A Million Suns (22 page)

46

AMY

WITHOUT ELDER, THERE'S LITTLE POINT IN ME EXPLORING the stairs further. Instead, I go to the garden behind the Hospital. Bartie and his crowd have left, including Luthor. The smashed grass around the bench is the only remnant of the impromptu meeting. I peel the moccasins off my feet and pad through the cool grass to the water's edge. I think about com-ing Elder, but I'm afraid of bothering him when he's doing something important. I sit on the bank, my knees drawn up under my chin, and stare at the pond's perfectly still surface. I try to see through its depths—the water's clear, and not very deep, but my eyes bore past the dangling roots of lotus flowers to the green-brown murkiness that shadows my view.

I lean back, and grass tickles my neck. My feet slip down the bank until my toes touch the cool water. I slide my feet into the pond and close my eyes. The solar lamp above me beats down warmth and light, but behind my eyelids, it looks like the same bright reddish blur that the Sun looked like on Earth when I'd lie down outside.

A shadow crosses over me, and the brightness dims—like the sun covered by clouds. I open my eyes, and Elder's face is rimmed with light as he leans down over me.

“Hey,” I say, suddenly breathless. All my thoughts of dragging him off to the stairs and exploring the ship disappear as he collapses beside me, exhaustion etched on his face.

“What's wrong?”

Elder makes a noncommittal noise.

I want to reach out to him, let him know that I'm sorry for his loss, but I know no words will ever be enough.

Elder leans back in the grass, staring at the metal ceiling of the Feeder Level. If we were outside on Earth, this would be nice. Lying in cool grass next to a pond, staring up at clouds the way little kids do. But this isn't Earth and the clouds are paint and even if there is a planet past this ship, it still seems a very long way away.

“Marae was murdered. Like Stevy. The same phrase on the med patches.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, the two most inadequate words in the English language.

“I want to know who's doing this.”

“Maybe the same person who tried to hide Orion's last clue,” I say. Before Elder has a chance to speak, I add, “And maybe the same person who sabotaged your space suit.”

“Sabotaged the suit?” Elder asks.

I twist my head to stare at Elder through the bright green grass. “Whoever tampered with the clues and tried to throw us off the trail could have easily punctured the PLSS tubing or something. If you died, you couldn't tell anyone what you saw. And look how close it came to working.”

Elder starts to respond, but as soon as he opens his mouth, he turns to answer a com. “Doc says Bartie's causing trouble at the Food Distro. Again,” he says, sighing, leaning up.

I touch my hand to his face, just over the purple-green bruise on his jaw. He leans into my hand—not a lot, just enough so that I'm suddenly aware of the pressure of his skin against mine.

“Elder,” I say, “you can't keep on doing everything yourself.”

“Who else is going to stop Bartie? Who else is going to get the Food Distro back on track? Who else is going to help the Shippers get ready for planet-landing—after the scans show whether or not we even
can
planet-land?”

There's a note of panic in his voice, and pain. I want to tell him everything will be okay, but I don't want to lie. I lean forward a fraction of an inch, and he leans forward, and I catch his eyes just as he starts to close in.

I think,
He's going to kiss me.

I think,
Good.

His lips bruise mine in their need, and when my mouth parts in a tiny
o
of surprise, his kiss deepens. His arms are strong; he's lifting the whole of my upper body up and against him. His body speaks for him; he
needs
me.

My arms slide from the ground up his arms, my fingers trailing through the tiny hairs along his forearms. His muscles tighten under my graze; his biceps are like rocks, pulling me even closer against him. My hands dance across his shoulders and meet at the base of his neck, and I swirl my fingers in his hair.

There's something deeply satisfying in touching him—it reminds me that he's real, despite how close I came to losing him earlier today.

My hands tighten, and I use my grip to lift my body up against his. One of his arms slides down my back, pulling my hips closer to him.

Elder breaks the kiss, and he peers into my eyes. I can only imagine what we look like—rolling around in the grass by the pond. Just like the Season. But I don't care. This isn't like that. The Season was just mindless, emotionless, loveless movements. But this is—

Elder reaches up and brushes a stray strand of hair from my face. I close my eyes and relish the touch. His fingers clench against my scalp—I feel the pressure of his hand, pulling me into another kiss.

And I go to him.

 

Sweeter, this time. Slower. Softer. I feel his lips this time, not the hunger.

 

I become aware of his body next to mine. I let my hand rest just above his heart, pounding away in his chest, so violent I can feel it mirroring my own heartbeat.

Then my hand slips lower, down his side. The bottom of his tunic has pulled up, and my fingers slide over the bare skin just above his hip.

Elder moans, a low guttural sound from deep inside him. His hands slide down my mussed hair to my shoulders, and he gently pushes me away. Our feet still touch under the pond's surface, though.

“Augh!” he says suddenly, smashing his hand into the side of his neck. “I don't have time for this!”

I scoot away from him, stung, then notice the way his head tilts. Someone is trying to com him.

“I'm sorry,” Elder says immediately, leaning back up and staring into my eyes. “Stars, Amy, I'm sorry,” he adds. “It's just—with Marae's death, and the planet, and—
frex!
”

My eyes widen, but Elder just punches the wi-com in the side of his neck. “What?” he barks into it.

I sit up slowly, no longer comfortable lying in the grass. As Elder listens to his com, I stare at the still surface of the pond.

I have no idea what I want. I told Victria that love is a choice, and I told myself that I didn't have to choose Elder, but I can't forget the way my heart stopped when his did.

47

ELDER

SHE LOOKS SO SAD AND ALONE, SO ABANDONED—AND I'M the one who abandoned her, even though I'm still sitting by the edge of the pond beside her. I shouldn't have kissed her. It's like tasting dessert before supper is served; it's only made me want more. But I couldn't help it. I don't know what it is about Amy. I couldn't help it.

But I should have. With everything that's happening now, the last thing I should be trying to do is kiss Amy. I need to focus on the planet—and she needs to figure out what she wants. I can see the questions in her eyes, the way she won't quite name what's between us.

 

Now she sits quietly, not meeting my eyes, her cheeks almost as pink as her lips.

Her lips.

No.

I look away from her. And her lips.

 

“What happened?” she asks quietly.

A beastly roar rises up in me, and I force myself to swallow it down. What happened? I can't control myself around her, that's what happened. I want her so much that it overrides everything else, every other thought in my head, every instinct, every restraint. My want is consuming—and I'm afraid it won't just consume me, but her too.

“With the Shippers, I mean,” she adds when I don't answer her. “When you told them about the planet.”

I frown. It's obvious Amy would rather ignore everything that just happened—or I've scared her off between my frustration and impatience. Frex. I run my fingers through my hair, tugging at the strands, hard, trying to pull some coherent thoughts up through the roots.

“They're running scans,” I say. “If everything indicates that Centauri-Earth is habitable, then we might begin planet-landing in a matter of days.”

Amy narrows her eyes. “Might?” she asks.

If she could, she'd land this ship right now. “Amy,” I say, warning already creeping into my voice, “we can't just land the ship on Centauri-Earth. We have to make sure it's safe.”

“Who cares if it's safe?” she says, throwing up her hands.

“I care. And I care about everyone else on this ship.”

“It's just going to take a couple of days, right?” she asks.

Maybe
.
If we're lucky.
“Of course,” I say.

“Okay, then,” Amy breathes. “I've been worried about . . . The sooner we land, the better.”

“It's not all bad here,” I think, put off by the disgust in her voice.

Amy looks at me incredulously. “People are angry. Marae was
murdered
.”

“Without Phydus,” I say, “the people—they're thinking . . . they're doing . . .”

“Shut up.” There's cold anger in Amy's voice. “Some people are good. Some people are bad. Phydus doesn't fix anything. It just hides the good and bad under a haze of nothing.”

“But—” I start, but I keep it to myself. But maybe it really
is
worth hiding the good if it distorts the bad, too.

Marae would have thought so.

 

“The water's very still,” Amy says.

I don't try to contain the disbelief on my face. Frex, really? We've gotten to the point where I can kiss her breathless, then we can talk about murder, and all she can comment on is the frexing pond?

“Aren't there any fish?” she asks.

Fish. Frexing fish. We're not painting charts on walls or setting up guards or trying to track down a murderer. I guess when it's my people being killed, not hers, she doesn't care so much.

“No fish,” I growl, standing up. “Not anymore.”

Amy looks up at me, questions in her eyes. “You're really upset.”

“Frex, Amy, of course I am!” I shout. She flinches from my voice. “I'm sorry.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Sorry. It's just—yes. I'm upset.”

She reaches for my hand and opens her mouth to speak, but before I can find out whatever it was she wanted to say, a voice interrupts us.

48

AMY

“OH, I'M SORRY,” LUTHOR SAYS. “I DIDN'T MEAN TO INTERRUPT.” While his face is impassive, his eyes linger on the inch of exposed skin above my waistband. I tug my tunic down with such violence I'm afraid my fingers will poke through the handwoven material.

“What do you need, Luthor?” Elder asks. I'm not sure if the impatience in his voice is because Luthor interrupted us or because Elder knows how close Luthor is to Bartie's plans for a revolution. Elder twists around to look up at the man. “Stars, Luthor, what happened to you?!”

Now it's my turn to smirk at his black eye and busted lip.

“Nothing of importance,” Luthor tells Elder. “Nothing I can't . . .
handle
 . . . myself.”

I don't let my face betray my fear.

Luthor sneers down at me, but when Elder glares at him, he shrugs, chuckling softly to himself as he meanders down the path away from us.

“That man is a frexing nuisance,” Elder says. “The only reason he's been helping Bartie is because he likes trouble for trouble's sake.”

“Yeah,” I say in a hollow voice. Before Luthor interrupted, I was going to tell Elder about the stairs and everything else I'd found out this morning. But Luthor's very good at silencing my words.

Elder turns his full attention to me. “What's wrong?” When I don't answer, he adds, “Amy, do you know something? About Luthor? Did Luthor do something?”

A hand wrapped around my wrist, pushing me down into the ground, cutting off the circulation in my hand, fingers digging into that little space over the blue veins under my palm.
But when I look down, it's my hand wrapped around my wrist, not Luthor's.

I open my mouth.

“Tell me,” Elder says.

I can't.

It's too late. I can't change the past, and it will only upset him. I can't explain why I never told him before—a combination of being afraid to put what happened into words and being worried about what his reaction would be. I let too much time pass. Part of it was my fault—I shouldn't have gone outside during the Season. And even though I know, logically, it's not my fault, it's his, I still can't forget—

His body straddling mine. Holding me down. His eyes, laughing—knowing what he was doing. The way he watches me even now. The way his gaze lingers on all the wrong places. The way his thumbs rub against his fingers, as if imagining my skin under his touch.

Elder touches my hand.

I flinch away.

 

But then I remember how Victria shied away from me.

And if I can't speak for myself, I can at least speak for her.

 

I talk to the pond, because it's easier to talk to water than to Elder's rigid face. I start at the end, telling him about how Victria and I used the med patches to exact something of revenge on Luthor. I tell him that Victria's pregnant, and explain how it wasn't her choice. I know I shouldn't betray her trust, but I also know that Elder, more than anyone else on the ship, needs to know the full extent of Luthor's evil. I add my fear that Luthor did the same to the girl in the rabbit fields.

And then I tell him how Luthor has been threatening me. I try to be emotionless as I describe the way he chased me across the field, the way it excited him when I tried to escape, but my voice still cracks.

To his credit, Elder doesn't interrupt, not once.

“It was his eyes, Elder. I could tell,” I say. “He
knew
what he was doing. He knew, and he was enjoying himself.” I think of the way he slowly licked his lips. “He still is. We're a game to him. We're just mice, and he's a cat, and he loves toying with us.”

For the first time since I started speaking, I glance at Elder. There are scars in the earth, claw marks. Elder loosens his fists when he sees me staring, and two clumps of dirt fall from his hand.

“Thank you for telling me this, Amy.” His voice is so cold that he reminds me of Eldest.

I reach out to him and grab his forearm. His muscles are taut and hard.

“I've been so fixated on Bartie and whatever revolution he thinks he can cook up,” Elder says, “that I forgot the evil one man can do on his own.”

I try to draw Elder's gaze to me, but his narrowed eyes are focused on the ground. “It was Luthor the other day in the Recorder Hall.” I say. “He's the one who said he could do whatever he wanted. Maybe Bartie even got the idea from him.”

He stands. “Thank you for telling me this, Amy,” he repeats.

“Elder?”

He walks away, fists still clenched and stained brown and green from the ground.