Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

A Long Horizon

Originally published in The Immortality Chronicles, part of the Future Chronicles anthology series, curated by Samuel Peralta

Space is a misnomer. If humans weren’t blind to it, they’d see that space is full, teeming with enormous creatures that float and skim through the blackness in the same way that phytoplankton fill the warm waters of Earth’s oceans. I don’t know why humans can’t see them. I see them all.

Even now, they glide and wheel past me, translucent, blinking, some bright and disc shaped, others pale with whip-like appendages that lash the darkness. I can see the stars through them. They move away and then return to hover. I know they see me as I stand here at the port window. They’re curious; not only about me, but about the ship that confines me.

The ship is my prison.

I am a convict aboard the Lonecross; a crew of ten also shares my fate. We are all sentenced to death, but a small, bright hope holds their hearts and minds—a hope for freedom, for an extension of breath and length of days. Their hope is my certainty, but they don’t know that. What we all know is this: their death is kept at bay for as long as possible by my isolation. My immediate company would be fatal to them all.

These are interesting times, full of ironies and paradoxes. The aristocracy has found itself with too much prosperity and too little desire to dirty its hands when dealing with commoners. It’s grown an odd skin of politeness that insists on humanely dealing with its worst dregs, so as not to offend the offenders. This is nothing new; I’ve seen it played out over and over through the years. The people in power change, the justifications change, but underneath the masks, the faces are always the same.

As for the worst lawbreakers, those deserving death, the benevolent method of dealing with them arrived later. A hundred years ago, eyes turned to space and desire to break free of Earth grew. The death penalty was abolished. In its place: a one-in-a-million chance at winning the lottery of the disgraced. Criminals were cajoled into volunteerism, that they might contribute something to give their hopeless, pathetic lives meaning.

These make up the crew of the Lonecross. They’re trained and made useful, then launched into space on a one-way journey, put to work whether they like it or not, for the good of a society that has cast them out like trash into the abyss of space. They’d like to believe they’re explorers of our vast galaxy, but in reality, they’re only maintenance workers on a vessel programmed to observe, record, send back information as it searches for new worlds that might be habitable. They forget about death—until fate snips the final threads of their existence by one cause or another.

But always dangling before their noses is the small hope that they will find that new world where second chances wait to embrace them.

And what of those who deserve the worst death, but are unable to die? Who cannot be killed no matter what torture is inflicted upon them? There is only one such soul on this ship. And I am locked away, isolated. My movements and activities are quietly documented by a computer’s cold eye for the duration of my so-called humane journey. I am the only prisoner ever to meet that description in the past nine hundred years.

I’ve never understood very clearly what sort of monitoring is done, what sort of notes are collected about me, or even why. I imagine some scientists at home want to know my end, if there is one. It’s always best to be mindful of one’s enemies and keep a careful eye on their whereabouts.

And so I remain alone, or almost alone, monitored like the stars and planets along our course. I don’t mind. I’m quite used to it by now. One crewman keeps me company, albeit by voice only. The pulsating diatoms of space keep me company. So does the life maturing inside me.

Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I’m on that other ship, the Prospect, where I first met my fate. I can almost feel the dizzying rise and fall of its bulk as it succumbs to the troughs and peaks of waves. I smell the pungent tang of salt and ocean decay. I hear the creak and whine of the hull, the thump of wind filling its sails. I close my eyes and I am almost there, where it all began.

I’d lived in London all my life. My name was Kate then; I’d just turned eighteen, straining at the fetters of drudgery and poverty in my overcrowded family home, eager for escape, for the freedom of adventure. It arrived in the form of an advertisement. Brides were wanted in the New World; women who were strong of bone and mind and lean of soul, because one had to be of that disposition to survive life in Virginia, let alone the journey there by ship. I felt qualified on all points. And so, without my father’s blessing, I responded to the advertisement. Soon I received a letter from The Virginia Company of London accepting my application and granting my fare to a new world. My mother and father did not say good-bye. I never looked back.

The journey was horrendous. I became so sick I truly thought I would see death before I saw land again. Halfway through the voyage, during a particularly sadistic storm, I considered pitching myself overboard and letting the sea swallow me. I didn’t think I could take any more. I hadn’t eaten in days because the mere thought of food made me retch. I was weak and feverish.

Then the sea calmed. The passengers embraced the relief it brought and slept. But I couldn’t sleep.

After twisting and turning in my bed, I’d had a brief, disturbing dream: a man had kidnapped me, stripped me naked and tied me to a bed spread-eagled, where he proceeded to probe my body with a glowing instrument. When he looked into my eyes, I felt a burning sensation at the back of my head. I was terrified, but finally he untied me and said, “You’ll do.”

I woke in a sweat, and realized my fever had finally broken. I rose and made my way to the deck for some night air, hoping it would bring calm to my frantic heart.

On deck, the ship rocked gently in the small swell of the sea. There was no moon, but the stars were so bright and numerous, I thought it might be possible to touch them. I stared out across the dark surface of the water. It was then I noticed a strange glow in its depths.

“Time to eat, Kata,” says Ruhan through a speaker in my door. His voice startles me from my thoughts. He calls me by my name, and he’s the only one. I know the others only by combinations of numbers and letters. Ruhan is CR7. I’m CK3, and in my files I’m told I have a suffix: 22, which means I’m extremely dangerous. The crew isn’t allowed to talk to me, although I’ve heard their voices from time to time. They’ve whispered through the speaker: “Hey, CK3, what you got going on in there?” or, “suck my dick, bitch.” Ruhan was no different at first, when he sought me out twenty years ago. But there was something about him that caught my attention. His snide remarks quickly gave way to curiosity; then as time went on, to friendship.

Ruhan fills me in on the goings-on of the crew. I never ask, but he talks as if I want to know. He told me once that I’m the subject of many discussions among the men. They wonder what I am, and why so much effort has been made to send me away and keep me separated. Why didn’t the judges make a special ruling in my case? Why didn’t they humanely euthanize me?

I never say anything. They don’t need to know. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Regardless, Ruhan talks to me. I think he feels sorry for me. Perhaps it’s because I’m the only female on-board. Or he’s simply curious. I never ask him why. I’m grateful for his friendship.

“I have some meat for you,” Ruhan says.

I know it isn’t real meat, with blood in it. It’s a block, processed and shaped to look and taste like meat. But I’m not hungry. I haven’t been hungry in years. I can’t remember the last time I tasted cooked food. I know this is a phase that will soon end. The cycle will come around and I’ll need another kind of food, as I have many times before.

“No, thank you,” I say.

“You have to eat, osita,” he insists. Little bear, he calls me. If only he knew.

“I’ll eat later,” I tell him.

A brief silence hangs beyond the door. “How about we eat together?” he suggests. “Me on this side and you on your side. We’ll eat and we’ll talk. How about that?”

I smile, but of course he can’t see it. Perhaps he hears it in my voice. “CJ9 won’t be too happy with that,” I say. “What if he catches you?”

“CJ can kiss my ass,” Ruhan replies. “What’s he gonna do? Send me to prison?” He laughs at his own joke.

I don’t say anything. Outside, the creatures swim languidly past my window. A sudden, incoherent longing rises in my chest, leaving me feeling fragmented and jumpy. I reach over and push a button. Portal shades descend and hide the view.

A series of clicks and hisses announces the arrival of my meal. A small door in the wall slides open to reveal a plate of food and a cup of water in a steel-reinforced box. I remove them both and set them on the table by my bed. Later I’ll drink the water, but I’ll send the food back to recycling. I don’t need it.

The life growing in my womb feeds me, and in turn eats me. Together, we live.

“Tell me a story, osita,” Ruhan says. “One I haven’t heard before.”

We’ve been on the Lonecross for twenty years. I’ve been telling him stories for the past ten. Perhaps he is the observer after all, the collector of information. He knows more about me than anyone else aboard the ship.

“You’ve heard them all, Ruhan.”

“Guess I have,” he says. “You sound tired.”

“I am.”

“Are you ill?”

“No.”

“Old age, eh?” His concern is brief. Through the speaker I hear him take an eager breath. “Tell me about the alien in the sea, then,” he says. “I like that one.”

I’ve told it a hundred times, it seems. But I comply. “The year was 1620, and I was eighteen,” I begin, as I always do. Ruhan chuckles.

I stop. “What’s funny?”

“That always gets me.”

We’ve discussed this countless times, but he won’t accept it as truth. “You never believe me.”

“That you’re 900 years old? It’s a good story.”

I want to argue with him, to convince him of the truth, but the urge passes, and I continue my story. “I was one of many young women hoping to become wives,” I continue, and I’m transported back once again.

I wasn’t the only person who saw the glow under the waves. I was one of a hundred or more passengers looking for opportunity and perhaps love in Virginia. Several had joined me on deck that night, as well as a few of the crew, all of us staring down into the depths, curious and maybe a little frightened of what we saw. One of the crew said, “It’s only the phosphor glow of tiny sea creatures. They cluster together and sometimes they grow in number to the millions. We’ve seen it before.”

That reassured us a little, but still we watched. Soon we realized that the glowing object was rising rapidly and would soon break the surface alongside the ship. We all stumbled back, stifling cries and gasps. The crewman who had offered the explanation leaned over the railing and said, “Damn.” It was all he was able to say before something from our nightmares rose up from the water and rocked our vessel so violently, we lost our footing and fell, grabbing for anything to prevent us from being catapulted overboard.

It was an oval-shaped thing and huge—almost the size of our ship—with a ring of shining eyes pulsating in colors of blue and green. The object slowly circled our vessel. When it completed a full circuit, it stopped, as if considering what to do next. It moved sharply to the left and then to the right, finally hovering a few feet above us, perfectly still and silent. I felt all those eyes scrutinizing, examining, sorting. The others on deck shouted and screamed, scrambling away, but I remained, paralyzed, transfixed by the sight.

A long appendage appeared from beneath the object and lowered itself closer to me. I felt the sensation of heat in the back of my head just as I had in my dream. In my weakened state, the shock and terror were too much. My ears filled with a high-pitched ringing, and all the stars in the night sky winked out.

“What happened to the ship?” Ruhan asks. “After you were abducted.”

I realize he’s never asked that question before. “I don’t know.”

“Kept on sailing, maybe. Minus one passenger, eh? Must have been like a hammer to the head: that whole experience, the whole ship telling wild tales of aliens. You think they went crazy after something like that?”

“How would I know that?”

“Seems like it could’ve happened. Maybe the ship sank and they all drowned.”

“Maybe.”

“And that sumbitch dropped you on the beach like nothing happened. What did it do to you?”

“You know what it did to me…what he did to me.”

“But you don’t remember.”

There’s much I remember. But to Ruhan I lie and say, “No. I don’t.” I choose not to share the details of an encounter with a creature so foreign and yet so humanlike that I wanted to both flee from and embrace him. He was altogether beautiful and entirely repulsive, an outsider in the fullest sense of the word, trapped on a world not his own, who knew he’d never see his home again. He did what he needed to do. He made a way to escape, if not for the whole of him, then for a piece.

I knew none of this at the time of my abduction. I was convinced I had died and been carried to hell for my sins. I thought I was facing a demon disguised as an angel of light. Only later in my dreams did the revelations come. But at that first encounter, I thought only of eternal torment. He studied me with a piercing, ferocious gaze that dissected my soul and stitched it back together. His touch burned, but stirred in me an intense longing I couldn’t begin to comprehend. It didn’t ease the pain and terror that overwhelmed me at the insertion of some part of him into my womb.

“So when did you know you had a baby inside you?” Ruhan asks.

“Not for a while.”

“Until the natives found you.”

“Yes.”

“And you turned cannibal.”

I cringe at the word. I don’t need human flesh. I don’t need blood. I did it for the life within me, my enemy lover who required a particular type of nourishment. I had no choice but to get it for him. I tried to stop myself, but I could no more prevent my burrowing into a brain or a neck or an abdominal cavity than I could prevent my blood from coursing through my veins. At the time I didn’t know the names of those things I craved, but now I can name them: the thymus, pituitary, thyroid, pancreas, liver—those parts rich in vitamins, amino acids, and hormones.

“I don’t consider myself a cannibal,” I say.

“I read your file. It goes back a long time. Hundreds of years. You’ve always been a cannibal.”

“I thought you didn’t believe I was that old.”

He chuckles.

“It’s all true, Ruhan.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Let’s just say it is true—”

“In the twenty years we’ve shared space on this ship,” I push, “have my stories ever changed?”

I hear nothing on the other side of the door.

“Do those files lie?” I ask.

Again, nothing.

“Have I wavered in any detail? Added or subtracted? Embellished?”

He considers this, I know, because the tone of his voice changes. Uncertainty, even anxiousness shades his words. “How can you be that old? Are you immortal?”

“He preserves me,” I tell him. “As I’ve said before. Perhaps he will forever.”

“A baby can’t do that.”

“Not a human baby. But he’s not human. Nor a baby.”

“What the hell is it then?”

Now I hesitate, uncertain myself. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve never tried to get rid of it, then?”

Our discussion is moving into forbidden territory. I won’t answer such questions, no matter how many times he asks. “I’m tired, Ruhan. I need to sleep. Go join your companions.”

He doesn’t argue, because knows it won’t change anything.

Ruhan was an enigma, not so much in his character but in the way he made me crave his company one moment and recoil from it the next. I spent most of my life in isolation of one form or another, ever since the day I woke up and found myself alone on a rocky shore. Twenty years on the Lonecross has been nothing out of the ordinary. But Ruhan changed everything when he took an interest in me. Not as an oddity, but as a person.

Initially he was no different than the other crewmen who slipped away unnoticed to try and engage me through the speaker with snide remarks. I ignored them and I ignored him too. But then one day he told me his name.

“Everyone knows me by CR7,” he said quietly. “But my real name is Ruhan.”

I didn’t respond, but I pondered this new tack. What did he expect from me?

“Are you lonely in there?” he asked in a strained voice.

I hesitated, then spoke. “No.”

He didn’t seem surprised that I answered. I heard a small sigh in his voice, and then he said, “I’m lonely.”

Over time, Ruhan and I settled into a peculiar relationship. He talked and I listened. I rarely asked questions, but when I did, he devoured them like a hungry animal. He needed to tell his story. He shared how his older brother had been responsible for getting him hooked on phreno, a hallucinogen. He mentioned his grandmother and her effort to keep him at home, away from trouble.

“What did she look like?” I asked. I don’t know why I asked. I can’t remember my own grandparents. Perhaps I wanted an image to fill that hole.

“Ah, mi abuela, she was such a beauty, even in her old age,” he said with a smile in his voice. “She had hair black as a raven, even at seventy. Barely any gray at all. And even though she was mujercita—a little lady—and she had these eyes that would put the fear of hell into your soul with one look. She would tilt her head to one side and put her hands on her hips, and her mouth would turn into a hard, thin line. Those eyes would drill right into you. That’s when you knew you might as well give up, because there was no escaping her wrath. But she was good. So good. And she loved me. I wish I’d paid more attention to that.”

Before he began begging me for stories, Ruhan would often tell me about the crew. He’d share conversations, altercations, weaknesses and strengths. Later, after we’d become more familiar with each other, he’d tell me what the men said about me; wild speculations, some of them humorous.

“CN8 says you aren’t a woman. You’re a machine, or a program or an AI-bot to make us think you’re real. He says you’re spying on us.”

I smiled at that. “What would be the point?”

“That’s what I said. But it makes more sense than what CV10 says.”

“Which is?”

“You’re an alien.”

“Maybe he’s right,” I said, but I didn’t want him to know how close they were to the truth.

As years crept by, he shared more troubling experiences. Infighting became worse. Twice, a crewman attacked and killed another. One by one, their numbers dwindled, until there were only five. Their tasks took longer to complete. Eventually, repairs were neglected and chores left unfinished. Ruhan began avoiding the others as much as possible.

Once, he came to me in the night, his voice tight with pain. “You awake?” he asked, gasping.

I rose from my place at the portal and moved to the door. “What’s wrong?”

“They beat me.”

My chest tightened. “Why?”

“They found out I’ve been talking to you.”

For the first time I felt a protective rage rise up inside. I wanted to make them pay for what they’d done to him. I might have even said something to that effect, although I don’t remember.

“I…I won’t be able to visit anymore, Kata,” he whispered. “Sorry.”

And he didn’t. Not for an entire year, by my feeble calculations. It was the longest year of my impossible life.

Time passes for me without an identity. I struggle to recognize its markings of minutes and hours. I try to make my own but they constantly shift and change. I sleep and I wake. I shower, read, write on a small tablet provided for me. I talk to Ruhan and Ruhan talks to me. And then I sleep again.

I dream I’m in the box. It’s a steel coffin and I watch, bound and helpless, as the seams are welded shut. It’s so hot inside; I can’t breathe. I’m jostled severely, my head and shoulder slamming from one side to the other. I know what’s happening to me. I’m being transported once again on a ship, but this time it’s a barge filled with cargo containers.

I can’t stop screaming. Pounding. Kicking. There’s a violent impact and thunder. At once the temperature changes—cool, cold, freezing. The pressure builds in my head and lungs. This is the end. I won’t be miraculously released this time. But I am. Always I’m protected. Shielded. Freed.

I wake up panting for breath. This is a nightmare I’ve had more times than I can count. The worst of my tortures always revisits me in my dreams.

When I find sleep again, he comes to me. He’s a thunderstorm that takes me by surprise each time. He rolls across my dreams and covers me, a shadow over the sun, an eclipse. He knows I can’t turn away. He’s a coiled adder, a stinging hornet, a hungry panther who devours me and I let him. He’s all I have.

I hate him because he’s stolen from me every precious thing I’ve owned or ever hoped to own: a family, children, a home, friendships, companionship, dreams, ambitions, all the things that have never had a chance to come to fruition because of what this creature has done to me. I love him, because he’s been my family, my child, my home, my lover, my companion, for nine hundred years. And when he visits me in my dreams, I lash out like a cornered animal, then I yield. More—I welcome him.

Always sorrowful, Kata, he says. Why do you resist?

I’m tired.

I am stirring inside you. I am growing now.

I know.

Are you ready?

No.

A woman is given nine months to prepare for birth. I have given you nine hundred years. Is that not enough?

No. How could I ever prepare for something like this?

Ah, Kata, my river of souls, my stream of dreams. Do you love me?

You’re cruel.

No, only pragmatic.

When you’re released from my body, will you let me die?

Is that your wish?

It is, more than anything.

Do you wonder if there is something more for you?

No, because I know there isn’t.

Has it been so dreadful that you welcome death?

Nine hundred years is too long for anyone to live.

I could give you something more, something fuller, richer.

I only want release. I want peace.

Do you love me, Kata?

You’re a parasite. I’m a mere host. How can you ask that question?

You are more than a host. You are my eyes to the stars, my ears to the music of the spheres. You are my heartbeat and my food, you are my breath. Do you love me?

Yes.

Afterward, I sleep and do not dream.

When I awake, I’m hungry. It’s a sensation I haven’t felt in a long time. The cycle has begun again as it has hundreds of times before, but this time something is different. The life in my womb is growing and changing. It’s ready to be born, to emerge from this shell of a body, this swollen belly that has housed it and nourished it for far too long. It needs to be fed, more than what I can give. I think of the crewmen who’ve died in the past twenty years, whose internal parts could sustain me if I had them now. Space has devoured them instead.

I shower, lingering under the hot spray a little longer than usual. Afterward as I dry off, I study my image in the reflective surface of my bedroom wall. I notice how much I’ve changed. All my body hair is gone, including my eyebrows and lashes. My eyes bulge slightly, as if too big for their sockets. Over time, he’s replaced my blood with a blue fluid, and it gives me a deathly tint, the color of a body pulled from icy waters. My skin is translucent, but also coarse and leathery. I look as though I could crumble at the slightest touch. But I’m stronger than ever. I’m impenetrable. The irony of that is not lost on me.

I don’t bother to dress. No one but the cold, impartial observer in the ceiling sees me, and the freedom of nakedness is one of the few small pleasures I can enjoy.

Ruhan comes with breakfast. “Did you sleep well, Kata?”

“No,” I reply. “I had bad dreams.”

“Tell me about them.” The speaker crackles. I’m sure after so many years it’s beginning to break down. The crewmen are nothing more than maintenance men, but they are few now, and there are priorities. Speakers are likely at the bottom of the list. I’m only grateful that Ruhan still comes to me, that he found a way to visit mostly unhindered. He’s never told me how it happened, what arrangement he made with the crew, or what threat he may have held over their heads. Ruhan doesn’t seem like a strong man, but I think he wears it as a disguise. I think—after the beating, after the long year passing—he took that disguise off and showed the crew who he really was.

The speaker hisses. I remember my loneliness without Ruhan’s conversations, and a tiny spark of panic flares in my chest at the thought of another long, empty stretch with no communication. But it passes.

“I dreamt that I was in the steel coffin, the one they put me in to try and kill me.”

“Ah, yes. A long time ago. When did you say?”

“I don’t remember exactly. I’ve tried to forget over the years. I think it was sometime in the mid-twentieth century, maybe around 1960.”

“You have that dream a lot.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t think of a worse way to die.”

I have to laugh at that.

Ruhan laughs with me, but he seems puzzled. “What’s so funny?”

“You don’t see?” I reply. “It is the way you will die. You’re in a box, sealed in, cast out into the vast ocean of space, with no control over where the ship goes or what your end will be.”

Ruhan is silent for so long I think he might have left. Then he says, “It’s not so bad, I guess. It’s different than a steel coffin. I can breathe.”

“You can breathe,” I say. “Yes, there’s that.”

He changes the subject. “CL6 won’t make it much longer. He had a stroke yesterday. That means just four of us now.”

His news means nothing to me. CL6 is a number. I’ve never seen him. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard his voice. Ruhan only mentions him in passing. But I think about his death, of the possibilities it might offer me.

“Will you do it this time?” I ask.

Ruhan knows what I want. “I can’t,” he says. “You know I can’t.”

“Just the pancreas, the liver and the thyroid glands. That’s all I ask. Is it so much from a man who will end up ejected into space? What difference will it make to a dead man?” There’s a desperate tone to my voice. I don’t want Ruhan to hear it, but I am desperate, and I need the organs. The life in me needs to be fed again.

“They’d never allow it,” he says. “They might kill me if they found out. They’re scared of you, Kata.”

“Aren’t they scared of you?”

“Not enough. Not anymore. But you…it’s different with you.”

“They have every right to be scared of me.”

I hear Ruhan’s shallow breathing. “Would you kill us and eat us if you could?” he asks.

I want to say no, but I can’t. “It’s out of my control, Ruhan. He’s like a demon possessing me. I do whatever he wants.”

Ruhan thinks about this. “My abuela believed in demons.”

“Did your grandmother believe in aliens?”

“She believed in everything,” he says, then tries to change the subject. “Have you named it? The thing in your belly.”

He doesn’t want me to push about the organs, because it frightens him. So I let I go. “I call him the wasp.”

“No shit? What kind of name is that?”

“It’s not a name. Just a label.”

I tell him another story, one I haven’t shared before. “Once, sometime around the early 1800s, I broke into a house. I’d been wandering in the wilderness for months, maybe even years. Time gets lost when you live so long. The natives there kept me fed and covered by making me offerings of animals and furs so I would stay away from their villages. They called me the River Witch. Sometimes Red Boar.

“I needed real clothes, something more than furs. I’d been watching this particular homestead—a woman lived there with her husband and three young sons. She was similar to me in size and build. So one day, when they’d gone to town, I broke in and took one of her dresses and a blanket.

“I allowed myself a moment to explore the house. It had been so long since I’d been inside one. The house was small but cozy. I noticed a small stack of books on a table—children’s books. One was about insects, with pictures carefully detailed and colored. There was a wasp with indigo wings, which I read about…it laid its eggs inside living beetle grubs.

“This was a revelation to me. For the first time I had some way to identify what had happened to me, no matter how grotesque the comparison. I hadn’t become pregnant, as I’d shamefully believed all those years. No, I was the captive host to this creature, a slave to his whims while I nourished his offspring with my body. The alien I encountered was humanoid; in fact, there was nothing about him I would define as insect. But what he did to me was very much like the wasp in that book. So I called him a wasp after that. It seemed most appropriate.”

Ruhan lets out a low whistle. “Jesus.”

There seems no good reason to hold back anything anymore. “He was stranded,” I continue. “Wounded. Abandoned. Dying. His ship would never again break the chains of Earth’s gravity. And so he waited for the time when Earth developed the technology to travel into deep space. Nine hundred years. He’s on his way home.”

Somewhere, out in the vast reaches of space, we’re drawing closer to what’s familiar to him. It’s an exchange, of sorts, between us, and also something we share. Against his will the wasp gave up his familiar home for an alien one; and now, ironically, I find myself doing the same. A slave to the will of one who could no longer direct his own fate.

Three days later, when it’s time for my meal, I find a bowl of organs, the ones I’ve asked for. I can’t eat fast enough.

Weeks pass before I hear from Ruhan again. When he shows up, I feel more relief than I want to. But he sounds tense, even frightened.

“How are you?” he asks, his voice shaky. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I was worried about you.”

“Worried about me? Ah, osita, how nice.” His words don’t line up with the fear I sense from him.

“You got in trouble for bringing me the organs, didn’t you?”

“Oh…yeah, some trouble,” Ruhan says. “Kept me locked up for a few days. But…you don’t want to hear about that. Talk to me, Kata. Tell me how many different ways you were tortured.”

I’m startled by his request. Does he wish to identify with me somehow, or are there darker, perverse urges at play? “I don’t understand what you’re asking,” I say finally.

He’s quiet for a long moment. “I think, sometimes, that if you went through so much, I can face it too, you know? I can handle it.”

I reluctantly rattle off a list of unsuccessful attempts by others—and myself—to end my life: drowning, burning, impaling, poisons, acids, bullets, explosions, radiation, lasers. And when nothing worked, confinement to small, dark rooms, exile to wastelands, separation behind impenetrable fences…then I stop. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yeah, I guess. Are you scared, Kata? Scared of the end?”

“You mean, scared to die?”

“Yeah.”

“No. I welcome death if it comes.”

“You think it won’t? You think you’ll stay alive forever?”

I ponder his question; my answer. “I hope not.”

Ruhan releases a long breath. “They want to kill me, Kata.”

“Who?”

“CM and CJ. They’ve killed CB.”

This news alarms me. “What?”

“We’re close to a planet. Looks like it’s habitable. A lot like Earth. Either we’ll burn up in the atmosphere or crash. Who knows? But there’s only one escape pod. I figure CJ; he’s the strongest. He’ll knock off CM and me, and take the pod. He might land on the planet; he might not. But he thinks he will.”

I open my port window, which I’ve kept dark for the past few months, and see what I’ve missed: a large, bright planet fills the view. Outside, the space plankton skim gracefully past, unperturbed by our presence. But there seem to be more of them, gathering close, as if waiting. I understand the purpose of their presence now; they’ve been guiding and maneuvering the ship through space toward this point. It was never random. The minute the ship launched, it had a destination.

But it’s Ruhan’s revelation that surprises me most. “The ship has an escape pod?”

“It only fits one person. Files and logs are stored in there. It can be maneuvered and it’ll make it to the planet in one piece. That’s what CJ said. But who’s to know what the atmosphere’s like? He says it’s good…But what the hell, it doesn’t matter anyway. We’re all sentenced to death, right? Here it is, ready and waiting.”

There’s a hitch in his voice. “I don’t want to die alone, Kata.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t want him to die at all. He’s been the only human friend I’ve known in nine hundred years.

Ruhan says, “I love you, Kata. I know that’s crazy. But I do. You never once asked me why I was sentenced to this ship. You always made me feel like I was a real person. An innocent man. A free man.”

My throat tightens. If I had tears, I would cry. “You’ve been a good friend, Ruhan.”

I hear scratchy, disjointed sounds of screaming, but it’s not Ruhan, it’s someone else.

“Oh shit,” Ruhan says. “CJ’s killing CM. I knew it. He’s coming after me next. Jesus!”

Inside me, desperation wells up, one part born of an urgent need to rescue Ruhan, and another born of a craving to feed. I can’t deal with it. I cry out and slam my fists against the door.

Ruhan says, “If I open the door, if I go in there with you, will you kill me, Kata?”

I’m shocked once again, not by his question but by this news. “You can open the door?”

“I found the code. It wasn’t easy. Years of searching. I thought maybe, someday…”

I want to answer his question with a no, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to control myself. “Ruhan, I don’t know what I’ll do. The wasp, he—”

Ruhan is yelling now, and suddenly the door slides open. Warm air rushes in, with terrible smells—the odor of blood and shit, of fear. Ruhan stares at me, wide eyed, and the color drains from his face. “Oh God,” he says, “You are an alien.”

I realize with a jolt of astonishment how shocking my appearance must be. Until this very moment I never understood, but now I do—now that I see myself as Ruhan sees me for the first time. I’ve been remade—the alien has recreated me in his image, so slowly and so minutely that I simply accepted the changes without question. But more than adapting my body to carry his seed, I’m now perfectly adapted for life on this new planet, the alien’s home world. He never had any intention of letting me die. He’ll keep me with him, and I’ll live in his world, as though I belong there.

I smile ruefully and say, “I’m not. I’m still me. Am I so awful?”

He shakes his head, breathing hard. “I’d rather die by your hand.”

I’m not sure why he says that, and I don’t believe him.

From the corridor behind Ruhan, I hear someone yelling. I know it must be CJ. Here’s my chance. I rush toward Ruhan, who screams when I grab him, but I merely fling him aside and make my way out the door. I’m filled with anger and a need for vengeance. But I’m also hungry. CJ will get what he deserves.

I sprint down the corridor and turn a corner, almost slamming into him. CJ stumbles back at the sight of me, his eyes wide and full of fear. He’s splattered with blood. It drips off his gray beard and runs down his arms. The iron bar he’s gripping falls to the floor with an echoing clatter, and he runs, but I catch him with little effort.

“Don’t kill me, please!” he pleads, but I must. I throw him to the floor, rip out his throat and pry him open like a clam with a strength I’d forgotten I possessed. Hungrily I feed, finding everything I need by instinct. When I’m finished I get up and look for Ruhan.

I find him cowering in a corner of my room. He knows there’s no use hiding from me. I must be a sight now, blue, naked, and smeared with blood. For the first time that I can remember, I feel self-conscious. I don’t want him to see me this way. And I don’t want him to be afraid of me. “Do you still love me, Ruhan?” I ask, almost as a joke, a feeble attempt to break through his terror.

He’s shaking; breathing in short, shallow puffs. As I approach him, the crotch of his trousers grows dark with a wet stain. “I don’t want to die,” he says.

“I didn’t think so.” I grab him by the wrist and pull him up. “Where’s the escape pod?”

“Two levels down.”

“Take me there.”

We hurry down metal steps and along dingy corridors until we reach a small storage bay. Ruhan points to a door. “There.”

“Get in,” I tell him.

He stares at me, trembling, unbelieving. “No, Kata, I can’t do this.” He thinks I’m giving up my chance of escape for him. He doesn’t understand the real reason I’m putting him in the pod.

“You have to, Ruhan.”

He shakes his head firmly. “I won’t make it.”

He’s made it this far. I haven’t killed him yet. Perhaps the wasp has done this for me. I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s a short reprieve. Already I feel the beginnings of need blooming in my gut. “You might,” I tell him. “But if you stay here with me, you most definitely won’t make it.”

Ruhan’s eyes grow wide, and then soften. “What about you, Kata?” he asks. “Do you want to die so badly?”

“Yes. But I won’t.” I know what my destiny will be. The ship may crash. But I’ll live because the wasp will keep me alive, just as he has for 900 years. I’ll emerge unscathed.

Ruhan looks at my swollen belly, then at my face. I see a new strength in his eyes. He relaxes, smiles. Then, without hesitation, he pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly. It’s the first prolonged human touch I’ve felt in hundreds of years. I cry; my body shakes with deep sobs, but no tears. Ruhan takes my face in his hands and searches my eyes. “You aren’t alien, osita,” he says. “I was wrong. Just like you said, you’re still you.” He wipes the blood from my lips and kisses me. Then he turns and keys in the code to the escape pod.

I watch as he climbs in. The door closes and seals shut with a hiss.

“See you on the surface,” I tell him, even though I know he doesn’t hear me.