Across the Universe

They’re all a little older than me; this must be the twenty-year-old generation. They have dark skin, dark eyes, dark hair. And they’re all staring at me. I reach my hand up to my sweaty, braided red hair, bright under this false sun. My pale skin flashes white. I am different from them in every way. I am shorter, younger, paler, brighter. I am from another world.

Even from here, I can tell that their first reaction is wariness, too—but there are more of them than me. I want to speak. But none of them even smile at me. They just stare, mutely, eerily.

My heart seizes with a deep, primal fear.

“Hello,” I say, hating the quaver in my voice.

“What are you?” one of them, a man, asks. Not who. What.

“I—I’m Amy. I, uh, I live here now. Not here, I mean, at the Hospital.” I point to the white building in the distance behind me, but I don’t feel comfortable turning my back to them.

“What’s wrong with you?” the man asks. A few of the others nod, encouraging him to ask what they’re all thinking.

Goose bumps prickle under my cold sweat. I stare at them. They stare at me. I have never felt more different, more of a freak—more alone—than now. I bite my lip. These people are nothing like Elder. Elder may stare at my skin and hair, but he’s not staring out of fear. He didn’t look at me like I’m a sideshow.

“What’s going on here?” a gruff female voice calls. A woman emerges from the fields toward the City. She scans the crowd, her eyes lingering on me. She’s older than everyone else here, older even than the doctor at the Hospital, but there’s a spark in her missing from the others.

She swings her basket as she walks. It’s filled with broccoli as big as melons.

The old woman stops a few feet away from me, glaring at the crowd. She looks at me once, slowly, from head to toe, then faces the man who spoke to me. “All right,” she says in a soft, drawling voice. “Nothing to see here. Go on, get back to your work.”

And they do.

They don’t protest. They don’t argue. They just accept what she’s said, and they all leave. They don’t even talk to one another as they go. They just turn and wander away.

“Now,” the old woman says, turning back to me, “You’re living in the Hospital, I hear that right?”

I nod. “Yes, I mean—I—” I trip over my words. This world is crazy. Earlier, a man was going to attack me with a gardening trowel. Now, a little old lady is able to single-handedly disperse a group of people who looked like they were about to grab some pitchforks and turn into a proper mob.

The woman raises her hand to stop me. “I’m Steela,” she says. “Don’t know who you are or where you came from. But looks to me this is some of Eldest’s doing. Most of the strange stuff that happens here starts off on the Keeper Level.”

Does she... does she not like Eldest?

“I don’t want to get mixed up with none of that. Had enough of Eldest’s experiments when I lived in the Ward. Worked as head agriculturalist for three decades.” Despite herself, there’s a note of pride in Steela’s voice. She pauses, inspecting me. “You don’t look stupid.”

“I’m... sorry?”

“You’re weird-looking.” She says it bluntly, and I flinch. “You might be okay in the Hospital. The Ward’s used to weird. But you be careful out here. Most Feeders don’t know how to react to something strange.”

“But you—all you did was tell them to go away, and they did.”

Steela shifts her basket of broccoli to her other arm. “Thing is,” she says, “I’m one of them. You’re not.”

“So?”

Steela looks at the backs of the people who had crowded around me as they fade into the town. “You’ve got to understand. The Feeders are simple people. If you complicate their world, they’ll get rid of you just to eliminate the problem. Why do you think they round up every person with a shred of creativity and jam them in a building clear on the other side of the ship?”

My first instinct is to protest, but then I remember the man in the fields. The way he clutched his trowel, the blade of it turned to me.

“You best head back to where you came from,” Steela says. Without glancing back at me, she continues on her way into the town. She walks briskly, and quickly overtakes the man from the crowd who spoke to me. He turns as she passes, and he catches my eye.

Then he starts walking back to me.

I take three steps behind me, almost stumble, turn around, and race away faster than I’ve ever run. This is not my measured run from before. I am not pacing myself, counting my breaths, conscious of my strides. I race like a monster is chasing me; I race as if they were chasing me. I cannot go fast enough. I tear through the tall grass of the fields, the thin blades slicing my skin like paper cuts. I break corn stalks as I pound through the field.

I run and run and run.

Past the hospital, through the garden, past a pond.

And to the cold metal wall.

I stop, gulping at the air, my heart racing in my ears. I reach up with one hand and touch the wall. My fingers curl into a fist, but it falls weakly to my side.

And that’s when I realize the most important truth of life on this ship.

There is nowhere to run.

22

ELDER

THE HATCH DOOR SLAMS SHUT. BEHIND ME, DOC AND ELDEST are talking in low, frantic whispers.

“Do you think it was—?”

“That’s not possible.”

“Does he know?”

Pause.

“Of course not.”

“Did you—?”

“Of course not.”

But I can think of nothing but the stars.

It is like a piece of my soul had been lost, empty, and it is now filled with the light of a million stars.

They are all that I had ever dreamed of; they are nothing I ever expected.

How could I have ever thought the lightbulbs in the Great Room were stars?

I will never, never be the same.

I have seen stars.

Real stars.

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.