Across the Universe (18 page)

38

ELDER

“BUT IT’S OKAY,” I SAY. “WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED here on the ship. You won’t have to worry about clothes or anything.”

Harley punches me in the arm.

“What?”

Amy hugs her stuffed animal and picks up the notebook, pencils, book, and photograph she’s selected from her parents’ boxes. “I’m done here,” she says in a hollow voice.

Harley helps me load the trunks back into the locker. He keeps shooting me these looks and waggling his eyebrows at Amy, but I have no idea what he means by it.

Click. Whoosh. Thud
.

Amy drops the stuffed animal and books, the pencils clatter on the floor, and the photograph drifts down. “I know that sound,” she breathes, and she’s off, running down the aisle toward the rows of frozen bodies.

“Amy, wait!” Harley calls, but I just chase after her. She skids around the corner in the row of sixties.

“Hurry up!” she screams.

I round the corner. Fog is rising from a glass box resting in the center of the aisle.

“Did you do this?” I ask, even though I know the answer.

“Of course not!” Amy says, her voice raspy, as if she’s trying to say everything at once. “Is she going to wake up like me?”

I glance at the box—there is a woman inside, a taller, heavier woman than Amy with dark kinky hair and darker skin than mine. The light at the top of the box blinks red. I look at the black electrical box. The switch inside has been flipped.

I jab my finger into my wi-com button. “Com link: Doc.
Now!
”

“What is it?” Doc’s voice fills my wi-com.

“Doc! There’s been another one! There’s another box out here! Come quick!”

“Wait, what?”

“Down in the cryo level. One of the other frozens. She’s been pulled outside.
The light is red!
”

“I’ll be right there.”

Doc disconnects the link. I hope he’s close. If he’s in the Hospital, he’ll be here in minutes—if he’s in the City or on the Shipper Level, it will be longer.

“What’s going on?” Harley asks.

“Someone’s done to this woman what they did to me,” Amy says. “Someone just unplugged me, left me here to die.”

“So will she wake up?” Harley asks.

“I don’t know. I think if we flip the switch back, put her back in... but I don’t know. I’m afraid to mess with it. It looks so simple, but...”

“Don’t let her wake up,” Amy says softly. “It’s bad, being frozen, but it’s better than waking up alone.”

My heart jerks. She still thinks of herself as alone.

“Elder?” a voice calls.

“Here!” I call back. “Number... ” I glance at the open door. “Number 63!”

Doc races down the aisle. He shoves Harley aside as he bends over the glass box. He wipes away the fog blurring the glass. “She’s not been out long,” Doc says. “She’s hardly melted at all.”

“That’s good, right? Right?” Amy’s fingers press against the glass box, like she’s trying to reach through the ice and hold the woman’s hand.

“Good,” Doc says. He bumps into me. I step back. Doc leans over the glass, looking at the electrical box. He plugs a floppy into a wire on the box and reads the numbers that pop up on the screen. He grunts, but I can’t tell whether it’s a good grunt or a bad grunt. He taps some more numbers onto the floppy, then unhooks it before flipping the switch. The light fades from red to green.

Doc shoves the glass box into the cryo chamber. He slams the door shut and pulls down the latch. A trace of cold swirls up around us, the only evidence that Number 63 was out at all.

“She’s fine,” Doc says. “You caught her in time.”

“Guys?” Harley calls. I look behind me in surprise—Harley has walked down the aisle and away from us, on the other side, out of sight.

“How did you know she was here?” Doc asks.

“I heard it,” Amy says.

Doc’s face scrunches in concentration. “That means whoever did this was down here when you were. Why were you down here, anyway?”

“I wanted to show Amy her parents’ trunks,” I say before Amy can mention how we were going to look at her parents. I somehow think admitting we were going to mess with the cryo chambers may not be a good thing to do now.

“Uh... guys?” Harley calls from two rows over.

“I don’t like this,” Doc says. “Whoever was down here when you were must have known you were here, must have known you would hear what was happening. Other than you three, did anyone else come?”

Amy and I glance at each other. “Not that I know of,” she says.

“Me neither.”

“Guys!” Harley shouts.

“
What?!”
I shout back.

“Come to the twenties row. Now!”

Doc starts walking, but Amy and I know better: we run. The urgency in Harley’s voice wasn’t false. Something is wrong.

When we round the corner, it’s clear what Harley was shouting about.

Another box lies in the center of the aisle. But this one has melted. And the man inside is already dead.

39

AMY

“OH.”

I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

But I know this man.

Mr. Kennedy had worked with my mom, and I’d always thought he was a little creepy. He was one of those old men who never got married but who thinks that because he’s old, he can be a pervert and get away with it. He was always looking down my mom’s shirt or getting me to pick up something off the floor whenever I came to the lab to visit my parents. Mom always laughed it off, but I wondered what Mr. Kennedy did at home with his memories of my mom’s wrinkled cleavage or my panty line.

And now he’s dead, floating in the cryo liquid with his eyes opened and his irises milky. His skin is sallow, as if soaked with water like a sponge. His mouth is slack, and his cheeks sag, creating tiny water-filled balloons at his jaw.

“Number 63 was a distraction,” Elder says.

“I don’t think so,” Doc says. “This one has been out for a while.” He lifts the lid of the glass box up, and Harley and Elder help him set it down on the floor. Doc dips his finger into the liquid Mr. Kennedy floats in. “The water’s cool, but not cold. He could have been unplugged yesterday, last night at the latest.”

Elder catches my eye. While we were running through the rain, laughing, Mr. Kennedy was drowning. As that couple made love on the bench by the pond, Mr. Kennedy was dying. As I stripped off my wet clothes and stood in the steamy shower, as I fell asleep gazing at the dark fields, Mr. Kennedy was swimming in death.

Another thought: Harley was here the same time the killer was.

“Why?” I ask.

Doc taps on his thin computer thing. “Number 26. A man named—”

“Mr. Kennedy,” I say.

“Yes.” Doc looks at me, surprise on his face.

“I knew him before.”

“Ah. I’m sorry,” he says, but in an offhand manner, as if he’s just saying it to be polite. “Number 26—”

“Mr. Kennedy.”

“
Mr. Kennedy
was a weapons specialist.”

“Really?” I ask. Even though Mr. Kennedy worked in the same department as my mother, I’d never known that he had anything to do with weapons. My mother didn’t. She worked on genetic splicing. She dealt with DNA, not weapons.

Doc nods. “He was well learned in bio-weaponry. It says here he worked with the government to develop eco bombs.”

“Who is doing this?” Elder asks. “Who is unplugging all these people? First William Robertson, then the woman, Number 63, now this guy.”

“And me,” I add.

Elder’s brow furrows as he stares at me.

“Two victims—two near misses,” the doctor says.

“And no reason why.” I stare at the empty cryo chamber, where Mr. Kennedy once was. And past it, to the rows and rows of little doors with numbers scrawled on them. How many cryo chambers will be empty before we can stop the killer?

40

ELDER

HARLEY AND I WHEEL MR. KENNEDY TO THE RELEASE HATCH for Doc. Amy says she’ll wait for us. But I know she wants to go to the other row, to see her parents’ doors, to make sure they’re still sealed shut.

Doc opens the hatch door, and Harley and I dump the body inside. The door slams shut, protecting us from the maw of open space. Harley peers through the bubble glass window, eyes wide, relishing in one more chance to see the stars. But I only see Mr. Kennedy’s bloated body.

And I look at Harley, and the billions of stars are in his eyes, and he’s drinking them up, pouring them into his soul. He raises his arms to the window, and for a moment I have a crazy vision of Harley trying to open the door, to fly after Mr. Kennedy and reach the stars. The hatch closes. But the light of the stars is still in Harley’s eyes.

“They’re more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen,” Harley whispers.

“Yeah, I’m sure Mr. Kennedy agrees,” I say, but Harley doesn’t notice my sarcasm.

“Come on, boys.” Doc’s worried expression deepens the lines at his eyes.

Amy is wiping her face when we get back. She’s retrieved her stuffed animal, photos, pencils, and books from where she’d dropped them by the lockers. Doc looks at them, but he doesn’t comment. He picks up a floppy and fiddles with it. Wasting time. Preparing to say whatever it is he means to say.

And I know then: he’s thinking about how he is going to contact Eldest and tell him about this. And I know that the reason why he’s fiddling with the floppy is to give himself time to think of something to say to me so that I will acquiesce.

I stand a little straighter. Before, Doc would have just called for Eldest without thinking of me, without even consulting me.

“Elder,” Doc says, “I know you understand the gravity of the situation. But Amy, Harley, it is vital that you do not tell anyone else about this. Not about Mr. Kennedy, not about the hatch”—he glares at Harley—“not about the people down here, not about the fact that there is even a level below the Hospital. You
must
keep this secret.”

It’s coming. I can feel it. That niggling doubt Doc has that he still needs to refer to Eldest.

His hand inches toward his wi-com.

Ah. There it is.

“You don’t need to com Eldest,” I say. “I vouch for Amy and Harley.” I shift my weight so that I’m between Doc and them. I’ve always been tall, but I don’t let myself slouch now. Instead, I make Doc look up to meet my eyes.

He hesitates, but finally nods. “You’re the Elder.” He means, I’m the one who will have to answer to Eldest.

“Little Fish and I will be fine,” Harley says, throwing an arm around Amy. “You don’t have to worry about us.”

Doc’s doubt returns. “Maybe I should com Eldest anyway, just see what he thinks.”

“No,” I say.

“What?”

“I’ve got just as much authority as he does. The Season is in full swing up there, and my gen is coming from that. Doc, you’ve got to learn to trust me, not just Eldest. I say Amy and Harley are fine knowing this, and that we can trust them. And I say it’s time to go. But first,” I add before Doc can say anything else, “let me see your floppy.”

“My...?”

“Your floppy.” I take the digital membrane computer from his still fingers. The scanner reads my thumbprint and grants me Eldest/Elder access. I tap quickly, with the back of the screen black. I don’t want any of them to see what I’m looking for.

I’m trying to find out who has been here in the lower level. The scanners on the doors read thumbprints; it shouldn’t be that hard to find a trail of thumbs leading to this level, this aisle of cryo chambers, this murder of a helpless frozen victim. And it isn’t hard to find. When we checked before, we didn’t have a time frame—Doc had been down to the cryo level, and so had Eldest and a handful of Shipper scientists.

But since then, there’s only been one person on the cryo level other than us.

I stare at the name on the screen.

Eldest.

41

AMY

ELDER DOESN’T GET ON THE ELEVATOR.

“I’ve got something else to do,” he says. There is a dark, serious manner in the way he stands now. I never noticed how much he slouched until he stood up straight. Before, I knew he was the destined leader of this ship merely because Doc and Eldest told me he was. Now I look at him, and I can see the determined leader within.

A part of me wants to stay here, on this level, and protect my parents from whoever is clever enough to unplug the frozen people while we’re all down there on the same level, but I can see that Elder needs to be by himself down here, for whatever purpose, and I trust him to guard my parents.

“Elder, I think you should come back with us, meet with Eldest,” Doc says.

“Oh, I’m going to meet with Eldest,” Elder says, and he reaches over, pushes the elevator button for Doc, and stands back as the doors slide shut. Before they close all the way, he turns away from the elevator and strides purposefully down the hall.

“I think his chutz is up, don’t you?” Harley says in a conversational tone. He’s awfully cheerful for someone who’s just dumped a body out into space.

Doc harrumphs.

When the elevator stops, Doc storms off. I watch him, waiting for him to push that little button behind his left ear and snitch on Elder, but he doesn’t—he just keeps walking.

“Wanna go back to the Ward?” Harley asks, holding his arm out in mock chivalry.

“Let’s go to that garden Elder showed me,” I say.

“Oh, he showed you the garden?” A lopsided grin smears across Harley’s face. He starts to head down the hallway.

“It must be weird for him,” I say. “He’s the youngest one on the ship, but he’s also something of a leader. I don’t know if I could tell someone older than me to do something and expect them to do it.”

Harley looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “You’re a strange one, Little Fish.”

“How so?” I grin back, willing to play along.

“You’re thinking about how weird it is for Elder on the ship. But you’re the fish out of water.”

I snort. “It’s easier to think of Elder than myself.” Unexpected tears prick my eyes. I had not meant to say something so close to the truth.

When we get to the doors in the lobby, Harley holds them open for me, and I step out into fresh sunlight and the smell of grass after a light rain.

And the sweaty, musky smell of sex.

“Frex. Forgot about the Season for a second,” Harley says as a half-naked couple bump into him, so distracted by their passionate groping and kissing that they don’t even notice Harley standing there. “Let’s go back inside.”

“Come on, we’ll just go away from the crowded areas. I don’t think I can stand being inside anymore.” I think I will never like enclosed spaces again. When I was younger, before the freezing, I never felt claustrophobic. Now, even here, on the edge of a garden, outside, tight bands squeeze the air from my lungs, and my vision lingers on the walls that seem to constantly be pressing down on me. I close my eyes. If I let myself think about it, it’s so, so much worse.

“The light is good out here,” Harley says as we start down the path away from the Hospital. “Shite, I wish I had my paints!”

I laugh. “Go ahead. Get them. I’ll wait here.”

Harley hesitates. “It’s not safe. Not now.”

I think of the crowd of people I ran into on my first run. Now seems like the perfect time to be out—none of the people are going to care about me. They’re way too busy with each other.

“Seriously,” I say when Harley looks wistfully back up at the Hospital. “I’ll go to that wheat field. No one’s over there; they’re all in the garden or on the road.”

“Come with me,” Harley says. He grabs my wrist and starts to pull me to the Hospital, but I wriggle out of his grip.

“I really need to not be in a building. I need some fresh air. Go on!” I laugh, shooing him down the path. “I’ll be fine.”

Harley hesitates again, but the pull of his paint is too much. “Be careful, Little Fish,” he says seriously. I nod, smiling. He sprints up the path to the Hospital. I stroll the opposite direction, toward the field.

I was right: the further I get from the garden, the fewer people are around. The path is practically empty, and it is only from the moaning and sighs that I know there are people further out in the fields, behind the trees, in the ditch beside the path. I try to ignore them. It creeps me out to see people so loose. I know that when I lived on Earth, I must have seen people having sex on TV a million times. But it’s not the same when people are having sex right in front of you.

“It’s her.”

My first instinct is to freeze; my next one is to run. I know from the tone of voice that whoever spoke was talking about me. I risk glancing back. There are three men, all about Harley’s age, all following me. I don’t recognize two of them—Feeders who do some kind of heavy labor judging by the size of their muscles.

My stomach drops.

I do recognize the third one.

Luthe, who’s always staring at me, always watching me in the Ward.

“Hey, freak!” Luthe calls when he sees me looking. He wiggles his fingers at me in a mock hello, and the other two men laugh.

I start walking faster. I wonder if the moaning, sighing masses of sweaty people in the fields will look up if I call for help. I somehow doubt it.

I can hear their heavy footfalls behind me. Their stride is longer than mine; they’ve already set their pace quicker.

“Don’t think I wanna freak,” one of them says.

“I do,” Luthe responds.

I quit caring about what I look like. I
run
. My legs pump high and hard, and I have panic to fuel me. One of them curses, and I realize the chase is on. I cut into a field, but the wheat slows me, and my wild race leaves a clear trail right toward me. I leap over a pair of lovers in the field who do not even notice my presence, let alone my plight. I turn around to see how close the men are.

Too close.

And I am too stupid. I trip over a pair of heaving bodies and land in the wheat, rolling over tall, sharp stalks. The girl, who is on top, looks at me with love-hazed eyes, then grins in an inviting sort of way. I scoot back, feeling the wheat bend and break under my body, struggling to regain my footing.

But I’m not quick enough.

One of the big Feeder men is on top of me first.

I struggle to get up, but my squirming only excites him. I still my body, but jerk my hands. He pins my wrists to the ground under his meaty fists, and now the other two men have caught up. The other Feeder grabs my ankles. Luthe drops to the ground beside me, leaning over my face. Grinning.

I thrash against the men. They all laugh, a deep, guttural sound that isn’t humorous at all.

I jerk my head to the naked couple I tripped over. “Help me!” I say.

The woman arches her back, digs her hips against the man she’s riding.

“Help me!” I scream.

The man beneath her stares back at me, but his eyes are glazed. He smiles dreamily. The woman notices, and turns to look at me. “It only hurts the first time,” she says, and then she thrusts against the man, and he moans, and she moans, and they have forgotten all about me.

Luthe straddles me and rips my tunic off, curses at the undershirt I’ve been wearing in place of a bra, and rips it off, too. The tattered remains of my clothes pool at my arms, but my breasts are exposed. And even though I’ve seen half the crew of this ship walking around naked in a lovemaking haze, I am ashamed of my nudity. And terrified.

Luthe bends over me and buries his face in my breasts. I try to wriggle away, but he moans in desire and grinds his pelvis harder against my hips. One hand fumbles with his trousers while the other twists my breast, hard. The Feeder man holding my arms makes a noise deep inside his throat, and bends down, licking my arms, nibbling my skin playfully at first, then harder bites that were they to have come from my boyfriend Jason, I would have liked.

The Feeder looks up at me as I start to cry. There is blank nothing in his gaze, vacant emptiness. He is lustful in the way an animal in heat is lustful. Luthe, however, is not. His huge smile exposes all his teeth. He’s been watching me from the moment I first entered the Ward.

And he
knows
.

I can tell it in his eyes. Most of the people—the Feeders—they’re acting like animals. But this guy’s not acting at all. He knows what he’s doing.

And he likes it.

It’s hopeless.

The man holding my ankles starts to tug at my pants.

I kick him, and I’m fairly certain that my heel connects with his teeth. He shouts, and his shout is not one of lust but of pain. But Luthe has gotten hold of his idea and starts yanking at the waist of my pants.

I open my mouth to scream, and the man holding my arms presses his mouth against mine, his tongue delving deep into me, rooting around against the soft palate of my mouth.

I bite until I taste blood. I bite even as he tries to jerk his tongue away. When he finally escapes, I spit his blood from my mouth, and scream.

“Little Fish! Amy!” Harley’s voice is panicked.

“
Harley!
” I scream with all my might. “HARLEY!”

And then he’s there, and he bangs his easel against the man straddling me, and his easel breaks apart, and now he’s pummeling the men with his fists. And I curl up into a ball, holding myself with myself, and choking back my tears. The Feeder men run away, but Luthe stands to fight. He and Harley circle each other like vultures circling a carcass, and I know I’m the carcass. Luthe hits first, but Harley hits harder. Luthe sprawls down, but he’s not knocked out. Harley grabs my wrist.

“Come on. Come
on
,” he says, yanking me up. My pants are loosened and they slip over my hip. I hold them with one hand, I hold Harley with the other, and I run and run and run, and I can hear the man’s heavy footsteps behind me, and then I don’t hear them anymore, but still I run and run and run, and I’m holding onto Harley like he’s the rope pulling me from the undertow.