Steal the Stars Read online

  “That’s what we’re going to do.”

  This time I went first.

  * * *

  YOU’RE NEVER aware of the most basic ambient noises until they’re gone. I mean the really subtle ones—the room tones, the sound of air just sitting against the walls.

  When we entered the ship, those sounds … changed.

  There was still ambient noise, but it was like the barely perceptible echoes of the world were turned off. Things didn’t reverberate the way they usually did. Noise became purely information, no longer experiential.

  And, of course, the other thing that changed: the light.

  The entryway was tight enough that, as we squeezed our way through, the world went momentarily dark. But once we were standing fully inside, the darkness almost inverted. There was no sense of light bleed from the outside, no sense that there was anything within the ship but deep and total darkness, especially considering there were no windows of any kind, but still the darkness took on different colors and textures. Shadows separated themselves from shadows, except … there were no shadows. There were a few clip lights we set up, hanging from various amenable surfaces inside, but the light, like the sound, behaved differently than usual. The way light does in mist, only there was no mist—rather than spreading throughout the room, the yellow light seemed contained to relatively small pools.

  Yet still we could see each other. The interior of Object E glowed, an almost incomprehensible blue-green pulse that rendered everything visible. The spectral equivalent of a low hum. All around us.

  “So this is the cockpit,” I said, in the weirdly dry atmosphere. “Can you see okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s not so—” But before the last word was out of your mouth, you saw the main attraction.

  * * *

  HOW TO describe Moss?

  I guess … picture Danny DeVito.

  That’s 100 percent not what Moss looks like—quite the opposite, in fact—but you know how your mind went straight to an image of the great Danny DeVito, unquestionably himself no matter what role or costume he might be wearing? He’s downright archetypal, right?

  Now picture an alien.

  Moss is that alien. The archetype. You might be picturing some slightly different variations, a different costume if you will, but the conceptual alien at the center is most likely a lot more accurate than you’d think.

  I could have just as easily told you to picture something or someone else, by the way, like a pirate or a cowboy. I just chose Danny DeVito because fuck you, I like Danny DeVito.

  But it’s amazing how much Moss looks like your standard alien from a billion drunken abduction stories. About seven feet tall, gray-ish pale body, huge head, huge eyes.

  Whenever some idiot claims he got probed, the sketch artist always ends up with something that looks like Moss.

  Except …

  * * *

  “WHAT’S THAT on him? On his skin?”

  The creature, the pilot, the extraterrestrial we had named Moss, was sitting in a chair in front of a long-dead console that was barely more than a blank monitor and two small trackball-type objects installed into an otherwise empty dashboard made of the same dark, cragged material as the outside of the ship. Everything about the picture seemed of a piece—the alien and the ship clearly tailored for his passage … but there was one additional element that was just a little jarring in its unexpectedness. Moss’s namesake: a thin layer of what looked like regular old tree moss covering his skin, from about clavicle to navel (to borrow human terms), and wrapping around the sides of his torso. The green substance was so spread out, so patchy, that it didn’t in any way obscure the shape of his body. The milky granite hue of his skin was visible straight through it.

  “Is he dead?”

  “We don’t know how he defines that.”

  “Has he moved, since…”

  “Nope.”

  “Is there a heartbeat, or some kind of equivalent of a—”

  “Not for eleven years.”

  “So that stuff growing on him…”

  “The moss.”

  “How is that still alive?”

  I kept a hand on the gun in my pocket. This is the point where it has been known to start to go wrong.

  “Touch him,” I said. “Not on the moss part, but anywhere else.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  You reached out, slow and steady, and touched Moss just above the shoulder, at the crook of his neck. Your hand flinched for the briefest of seconds and then spread over his skin.

  “Whoa! He’s … warm.” My heart lifted a little—most people recoiled when they touched him; made a sound, a grunt, a gulp, like they were touching something impure. You sounded like you were receiving a gift. You kept your hand on him and looked back at me. “He hasn’t moved in eleven years … but he’s warm…?”

  Before I could say anything, the noise began.

  “Right on time,” I said.

  If it’s not too fine a point, it was an unearthly hum—or several hums, all at different pitches, as if someone hit a hammer against several strings.

  You were understandably concerned.

  “Okay—is that—is that—”

  The sound began to grow in amplitude.

  “It’s called the Harp,” I said. Another name, another code.

  “It’s a harp?” Already raising your voice to talk over the noise.

  “No. It just looks like one. They think it’s the engine, or part of the engine. We’re in the cockpit right now—see that door-looking thing over there?”

  The noise got louder.

  “Yeah.”

  “Behind that door is the engine room. It’s basically a two-chamber ship.”

  The noise got louder.

  “Can I see it?”

  “That noise you’re hearing? That’s Power-Up. You do not wanna be in that room with the Harp when it’s powering up. Trust me.”

  “I do. Why is it powering up?”

  “We don’t know. About every hundred hours or so, we think it tries to turn on,” I explained, my hand in my pocket, wrapped around my sidearm, releasing the safety.

  “You think?” you asked.

  The noise got louder.

  I was practically shouting by this point. And still, not an echo bounced off a wall. “We don’t know anything. I’ve been here eight years. Moss has been here eleven. And it’s all still guesses. Better get ready.”

  The noise got louder.

  “Get ready for what?”

  “For this.”

  The Harp reached crescendo and then, as if it breached some unknown barrier, it didn’t so much cut out or lower in volume—rather, it spread itself evenly across the room. The yellow clip lights blinked out. The heavy air felt somehow even heavier.

  We stood there, breathing.

  “When the Harp spins all the way up, it kills everything in Quill Marine for about thirty seconds. Power, surveillance, everything. Right now the entire building’s completely dark, except…”

  The blue-green glow persisted. I could see every contour of your face. Were you always this handsome? And I realized I’d never noticed … light and sound in this place were always muted … but that smell of you, your scent, intensified.

  Ask him, Dak, go ahead. It’s time.

  “Holy Jesus Christ…” you were whispering.

  “Just us, and him.”

  Moss, as always, sat there. Silent. Still.

  “You look … how can I see you?” You were staring at my face with giddy, glistening eyes.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Where does that light come from?” A rhetorical question, asked with awe.

  “We don’t know.”

  “There are no shadows.”

  “I know.” Ask him, Dak. You have to ask. “So, New Fish. Matt Salem. What are you thinking?”

  I remembered shaking your hand and looking into your eyes just a short while ago. Now, in the darkness, I believed
I could see every particle of you.

  those eyelashes

  I thought again of how this moment would define both our lives going forward. I felt a prickling numbness spread across me. The bad kind of tingly. Everything depended on how you answered the question. My hand stayed in my pocket. I was suddenly aware that I was holding my breath.

  “I’m thinking…” you began, then looked into my eyes, “this is the job.” You said it with the slightest smile, in that new language I could read. Your voice was clear, your intent even clearer.

  And I started breathing again.

  thank you

  This had been your chance to freak out, to ask one question too many, to have a panic attack, to throw up, to start to cry, to start to laugh hysterically—any number of disqualifying reactions we’ve encountered before at this moment. My hand came out of my coveralls, empty of the thing that would have

  an image of you hugging your knees, facing the floor, while I stood above you

  ended your life and, effectively, ended mine, as well. But that didn’t have to happen.

  “Guess what,” I sighed, inching toward you, with as close to a shrug as I could muster. “You passed.”

  And then.

  I guess we’ll never know if it was you who initiated it, or me. It could have been mutual. That’s actually a nice idea—especially in light of what happened later.

  Whatever it was, our lips were together.

  Your tongue insistent against mine.

  My hands desperate against the back of your head, running through your hair. Yours on my lower back, pulling me closer.

  Like the spaceship had breached and we were in dead space, desperately siphoning oxygen from the other.

  Or, no, in the blue-green glow, we were underwater.

  Or, no.

  Like.

  Fuck it. Words fail. The depth of that hunger was beyond words.

  It was (needneedneed)

  It was (itchitchitch)

  It was (thankyouthankyouthankyou)

  Oh, you fucking marvelous, horrible asshole.

  It was paradise.

  * * *

  IT WAS a huge fucking mistake. Momentous, even. I’d say life-ending but, well, we’ve already established I was dead by this point. We both were. Seconds into the kiss, we both knew it.

  “Oh, fuck,” I gasped. “Shit.”

  “I’m…”

  “No, I’m…”

  “Jesus.”

  “This didn’t happen.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Because…”

  “This never happened.”

  “This never happened.”

  The noise from the Harp was gone. The silence felt lighter. The clip lights all popped back on.

  So did a speaker. We’d patched one through into the ship years ago, before my time. Patty’s voice came in loud and proud.

  “So? What’s the verdict? Do we shoot him or not?”

  * * *

  OF COURSE, what happened to me next is what happens to all dead things.

  4

  THE NEXT step: the great corporeal unknitting. Everything starts falling apart. It might look normal for a little while but under the surface all sorts of little fuckers are at work eating, disassembling, breaking things down. That’s how I knew I was dead well before that kiss. Something had already irreparably eroded. It’s the only way what happened could have happened. Now everything else was following suit.

  The fun thing is that, as the decomposition sets in, all sorts of different versions of the deceased are revealed. A real peeling-of-the-onion thing, with the added joy of each layer being dead or dying aspects of the person you used to be.

  The night we kissed I took a scalding hot shower.

  I don’t believe in cold showers. I like my showers to be hot. I like my food to be spicy. What’s the point of showers if they’re not hot and food if it’s not spicy? Anything good should make you suffer a little bit, right?

  I stood in that shower until my skin itched from heat rash. I kept increasing the heat of the water until I couldn’t stand it.

  I had a plan, though. There was no real reason why we ever needed to interact again. I couldn’t really avoid you, but I could limit the time I spent with you. I had my job to think about, my place, my lifestyle—hell, I had a literal rulebook to follow. I also knew what happened when we forcibly let employees go. None of this was worth it, not even in the slightest.

  Practical Dak had just been revealed by the decomposition process.

  * * *

  PRACTICAL DAK lasted about two weeks before turning completely into mulch. In her defense, shit started to happen really fast to hasten the process. But for a few days, everything seemed perfectly doable.

  I’d eat my omelet at the Seaview, alone. I’d show up and clock in, alone. I’d maybe shoot the shit with Patty, do my job, and then leave, alone. All practical. All good.

  But, of course, Practical Dak needed rest if she was to operate optimally. So every now and then another Dak would take the wheel. Sometimes it was Drunk Dak, who found herself ordering another round—just one more, to keep her from listening to the songs on the jukebox too closely. Sometimes it was another Dak, an angry, adamant one who found herself staring, glaring at people, hoping they’d start something, hoping they’d give her an excuse. Sometimes it was Endorphin Dak, the one who kept searching for a more sustainable high, straining, exercising, even wearing down the devices she kept by the bedside.

  But Practical Dak was in charge for the most part. She was the most resistant to the dissolution tugging at the seams of the Everydak.

  Practical Dak was hiding some secrets. Practical Dak was miserable. But you can maintain miserable. Hell, in retrospect, these wound up being the halcyon days.

  Then the turbulence started.

  * * *

  WANNA KNOW how much I’d changed already? Halfway through that first week, three days after that kiss, I was sitting through an episode of the Lloyd and Andy Show, which normally would have made me want to gouge out my own eyes and stuff them inside my ears, and instead found myself grateful for the distraction. They were helping me not to think about what I’d done in my car the night before.

  We were all inside the front chamber of the ship—the cockpit, which, once you got more than three or four people in there, began to teeter on the edge of uncomfortably cramped.

  Guardshift is every thirty minutes. Two sentries at a post. One sentry moves to the next site on the location in the rotation, the other remains. It reduces complacency, raises alertness, and ensures that no two sentries spend too much time together. No one’s exempt, not even me. One can expect, over the course of the day, to be stationed everywhere for a little while: up in Bird’s Eye, inside Object E, various posts upstairs.

  But it’s time we talk about Lloyd.

  We passed right by him your first day on the floor and I didn’t point him out. I figured you’d get to know him all too well soon enough.

  As usual, Lloyd had arrived late today. Lloyd tended to be late for things—as well as a cause of lateness in others.

  “He is supposed to be here, right?” Andy, one of the youngest members of my security team, all buzz cut, freckles, and enormous ears, kept panting as the two of us stationed ourselves in the cockpit. Andy loved Lloyd. It made them one of my very least favorite combinations of personnel … under normal circumstances.

  Eventually, we heard the signature call from outside the entry fissure.

  “Class is in session!”

  Andy practically vibrated as Lloyd squeezed his way into the ship. He had his regular bag, full of measuring devices and doodads … and also what looked like a space suit and fishbowl helmet draped over his arms. I was honestly impressed he made himself fit.

  “Lloyd, my man!” Andy exclaimed.

  “Andy.” I had to play my part as the disciplinarian.

  “Andy! Dak! Morning to you both!” Lloyd carefully laid the suit and helmet down bef
ore pulling out his usual equipment from his shoulder bag. He was a birdlike man with hair the color of television static. That hair always seemed to be in a new position every time you looked at it—it was as amorphous as a lava lamp. His face was composed entirely of sharp angles, and his nose and Adam’s apple were locked in an eternal competition between which could jut out more prominently. On first glance, one might mistake his hollow cheeks, his bulging eyes, as signs of sickliness, but there was no mistaking the perpetual sparkle behind his face. This was a guy who got a real kick out of being alive.

  “Wait—Lloyd—is that—?” If Andy weren’t ex-military like the rest of my team, he would have been hopping up and down.

  Lloyd played dumb. “Gosh, this is just my measuring equipment, Andrew, I don’t know why you’re so excited—”

  “No, no! The—” Andy gestured at the suit on the floor.

  “Calm down, Andy,” I grumbled.

  “Is that the suit?”

  Lloyd gasped. “Oh, this old thing? Could be.”

  “Holy crap!”

  I wished I shared Andy’s enthusiasm. “The suit” filled me with dread. Today was my day to practice helping Lloyd into and out of this space suit–looking ensemble and then to see how it maneuvered within the tight accommodations of the ship. Lloyd had made a few new design tweaks—I could already notice a much slimmer overall cut, as well as what appeared to be knobs on the breast, arms, and neck—and he was still insisting that tomorrow the big test could go as planned. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was hoping his little dog-and-pony today would be as unsuccessful as the last time he tried to move around Object E and had gotten so awkwardly tangled up in his own legs he’d fallen right onto his space-suited ass. Then, at the very least, I could convince him not to be the guinea pig when we did it for real. Stern as we tried to be, technically we were outranked by the science personnel and I couldn’t just issue the order.

  Lloyd brandished his meters. “Moss measurements first, Andy. No dessert before dinner.”

  “Aw, man, but it’s almost Guardshiiiiiift—”

  “Lloyd,” I nodded to him, firm and even. “Moss measurements.”

  Lloyd looked at Andy as if to say, “You heard the chief,” and set to work.

  Every day, with a few exceptions, this was part of Lloyd’s two-part routine: he’d come in with his finely calibrated machines—laser levels, microanalytic graphing cameras, a spectrograph, a tablet to document and tabulate—set them up around Moss, and let them run their scans. The second part of his routine was conversation.