‘And what if the air tastes of honey? What if there’s so much food we all get too fat? What if the sky is so beautiful we don’t get any work done because we’re all looking at it too much?’
I turned and closed up the coolant tube cases. ‘But what if it isn’t?’
‘But what if it is?’
‘What if it isn’t?’
‘What if it is?’
‘Yeah, this is getting us somewhere.’
‘Haven’t we raised you to be hopeful?’ he said. ‘Wasn’t that the whole point of your great-grandmother agreeing to be a caretaker on this ship, so that one day you could have a better life? She was full of hope. Your mum and I are full of hope.’ He was close enough now for a hug, if I wanted it. ‘Why can’t you share some of that?’
And he was looking so caring, so worried, that how could I tell him? How could I tell him how much I hate even the sound of the word?
Hope. That’s all anyone ever talked about on the convoy, especially as we got closer. Hope, hope, hope.
As in, ‘I hope the weather’s good.’ This from people who’d never actually experienced weather except in immersive vids.
Or, ‘I hope there’s interesting wildlife.’ From people who’d only ever met Scampus and Bumpus, the ship’s cats on the Delta. 10,000 frozen sheep and cow embryos didn’t count.
Or, ‘I hope the natives are friendly.’ This always said with a laugh because there aren’t supposed to be any natives, at least according to the deep space probes.
Everybody was hoping for something, talking about our new life to come and all that they hoped from it. Fresh air, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Real gravity, instead of the fake kind that broke every now and then (even though no one over fifteen would admit that it was actually really fun when it did). All the wide open spaces we’d have, all the new people we’d meet when we woke them up, ignoring completely what happened to the original settlers, super-confident that we were so much better equipped that nothing bad could possibly happen to us.
All this hope, and here I was, right at the very edge of it, looking out into the darkness, the first to see it coming, the first to greet it when we found out what it really looked like.
But what if?
‘Is it because hope is scary?’ my father asked.
I looked back at him, startled. ‘You think so, too?’
He smiled, full of love. ‘Hope is terrifying, Viola,’ he said. ‘No one wants to admit it, but it is.’
I feel my eyes go wet again. ‘Then how can you stand it? How can you bear even thinking it? It feels so dangerous, like you’ll be punished for even thinking you deserved it.’
He touched my arm, just lightly. ‘Because, Viola, life is so much more terrifying without it.’
I swallowed away my tears again. ‘So you’re telling me the only choice I have is which way I’m going to be terrified for the rest of my life?’
He laughed and opened his arms. ‘And at last a smile,’ he said.
And he did hug me.
And I let him.
But in my chest, there was still fear, and I didn’t know which kind it was. Fear with hope, or fear without it.
***
It takes what seems like forever to unbuckle my belt, hard to do when you’re hanging upside down against it. When it finally comes undone, I fall away from the seat, sliding down the wall of the cockpit, which seems to have folded into itself.
‘Mum?’ I say, scooting over to her.
She’s facedown on what used to be the ceiling, her legs twisted in a way I can’t really look at-
‘Viola?’ she says again.
‘I’m here, mum.’ I push away the things that have fallen on her, all the files and screenpads, everything broken as we tumbled, everything that wasn’t fastened down broken to pieces-
I pull up a large metal plate off her back-
And I see it-
The pilot’s chair was torn from the floor, tearing away the back panel of it, turning the backrest into a shard of metal-
A shard that’s gone right into my mother’s spine-
‘Mum?’ I say, my voice tight, trying to lift it further off her-
But when I move it more, she screams, screams like I’m not even there-
I stop.
‘Viola?’ she says one more time, gasping. Her voice is high, broken. ‘Is that you?’
‘I’m here, mum,’ I say, lying down next to her so I can get close to her face. I push away a last bit of glass that’s covering her cheek and see her eye looking wildly around-
‘Sweetheart?’ she says.
‘Mum?’ I say, crying, brushing away more glass. ‘Tell me what to do, mum.’
‘Sweetheart, are you hurt?’ she says, high and fluttery again, like she can’t really take a breath.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Mum, can you move?’
I put a hand under her shoulder to lift her, but she screams again, which makes me scream, too, and I let her go back to how she was lying, on her stomach, on the ceiling, the metal shard in her back, blood coming out of it slowly like it was no big deal, and everything around us broken, broken, broken.
‘Your father,’ she gasps.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘The fire-’
‘Your father loved you,’ she says.
I stop and look at her. ‘What?’
I see her moving her hand, trying to worm it out from under herself and I take it gently, holding it with my own. ‘I love you, too, Viola,’ she says.
‘Mum? Don’t say that-’
‘Listen, sweetheart, listen to me.’
‘Mum!’
‘No, listen-’
And she coughs and the pain of it causes her to scream again and I hold her hand tighter and I barely even notice that I’m screaming along with her.
She stops, gasping again, and her eye looks up at me, more focussed this time, like she’s trying really hard, like she’s never tried harder to do anything in her entire life. ‘They’ll come for you, Viola.’
‘Mum, stop, please-’
‘You’ve been trained,’ she says. ‘You stay alive. You stay alive, Viola Eade, do you hear me?’ Her voice is getting louder, even though I can hear the pain in it.
‘Mum, you’re not dying-’
‘Take my hope, Viola,’ she says. ‘Take your father’s, too. I’m giving it to you, okay? I’m giving you my hope.’
‘Mum, I don’t understand-’
‘Say you’ll take it, sweetheart. Say it to me.’
My throat is choking and I think I’m crying but nothing feels attached to anything and I’m here holding my mother’s hand in a wrecked spaceship on the first planet I’ve ever been to, in the middle of a night I can see through a crack in the ship’s hull and she’s dying, she’s dying, and I’ve been so horrible to her for months-
‘Say it, Viola,’ my mother whispers. ‘Please.’
‘I’ll take it,’ I say. ‘I’ll take your hope. I’ve got it, okay? Mum?’
But I don’t know if she hears me-
Because her hand isn’t gripping back any more.
And that’s when something happens, something that makes everything now, something that cuts all the past away, the convoy and everyone on it gone and past, and it’s just me, here, now, so fast, it doesn’t seem real.
My father. The crash. My mother. It’s not real.
It’s like I’m watching it all, including myself, from somewhere else.
I watch myself stand up next to my mother.
I watch myself wait there in the wreckage for a while not knowing what to do.
Until enough time passes that something has to be done, so I watch as I climb to where the wall of the cockpit has come apart and look out into the planet for the first time.
Look out into the darkness. Darkness upon further darkness. Darkness that hides things.
Things I can hear.
Animal noises that almost sound like words.
I watch myself step back into the ship, away from the darkness, my heart beating heavy.
And then I seem to blink and the next thing I see is myself pulling back a broken panel to the engine room.
From even farther away, I see myself finding my father, burnt in a nightmarish way from the chest down, a terrible wound on his forehead that would have killed him anyway.
I watch myself as coldness flows through me, watch as I’m so cold I’m unable to even cry at my father’s body.
I blink again and then I’m seeing myself back next to my mother in the cockpit, my arms pulled tight around my knees, the battery lights in the panels flickering and slowly getting dimmer.
And then there’s a birdcall or something from outside, louder than the rest, a weird one that almost sounds like the word Prey or Pray.
And I’m back behind my eyes.
Because I’ve seen something, tumbled there.
Something my mother must have taken from my room and brought into the cockpit, something to give to me as soon as we landed, which hurts me somewhere in a far, far off place.
There, in the wreckage.
Bradley’s present.
It’s still wrapped, after all these months, after even my birthday. And everything still feels impossible and like a dream, so why shouldn’t I open it? If that’s what my mother and father wanted, why shouldn’t that be the first thing I do on this planet?
I pick it up, sliding off the torn paper and opening it just as the last of the battery power cuts out, leaving me in total darkness.
But it’s okay.
It’s okay because I’ve already seen what it is.
The darkness is so thick I have to feel my way out of the wreckage, still feeling dazed, still feeling dreamy, the blanket of darkness so complete, it’s almost like I’m sleeping. But I’m holding Bradley’s gift.
I step out onto the planet and my foot sinks in about ten centimetres of water.
A swamp.
That’s right. We were aiming for a swamp.
I keep walking, my feet sticking in the mud sometimes, but I keep walking.
Keep walking until the ground gets more solid, a little ways from the ship.
My eyes are adjusting and I can see a little clearing, surrounded by trees, the sky above us filled with all the stars I was just flying through.
I’m hearing more animals, too, but I swear it sounds like they’re actually talking so I figure it must still be the shock.
Mostly there’s just darkness.
There’s just darkness closing me in.
And that’s exactly what Bradley’s gift was for.
There’s a dry enough spot in the middle of the raised clearing, not great, not perfect, but enough. I set down the gift and feel around for some twigs and leaves, getting a few damp handfuls and piling them on top.
I press a button on the gift and step back.
The damp leaves and twigs burst immediately into flame.
And there’s light.
Light across the little clearing, light reflecting on the metal of the ship, light that includes me in it, standing here.
Light from a fire.
Bradley gave me a fire box. One that will start a fire nearly anywhere, in nearly any condition, with nearly any fuel.
Start it to give a light against the darkness.
And for a while it’s all I can do just to stare at it until I feel myself shivering, and I sit down closer to the fire until I stop.
Which takes a long, long time.
The fire for now is all I can see.
Soon, I’ll need to see what supplies I have left to live off of. Soon, I’ll need to see if any of the communications equipment survived so I can try and contact the convoy.
Soon, I’ll need to take the bodies of my father and my mother and-
But that’s soon, that’s not now-
Now there’s only fire from the fire box.
Now there’s only a tiny light against the darkness.
Whatever’s going to happen next can wait.
I don’t really know what my mother was saying, I don’t know that hope is something you can give to someone else, something that you can take.
But I said I would, I said I did.
And so I sit in front of Bradley’s fire, on the surface of a dark, dark planet, and I have their hope, if not any of mine.
Except the hope that it’ll be enough.
And then I see a lightening in the air, in the sky above and behind me. I turn to watch this planet’s sun rising, and I realise it’s morning, that I’ve made it to morning.
That I’ve had enough hope to make it to morning.
Okay, I think to myself.
Okay.
And I begin to think of what I need to do next.
