The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

Five hundred meters of stone separated her from human contact, and she felt it in her bones.

The few good people—the empathetic people, the people who cared about social order—tended to die young and idealistic deaths, leave planet as soon as they could, or grow old and cynical, sand-whipped and exhausted by the weight of believing the other colonists could be better than human.

She’d heard somewhere that pride came before the fall. But she wasn’t going to fall. She was going to climb.

That was the look of somebody resigned to being the monster they knew they were.

That calculus was as raw as Isolde’s pain in that exit interview, and Gyre couldn’t fight the feeling of Em’s grief being a living thing, as inexorable as a Tunneler but with a beating heart, a pulse that throbbed and curdled in the vein.

It was soothing, watching somebody else work instead of working herself. Watching, instead of being watched.

The problem, as far as Gyre could see it—aside from this being a suicide mission to begin with—was that half of any success was luck.

She’d thought about Em deliberately hiding things from her, but not about the computer algorithms making sure she never saw confusing things. If the computer knew another person couldn’t be down there, would it hide movements? Signs?

A tug, a longing that didn’t feel like hers, pulling at her spine. It was like a whisper against her ear, a distant cry that begged her to come back, come home.

But I don’t know that I could have gone on wrapped itself around her heart, nestled in her chest. She meant something. She was different from the other cavers. The warmth she felt was part rage on those other cavers’ accounts, but a lot of it was simply happiness at being seen. At being wanted.

“You’re a monster,” Gyre agreed. Em’s flinch brought her no joy, no vindication. “But a human monster. People are selfish. You are. I am. Humans are selfish. It’s what we do. You loaded the gun, but Jennie Mercer, Michael Doren, me—we all pulled the trigger. We all decided the risk was worth it. You never forced us.”

I just took advantage of how this world drives people to do horrible things just to survive. I just—played the game, from the winner’s chair.

She hadn’t planned, because her goal hadn’t been in the future. It had always been behind her, pulling her back, pulling her down.

Em had been clear: the only thing unique about Gyre was the combination of her failures.

When Gyre had been ready to follow Isolde, Em had been there to carry her back into the sun. When Em had been forced to see the full horror of everything she’d done, Gyre had seen the humanity in her. They had broken each other open down in the dark, and now that their wreckage was splayed out in the light, Gyre recognized every inch of Em, and Em knew every inch of her.