Across the Universe

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

47

AMY

THE NEXT MORNING, I SHOWER—THEN SHOWER AGAIN. BUT I cannot scrub away the bruises on my wrists or legs, and I cannot wash away the memory from my mind.

Fewer people populate the fields. Almost none.

People are animals, Harley had said.

They are. Luthe and the two Feeder men proved that. And that man and woman, who were right beside me, who didn’t even notice, or care....

Elder kissed me in the garden, just as the Season began. Was that a real kiss—or would any female lips have done in my place? My face burns. It had been real to me. But probably not to him.

I don’t care what sort of plague happened on the ship, or what sort of rules Eldest has made: the Season is not normal human behavior. There has to be some reason for it. Something in what they eat, or a chemical in the recycled air—maybe even a disease to make people act like rutting animals.

Then it occurs to me: the doctor. He should know this isn’t normal, he should know how to isolate—and stop—whatever trigger makes the people so barbaric.

I jump up and stride to the door, but my hand shakes as I reach for the button to open it. In here, I’m safe. Out there...

No.

I will not stay in my hidey-hole like a scared rabbit. The whole point of finding the doctor is to prove people aren’t animals. I can’t hide like one.

The doctor, however, can. He’s not on the third floor, or the fourth. A nurse in the lobby directs me to the second floor.

“But he’s busy,” she calls after me.

Dozens of women line the hallways on the second floor, some wearing hospital gowns and sitting by doors, apparently waiting for a room to open up, some wearing their plain tunics and wide-legged pants, holding neatly folded hospital gowns and waiting to change. This entire floor looks like a gynecologist’s office. In each room, there is a bed with stirrups, and nearly every bed is occupied. My steps slow. Why is a gynecologist’s office so crowded now? These women can’t think they’re pregnant already, can they? Not after just one day. I shake my head. I can’t be sure of that. On a ship where phones are built into your ears and paper-thin plastic is a whole computer, it’s not that crazy to think that maybe you can know if you’re pregnant as quickly as this.

None of the women talk.

“Get in line,” a nurse says, handing me a folded hospital gown.

“Oh, but I’m just here to see the doctor... ” I start, my voice trailing off. Obviously I’m here to see the doctor—obviously all the women here are. “I mean,” I add at the nurse’s impatient look, “not the, uh, gynecologist, but the other doctor, the one who’s usually on the third floor.”

“Only got one doctor,” the nurse says. She eyes my red hair and pale skin a little closer. “I take it you’re not here because of the Season?”

“No!”

She sighs. “Follow me.”

The nurse leads me down the hall, weaving in and out of clusters of women. Many of the women look up and stare at me with a surprised sort of curiosity, as one would look at a strange person on the bus. None of them speak; they don’t seem too greatly bothered by me.

“Only one doctor, with this many patients?” I ask the nurse.

“He’s got us nurses, and he’s got assistants—several of the scientists have been working under him directly for years.” The nurse sighs again. “But Doc won’t pick any as his apprentice. Not the trusting type.”

I wonder what trust has to do with hiring more help, but there’s no time to ask. The nurse stops by an open door and jerks her head for me to go in. I enter. The doctor is sitting at a chair between the stirrups of a bed, with a woman’s legs propped up in the bed’s stirrups. Everything the woman probably doesn’t want me to see is right there.

“Oh my gosh! I’m sorry!” I cover my eyes and turn to go. Why did the nurse let me in the room in the middle of an examination, a very personal, private examination?

“It’s okay,” the doctor says. “What did you need me for?”

“I don’t think she wants me here....”

“She doesn’t mind. Do you mind?” he asks, peering up at the woman over her knees.

“No, of course not,” she says. She sounds bored.

All I know is that if I were lying on a stirrup bed with my legs in the air and my private bits just out there for everyone to see, I’d be mortified. My mother made me go to the gynecologist after I first started getting serious with Jason, and I have never had a more uncomfortable half hour in my life. I didn’t want anyone in the room with me, up to and including the doctor, the nurse, and my mother, let alone some stranger.

But this woman couldn’t care less. I risk opening my eyes, and she meets my gaze with a calm look. She doesn’t seem bothered in the least by my presence.

“I, um...” I try to ignore what the doctor is doing with that clear goo and that metal thing that looks like a torture device. “I wanted to ask you about the Season.”

“Ah,” the doctor says. He’s just going right on with his examination. I mean, couldn’t he stop for a second?

“Does it change people?” I say it all at once, trying to get it over with as quickly as possible.

“What do you mean?”

The doctor’s metal thing slips. The woman grimaces, but doesn’t say anything. She’s staring at the ceiling blankly.

The glazed look in her eyes, the passive way she’s lying there, it all reminds me of the way that couple acted when I was attacked. Those people’s apathy wasn’t normal... but neither is this woman’s. In fact, all the women I saw in the hallway were a bit off. They were all sitting so patiently, so quietly... so blankly. With that many women all lined up to take a gynecological exam... they should be impatient, they should be talking, they should be nervous or disgusted or anxious or a thousand other things than nothing.

“What’s your name?” I ask the woman. Her face shifts downward so she can see me, and I can tell that she’d forgotten I was there but isn’t entirely put out about it.

“Filomina,” she says in an even tone, even though the doctor’s doing something to her now that would have made me squirm with unease.

“Are you happy?” I know it’s a weird question, but it was the first thing I could think of.

“I’m not unhappy.”

“Amy, what do you want?” the doctor says.

“It’s like she’s not even human,” I say. “Can’t you tell? You’re a doctor! You should know this isn’t normal!”

“What’s not normal?” the doctor asks as the woman lets her head slide back to the center of the pillow. She stares blankly up at the ceiling, her eyes blinking but otherwise showing no sign of life.

“This,” I say. “Her.”

The doctor squirts clear lube jelly on the woman’s stomach, then rubs a flat-bottom handheld instrument across it. I think, at first, that he’s doing an ultrasound, but there’s no screen to show a fuzzy black-and-white picture of a fetus. Instead, a small monitor on top of the handheld device beeps.

STATUS: HORMONE LEVELS OPTIMAL

GENETIC LIKELIHOOD OF PHYSICAL DEFORMITIES: MEDIUM

GENETIC LIKELIHOOD OF MENTAL DEFORMITIES: MEDIUM-HIGH

INCESTUOUS INFLUENCE ON GENETIC SEQUENCE: HIGH

“Well, Filomina, looks like you are pregnant!” the doctor says as he puts away his device.

She sighs with contented delight—the only real emotion she’s had the whole time.

“How do you know?” I say.

The doctor turns to the table by the bed. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“They’ve only been doing it for like a few days. Don’t you have to wait a couple weeks before you can tell someone’s pregnant?”

The doctor wipes off the lube jelly from Filomina’s bare stomach, then rubs her skin with something that smells of rubbing alcohol. He reaches down and opens a drawer from the cabinet beside the stirrup bed and pulls out a syringe as long as my forearm. The long glass cylinder is filled with amber liquid. Near the plunger is a tiny label; I can tell words are written on it, but I am too far away to read them.

“Her hormone levels indicate that she’s got a good chance at fertilization. And if she wasn’t pregnant before, she will be after this. This will sting a little,” the doctor adds to Filomina, who doesn’t seem to care.

Then he stabs her with the needle, ramming it deep inside her—into her uterus, I’m guessing.

I shrink back in horror, my own stomach clenching at the sight, but Filomina just gives a tiny uh! of pain, and then it’s over. The doctor pushes down on the plunger, and the amber liquid shoots into Filomina.

“That stuff is there to change the baby,” I say in a choked whisper.

The doctor looks at me, still depressing the plunger. “It makes the baby stronger, better.”

My mouth is dry. I remember what the girl in the rabbit field said about the “inoculations.”

“Is that why all these women are so odd? Because you changed them before they were born?”

“All I did,” the doctor says as he starts to pull the needle from Filomina’s abdomen, “is give this baby additional DNA sequencing, so that the part of its DNA that’s weaker because of incest can be remade. I’m not affecting its personality.”

“If you change it, you are.”

The doctor pulls the needle out. I can’t stop staring at the tiny jewel of blood rising from the puncture.

The doctor drops the needle in a waste bin and finally turns his full attention to me.

“This is all perfectly normal,” he says, stressing each word. “There is nothing wrong here. This is the way normal people are.”

“Oh, yes,” Filomina says in a flat monotone. “This is normal. I’m normal.”

I back away, fumbling with the doorknob. I spill out of the room and run down the hall. The women stare at me silently as I race past. And even though I know their eyes aren’t interested in me, the soullessness of them fills me with a dread I cannot explain.

48

ELDER

“TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE BAT. HOW I WONDER WHAT you’re at.”

“Pardon?” I ask, smiling.

“Just a text from Sol-Earth,” Orion says, turning back to the floppy in his hand.

I didn’t expect to see Orion in the Ward’s common room again, but I’m glad he’s here. A friendly face. Harley commed me yesterday to say he took my shift in the cryo level. I’ve been stuck with Eldest most of the day.

“Have you see Harley or Amy?”

Orion shakes his head.

“What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you didn’t want Eldest or Doc to see you.”

Orion laughs. “Oh, no worries. They’re both quite busy, I’m sure.” I almost think he’s trying to tell me something secret with his eyes, but whatever it is, I can’t figure it out. Sighing, Orion turns back to his floppy. “These Sol-Earth texts are just so fascinating.” He taps on the screen, flipping through different texts.