Across the Universe

There they are.

My parents.

Or... well, at least their bodies are there. Under the blue-flecked ice.

The room is cold, so cold, and I shiver. My arms prickle with goose bumps. The glass coffins are cold and dry. My fingertips skid across the top as I run my hands over my mother’s face.

“I need you,” I whisper. My breath fogs the glass. I wipe it away, a sheen of wet sparkling on my palm.

I squat, my face parallel to hers. “I need you!” I say. “It’s so... strange here, and I don’t understand any of them, and—and I’m scared. I need you. I need you!”

But she is ice.

I spin to Daddy. Through the ice, I can see the stiff bristles of his beard. When I was little, he’d rub his face against my bare stomach, and I’d scream in glee. I’d give anything to feel that now. I’d give anything to feel anything but cold.

The glass is fogged and the ice isn’t crystal clear, but I can see where Daddy’s hand is. I rub my pinky against the cold glass, pretending that his finger will wrap around mine in a promise.

I don’t realize I’m crying until the tears splash on the coffin. “Daddy, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t get up, Daddy. They were too strong. If it wasn’t for Harley—” My voice cracks. “Daddy, you said you’d protect me! You said you’d always be there for me! I need you now, Daddy, I need you!”

I pound my fists against the cold hard glass surrounding the ice. My hands crack and bleed, smearing crimson across the glass.

“I NEED YOU!” I scream. I want to break through the glass, to rub life back into his bristly-bearded face.

My body falls limp. I curl up under their cold, lifeless forms, draw my knees to my chest, sob dry, empty sobs, and scrabble to fill my lungs with air that is too thin and weak.

One giant droplet of condensation slips off the glass and plops onto my cheek.

I rub it, and the warmth of my hands brings life back to me.

It doesn’t have to be like this. I may be awake, and it may be impossible to put me back inside a cryo chamber... but that doesn’t mean I can’t see my parents.

I stand. This time, I don’t look for my parents’ faces in the ice. This time, my eyes seek out the tiny black box at their heads, the one with the blinking green light. The one with the switch under the cover.

It can’t be that hard. Flip the switch. That’s all I have to do. I will stand here and wait. I will pull them from the box when it melts so that it won’t drown them. I will help them climb out of their coffins. I will wrap them with towels, and I will hug them, and they will hug me. Daddy will whisper, “Everything will be okay now,” and Mom will whisper, “We love you very much.”

They’re essential, a small voice whispers in my mind. I see the row of flags on the bottom of the door, the symbol for the FRX, the Financial Resource Exchange. They are a part of a mission that’s greater than me.

Mom’s a genetic splicer, a biological genius. Who knows what life we’ll see on this new world? She’s needed.

But Daddy—he’s with the military, that’s all. He’s a field analyst. He’s sixth in command, let the five in front of him be essential, not him. They can take care of the new world; Daddy can take care of me.

“I’m the failsafe.” I can hear Daddy’s strong, proud voice in my mind, just like the day he told me we’d be a happy frozen family, wasn’t I excited? “That’s my mission—if anything goes wrong, I’ll be there.”

A glorified backup plan. They needed him in case something went wrong. But what if nothing went wrong?

If I leave them Mom, maybe they won’t mind that I take Daddy back. He’s not really needed.

My hand is already on the box over Daddy’s head. I run my finger across the biometric scanner at the top. The light blinks yellow. Access denied. I don’t have high security clearance; I’m not important enough to be able to open up the box and flip the switch and wake Daddy up.

But I can smash it. The whole idea plays out in my mind—my eyes wild and my hair swinging as I beat the box with my fists until it shatters and I can press the button and melt Daddy.

It’s such a ridiculous image that I laugh. A high-pitched hysterical laugh that breaks with a dry sob.

I can’t wake up Daddy. He’s needed. I know he is, even if I don’t want to admit it. I’m proof enough that he’s needed—they wouldn’t have let me come if he weren’t. He and Mom knew what it meant when they signed up for the ship. I remember that first day. They were both willing to say goodbye to me so they could be on this ship. Daddy had already arranged it so that I could walk away from them. When he hugged me before he was frozen, he was hugging me goodbye. He never expected to see me again. He didn’t even pack me a trunk. He gave me up so that he could wake up on another planet.

I can’t take his dream away.

If he can say goodbye to me, I can say goodbye to him.

Besides, I’m not so selfish as not to remember my status. I was the nonessential one, not them. If food won’t grow or animals won’t live, Mom will make it happen. If there’s a bunch of evil aliens already on the new planet, Daddy will take care of them.

Either way, they’re the difference between a whole planet of people living and a whole planet of people dying.

I can’t take them away from that. I can’t kill their dreams, and I can’t kill the future inhabitants of the planet I won’t reach until I’m older than them.

I can wait. I can wait fifty years until I see them again.

I slide their trays back into their cryo chambers and push the doors shut, then head silently back to the elevator and my lonely room.

I can wait.

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.