New Decameron Seven: Maya Chhabra (Patreon)

 CW: references to plague, non-graphic cannibalism 

The Ship of State

by Maya Chhabra

Yes, Your Honor, I killed Antigone. I didn’t hold the laser-knife to her throat, it’s true, and I did my best to save her, but it’s my fault she was in the airlock to begin with. I’m not trying to dodge responsibility; I was the captain of the ship. I just want you to know everything before you make your decision. 

It all started because my nephew was a dick. Both of them, really. Though they’d agreed to trade off shifts as chief engineers, Eteocles monopolized the position. Still, only one of them mutinied. Only one of them’s the reason we’re here on earth, and not out there among the stars, carrying out the medical research that will prevent future plagues. 

Believe me, I know all about plagues. My sister and her godforsaken husband accidentally let a virus out of their lab, and thousands died before they got the antidote. But that’s another story. All you need to know is I lost my sister in that mess, and I take plagues extremely seriously. 

So when fucking Polynices went straight for the pathogens in his grudgematch with his brother Eteocles, I knew I had to make an example of him. I couldn’t have  people using bioweapons to settle scores, or soon enough we’d be a ghost ship, drifting in the void like so much junk.

But how to do it? He was dead by then. Eteocles got in his way, thank God, though it cost him his life, too. Eteocles saved all of us. Polynices, on the other hand? As far as I was concerned, the traitor could rot. 

No one rots in space, though. I figured we could use him for food instead. The ultimate proof of loyalty—take a laser-cooked slice of your kin and eat it. That would seal us together, and scare off anyone thinking of emulating him. 

I didn’t plan to force anyone if they really couldn’t do it. Things got out of hand. 

All because of my niece Antigone, sister to those two assholes. The other girl, Ismene, was pliant and see-no-evil, a lot like my poor sister. But Antigone took after her damned father Oedipus (all my nephews were dicks). She was implacable. Iron isn’t enough to describe it—she was like the void itself. 

I miss that, now. I miss her. But let me tell you, at the time it was maddening. 

I said, look, if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. That wasn’t enough for her. She had to control everyone else, too. 

She dumped the body out the airlock. Like a burial at sea, she said. He’d float untouched among the stars till the universe expanded to nothingness. Real romantic, for a fratricide and would-be mass killer.

“I’ll shove you out that fucking airlock,” I told her when I caught her. I didn’t mean it, or maybe I was just furious enough to. But then I calmed down, tried to get her to apologize. Tried to understand why she’d done it. Poor kid was still grieving her parents when her brothers died; that’d turn anyone’s head. She had been treated for depression; it would be so easy for her to say she hadn’t been in her right mind when she did it.

She laughed at that. Called me the sick one; a cannibal, a monster, a tyrant. I tried to explain. It wasn’t easy, trying to hold the crew together after the mutiny, after we’d all nearly died. Feeling was running high, and it needed to be purged somehow. Cannibalism might sound fucked up, but it would also be cathartic. 

“Pity and terror,” she said quietly. “I don’t feel any terror. Though I suppose I pity you.” 

At that moment, I could have strangled her. But what sort of captain was I, if I couldn’t control myself? Not the captain who would get us out of this mess, that was sure. I needed to make an example. And if Polynices couldn’t be it, Antigone would do.  

I shut her in the air lock. I told her I wouldn’t open it to space, but neither would I open it to the rest of the ship—she could just suffocate, for all I cared. Or she could knock and say she was ready to admit she was wrong. That was all it would take. 

I honestly thought she would do it. That’s how blinded by fury I was. I honestly thought…

Well. It didn’t go like I’d planned. The word got out, garbled, that I’d killed my own niece, that I wasn’t fit to be captain anymore. First cannibalism, now this? They wouldn’t believe she was still alive; they were sure I’d tossed her out of the ship to join her brother. 

I suppose she would have liked that. 

These mutineers were less unscrupulous than Polynices. They sent Tiresias to negotiate. Tiresias, the computer programmer with a universe of knowledge implanted in their brain, despite the risks. Sometimes they hallucinated, but Tiresias thought it worth the sacrifice to have direct access to the virtual world. Besides, they’d modified their body to match what was in their mind, and everyone thought that was normal enough, so why was it so weird they’d modified their brain too?

“Antigone’s alive, I’ll show you myself,” I told Tiresias when they explained the mutineers’ grievances. “I’ll even let her out if it means so goddamn much.”

I’d lose my authority forever and probably have to step down, but the risks of fighting the mutiny were much, much higher, as Polynices had shown. Higher for all of us. 

“It’s too late. You will never get the blood off you.” said Tiresias, and I shivered. Did they know something from the network, or was Tiresias just seeing things?

“It’s not,” I said, a little desperate. “I’ll let her out right now. For the good of the ship.”

Ships are not democracies; they can’t be. But I wasn’t prepared to risk the common good for vengeance on one depressed, angry girl. I opened the side of the airlock that faced the rest of the ship. There was still plenty of oxygen.

“Antigone?”

She was curled up in a corner, facing away from me. 

“Antigone, you win. Now get the hell out of this airlock.”

I put a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face me. Her throat was slit. There was a little laser-knife in her hands, which had curled stiff around it. She’d been dead a while. Drops of something red floated over to me and splashed my face, my uniform. Her blood on me. I laughed, because there was nothing else to do. 

She had beaten me. She must have had the laser-knife on her the whole time, but she hadn’t killed me with it when she had the chance. Maybe she thought death wasn’t good enough for someone like me, who’d desecrate a corpse. Only for her, the bride of death. 

There’s not much else to say. I turned command over to Tiresias, who brought us safe home. They’re a better captain than I ever was, and I hope they get to keep the ship. Just make sure their second-in-command can tell when they’re seeing visions, and when they’re seeing truth. 

As for me, it doesn’t matter what you do with me. I failed. I meant to hold the ship together and instead--

Well. 

As for the count of destruction of evidence, though, I won’t plead guilty to that. I buried her in the dark dead realm of space with her brother, where she wanted to be. 

***************************************************************

"That wasn't about plague," Maya says.

"No, but it's mentioned. Bioweapons. Human engineered plagues. Terrifying thought."

"It was Antigone. It was like a translation of Antigone into the future," Maya says. The cat has crept onto her lap while she was reading, and she stokes his head now, and he purrs, rumbling loudly in the library.

"It's getting dark now. Maybe we should go to sleep?" he suggests.

"It's not seven o'clock. It still gets dark early in March. We could put the lights on." The cat's purrs sound like an engine. 

"But then somebody might see us," he says, "They might come to see why a light's been left on and turn it off."

"If it was a librarian they'd probably --" Maya stops. "No, they wouldn't let me stay here. would they?"

"No responsible adult would," he agrees.

"But I can't go home, I can't be shut up with them!"

"Unlike the guy in the story, they're not actually cannibals," he says. "But you're right. You should stay here."

"Maybe if we went down a floor, to the tables in the back there we could put on one of the reading lights at the desks and it wouldn't show from anywhere, because the only windows there are onto the courtyard. Then we could read a little more before going to sleep. One more anyway."

"All right," he says. "I'll bring the book and you bring the cat."

But when Maya tries to pick up the cat he jumps down and stalks away, offended. They go downstairs and find a table. The tables are usually fully occupied by students and people typing furiously on their laptops, with people waiting for any vacant space. Maya has never sat here before, and it feels luxurious to be able to slide onto an office chair and switch on the green-shaded lamp. "What book did you bring," she asks, in the low tone she usually uses in the library.

"Pamela Dean --"

"Pamela Dean!" Maya interrupts, loudly. "Give it here!"

"It's from the first chapter..."

"I don't care what it is, it doesn't matter, give it here right now, I want to read it whatever it is. Pamela Dean!"

 Her voice lingers lovingly on the name. "This really is a magic library."

"It's called The Wolf Far Hence," he says as he hands the book to her. The cat arrives and jumps up onto the table. But Maya pays no attention. She is already reading.