Across the Universe (15 page)

29

AMY

“WHAT KIND OF SECURITY IS THERE ON THIS SHIP?” I ASK, turning to Elder. “Do you guys have cops or anything?”

Elder and Harley look confused. “Cops?” Elder asks.

I nod. “You know, policemen. Cops.” They stare blankly at me. “People whose job it is to keep the bad guys under control.”

“That’s what Eldest is for,” Harley says, turning back to his canvas.

Great.

“We don’t have a need for ‘cops’ like on Sol-Earth,” Elder says. It takes me a moment to remember that the “Sol-Earth” he’s talking about is
my
Earth. “On Sol-Earth, there was more discord, because there were more differences. There aren’t differences on
Godspeed
, so there aren’t problems.”

I bristle. “The problems on Earth didn’t stem from people being different—”

“Slavery. The Crusades. Genocide. Civil rights violence. Apartheid. Differences were the main source of all of Sol-Earth’s greatest man-made disasters.”

My mouth hangs open, but I can’t refute the blemishes of my world’s history.

“Look at you being so smart,” Harley says. He winks at me. “Elder gets more education than the rest of us. Our education on Sol-Earth was mostly just farming methods and science. Elder’s the smart one.”

Elder flushes deeply.

I don’t have time for this. “What’s being done to find the murderer?”

Both guys look up at me, blankly.

“Is there a guard over the cryogenically frozen people? Is Eldest investigating the crime? Are there suspects? Is there any kind of security or surveillance there?
What’s happening?
”

Neither of them have thoughts on any of this, and it infuriates me. “You never even gave any of this a second thought, did you? Someone’s
died
, and you’re just going to sit back and let this happen? I thought you were the future leader of this ship,” I shout, pointing at Elder. “And you’re going to ignore this and hope it goes away? Some leader!”

“I... I...” Elder splutters.

“Don’t you realize that my
parents
are down there? Helpless? Frozen in a little box? You weren’t there. In the box. When it was unplugged.
You don’t know what it felt like
. That moment, when you’re finally awake, and you know you’re awake, and you want to vomit out those tubes, but you
can’t
, and you want to get out of that box, but you
can’t
, and you want to
breathe
. But. You.
Can’t
.”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Calm down. Drink some water.” Elder uses this as an excuse to refill my empty cup from the bathroom tap.

“I don’t need water!” I say. Why is it so difficult for them to see what’s important?

Elder keeps thrusting the cup toward me anyway. I take it and gulp down a swallow. An odd bitter taste stays on my tongue. I wonder how often this water has been recycled and processed. Thinking that, my anger fades and I do actually feel calmer.

“How would you feel if it were your parents?” I ask Elder quietly.

Harley looks up at us both, then slowly puts his paintbrush down. He is more intent on Elder’s answer than on my ranting.

“I never knew my parents,” Elder says.

“Did they die?” The words come out harsher than I’d intended, but this world seems intent on making me more callous.

Elder shakes his head. “No. I just never knew who they were. An Elder isn’t allowed to know. He must feel as if he is a child of the ship.”

He speaks as if he’s reciting from a textbook, but there is also a sadness to his words that I am not sure even he recognizes. He seems very small and alone. His shoulders have hunched down, as if he wants his body to swallow him.

“Is that why you’re here?” I ask Harley.

“Nah. I know my parents. They’re weavers, in the City. My whole family has been weavers, ever since the Plague. I’d say my parents were disappointed that I didn’t uphold the family tradition, but I’m not even sure they noticed when I left. They couldn’t make me care about cloth, and I couldn’t make them care about anything else. So I moved here. It’s only Elder here without proper parents.”

“As it should be,” Elder says in a low voice without looking at either of us. “But right now,” he says, “if we can’t figure out
who
killed Mr. Robertson, let’s start with
why
.”

I stride across the room to Harley and his art supplies and take up his biggest brush and the cup of black paint.

“Hey!” Harley says, but before he or Elder can do anything, I scrawl my name in big letters across the wall beside the window.

“What are you doing to your wall?!” Elder sounds shocked.

“It’s not my wall,” I say. Nothing on this ship is mine.

Under my name, I add everything that I can think of that might make me a target for the killer. Girl, I write. Seventeen, Red hair, White, Average appearance,

“You’re beautiful,” Elder says quietly, but I ignore him.

Not part of any mission, I add.

“Okay,” I say, turning around. “What about Mr. Robertson?” I write his name on the wall next to my own.

Elder picks up the thin sheet of plastic off my desk that I’d wondered at before. When he runs his finger across it, it lights up like a computer screen. He starts tapping on it, and images flash across the screen.

“Eldest/Elder access granted,” a female voice says from the computer.

“Mr. William Robertson,” Elder reads from the screen. “Male. Fifty-seven years old, Hispanic, 212 pounds. Leadership specialist. Experience with United State Marines. Mission: offensive organization. Funded by the FRX. FRX?” He pauses. “I’ve seen that before. On a plaque in the Keeper Level...” His voice trails off.

“Financial Resource Exchange,” I say as I write the details about Mr. Robertson below his name. “Everyone in the military was funded by the FRX. It’s how Daddy got to join the mission.”

Elder rolls his finger on the screen. “That’s all there is.”

I look at that weird computer thing. “Does that say anything about me?”

Elder hesitates.

“What?” I say. “What does it say about me?”

“Er—”

Harley, who’s been watching us silently, snatches the computer thing from Elder. He scans it quickly, the laughter dying from his eyes.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing.” Harley moves to touch the screen—to turn it off, I’m sure. Before he can, I grab it from his hand.

There’s the picture they took of me a few days before I was frozen, during the health screening. My date of birth, blood type, height, weight. And, in tiny letters at the bottom: NONESSENTIAL CARGO.

Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten.

I’m just extra baggage.

I drop the computer thing on the desk and turn back to the wall with my paintbrush. Under my name, I add nonessential.

“You’re not—” Elder starts, but I silence him with a look.

Stepping back, I look at my handiwork. I painted the lines too thick; trails of black trickle down from the letters, some of them making it all the way to the baseboard, streaking over the peeling old painted vines on the floor, made by whoever once lived in this room. Harley’s eyes are on the trailing black, watching the drips race one another over the hand-painted flowers.

“So,” I say, scanning the lists, “what’s the connection? Why would someone want to kill both of us?”

Silence.

“We’re missing something,” I say, smoothing my hair down with both hands. “There must be some connection.”

But whatever it is, none of us can see it.

I throw my hands down to my sides. “We’re getting nowhere this way. Let’s just go down to the cryo chambers and see what we can see.”

“Go down there?” Elder asks, surprised.

I nod. “Maybe we’ll find some clues.”

Harley laughs, like this is a game. “Clues?!”

I just stare at him, and his laughter dies.

“Okay,” Elder says. His eyes meet mine, and I don’t remember why I used to think his face looked innocent. He’s determined now, ready for a fight, prepared to back me up.

“Okay?” I ask.

“Let’s go.”

30

ELDER

AMY IGNORES THE COLD STARES FROM THE PEOPLE IN THE Ward common room as we make our way to the elevator. She keeps her chin raised and avoids eye contact, and to me she looks like a queen, but I can tell from the whispers that follow her that the people around her view her as something very different. My jaw clenches. Eldest did this.

The elevator dings as the doors slide open on the fourth floor.

“Did you hear that?” Amy asks as we walk down the empty hall.

“Hear what?” Harley asks.

Amy shakes her head. “Nothing. I guess it was just my imagination.” Still, she looks at the doors as if she’s a little skeeved out.

I open the door at the end of the hall—still unlocked—and cross the room to get to the second elevator. The smashed alarm box is gone. Eldest has probably taken it to the Shippers to see if they can fix it.

“So, what are we looking for?” Harley asks as the elevator descends.

“I’m not sure.” Amy shifts on her feet. “A clue. Something.”

I think about the last time I was on the floor with the cryo chambers. The only evidence that I remember seeing that proved a murder had taken place was the body of Mr. William Robertson. There were no other clues.

But I don’t tell Amy that.

When the elevator doors slide open, Harley strides out, looking around eagerly. I follow. Amy doesn’t step out until the doors start to slide shut again.

“Where’s the hatch with the stars?” Harley asks eagerly.

Amy steps forward. She grabs my sleeve and tugs at it until I turn to face her. “Where are my parents?” she asks very, very softly.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I can look up their location for you.”

Amy bites her lip, shakes her head. “No... that’s okay.” She looks around her with wide, round, scared eyes. “Not... not this time. Later.”

“Can we look at the stars first?” Harley asks eagerly.

“There’s a hatch down there,” I start to say, but before I can finish, Harley takes off down the rows to where I’ve pointed. I turn to Amy. “But he doesn’t know the code to open the door.”

She throws me a half-smile. “Let him figure it out. Why don’t we try to find something here that can help? Can you show me where Mr.... er... Robertson was?”

We go down the aisle of cryo chambers marked 75-100, and stop at Number 100.

Amy reaches toward the empty tray with shaking fingers. I wonder if she’s imagining her parents on that tray, or herself. Before her fingers actually touch it, though, she snatches back her hand and holds it against her.

“So, what should we be doing?” I ask, trying to distract her from whatever thoughts she’s having that are making her draw into herself.

Amy steps back, looks at the ground. Her eyes scan the bare, clean floor, then rove over the clinically neat room.

“I don’t know what I expected to find,” Amy says. “I guess I thought this was like a cop show, and I’d come down here and find a fiber that I could match to Eldest’s shirt, or a blood drop we could DNA test, but I don’t even know if you have DNA testing here—”

“The biometric scanners read DNA,” I interject, but she’s not listening to me.

“Or maybe a giant fingerprint...” Her voice trails off. “Harley’s art supplies,” she says. She looks me fully in the face. “Harley’s art supplies!”

“What?”

“Harley has brushes. And he sketched me with charcoal before he started painting me. He’s got everything I need.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I say, but I’m smiling too, because she’s gotten back that spark of life she’d lost when she first got off the elevator.

“Harley!” she calls, jumping up and heading toward the end of the aisle. “Harley!”

I have no idea why she needs them. I just know that I’d face another Plague to get them for her if I had to. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier than that.

“Com link: Harley,” I say, pressing my wi-com.

“What?” Harley’s voice asks impatiently in my ear.

“Get your art box.”

“Where’s the hatch with the stars? There are a lot of doors and hatches and things down here, but they’re all locked.”

“Go get us your art box first.”

“If I do, will you tell me which hatch leads to the stars?”

“Yup.”

“Done,” Harley says, and he disconnects the com link.

“What is that thing?” Amy asks me after a moment, when she’s sure I’m done talking with Harley. “I thought you all had tiny headsets or something, but that’s actually embedded in your
skin
, isn’t it?”

I brush my wi-com button with my fingers. “It’s a wi-com. Wireless communication link.”

“Does it hurt?”

I laugh. “No.”

“So cool,” Amy exhales, leaning in. Her soft, warm breath tickles the hairs near my ear. “It’s like a phone built into your ear.”

Her fingers brush the raised skin over my wi-com. My breath catches. She’s right in front of me, tantalizingly close. Amy bites her lip, and all I want to do is seize her, crush her against me, feel her lips with mine.

Then she steps back, dropping her hand, an unreadable expression on her face.

“Doc can, uh, get you one if you like,” I say, trying to ignore how much I want to grab her and pull her back to me.

Amy’s hands fly to the side of her neck, below her left ear. Her fingers smooth the skin. “No,” she says. “I don’t think I’d like one yet.”

Harley shows up a few moments later. He dumps his art box at our feet. I can tell part of him just wants to run off and open the hatch to the stars, but he’s also curious about what we’ll do with his art stuff. For that matter, so am I.

Amy rifles through the box, bypassing jars of paint, nubs of pencils, and scraps of paper. She finally pulls out a pile of charcoal wrapped in thin cloth. Then she smashes it on the ground.

“Hey!” Harley shouts. “I have to make that myself.”

“I need the powder,” Amy says, pulverizing the black bits of charcoal.

“Why?”

Amy grins. “Just watch.”

After selecting one of Harley’s loosest, biggest brushes, she runs the bristles through the black powder, and then twirls the brush over the surface of the morgue door.

“Please work, please work, please work,” she chants as she dusts the metal with a fine coat of powder. Her breath catches.

The powder reveals the whorls and swirls of a fingerprint.

Amy laughs. “Now if there was only a simple way to tell whose fingerprint this was!”

I’m one step ahead of her. “Try this,” I say, kneeling beside her with the floppy from the desk at the end of the aisle. I hold the digital membrane over the fingerprint and press scan. The print shows up on the display in seconds.

“Now,” I say, tapping on the screen, “all I have to do is match this with the biometric scanners. . . .”

“Wow,” Amy says under her breath. I grin at her.

The floppy beeps.

“Well?” Harley asks, leaning over my shoulder.

“Mine. I was down here with Doc; that’s my print.”

“It says ‘Eldest/Elder,’ ” Harley says, pointing to the screen. “It could be Eldest.”

Amy looks up eagerly, but I shake my head. “We have the same access in the computer—it always shows both our names on biometric scans. But I checked the wi-com locator map earlier, and he wasn’t down here. That has to be my print.”

“Try some more,” Harley tells Amy, and she eagerly turns back to the door with her brush and powder. I scan every print she finds, but the only ones clear enough to scan are four of Doc’s and twelve of mine. Most of the prints are smudged or overlapped to the point of uselessness.

“Found another one,” Amy says, brushing charcoal dust over the top of the cryo chambers. “Is this you?”

“I don’t remember touching there,” I say.

Amy’s eyes glisten. “Maybe this is the murderer!” she says, excitement creeping back into her voice.

I hold the floppy over the print and scan it in. The print is wide and fat—a thumb. A thin jagged line slices its way through the whorls.

“What’s that?” Harley asks as the floppy zooms in on the print.

Amy looks over my shoulder at it. “Maybe nothing—but it looks kind of like a scar, doesn’t it?”

Beep. Beep-beep.
The scan is done.

“Eldest/Elder,” flash the words over the thumbprint.

“Another one of yours.” Amy sighs, her face falling. She turns back to the cryo chamber, but she brushes the charcoal dust across the surface as if it were achingly heavy.

“You have a scar on your thumb?” Harley asks.

I inspect my thumbs, even though I know there is no scar there connecting the ridges of my thumbprint.

“He could have just had something on his thumb when he touched the cryo chamber,” Amy says without looking up. “Something that got between the surface and his thumb.”

But I hadn’t touched there.

I know I hadn’t.

Amy picks up the floppy. “Are you sure, absolutely
sure,
that it couldn’t be Eldest?”

“Positive. Right after we found Mr. Robertson I checked the wi-com locator map. He wasn’t down here.”

Amy blows air out her nostrils like an angry bull. “I still think he could have—”

I’m already shaking my head, and Amy stops. There’s just no way. Even though Amy’s right about his cruel personality, Eldest simply wasn’t here when the murder happened.

Amy throws the brush down in disgust. “So much for fingerprinting.”

“Sorry,” I say absently, more distracted by who could have left the print if it wasn’t Eldest and it wasn’t me.

Harley snatches the floppy from my hand and throws it on the desk at the end of the aisle. “Can I see the hatch now?” He picks up his art box, and I notice that he’s also brought along a fresh—albeit small—canvas.

“If I open the hatch for you, will you spend the night down here and make sure no one messes with the frozens?”

Amy’s smile is more than enough reason to ignore the voice in my head warning me that Eldest won’t like me leaving Harley here, alone.

“Sure,” Harley says.

I tell Harley the location of the hatch and the access code as I retrieve the floppy he’d tossed away. Tapping quickly, I set up access approval for both him and Amy so they can come and leave the cryo level as they please, and I add in access for Amy to use floppies. Harley runs straight to the hatch as soon as I scan his thumbprint, not bothering to hide his eagerness. Amy’s still laughing at him when I press her thumb into the scanner on the floppy. When she stops laughing, I realize I’ve been holding her thumb down for a full minute.

“Sorry,” I say, snatching my hand back.

Amy smiles at me.

“Wannagogardenwime?” I ask all in one breath. My eyes grow wide. What came over me? Why would I blurt that out like that?

“What?” Amy asks, her smile widening. She leans against the metal table behind her.

“Want to see the garden?” I ask, speaking much slower than my heart is pounding. “With me?”

She bites her lips, and although she doesn’t look away from me, her gaze grows distant and unfocused. Her hands grip the edge of the table, and she looks as if she’s afraid I’m going to drag her from this cold, dark place against her will. It’s not hard to guess why. She wants to stay close to her parents. Her eyes flick to the right, where Harley ran off. She wants to see the stars, too.

My heart sinks. How can I compete with that?

Then her eyes focus on me again, and she smiles. “Sure,” she says.

And in her smile I see something more beautiful than stars.