Shine a Little Light

10 min

When I barge in to take you, a length of rope coiled around my arm and a plasma knife in my pocket, you look up from the vegetable beds with such trust, my heart breaks. You feel safe in your backyard. Six years have passed since anyone in the colony last reminded you of your purpose. No one calls you Charger anymore. You’re Argy now, or simply, girl, because you don’t age. That’s how I call you—girl. Come with me, girl, and you come, without question. You beam that smile of yours, wipe the dirt off your hands, and follow me into the forest. It’s so easy, I almost blow it, but it’s dark, and you don’t see me weep.

Your cabin is the last in the clearing, and it’s dusk, so no one sees us go. I cut through the underbrush, pushing the giant fronds aside, and they swing behind me, showering you with dew. The ferns fare particularly well in this climate. Ferns and maple trees. There are thousands of new species here, branching from the most successful Lady Fern Spec A and Acer Spec C. Some are even edible—a complete terraforming success. This planet is ready. It’s you who holds the mission back.

We descend into the ravine. It’s not flooded this time of year, the soil viscous and black with organic matter. Your breath is hot on my back. You probably think this is a rescue trip, that someone got stuck in the mud, and that’s what the rope is for—to pull them out. It’s only when we leave the peat bank behind, and the path under our feet is solid once more, you start to ask questions. It’s what happened and where are we going at first, but then we pass a waymark stone, and you fall silent.

That’s when I have to grab you. You’re so light, I can lift you with one arm. Your skin is warm to touch, smooth, convincing. People didn’t like touching you back on the ship, but it’s different down here. You labour by their side, you share their food, you fall asleep from exhaustion—one of them in every way that matters—and they forget. I could forget too. But someone has to remember.

You put up a fight. You kick and scratch and bite, and it gives me no pleasure to hit you back. My cheeks are wet by the time our skirmish is over and your hands are secured. We sit slumped on the ground, panting. You shoot daggers at me, and it’s better this way. At least we’re honest. You no longer scream—you know it’s pointless so far from the settlement and in the forest so dense.

When your breath evens out, you don’t ask me why—you know why. You ask me why now. It probably seems so unfair. You worked so hard to earn your life. You thought you were in the clear. People stopped mentioning the mission before we even left the First Camp. It might look like the original plan was abandoned. Why only make way for others when we could stay, keep the planet to ourselves? What can I tell you that you don’t already know? We might not have much, but people back home have even less. So many sister missions have failed to tame their long-ago pre-seeded planets, while ours is clearly thriving. Who are we to decide who gets to live?

Except, that’s what I’m doing now—with you.

I want to reach out and wipe blood from your lip, but you might take it the wrong way. I don’t want to give you hope. This is what you were made for: to live long enough to see proof of success, to lend your metabolism and use biology to keep the Energy Cell X charged. You’re sturdier than you look but still frail enough to double as an indicator: if you survive, the rest will, too. It was cruel of people to let you think you might have a different fate. So instead of confusing you with my kindness, I clamber to my feet and tug on the rope for you to get up.

I’m afraid you will resist and I will have to drag you along, or carry you over my shoulder, but you surrender and plod obediently before me. The old road is overrun with creeping fern, but both moons are up, and the trees around us retain their tunneling formation, so I don’t need to stop to look for the waymarks as often. You make small talk like we’re in a harvesting tandem, the rope between us not a leash but a tether. Only your voice is quivering. You use my name a lot, as if this could soften me up. Maybe it does. I can’t look at you. Your posture is crooked, and one shoulder blade sticks out like a sprout of a wing. Who ever thought making you look like a teenager was a good idea? If this was meant as a test of devotion to the mission, it’s brutal. I push back, mortify whatever softness has taken root. The forest around us has blurred into a black curtain. You keep talking, trying to sound cheerful. Maybe you’re counting on me not being able to do it when we’re there. I’ve seen the charts, I know where to cut to get to the power cell, and I’m counting on it not being harder than butchering a lamb. Domestic Sheep Spec B, the most common source of protein for the settlers. I’ll have to do it. Nobody else will.

The larger of two moons sets by the time we reach the remnants of the midway post, and the glade is like a black blot. Little is left of the old lodge, just a ribcage of protruding brickwork. Perhaps even less is left of the chimney, and my effort is in vain, and I want this to be so, so I don’t have to do what I’ve set out to do. You pray for that, too, I know, and even though we’re aligned, I’m angry at you. I begrudge you your passion. You’re more alive in your final moments than I’ll ever be. I’m dead inside already.

We don’t have the time to camp, but we’re both worn out from wading through the bush, and I allow us a minute. I loosen your rope when we sit down. The warmth from your thigh against mine makes me shiver. You ask for water, and I give you my whole canteen. Your hand lingers on mine when you take the bottle, but I pretend I don’t understand what it is that you’re offering. There is nothing you can do to make me change my mind. You see that now. From up close, you can see the rot inside me, the dead meat in my chest, and you start to cry, wasting the newly gained water. I turn away. Please, you beg, and I don’t want to die, and believe me, if there was another way to complete the mission, I would have gladly used it. But some things are bigger than you and me.

You fight again, harder this time, meaner. I respect you for that. You fling water in my face and use your shoulder as a battering ram to topple me over, and you run while I scramble to my feet. I catch you easily enough. We roll in the wet thicket, elbows and knees banging, and there’s a moment when your quick breath hits my neck that I imagine a different tangle. If, like the others, I had allowed myself to indulge in a dream of domestic bliss, could I have done it with you? You’re not a child. I could have loved you in another life. I press you to the ground, feel your whole body scrunched under me, all fear and anger and pain. Don’t, Charger, I whisper, and you deflate, and I win.

We’re back on the old road, barely visible now in the low moonlight. Even without resisting, you manage to impede our journey. You hobble in my steps, the rope between us tight, stumbling on roots, dragging us off-course. When it changes nothing, the begging resumes. I don’t listen to words, letting the sound of your pleading fuse together, become a background. I cannot argue. Of course I don’t have the right to do this to you. Self-sacrifice is easy—it’s sacrificing others that is hard.

Something pale leaps out from behind the thicket at my next step. I tilt my head, and the white continues, left and right and up. Up, up—high up into the sky. It’s a never-ending column of brick and mortar. Half of the star-speckled black is blocked off by that thing. I’m momentarily overwhelmed, my mind refusing to comprehend the scale of the structure, and a surge of irrational fear makes me stagger. The unnatural, looming intruder is before me, a crime against this arboreal landscape. Tremble before me, the chimney says. Run. And the rope I hold almost slips out of my hands at your yank as you obey the imposing command. But I manage to control us both.

We are here. The lighthouse has not crumbled.

I have to carry you upstairs. You’re clawing at the walls on the ground floor—and hang like a rag by the time we reach the top platform. I’m surprised to see it clean of vegetation, but then I remember we’re sixty metres above the tree line. One million clay bricks. Eight years of labour. Fourteen dead. When did it stop being Mission Objective E and became the chimney? After rationing had been called off? After the first child was born? Sacrifices erased for simple comforts. Will one more death correct the score?

I put you down gently. You’re shivering, eyes on the magnetic lantern as if that is the weapon that will end you. I’m disappointed nothing has stopped me yet. I’ll have to go through with it now: butcher the girl, extract the energy cell, place it in its slot to power the beam that will signal the mission coordinators: come, we’re ready for you. But we are not ready, you and I.

You begin to sob. The words of solace I could offer Charger do not fit you. Destiny and fulfilment mean nothing to a girl with dirt under her nails. Shine a little light for us, girl, I don’t say. Your bound hands shield your sternum, guarding the thing the mission has forced on you: your fuel and your leech. The light it could emit, for you is darkness, and yet the sole spark you withhold will extinguish the mission.

Hush, Argy, I say, and your name cuts deeper than my knife ever could.

You are a test, I’m sure of it now. The test I don’t know the correct answer to. Did all those sister missions fail because the crew could not bring themselves to chop one of their own? Or did they fail precisely because someone took up the burden? What if sending the signal is not an invitation, but a warning? Don’t come: they slaughter innocents here.

You don’t look at me when I raise my knife, so you don’t watch me fail the mission. I have deadened myself for this, so now I can stand it.

Shine a little light, I say and cut the rope.