When Stars Are Scattered Read online

  “When the homesteaders get the virus, will there be peace? If they can feel what you feel?”

  Ibrahim’s enormous head twisted, and stared up at Ahmed. “The peace is made by you, sadeaki.”

  Ahmed looked at Adéla’s face, wracked and red, and back at Ibrahim. “I have to take these antibodies,” he said softly, “to the homesteaders.”

  * * *

  The days blurred as they traveled. Adéla was on the transport, then she was walking with Ahmed in the grass, and then they were surrounded by angry, sun-blasted faces and their shotgun barrels, and then they were among more prefabricated buildings, shoved into a hot, small room, and Ahmed was saying, it’s okay, I’m a doctor, just a doctor and they were yelling, murderers, murderers, just like your little animals and again Ahmed said I’m a doctor and finally Ahmed brought out his flask and passed it around, saying, will that convince you?

  Adéla just stared. Stared at the woman she had seen a week before, who had taken fifteen kilos of penicillin. The woman waited, once again on the other side of a shotgun.

  The woman said something, and the others quieted. “This one gave me medicine.”

  “You’ve got some kind of flu, right?” Ahmed asked. “Coughing blood, high fevers. Same disease the kites have, now jumped to humans.”

  Noise of assent. The woman looked back at Adéla. Adéla stared at her and thought, did you kill my son? Probably not. This woman probably hadn’t pulled any triggers, built any missiles—hadn’t killed anyone, except, like Adéla, she hadn’t done enough to stop it.

  Perhaps she had been afraid too, impossibly afraid.

  “This is a cure,” Ahmed said. “I’ve isolated the antibodies.”

  The woman who had taken the penicillin spoke. To the room, but to Adéla in particular. “We got a flu, yeah, you’re right—real bad one—but I want to know about our heads? What’d you and your pets do to our minds?”

  “That,” Ahmed said. “I can’t do anything about that.”

  Adéla leaned forward. She lifted up the shard of plastic she’d had clutched in her hand. A piece of Pablo’s new toy, shattered in the missile strike. Without a word, she held it out.

  She thought she could feel Ibrahim’s soft body enclosing her, wrapping her in light. She closed her eyes and said. “Salaam alaykum.”

  After a moment, the woman did what Adéla had hoped she would. What Adéla knew she would. She took the piece of plastic, the remnant of Adéla’s son, and spoke. Her words were soft, hesitant, as if she was just learning to say them. “And unto you be peace.”

  They walked back through the rustling grass from the transport, and stopped just outside the Muslim settlement. “I’m amazed I wasn’t shot,” Ahmed said, more than once.

  Adéla looked up at the starry sky, an expanse of bright, clustered suns in black. “Can I get another sleeping pill?” she said. “I don’t want to wake up thinking my son’s still alive.”

  Ahmed put an arm around her. “I’ll get something.”

  She leaned into him. They stood there in silence. In the distance, the colony shone, the tin buildings bright in moonlight, the mosque catching the light in different patterns.

  “I have to go with Jose,” she said. “After his trial, Sofia will need both of us.” She put one hand to his cheek. Her hand was rough, worn, cut in places from the dry weather and the constant hand washing. He took her hand in his own equally weathered hand.

  Their dry lips touched, locked in a long embrace.

  He whispered, “I love you, friend.”

  “I’ll miss you, Doctor.” She laughed. “Ahmed.”

  Overhead, specks of black blew over the stars. A flock of kites, like a hand moving across the sky.

  “Do you still believe?” Ahmed asked.

  “I don’t know,” Adéla said. “Like you said. The universe looks different when you have to ask why a loving God would do horrible things.” After a long silence, she asked, “Do you?”

  She didn’t know what she expected. The usual sarcasm. Contempt, perhaps, for the foolish way they’d thrown their lives away, the way Jose’s certainty and the human arrogance and her own fear had led to this.

  Instead he said, “There is an immune system for the universe, I think. A way of fighting off our own fragility and self-destruction. Something the kites know about, that we will understand one day.” They watched the kites tumble across the stars. “Maybe. I’ll run some tests.”

  “Ahmed.” Adéla let go of his hand, and looked to the mosque. He looked with her. The moons had come out, illuminating the dark crescent at the apex of the weathervane. “One day. When the sky is torn, when the stars are scattered, then a soul will know what he has given and what he has held back.”

  In Arabic, Ahmed answered, “I believe that.”

  About the Author

  SPENCER ELLSWORTH’s short fiction has previously appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Tor.com. He is the author of the Starfire trilogy, which begins with Starfire: A Red Peace. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three children, works as a teacher/administrator at a small tribal college on a Native American reservation. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2017 by Spencer Ellsworth

  Art copyright © 2017 by Micah Epstein