Across the Universe (13 page)

23

AMY

MY FACE IS PRESSED AGAINST THE METAL, BREATHING IN THE dust that clings to the rivets curving around the interior wall. My eyes burn; my vision is so blurred all I can see is the grayness of the metal world.

Something inside me snaps.

I. Can’t.
Do
this. I can’t. It’s too much. This—all of this—
living
—I can’t. I just can’t. To have given it all up, and be left with nothing but this metal wall—

I slide down its slight curve, leaving a trail of sweat and tears and snot, but I don’t care. As I fall to my knees, the damp earth seeps wetness through the knees of my pants. My fists clench the dirt. It
feels
like dirt—real, honest dirt.

But it’s not.

“Are you all right?”

A man is standing on a path that connects the Hospital to a big brick building farther down.

I lift my filthy hands in front of my face, dirt falling in clumps from my fingers. I try to wipe the tears and snot from my face, but I’m pretty sure I’m just a muddy mess.

I press against the wall to stand. “You must think I’m crazy,” I choke out, attempting a half-laugh.

“I think you’re very upset,” the man says, rushing forward to help me stand, “but not crazy. What’s wrong?”

I snort. “Everything.”

“It can’t all be bad.”

“It really can.”

The man stands there, totally ignoring the mud I’ve smeared on his sleeve.

“I’m Amy, by the way.”

“Orion.”

“Nice to meet you.” As I say it, I realize it’s true. This is the first person on the whole ship who either didn’t creep me out, threaten to kill me, or both. He’s older, almost as old as my father, and although the thought feels like a splinter in my heart, it’s also a little comforting.

Orion starts leading me toward the brick building, away from the Hospital. “Let’s clean you up before I send you back on your way. What were you doing at the wall, anyway?”

“Looking for a way off this ship,” I mutter.

Orion laughs, a sincere, real laugh that makes me smile, too. His eyes light up, reminding me of Elder. Not so much because of the way he looks—everyone looks like they’re related to everyone else on this ship, with the same skin and same hair. No—it’s the kindness in his eyes that reminds me of Elder.

I pause at the steps of the brick building. RECORDER HALL it says in big, white-painted letters. Next to the big doors is a painting of Eldest. His cold eyes follow me as I mount the steps, and I try to avoid his painted gaze. Orion rushes ahead, saying something about a towel.

I push the door open after him, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior light.

Then I see it.

Earth.

Not the real Earth, obviously, but a big clay model.

I rush forward, my fingers reaching for the huge clay globe of Earth that hangs in the center of the giant entryway. There’s America, there’s Florida, where I was born, there’s Colorado, where I met Jason. My hands tremble as I stretch up to touch the dusty, bumpy clay, even though it’s far beyond my reach.

Orion snatches my hands away and scrubs them with a steaming hot, slightly damp towel. It feels almost as if he’s scrubbing away my skin, and when I pull away and look at my hands, they’re red, but clean. Before I can say anything else, Orion shoves the towel in my face and scrubs it as well. He’s laughing, and so am I—I haven’t been treated as if I was a child in need of a bath for a very long time.

“Clean again!” Orion says cheerily, tossing the towel behind him. He hands me a glass of cold water, and I drink it greedily. My muscles seem to relax, and I finally start to feel calm again. “So,” Orion says, nodding to the replica, “you found our model of Sol-Earth.”

By Sol-Earth, I guess he means my Earth.

“And here,” Orion adds, “is
Godspeed
.”

I hadn’t noticed the little model of the ship made to look as if it were flying from Earth before. It’s about the size of my head, whereas the model of Earth is so big my arms wouldn’t reach around it.

I flick the model with my hand. It swings on its wire, chaotically off-course. Then settles back, as if nothing has happened. It’s a ship. It can’t be bothered to care.

“Everything better now?” Orion asks, as if a warm towel is enough to solve any problem.

“I’ll be okay,” I say, but we both know I’m lying.

24

ELDER

“COME,” ELDEST DEMANDS, AND I KNOW BY THE WAY HE SAYS it, as if he’s a master speaking to a slave, that he means me and not Doc. I tear my gaze away from the closed hatch door and follow Eldest. Doc comes, too, but his steps are measured, an ominous drum beat on the floor.

When Eldest gets to the table against the wall at the end of the rows of cryo chambers, he stops and looks at me expectantly. My eyes are on that table, remembering how Amy huddled on its cold metal top, and how there was nothing I could do to help her.

“Well?” Eldest demands, his voice a short bark.

“What?”

“As leader, what would you do in this situation?”

“Um...” I say, wrong-footed. Typical Eldest. Just like him to throw a lesson at me when I’m least ready for it.

“Um, um!” Eldest mocks. “Be a leader! What should we do?”

“Uh—we need to see the vid records. And!”—I add when Eldest shows signs of derision—“we could check the wi-com locators, too.”

Eldest harrumphs, but does not insult my plan, just hands me a floppy. I press my thumb against the access login, and the floppy flashes into life. I tap in a few commands, searching for the video recordings of the cryo level. But when I find them, they show nothing but black.

“Something’s wrong with the vid screens,” I say, trying again and getting nothing but black.

Eldest grunts. “The vids were out the first time, too. I thought I’d taken care of that, but clearly he’s found a way around it. Try the wi-com locator.”

I tap more commands, this time accessing the map of
Godspeed
. Hundreds of blinking dots shine up at me: one dot for each person, each traced through the locator in the wi-com. I’ve done this before—it’s a good way to cheat at hide-and-seek, and it took Harley a full six months before he realized how I was so good—but I’ve never tried to use it for anything else. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I see an access dot on the fourth floor of the Hospital, and when I tap the screen there, the map shifts to the cryo level. Three dots blink on the cryo level now: one for my wi-com, one for Doc’s, one for Eldest’s. I press the time slider and move it back an hour. The wi-com map shows no one except—

“Doc,” I say, handing the floppy to Eldest for his inspection. “It was only Doc down here.”

“Some of the scientists have been in the secondary lab with me. They could have come out here, too. It would be easy. It’s not like I escorted them out. Any of the scientists could have been here earlier today.” Doc’s voice is emotionless and analytical. “I know what you’re thinking, Eldest, but you’re jaded. It could be any of them. They all have access to this floor; they all know about the cryo chambers and how they work.”

“Or it could be
him
,” Eldest says.

Doc’s face is like carved ice. “He’s dead,” he says, with such finality that whoever Doc is talking about, I’m convinced he’s not alive.

“Yes, he is,” Eldest growls, staring at Doc, hard. “But I’m not sure his influence is.”

Doc’s jaw juts forward, biting back whatever chutzy thing he was going to mouth off to Eldest.

“Either way,” Eldest says, “we’re going to have to figure out a way to fix the vids. And as for the wi-com locators—” He pauses mid-sentence, cocking his head as he listens to his wi-com.

He keeps his voice low, but I can still hear him say in a low growl, “She’s doing
what
?”

25

AMY

WHEN I GET BACK TO THE HOSPITAL, I BREATHE DEEPLY. IT’S almost a relief to smell the harsh, stingy scent of disinfectant in the air—at least there’s one difference between the air inside and the air outside.

I pass a family checking in their elderly father. The old man mutters to himself under his breath, too low and with too thick an accent for me to understand, but I can still tell he’s upset.

“What’s wrong with him?” the nurse at the desk asks in a bored voice as I wait for the elevator.

“He is having strange memories.” The young woman’s voice is empty, monotone. I pause, staring at them. If I were checking my father into the hospital, I think I’d be a little more emotional.

The nurse checks something off on a thin piece of plastic-like stuff. “We’ve seen a lot of this recently in the grays.”

The young man nods. “It’s their time.” The elevator doors open, but I just stand there, staring at them. Does he mean it’s the old people’s time to die? Surely not.

“Come with me,” the nurse says to the old man. He takes her arm and walks with her toward the elevator. The young couple leave the old man without saying goodbye.

“Please hold the elevator,” the nurse says. I jump out of my distraction and throw my arm out, catching the elevator doors.

“She has odd hair,” the old man says, staring at me, but he’s got very little emotion behind the words.

“Yes, I know,” the nurse says. She glances at me as she steps inside the elevator. “Doc has told us a strange girl would be taking up residency in the Hospital.”

“Um, yeah.” How am I supposed to respond to that? I press the third button, where my room is.

“The fourth floor, please,” the nurse says. She glances at the glowing screen on the elevator. “It’s almost time for meds; if we hurry, we’ll get you to your new room in time.” She pats the old man on the hand.

The elevator doors slide open to the third floor and I move to step out, glad to be breaking free from them. The old man seems as if he should have been checked into a nursing home years ago, even though he doesn’t look
that
old. But his eyes are vacant, his expression slack. It reminds me of Grandma, when her Alzheimer’s was bad enough that Mom put her in a nursing home. We visited her the Easter before she died, and she gave me a decorated egg. She called me by my mother’s name and didn’t know where she was, but she gave that egg to me.

I give the old man a watery sort of smile that’s mostly an apology.

When I had left earlier, there was only the tall man in the common room. But, as the nurse said, it is now time for medicine. The common room is crowded, and two nurses walk among those gathered inside, passing out big blue-and-white pills. I can tell by the uncomfortable silence that this room had once been buzzing with noise and activity—the dying strains of guitar music are still on the air—but it is as if I’d pushed pause. As soon as everyone turns my way, they freeze.

“Yeah,” says a friendly-looking guy with a grin, “this is gonna get good.”

Standing behind him, leaning against the big glass window, is the tall man who saw me this morning. His lips spread in a smile, but his grin is more malicious than the friendly guy’s.

Hostile stares follow me as I take a few steps into the room.

“I’m Harley,” the friendly guy says. “You must be the new res!”

One of the nurses fussily hands him three pills—one of the big blue-and-white ones, and two smaller ones, one green, one pink. The man swallows them in one big gulp and bypasses the nurse, striding toward me with an even bigger grin than before. “What’s wrong with everyone?” he calls over his shoulder. “This is the new res Elder told me about!”

Some girls near the elevator twitter nervously, then turn to whisper to each other. A wave of words and whispers washes over the crowd. I can’t distinguish what most of them are saying—really, that accent is hard to figure out sometimes. Still, it’s not like it’s hard to know what they’re talking about. It feels very much like high school lunch for the new girl: seeing everyone staring, hearing everyone talking, and knowing that everyone’s staring at and talking about
you
.

“What’s wrong with her?” I hear someone nearby whisper.

“Nothing’s
wrong
with me,” I say, loudly.

“Her hair...” says someone else behind me. When I whip around, my red hair spinning out behind me, I cannot tell who spoke, but they are all staring with brown eyes in dark faces framed by darker hair.

The tall man licks his lips at me. He doesn’t even pretend not to stare.

“Nice to meet you!” says Harley, interrupting the uncomfortable silence. When he shakes my hand, he leaves behind a bright stain of color on my palms. Harley’s skinny and lanky, with hair that sticks up everywhere, some of it streaked with paint. His face is bright and open. He reminds me a little of Elder that way.

“Everyone, this is the new girl. Elder knows her. New girl, this is everyone.” A few people look up politely; some actually smile. Most, however, look wary at best, disgusted at worse. The nurse closest to me jabs her finger behind her ear and starts whispering to nobody.

“What’s wrong with her?” I ask Harley as he leads me to the table he was sitting at.

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re all mad here.”

I giggle, mostly from nerves. “It’s a good thing I read
Alice in Wonder-land
. I definitely think I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole.”

“Read what?” Harley asks.

“Never mind.” All around me, eyes follow my every move.

“Look,” I say loudly. “I know I look different. But I’m just a person, like you.” I hold my head up high, looking them all in the eyes, trying to hold their stares for as long as possible.

“You tell ’em,” says Harley with another Cheshire grin.

“Where did you come from?” asks the tall man who keeps watching me, smirking.

“Who are you?” I demand, annoyed.

“Luthe.” His voice is low and gravelly.

“Well, quit staring at me like that,
Luthe
.” I cross my arms over my chest. Luthe’s smirk widens, and his gaze doesn’t leave me.

“Where
did
you come from?” a woman near Harley asks.

I sigh. There’s no real point in demanding that Luthe not stare at me; they’re all staring at me. “I came from Earth,” I say. “A long time ago.”

There are looks of disbelief—from most of them, actually—but a few glance up with a light in their eyes that makes me know that they, too, are very aware of how their sky is painted metal.

“Will you tell us about it?” Harley asks.

So I sit down in the seat he offers, ignoring how the woman closest to me scoots away. What can I tell them about Earth? How can I describe how the air smells different, how the earth feels richer, how you yourself are different, just from knowing the entire world is at your disposal? Should I start with the mountains always hidden in clouds and snow—or do they even know what those words are:
cloud
and
snow
and
mountain
? I could tell them about the different kinds of rain, pouring rain that’s perfect for when you want to stay inside and watch a movie or read, or piercing rain that feels like needles on your skin, or soft summer rain that makes your first kiss with your first love all the sweeter.

They look at me eagerly, waiting to hear about the planet I called home.

I begin with the sky.