Every Hole is Outlined

Every Hole is Outlined by John Barnes

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John Barnes is better known for his book-length stories than his short stories, but this short story reveals that he can bring his prodigious imagination and storytelling skills to the short story format.

This story is set more than 14,000 years in the future - or at least the starship on which the story is set is that old. Humanity has expanded far across the galaxy in various pulses of colonization. It isn't clear why interstellar trade occurs at all since humans can create anything from the molecular level on up. “Ship people” are an autistic class that is separated from their planet-bound fellow humans by centuries of relativistic time dilation.

This is a ghost story. I was expecting something dark and spooky for the Halloween season, but this is really a romance. The humans who crew these ancient ships are quiet and withdrawn and have to keep a minimum number of crew. When one of their numbers dies, a replacement - a slave - is purchased and integrated into the crew. Her mentor shows her that occasionally - rarely - ghosts of the former crew come back to the ship. There is a discussion about what this means, but the real strength of the story is the feeling of melancholy and nostalgia as the relativistic years pass.

I enjoyed the setting and the writing.