubbed right away. Too much crazy on this ship, already. We don’t need blood.

Last night, I woke up sweating from a nightmare. I couldn’t remember anything. Just the terror. Instead of going back to sleep, I started cleaning early. No one gets up early on this ship. The mess hall should have been empty.

But there was Captain Hao, with a razor blade and a calligraphy brush. One glove pulled off, one hand dripping red, the brush redder. Writing a word on the wall.

She turned her head and looked at me. I’ve never seen emotion in Captain Hao’s face before. Today, her eyes went wide; her lip trembled. I think it was fear.

If she hadn’t looked scared, I might have stormed in, demanded an explanation. But with that look in her eyes, half of me wanted to hug her, kiss her straight black hair, tell her it would be okay. Half of me wanted to run screaming.

I split the difference. I bowed my head and backed out politely. Hours later, when she was gone, I scrubbed the bloody wall until it shone.

I almost didn’t tell anyone. I lay awake, tossing and turning, trying to shut out the stars. Told myself it would make no difference if I did. She’s the Captain. Even if she weren’t, what could we do? Send her home?

We will be here when you are dust, said the stars. You will serve us. She will serve us.

I got up and paced, as much as you can pace in a room the size of a closet, taking one step and turning, step and turn, step and turn. I leaned on the poster I’d smuggled up from Earth, a big view of a herd of kudu in Marakele National Park. I stared at it and wondered if I’d been there before.

I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen kudu. I couldn’t remember if I’d been to a national park, at all. I tried to think of it and only saw blood.

That was the last straw. I had to talk to someone.

“Someone” means Mesfin Biniyam, the ship’s psychiatrist. At Mission Control in Beijing, when they told me psychiatry was one of the most important jobs in space, I laughed. I wrote an eye-rolling letter back home to Onalenna.

Nowadays, I don’t laugh about it.

We each had a weekly session with Mesfin for the first few months. When Henri and I started fighting over whether to call ourselves a couple, Mesfin smoothed it over. When Suardana reported anxiety, he taught her some deep breathing, which helped her keep an even keel—for a while.

But when I first told Mesfin about the stars and their whispers, he got this gazelle-in-the-headlights look. Like, all of a sudden, here was something he hadn’t read in a psychiatric journal. Nowadays, he wanders the ship with nothing to say.

When he stopped holding weekly sessions, I just grumbled and wished he’d help with the cleaning. But today, I needed him.

Mesfin’s office doubles as his cabin and it’s one of the bigger ones. He and I can both sit down and close the door and, if we’re careful, our knees don’t touch. He’s decked out the walls in inspirational posters mixed with traditional Ethiopian art.

I sat down and explained. About Captain Hao. The blood on the walls. The whispers. How I felt like a traitor just talking about it, but worse if I said nothing. How beautiful she was, even writing with the blood from her own wrist. How badly I wanted her to be sane.

He let me h. He asked the usual headshrinker questions. “How does that make you feel?” Then he closed his eyes. “I can’t help with this, Moremi. I’m sorry.”

I pulled away a half-centimeter, which was all I could do without plastering myself against the wall. “What do you mean? You’re the one who deals with the crazy. You’re telling me there’s no entry for this in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual? No little page of instructions in Mandarin, somewhere in the ship’s handbook? ‘By the way, if the whole crew goes batshit, here’s what you do….’” My voice cracked. That surprised me. I held my hands up to hide my face.

Mesfin’s voice had the kind of calm that you only get by doing a real good job of pretending to be calm when you’re not. “What do you think, Moremi? Do you think there are instructions for this?”

I didn’t want him to see my lip trembling. Like a little kid. “You’re the psychiatrist. Make something up.”

“I hear the voices, too, Moremi. Maybe they’re the stars. Maybe they’re a projection of my unconscious mind. My temporal lobes constructing a presence to block out the emptiness that’s really out there. How can I know? And if I don’t know, how can I give advice? Won’t I simply be repeating what the stars tell me? How can I say anything?”

“People are writing on the walls in blood. How can you not say anything?”

“I can’t say anything.” I expected him to show some emotion, to start waving his hands or trembling. He just sat there. Repeated it over and over. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

I stormed out. I cried in my cabin for a minute or two.

But so what? He showed me what not to be. I refuse to sit there, expressionless, while things fall apart. Even if my memory’s going and the stars are loud in my ears, I have to do something so we survive until Barnard’s Star. I have to, so I can.

I am going to have a talk with Captain Hao.

It will be delicate. I can’t do it when someone else could be watching. And her door isn’t open, anymore. When I come by, she waves pages of Mandarin paperwork in my face. I have to wait for the right moment.

It’s awful, waiting. It drove me to distraction all day. Finally, I gave up and went to Henri.

He smirked the way he always smirked. “Ah, yes, love. I’ll give you something else to think of.” He pulled me close without waiting to see if I liked the idea or not. Half of me hated him for it and half of me wanted to kiss him until speech was not an option. I went with the kissing. Henri’s not all bad. His jaw is a good shape. His skin tastes salty, alive.

I’d kissed halfway down his neck before I realised I wasn’t thinking of those things. And, this time, not about Captain Hao, either. I was thinking of the pulse in his throat. Strong, heady, rhythmic, saltier than skin. The red, the life, hiding inside him. I wanted to touch that. To taste it.

I pulled back abruptly. Henri raised an eyebrow, not moving. He’s learned not to push.

You are ours, said the stars, suddenly loud in my ears. We can use you.

I put my hands over my ears. Henri tilted his head. “Moremi, what…?”

I shoved him away and ran back to my room.

I’m not crazy. Captain Hao’s the crazy one. I’ve always had these little uncomfortable moments. One time, I had a girlfriend back in Johannesburg who—

I don’t remember her name. I don’t remember what she did.

I remember it was awkward, though, and I came home and told Onalenna about it. Once told, it was funny. We laughed and laughed, and Onalenna said—