Across the Universe (20 page)

44

ELDER

“WHAT’S THAT NOISE?” I ASK, ONLY NOW NOTICING THE churning sound.

Eldest glances over his shoulder, where the room makes a hard right angle. “The water pump’s back there.”

I frown. The water processor is on the Shipper Level, not here. But then I remember the blueprints Orion showed me before Amy woke up. There
was
another water pump on the fourth level in the diagram.

“This is old,” I say.

“How do you know that?” Eldest asks sharply, but I ignore him.

I step forward, inspecting it. It’s nowhere near as big as the pump on the Shipper Level. There’s a control panel and, above that, a nozzle. The pump on the Shipper Level is used to recycle, purify, and distribute water. This pump is just designed to mix something into the water. An empty bucket rests beside the pump, a thick, syrup-like substance coating the inside.

“What’s that water pump for?” I ask.

Eldest looks at me like he can’t believe my stupidity. “To pump water.”

“No. That’s what the pump on the Shipper Level is for. What’s this one for?”

Eldest smiles, and it actually looks genuine. Like he’s proud of me for seeing through him. “It was a part of the ship’s original design.
Godspeed
is only so big. By adding nutritional supplements to the food and water, we can maintain a population rate of up to one person per two acres. Even with that, though, the ship can’t support much more than three thousand people. We’ve always had to enforce population control.” He notices my confused face. “Birth control.”

“Through here?” I ask, pointing to the nozzle.

Eldest nods. “We use this water pump to distribute contraceptives and vits to everyone. Mix it directly into the water supply, keep everyone healthy. Why do you think the Feeder wives say to drink water when you don’t feel well? And, at the start of the Season, we take out the contraceptives and add in hormones. To increase sexual desire. It works particularly well on the Feeders.”

I remember Amy’s words, how the Season wasn’t natural. She was right.

“I’m glad you’re asking these kinds of questions,” Eldest says. “Glad you’re finally starting to think like an Eldest.” He grips the basket in his hands. “It’s important for me to know that you are willing to do whatever it takes to make this ship and its people prosper. Whatever. It. Takes.”

“Are you?” My voice cracks over the words.

“I always have been.” Eldest speaks with such sincerity that I don’t question him. “Every moment of my life is spent making this ship a better place for the people on it to live. I know you don’t always agree with me, but it
works
.”

“Every moment, huh?” I ask. I can feel my chutz rising at Eldest’s cocky attitude. I know he’s implying that I’m not as dedicated as he is.

“Every moment.”

“Then how were you ensuring that the ship prospers when you were in the cryo chambers earlier? What great leadership action were you taking then?”

Eldest straightens up. “I do not have to answer to you, boy.”

I know how Eldest operates; I know how to make him talk. “I thought the second cause of discord was lack of one strong central leader. How can you be a strong central leader without disclosing important information to your successor?”

I hear a creak. Eldest is crushing the sides of the basket of needles under his hands. “Why don’t you just tell me what you think I should have been doing.” It’s not a question, it’s more of a threat.

“Why not just say what I think you shouldn’t have been doing? Like how maybe you shouldn’t have been ripping more people from cryo chambers. The man died. The woman would’ve, if Amy hadn’t found her.”

Eldest shoves the basket away from him. The needles clatter inside it. “Are you accusing me of opening the cryo chambers, of killing another one of the frozens?”

“All I’m saying is that you’ve been awful close every time one of them dies.”

“I do not have to listen to this drivel from the likes of YOU!” Eldest roars. He heads to the door, but his bad leg makes him stumble. He crashes into one of the big cylinders of goo, and the bean-shaped things wobble in the bubbles.

“Some leader,” I mutter.

Eldest straightens up, glaring at me.

“The third cause of discord,” he says in a terrible monotone, “is individual thought. No society can thrive if a single individual can poison its members into mutiny and chaos.” He turns now, glaring. “And if the individual thought is coming from the ship’s future leader, and if the ship’s future leader is spewing forth such vitriol and stupidity that he’d accuse
me
of killing the frozens, then I
pray
to the stars above that he puts something more intelligent in that empty head of his before I die and he takes over!”

“That’s just like you, to try to turn this into a lesson about how shite of a leader I’ll be!” I shout. “But you haven’t told me what you were doing down here, or how Mr. Kennedy ended up drowned just on the other side of this door!” I fling my arm toward the door, hitting the tube of cryo liquid and embryos so hard that the embryos inside jiggle like fruit in gelatin.

“You are a fool,” Eldest spits out at me. He storms from the room, slamming his foot against the door when it rises too slowly. The needles clatter with each of his steps.

“I might be a fool,” I mutter, “but you haven’t told me that you didn’t do it.”

45

AMY

I HAVE ONE REGRET.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about this, now. But it’s think about
this
or think about
that
.

It was our last date.

I’d already told Jason by then. Told him how I’d be gone soon. Gone forever. We’d said goodbye earlier that night, alone in his bedroom. Together.
Really
together. For the first—and last—time.

After, he took me to this overpriced Italian place called Little Sienna. And it was so wonderful that all I wanted to do was cry, because I knew it would end. And of course I hadn’t worn waterproof mascara, and of course it smudged all over the place, so I excused myself. There was only one toilet, and a line of women waiting.

“Are you here with Jason?” the girl in front of me asked. I nodded. Her name was Erin, and she was a senior, and that’s about all I knew of her.

“He broke my heart last year. I don’t know how he does it.”

“Does what?” I was still smiling, but the smile was starting to feel plastic.

“Keep up with all his girls.” My smile disappeared. “I swear,” Erin said, “I thought I was the only one, all those months we dated, but I never knew about Jill and Stacy, not until after we broke up.”

I felt like I had swallowed boiling lead.

“He cheated on you?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. Then she laughed. “But that was last year. I’m sure he’s not like that now. You two look really cute together. I’m glad to see you were able to reform him. Your name’s Kristen, right?”

“No,” I said hollowly. “Amy.” Who was Kristen? Why’d she think my name was Kristen? Was Jason seeing Kristen on the side?

“My bad,” Erin said.

Was that
pity
in her eyes?

I left the line. Screw smudged mascara.

But when I sat down at the table, Jason laughed and passed me a napkin, and then he licked the corner of it and wiped my eye himself, and he brushed my cheek with his fingers, and his eyes lingered on my lips.

And I remembered saying goodbye to him, earlier that night.

Part of me wanted to demand who Kristen was. To find out who he’d been texting, earlier, when he wouldn’t let me see his phone. What his friends had meant about “big plans” next Saturday. After I’d be gone.

But another part of me said it was too late. We’d already... said goodbye.

Wouldn’t it be easier to believe Jason was
my
Jason, not a cheater, not a scumbag?

At the time, I didn’t think it would matter.

But now, my only regret is that I didn’t demand the truth.

46

ELDER

“SHE’S NOT HERE,” HARLEY SAYS. HE’S SITTING IN THE WARD common room, staring out the window at the wheat fields in the distance.

I head to the door that leads to the private chambers. “Don’t bother,” Harley snarls. “She wants to be left alone.” I open my mouth to ask why, but he adds, “For that matter, I want to be left alone too.” He rubs the side of his face, and I notice a dark bruise under his eye.

I make a mental note to check with Doc about the last time Harley took his meds. It’s not the standard mental meds I’m worried about—it’s the other pills Doc gives him, the ones that hold back Harley’s dark moods, make him less loons.

So I leave the Hospital alone. I pass the statue of the Plague Eldest, but I don’t pause. I don’t want him looking down on me, too.

Instead, I head up the path to the Recorder Hall. I see the people, still in full swing of the Season, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach, knowing that all of this is just contrived through Eldest’s water pump.

When I get to the Recorder Hall, I have to step over a pair of intertwined bodies to get up the stairs. Victria sits on a rocker on the porch, watching them, occasionally writing something in her small leather-bound book. I’m surprised she’s not with Bartie, not doing what the couple on the steps are doing, but Eldest did say the hormones affected the Feeders more than others.

Orion stands with his back to me, facing the picture of Eldest that looks out over the vastness of the Feeder Level. Before I can say anything, however, he lifts the picture from its nook on the wall and leans it against the floor of the porch.

“What are you doing?” I ask, shocked. The wall of the Recorder Hall looks naked without Eldest’s falsely welcoming face peering down from it.

“Time for an updated picture,” Orion says, picking the painting up and heading back inside the Hall. That makes sense. The painting of Eldest is at least a decade old. In the painting, his hair is still mostly brown, his eyes still clear, only a hint of wrinkles on his brow. I wonder what the new picture will show. Long white hair? Stooping shoulders that slope more because of years of limping? Maybe I’m off entirely. Maybe his age will make him regal.

“Hey,” Victria says without looking up at me from her book. She’s not talked to me much since Amy arrived, although we were really close before, when I lived in the Ward. She looks meaner now, more bitter than three years ago, when she was seventeen and I was thirteen. She was my first crush, then, but I don’t know why anymore.

“Hey. Writing another book?” Victria has authored nearly a dozen books and uploads them to the floppy network. They’re great—I don’t know how she does it. Really amazing stories about heroes during the Plague. Tragic stuff. My stomach sinks. I guess Eldest gave her “writing” goo before she was born.

“Not exactly.” She snaps her book closed and tucks it into the large pocket on her jacket. She doesn’t turn to me, though, she just stares out at the perfectly square and measured fields in front of her, dotted with couples.

I follow her gaze. “Hey, be careful out there. The Season’s pretty wild right now.” I’m glad Amy’s safe with Harley.

Victria doesn’t look at me. “Luthe walked me over. Orion’s here now; he can walk me back.”

Shrugging, I turn back to the wall and am surprised to see that the old painting of Eldest hid a plaque.

Hall of Records & Research Built 2036 CE Funded by FRX

Underneath that are letters I don’t recognize—from the Cyrillic or Greek alphabet, I’m not sure which. Then, beneath that:

“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.”

—Aristotle

There are eight other lines of text, each in a different language, two of which are nothing but unrecognizable symbols, but it’s not hard to guess that it’s the same quote in other languages.

“This is old,” I tell Victria, who doesn’t seem to care. “Really old. This has been here since the ship’s creation.”

She grunts to acknowledge that she’s heard me.

I think about the plans of the ship Orion showed me a few days ago. How once, the Feeder Level was focused on “Biological Research” and this “Hall of Records & Research” was its hub. The couple I had to walk over to get to the Recorder Hall are moaning, loudly.

This can’t be the kind of records and research the ship builders intended.

Eldest talks so much about how we’ve progressed, how much better we are with monoethnicity and our strong system of leadership. But right now, it seems to me that the austere words of this Aristotle sneer down at us, at how our research isn’t more than fornication.

I wonder at the timing of the new painting. This is twice now that Orion has led me to discover something new about the ship. How much do I know about him, really? I’ve hardly ever seen him anywhere except for the Recorder Hall, and even there he mostly stays hidden behind books and shadows, a ghost among words and digitized information. I may know everyone aboard this ship—their names, even their faces—but do I
really
know any of them? He could be anybody.

“You think they love each other?” Victria’s voice cuts through my thoughts. She’s not looking at me—she looking at the couple finishing on the Recorder Hall steps.

“No,” I say.

“It’s disgusting,” Victria mutters. “Can’t they control themselves?”

No
, I think.
They really can’t
.

“Orion says it’s human nature.”
It’s not
, I think.

“It’s not,” Victria says.

I look at her, surprised.

“If it was, I’d be like them,” she says, nodding at the couple by the steps. Well, frex. She’s right. “But I’m not. I have no... desire to be like that. Not with anyone I don’t—”

She cuts herself off, but I can guess what she’s going to say. Not with anyone she doesn’t love.

A week ago, I would have snorted at those words. Love was no more real than the “god” Amy worshipped. I’d heard of “love” in the same context that I heard of those religious fairy tales—as stories Sol-Earth people used to tell to make themselves feel better about the imperfect world they helped to create.

But now...

“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” Victria says.

“Is that from your new book?”

Victria snorts. She shifts in her seat, and I notice a stack of books—real books, from Sol-Earth—sitting on the porch floor beside her rocker. I frown. Orion, as a Recorder, should know better. Even Recorders are forbidden from messing with the ancient books. If Eldest catches him...

On the lawn in front of us, the woman’s hand rests on her bare belly, her fingers curling against her skin, as if she were clutching something invisible but precious.

“Do you think they’re happy, at least?” she asks, nodding her head at the couple. Before I can answer, she adds, “Because I never am.”

“Okay, let’s get this brilly painting hung!” Orion says cheerfully as he emerges from the Recorder Hall. The canvas he’s holding is so new that I can still smell the paint on it—it reminds me of Harley.

Orion twirls the canvas around to position it on the hook over the plaque, and I gasp. He looks up at me and smiles knowingly.

It’s not Eldest on the canvas.

It’s me.

“This Season is the start of your gen,” Orion says, sliding the wire on the back of the canvas over the hook and straightening the picture. “It’s almost time for Eldest to step down. For you to be the new leader.”

Painted me looks out on
Godspeed
from exactly where painted Eldest had looked. Harley’s done this—I recognize his style—although I never sat for a painting. He must have done it by memory—which would explain why he’s added all sorts of things into painted me that just don’t exist. The same confident tilt of the head that Eldest has, not me. The same clear eyes, the same assured posture. It doesn’t look like me at all. Is this how Harley really sees me? It’s not me at all.

“It looks exactly like you,” Victria says. She’s abandoned her rocker and stands behind me, peering over my shoulder to look at the painting.

“It looks like a leader,” Orion says.

A leader? No. A leader would know what to do.