The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

Cassandra-V was a population-overflow planet, a raw materials colony, and it had never attracted the best of people. Nobody moved there because they wanted to. 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. Everybody did what they had to do to survive.

She thought of her mother then, of the dossier still waiting unread, of her mother happy and healthy and so far away from this hell. Then she grabbed the image of emerging onto the surface, walking into the bar closest to her home, bragging and getting her pick of women. And then she pictured Em, pictured herself slapping her or kissing her, anything that might let her imagine herself alive after she was out of this cave.

She had to go on because there was no other choice but to lie down and die, and Gyre wouldn’t give anybody that last bit of satisfaction.

“Em,” she said, “I made it to Camp Four.” As she spoke, her voice rasping against her throat, she could feel every burnt-out nerve ending in her body, every knotted muscle. “I’m almost there, anyway. I’m going to strike for Camp Five immediately. I heard a Tunneler a while ago, but I think it’s gone now. But my battery is low. I might have fucked up, in the climb, and I just . . . I just wanted to tell you, in case I don’t get to talk to you again—” In case I don’t get to talk to anybody ever again— That what? I’m sorry for taking steps to protect myself and keep you from doing this to somebody else? I’ve been fantasizing about you, I hate what you’ve done to me, but I can’t stop needing you, I’m so angry, I’m so sorry, I wish we’d met some other way, I wish you weren’t crazy, I wish I wasn’t an idiot?