An Unkindness of Ghosts

Theo Smith describes a meeting with his uncle, the Lieutenant, from his point of view. The Lieutenant fully expects that he will soon take Nicolaeus’s seat as sovereign. Lieutenant warns Theo away from keeping Aster’s company. In the past, Theo’s father despised Theo for his “sissiness,” but Theo had always been conciliatory in a way that Theo has never trusted. After the meeting, he meets with Aster after her field work is done. They have a meal together in the barn, and the two share intimacies of a delicate, romantic, but removed nature, such as performing verbal “anatomical recitations” (107). Afterwards, Theo whips himself in penance.

Back in Aster’s point of view, the next day Theo radios Aster to let her know in advance that Sovereign Nicolaeus is dead and that the Lieutenant will succeed him. Theo wants to know if Aster had anything to do with Nicolaeus’s death, to which Aster responds that she did not. He asks her to meet him for the autopsy the following morning and warns her to be careful of guards looking to exploit the break in leadership to perform random violence. 

On her way to see Lieutenant, Aster meets a lost upper deck woman in the fields who demands to be shown the way back. Aster turns the woman away. Soon after, the woman registers a complaint with the guard, who is, coincidentally, the drunken guard Aster intimidated a few nights before. Aster radios to Giselle for help. Just before the guard prepares to rape Aster, Giselle appears with an old rifle and shoots him dead. The two escape through the air ducts using Aster’s special pass, given to her by Theo. Aster asks Giselle where she’s been, and Giselle says, cryptically, “with your mother” (122). Soon after, Giselle disappears, and Lieutenant makes the general announcement about the change in leadership.

Aster travels through J deck to B deck to see Theo in the morgue. She’s not sure why she’s there, as the autopsy of Nicolaeus is nearly finished. Aster says that her surgical technique is not as refined as Theo’s. Theo notes, “Aster, you’re not my intellectual equal. You’re my intellectual superior” (136). When she approaches the body, the radiolabe she inherited from her mother, a device she assumes doesn’t work, is triggered into action. She quickly deduces that both Nicolaeus and her mother were killed by a rare form of heavy metal poisoning. She names the substance eidolon, after the Greek word for spirit.

Correlating her clues, Aster determines that she’ll find Giselle in the secret area she discovered from the map in the Baby engineering section. Soon after, she does. The room she discovers is a walled-off shuttle bay filled with her mother’s notes, including complex star charts. The room also features a large window; Giselle confirms that such a window exists in Nicolaeus’s chambers, as well, as she has snuck into his room several times. The unreliable Giselle recounts that “he reached up and touched my lips, and I closed my eyes and wished he was dead. And he died, like that, on my command” (153). Aster notes that the window is unshielded from outside radiation. Aster also realizes that her mother was looking for a way to escape the ship.

Reading Lune’s notes, Aster uncovers more information. The original founders, by her mother’s calculations, made serious errors in calculating the trajectory of the Matilda. Furthermore, Aster learns that the mysterious heavy metal that infected Lune and Nicolaeus is called siluminium, and it has properties that compress space and time, allowing for near-light-speed travel. She also learns that Matilda had been running on automatic pilot ever since colliding with an asteroid. While making her rounds as a medic, she talks to Melusine, the woman who raised her, who suggests that Lune gave Matilda a “flick” 25 years ago, rerouting its trajectory.

An increasingly dissociated and paranoid Giselle comes to Aster carrying her rifle. In the fuss of trying to hide it, it goes off. Running through the corridors, the two are caught for breaking curfew, caned, and thrown in jail for the night. In jail, as a matter of routine, Giselle is raped, and Aster is forced to drink urine. Returning home, Aster attempts to care for Giselle’s bruises, to which Giselle responds, “Wiping me clean won’t help. Neither will feeding me or giving me water” (176). Both women dread the new spate of violence that will accompany Lieutenant’s coronation.

A flashback follows. Growing up in Melusine’s care, Giselle and the orphaned Aster often play house, with Aster taking on the role of the gruff, abusive man and Giselle taking on the role of the cheating woman. Soon after their 15th birthday (the girls were born a month apart), their relationship changes when Giselle becomes pregnant. Melusine was Theo’s nanny when he was younger, and she brings Giselle to him to perform an illegal abortion. It is during this initial meeting that Theo comes to recognize the power of Aster’s intellect, particularly upon learning that she synthesized and perfectly administered a dose of the sedative benzodiazepine. After the procedure, the women have trouble getting home on time, so Aster creates a distraction and is arrested. Hauled before Lieutenant, she gets a first-hand glimpse of his casual cruelty but is rescued by Theo, who takes her on as a servant as a form of “punishment” for her crime. This is how her education as a medic and her friendship with Theo come about.

Back to the main narrative, after her release Aster cleans herself in Theo’s office and asks him to sneak her onto the high-ranking E deck to witness the coronation. To accommodate her, Theo cuts her hair and dresses her in his clothes. Passing as a man, she becomes less conspicuous. During the coronation, she sneaks in a present among the many to be given to the new Sovereign. It is Flick’s preserved foot, with a note admonishing him for the extreme cold of the lower decks. The narrator explains of this act of protest: “It was not quite the same as setting everything ablaze, as Giselle had suggested Aster do, but as she left the amputated foot for Lieutenant, she had the distinct feeling she was committing an act of self-immolation” (222).