Across the Universe (30 page)

73

AMY

I WOULD HAVE FELT SORRY FOR ELDEST’S BROKEN NOSE AND bloody mouth if he weren’t such an evil, twisted tyrant to start with. But considering he’s planned to kill me before—and again, just now, when he told Doc to leave me on the fourth floor—well, let’s just say I didn’t have too much sympathy for the old jackhole.

The doctor puts a hand on Elder’s shoulder. “Elder, we need the drug. This ship won’t operate without the control it affords us.”

Elder almost agrees with him, I can see it in his eyes. “That’s not true,” I say, willing Elder to look at me, to remember how the drug killed me inside. “Yes, it will be harder without the drug. Yes, it may be easier for us all to bear a lifetime without the sky if we’re doped up beyond thought. But that’s no life, not really. In amongst all this sorrow”—I meet Elder’s eyes then, and we both know I’m talking about Harley now—“there is also joy. You can’t have one without the other.”

Elder stumbles away from Doc and Eldest, closer to me.

“I can’t be the kind of leader you want me to,” he says. “I will never, ever be the kind of leader you want me to be. And I will be better because of it.”

Eldest whirls around to Doc. “Do it.”

“Do what?” I say.

Eldest has Doc’s full attention. “We’ll make another. Use different DNA replicators. We’ll get rid of this one and make another.”

“Do
what
?” Elder says. His eyes are wide, as if he’s afraid of his own thoughts.

Eldest turns on Elder. “You frexing
idiot
. I can’t believe we share the same DNA!”

“What are you talking about?” Elder’s voice quavers. “Are you ... my father?”

“There,
there
!” Eldest says, pointing. Beyond that wall is the table with the needles, and the big cylinder with golden-yellow liquid and tiny circles of embryos inside.

“What—some of your DNA was injected into my mother?”

Eldest roars in frustration. “You never had a mother! We’re the same person! Elders are cloned—same DNA, same everything. All I did was pluck you from the jar and put you in a tube sixteen years ago.”

“We are not the same,” Elder says, disgusted.

“Down to our genetic code, we are exact replicas of every Eldest before us.”

But I know that’s not what Elder meant when he said he wasn’t the same.

“That’s why we shared access; that’s why my biometric scan would get us anywhere,” Elder mumbles. I think about the pleasant lady’s voice in the computer: “Eldest/Elder access granted.” The computer never distinguished between Elder and Eldest because there was no difference between the two.

“I don’t care,” Elder says louder, staring right at Eldest. “It doesn’t matter to me that we’re the same. I’m
not
you, and I won’t make the decisions you’ve made. I don’t care about your lessons; I don’t care about your rules. I’m
done
listening to you!”

I hear soft footsteps behind me. Everyone else is so focused on Elder and Eldest they don’t notice the man with scars on his neck, the one walking quietly forward. Orion reaches for the bucket of Phydus that Eldest dropped when Elder punched him. The movement of him bending down catches Doc’s eye, then Elder’s, then Eldest’s. Eldest’s eyes grow wide with shock.

“He’s here,” he whispers so softly I’m not sure of his words. His eyes dart to the doctor’s and then back to the man before him. “You swore he was dead.”

“And I am dead, Eldest,” the man says, lifting the bucket up. “The Elder you made is dead, gone. I’m no longer that Elder. I’m Orion now. The Hunter.”

Eldest opens his mouth—to rant, to rage, to rave—but Orion silences him by upturning the bucket of Phydus on his head.

“Stand back! Don’t touch it!” the doctor screams as the gooey-thick liquid slides down Eldest’s body. Orion steps back, smiling. Elder looks as if he’d like to rush to Eldest’s aid, but stops himself.

Eldest’s face was scrunched in a mask of anger, but the mask slips away as Phydus coats his skin. He cocks his head like a curious child. His knees crumple, and he flops to the ground, legs splayed in front of him, arms behind him, supporting his weight. A slow, easy smile spreads across his face, then falls into nothingness. He looks, for a moment, more gentle and at peace than I’ve ever seen him before. His hands slide on the smooth floor, and his body crashes all the way to the ground. He doesn’t catch himself; his head cracks on the tile so hard I wince. Phydus spreads around his body like a bloodstain. I watch the slow in-and-out of his breaths until they stop.

Eldest has calmed to death.

74

ELDER

“YOU KILLED HIM.”

Orion looks up at me and grins, clearly pleased with himself. “You’re welcome,” he says.

Part of me thinks this is a great thing, killing Eldest. He was a tyrannical dictator. He was cruel. He never saw anyone on this ship, even me, as a real person.

But he’s also the man I’ve lived with for three years, the one who had the biggest hand in raising me, and the one I always used to think I could turn to.

And now he’s just a gooey mess.

I want to ask why, but I know why.

Despite myself, my eyes fill with burning tears. He was the closest thing to a father I had.

Orion sets the bucket down. He walks toward me, his hand outstretched. I take it without thinking—my eyes are still on Eldest’s motionless body.

“I knew you’d be on my side!” Orion says, churning my arm up and down in an enthusiastic shake. “I wasn’t sure—you’d been under Eldest’s thumb for so long, and you didn’t respond to the unpluggings like I thought you would—but I just knew you’d be on my side in the end.”

“Your side?” I shift my blurry gaze from the dead Eldest to Orion—who, as the Elder older than me, is technically now the Eldest of the ship.

“When I started saying I didn’t like the way of things, Eldest sent me to Doc. Told him to stick me on the fourth floor. Didn’t he, Doc?”

Doc nods mutely. His eyes are wide with shock, or terror—I cannot tell which.

“Doc was my friend, weren’t ya, Doc?”

Doc doesn’t nod this time, just stares down at Eldest’s body. “I thought, with enough Phydus ...” he whispers. I turn my face away from Doc. He always did think that anyone could be cured if he threw enough drugs at him. Doc never believed people were more powerful than medicine.

“Couldn’t let Eldest find me, so the first thing to go ...” Orion raises his hand to where his wi-com should be, and he mimes clawing at his neck. When he opens his hand, I see a snaking scar across his thumb. “It was terrible. Worst thing I ever did, ripping that out of my own flesh, with my own hands. Felt like I was ripping my soul out.”

There is silence in the room, punctuated only by the occasional drip of Phydus on the ground.

Orion continues. “When Doc saw the wi-com dot was gone, and since Eldest hardly ever leaves the Keeper Level ... it wasn’t hard to hide the truth from them. The old Recorder had ... an accident, and I blended into my new life.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell?” Amy asks, her eyes locked on Doc.

“I didn’t know,” Doc whispers apologetically to Eldest’s body. “I thought—I’d hoped—suicide.” His eyes raise to Orion. “I thought—that night, at the Recorder Hall. That
was
you.” He pauses. “But it had been seventeen years ....”

“You could have found me if you’d just gone next door. You know, the whole first year I stayed hidden, behind the walls, sleeping with the wires and pipes. But then I realized you and Eldest weren’t even looking. I just had to give myself a new name, a new home, and the idiots you made accepted me without question.

“But,” he continues, turning to Elder, “I always felt bad. About what I knew Eldest was doing. So much about this ship is wrong.” His eyes bore into mine. “You’ve only just scratched the surface with Phydus. Have you learned about the ship’s engine?” I nod. “Good,” Orion says. “And you knew about the mission, obviously?”

“The mission?” I say.

“The real mission behind this ship?”

“What do you mean?” Amy asks. She walks over to me and weaves her hand in my mine, giving me her strength just as I gave her mine when she cried.

“Have you never questioned why we’re here?” Orion asks me, ignoring Amy.

“To operate the ship—”

“The ship is on autopilot. It can get to Centauri-Earth without us.”

“To—”

“No,” Orion cuts me off before I can begin. “Whatever Eldest has told you was a lie. He kept much from you, after I betrayed him. No, there is only one reason why we’re aboard this ship, and that reason lies beyond this door.” He points to where the cryo chambers are, where Amy’s parents are.

“What do you mean?” Amy says again, her voice more urgent.

“You know at least what the frozens are here for, right?”

“They are experts at terraforming, and environment, and defense.”

Orion snorts. “They are experts at taking the planet away from us.”

“You don’t make any sense,” I say, squeezing Amy’s hand tighter.

“
They’re
the colonists, not us. Never us. When we finally land, they’ll use us. As slaves in their terraforming, and—if there are hostile aliens on the planet—as soldiers. They plan to work us or kill us. They put our great-great-great-whatever grandparents on this ship so that they could breed slaves and soldiers. That’s all.”

Amy gasps. “That’s why you’re killing the ones with military experience. You think they’ll make the people born on the ship fight when they land.”

“I know they will!” Orion roars. I can see the Eldest in him now, when he shouts. “And if there are no hostiles to fight, then they’ll use that military experience to force us into slave labor. It’s the perfect plan: growing expendable people while they sleep!”

“But why me?” Amy says, her voice a desperate whisper. “When you unplugged me, surely you could tell I wasn’t my daddy? Why didn’t you put me back in before I melted? Why did you let me wake up?”

A slow, evil smile spreads across Orion’s face. His gaze pierces mine. I clench my fists. Orion cocks an eyebrow at me.

“I keep my secrets,” Orion says, glancing at Amy.

“Daddy isn’t a slave driver,” Amy says. “And if there were ‘hostile’ aliens, he wouldn’t force you to fight.”

Orion shrugs. “How do you know that for sure? And,” he adds before Amy can say anything else, “either way, better safe than sorry.”

“Your kind of safe means killing my dad!”

Orion glances behind her at Eldest’s body. Clearly, he has no hang-ups about killing.

“If you don’t like it ...” he says, walking over to the cryogenic freezing tube on the other side of the room. He opens the door and sweeps his arm to display the interior. “By all means, refreeze yourself. Sleep until we reach planetside, and see what kind of man your father really is. That is,” he adds, thinking, “if Elder and I decide to let your father live until planet-landing.”

“You’re as evil as him!” Amy hisses, pointing at Eldest’s lifeless body.

“But you know what’s really gonna twist you?” Orion asks. “The fact that Elder sort of agrees with everything I’m saying.”

“No, I don’t—” I start when Amy looks back at me with her beautiful accusing eyes.

“And the fact that Elder here’s the one who gave me the idea for unplugging them in the first place.”

Amy covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes fill with disgust, and it’s directed at me.

“Don’t believe him,” I plead.

“No, really, it’s true. You have realized that, haven’t you, Elder?” Orion sneers, laughing, and I wonder how much he knows. I search his face, and see mine in it. We share the same DNA, but we aren’t the same person. But maybe the same emotions and self-doubts and fears are woven into our identical genetic code.

“Why don’t you tell her?” Orion continues. “Or would you like me to?”

“Tell me what?” Amy asks.

I stride across the room to where Orion is standing beside the cryogenic freezer. My hands are clenched into fists.

“She’s a pretty thing,” Orion whispers to me, low so Amy and Doc can’t hear. “Very pretty. Is that why you did it?”

“Shut up,” I growl.

“Don’t let her get in our way.”

I know that there are all sorts of logical reasons why I should do it. Orion is as crazy as Eldest, his method of control just as twisted, if not more so. I’ll never be able to talk him out of killing the frozens, and he needs to be punished for the deaths he has already caused.

But those aren’t the reasons why I shove Orion into the cryofreezer and lock him inside.

“Let me out!” Orion screams.

I spin the dial. Cryo liquid held in the tank over the freezer bursts open, pouring blue-specked water over Orion’s head.

“Frex!” he splutters. He claws at the door, his face twisted with pure terror. Amy comes up beside me, watching Orion through the little window in the door. When he sees her, his eyes fill with an evil glint. He opens his mouth to shout something at her.

I spin the dial again.

The cryo liquid pours faster, filling his mouth, drowning him. His face is under the liquid now, his cheeks puffed out, his eyes bloodshot and popping. One hand presses against the window, and I notice the jagged scar on his thumb, the only thing that separates his thumbprint from mine.

“Freeze him now, or he’ll die,” Doc says. “He might die anyway.” He shrugs. “You didn’t prep him for freezing.”

I look into Orion’s eyes and see myself in them.

I slam my fist into the big red square button.

A flash of white steam escapes the box.

Orion’s face is pressed to the glass, his eyes bulging.

But he can no longer see us.

75

AMY

ELDER STARES THROUGH THE SMALL WINDOW INTO ORION’S frozen face. I wrap my arms around him from behind. I try to pull him back, but he won’t move, so I just hold him.

“It’s over,” the doctor says. “Unless you wake him back up, you’re Eldest now.”

I can feel Elder stiffen under me.

Elder shakes his head. “Let the people he tried to kill judge him when they land.”

I think of my father, and what kind of judge he will be to this man, and I am not the least bit sorry for him.

“How am I going to lead a ship full of people?” Elder asks, his voice catching. “When the Phydus wears off, they’re going to realize the lies. They’re going to be angry. They’re going to hate Eldest, and me.”

“They won’t hate you,” I whisper into the back of his neck. “They will relish their anger, because that is the first emotion they will have ever truly felt, and then they will realize there are other emotions, and they’ll be glad of them.”

“Will you stay with me?” Elder whispers. His breath fogs the glass covering Orion’s face.

“Always.”

Elder pushes his ear button, and he makes an announcement to the entire ship, just as Eldest did before when he told the ship to fear me. His first announcement is simple. In childlike terms, he explains that they’ve all been under the influence of a drug, and that they will slowly start to regain their own emotions. Elder encourages them to remain calm as they begin to feel for the first time, especially the pregnant mothers.

Doc begs me for the wires to fix the pump.

“We should at least keep putting the hormones in the water,” he insists, “so that they don’t start mating with relatives.”

“Most people don’t want to commit incest,” I say dryly. “When they wake up from the drug, we’ll just explain to them what incest is, and what it does, and that they should get a blood test before they have sex. You’ve got those scanner things that test DNA. We could start mapping out family trees again.”

I hand the wires to Elder.

Doc turns to him. Elder just looks at him coldly. “No more drugs,” he says.

And that’s that.

Later, when men with thick gloves have taken Eldest’s poisoned body and thrown it out of the hatch after Harley, when Doc has put Orion in an empty cryo chamber, when we’re safely back in my room with Harley’s painting watching over us, Elder gives his second announcement. It is a repeat of Eldest’s last one: Everyone is to go to the Keeper Level.

Before we go up there, we discuss the truth.

“That’s what killed Harley,” I say. “The truth. When he heard about how he’d never leave the ship—” I choke on my words.

“He couldn’t live with that truth,” Elder finishes for me.

“We should have known that it wasn’t Eldest killing the frozens. He would have known it would make you seek the truth, and he wanted to keep it from you, from everyone.”

Elder looks down at his hands, then up at Harley’s painting. “A part of me thinks that we cannot share the truth, not all of it.”

I start to speak, but Elder cuts me off.

“A part of me thinks that the truth will kill them all, just like it killed Harley. This is a big truth, a great truth. We cannot just say it. We must let people discover it.”

Elder goes to the Keeper Level alone. He will stand on the platform, and he will tell the people, who are
feeling
for the first time, some of the truth, but not all of it.

He will tell them that he is Eldest now. That the old Eldest is dead.

He will tell them about Phydus, about the hormones in the water, about the lie of the Season.

They will be angry, furious even, but then they will realize that they are
feeling
, and they will know that Elder was right to do as he did.

He will tell them of the engine, but not how far behind schedule we are. Anyone with any interest in science, mechanics, engineering, will go with the Shippers and will see the engine, and will try to help the scientists solve the problem.

Elder will not tell them about Orion, or the frozens.

But he won’t keep the truth from them, either. While he is telling them as much of the truth as can be told, I’m writing out all I know in pages ripped from the notebook my parents brought from Earth. I fold the pages in half, and leave them in the Recorder Hall. They’re there for anyone who looks to find.

Many won’t. They won’t care to know; they won’t seek any kind of truth. Some will—and they will not believe the truth. But others will need the truth, and crave it, and they will seek it, and accept it for what it is.

Later, Elder and I will continue working in the Recorder Hall. I will rewrite as much of the falsely written history as I can. All the files of Earth’s past will be made available to all the people. And Elder will have his people start recording the lives of the ship’s inhabitants, just like before, so that they may feel they are more than forgotten shadows of a ship floating through empty space.

But now, I open my blue notebook to the remaining blank pages. I hold the pen over the first page, then slowly scratch out the first words.

Dear Mom and Daddy , , ,