Chapter 1: Jacob's Ladder

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Even though you know this, you want to try for yourself. Maybe a good scream would help release some of the tension that has been building in your chest for the last two weeks, though you doubt it. Most likely it would just startle Sami, which is the last thing you want.

Leaving orbit seemed to make Sami feel more serene than she’d been in a long time. After all the high nerves and endless tension, serenity isn’t something to spoil.

Sami sways a little in the low gravity and her shoulder bumps against yours. Even with the whole taxi empty and a hundred self-folding seats to choose from, you’re still side-by-side, standing in the window just like you’ve always been. The whole planet is beneath you, sinking out of view. It’s always whiter than you expect, crawling with clouds that swirl like a giant fingerprint.

The old poets would have said that the fingerprint was god’s, but you know better. Near the horizon, where the earth’s rotation plunges the eastern hemisphere into darkness, you can see lights coming on by the billions. If it was anyone’s fingerprint, it was humanity’s. Half of those clouds were machine generated, after all.

“Imagine a world where the sky is green instead of blue,” said Sami.

It’s been years since you’ve played that game. The last time, you were in your late teens. You’d put your hands under her shirt at the arcade and she’d given you this look that still rattles around in your dreams sometimes. Then you went home, and you remember her laying you down on a bed you’d shared when you were kids, and you remember her exploring you the way you always dreamed someone would. Afterward, you laid next to her in the lamp-light. You couldn’t pry your eyes away from her, even when she asked you to picture world after world. You could picture them all. None of them seemed outlandish anymore.

Now you look at Sami in surprise, hoping that she’s looking at you the way she did that night, but she is looking up at the Ladder that stretches into space above you. It’s been ten years since that night. Not all lights can stay on that long. Humans are such brief stars.

“Easy,” you say. “It’s already been found. It’s called TSX-3.15E. Or Homunculus 5 as they’re calling it. Mostly methane atmosphere that glows green thanks to a desert of polarized tresselanite crystals that cover most of the surface.”

“How long would it take to get there?”

“Three generations by slow-ship. Not that it would matter, the whole Homunculus system is practically made of radiation.”

Sami gives a faraway smile that makes your stomach sink further into your boots. “All the charismatic ideas are wasted on the untouchable ones.”

You feel the overwhelming need to counter, but you do it gently. You play the game. “Imagine a world inside of a planetary ring system. Half of our sky would be the curve of a huge pink planet. We’d have a thousand brother and sister satellites all around us. We could hop along them for ten thousand miles.”

“Or get ground up between them.”

“Ble-eak Samira. But not untouchable, is it?”

“Does this one exist too?”

“Yes. PAAHS classifies it as a Micro-World, even though it’s bigger than Luna. It’s been in orbit around Camus-6 since the Milky Way was in diapers.”

You can’t tell what Sami thinks of this, but that has always been the challenge. You’ve always hated the uncertainty. So has she, in her own way. You’ve always been unsure of different things.

You bump her shoulder on purpose with your own, and the momentary contact causes both of you to sway where you stand. This does exactly what you hoped it would—Sami reaches out and puts her hand on your hip, tethering you together.

“How long would it take to get there?” Sami asks.

“Seventeen years by slow ship. But with the slingshot, as little as a year.”

For a long moment, there’s nothing to say. The earth slips out of sight just as the appearance of Assembly Station draws your attention upward. From this distance, its outer rings—each one wider than a city block in circumference—look no thicker than a copper wire.

Sami lays her head on your shoulder. “Imagine a world where we learn that dogs’ favorite letter is B, so everyone names their dogs Bubba, or Bellamy, or Bluebell.”

You laugh and lean away to look at her, but Sami’s hand on your hip pulls you nearer. You are face to face now, almost hip-bones to hip-bones. This is as close as you’ve been in three weeks, not counting one night of plaintive groping and touching that left both of you feeling worse. You want, maybe more than anything else in the world, to go back and redo that night.

“Does that one exist?” Sami wants to know.

“I’m afraid that one’s purely theoretical,” you reply.

“Oh, are you sure?” she squeezes you right above the hip and you think you might actually scream, when—

Attention, Passengers of the Taxi Versailles. If you turn your attention to the display, you will see the outer ring of Assembly Station coming into view, along with the outer jetty of the Ladder.

“That bloody computer,” Sami rolls her eyes. “Can’t we turn it off? It’s just us in here.”

“Computer,” you say sternly, “disable non-essential announcements.”

Sami watches the ceiling breathlessly, waiting for a response, and for a moment you do too. But then you just look at her. You’re only inches apart. You know how soft her cheeks are, but you want to touch them. You know what your lips feel like on her neck, but you want to to be sure. You’ve kissed her so many times, but suddenly it feels like you’ve never once done it right.

“Did it work?” she whispers. The tight collar of your suit makes it hard to breathe.

“Sami, I—”

Estimated arrival in Jacob’s Landing: two hours and forty-five minutes. Thank you, and enjoy your visit to Assembly Station.

“Fuck!”

You want to rip the speakers right out of the dome. Sami sighs and shakes her head.

“I guess I shouldn’t be disappointed. We have a whole taxi to ourselves. Who knew we’d get so lucky?”

“Lucky’s a boogeyman word,” you remind her.

“I know,” is all she can say.

The truth is, you are lucky, Edelweiss Usavi. Not generally, not in the day-to-day way—your name is not picked out of a hat more often, nor do you win more coin-flips than chance warrants. But in the big ways, in the things that matter, you have been lucky.

Lucky to have been born by the sea. Lucky that your reconstructive surgeries left you without even an ounce of discomfort. Lucky to have had the right sponsors, to have fallen into the right programs. Lucky to have been seen and heard by the right people. Lucky to have scored so well on the aptitudes, to have the right shaped brain to interface with the right shaped system. Lucky that a research vessel on its way to the slingshot was in desperate need of an Apiarist, and that you’re licensed for off-world drone piloting. Lucky to be here above the clouds instead of down among the twinkling lights of earth.

Luck is a boogeyman word, like evil, like belief, like the devil—words that conveyed worldviews instead of simple ideas, that came with an us versus, a divinely imposed inside and outside. But lucky is still the best term that you have, whether it’s a relic or not.

You’re ascending Jacob’s Ladder, for fuck’s sake. From Assembly Station, you will be boarding a fourteen-month slow ship to the Slingshot, which is officially called The Wicket Gate after some 17th Century religious text about a pilgrim’s analogous effort to reach heaven. Even up here, where mankind’s greatest achievements hover over an abyss that was once unimaginable, the memories of the arcane are ever-present.

You carry your past with you wherever you go. The history of the entire planet is written in your cells. Every organism that was. Every organism that might be. Luck plays no part in it, but still.

The station’s many rings begin to crowd the window and you look back at Sami, find her staring. For once, you know exactly what she’s thinking, and she’s right. Of course, she is the greatest of all lucks. The fact that she noticed you, that she took interest in you. Protected you, cared for you, believed in you. It’s not just her, either, but the family that came with her. Her parents might as well be your own. Her childhood bedroom might as well have been your own. What years she has given you. What worlds she has taught you to imagine, when the only one you could see was the one right in front of you.

And now you are here. Taxiing away from the only world you’ve ever known, because you can’t get the rest of them out of your head. Because she told you it was okay to dream, and now you can’t stop dreaming.

Sami’s eyes are unbearably serious. There are tiny pinches in the skin just above her cheeks that make you ache even before she speaks.

“Imagine a world where you don’t leave, Edel. Where you stay with me…and sure, maybe you’re disappointed at first. Maybe it’s crushing, staying behind. But only for a little while. Because in this world, I make you feel better. I make you happy. And then I keep on making you happy forever. And that’s enough.”

Oh, Samira. How you wish you could explain that if you stayed, you could never be happy, and certainly not forever. Forever is a boogeyman word. An idea that simply does not exist and never has. And even if she could make you happy forever, this isn’t about happiness. This isn’t about her. But how could you ever say such a thing? You’ve been trying for months and still haven't figured it out.

“I don’t suppose you can imagine a world where you come with me,” you say. “Where we actually do get to see new worlds. Where we get to stand under new skies. Look up at new stars. Where we get to keep telling our story.”

Sami’s eyes gloss as she smiles. All the times she’s wept in front of you, and she won’t do it now. You don’t know if this is a mercy or a punishment.

“You know, I couldn’t before. Me, on another planet. Even with you. I just couldn’t picture it.” She wraps both hands around your arm and squeezes it like she wants to comfort you, or maybe deep down wants to strangle you. “But something tells me I’m going to be imagining it every day from now on.”

“It’s not too late,” you blurt out. “You can make arrangements once we get to the station. With your scores and experience—you’re a geneticist for fuck’s sake! A good one. You could make two phone calls and get a hundred letters of recommendation. I know they’ll find a place for you—”

“It’s not just that, Edel—”

You take her hands in yours just like you did when you first told her you’d been admitted to the program.

“You can still talk to your family in real time. You know that they’ll understand!”

“It’s too late, Edel!” Her words are like a rupture in your hull. You can feel the vacuum tugging at your insides and you want more than ever to scream, even if nobody will ever hear it. She offers a remorseful shrug and repeats, “It’s just too late.”

Sami pulls her hands away and steps back toward the window. After a moment, you follow, leaving a damnable foot of space between you. You knew you shouldn’t have pushed so hard. You know better.

“It’s because I already chose, isn’t it?”

Sami smiles and you know it’s the kind of smile that people force when they’re trying not to fall apart. “We both did.”

This time you lay your head on her shoulder. You put your arms around her and leave them there, just like you did that night when she told you to imagine a world covered in wildflowers, and you told her to imagine a world in total darkness.

“You want to feel chosen,” you say.

“We all want to feel chosen, baby.”

You aren’t sure how the remainder of the taxi ride will go, whether you will sit on opposite ends of the vessel or stay here together and cry. The computer chimes to tell you that you will be arriving in less than two hours, and you open your mouth to say something when Sami kisses you. She kisses you and kisses you, and you are eighteen again, and you are so lucky.

The folding seats weren’t made for this. You melt onto the floor and stay there with her on top of you. The weight of her body feels lighter than it did on the surface, so you hold her hips and press her down onto you, feeling all the blood and hunger awakening, competing with the ache and the loss. She pries you out of your suit. You slide your hands into hers.

She tastes just as you have always known her to taste. Like thunderstorms, cantaloupe, and the beach. She tastes like earth. You wonder what you taste like.

“I love you,” she says, and it’s a song.

“I love you, baby,” you answer, and it’s a promise.

“I choose you,” she whispers, kissing your chest, and it’s the truth.

“Samira,” you gasp, and it’s an epitaph.

Humans are such brief stars.