Across the Universe

“What have you done?” Eldest screams, but not at me—at Amy.

I look up. While I was punching and yelling at Eldest, Amy snuck around the pump, found a tiny door in the side of it, and quite simply ripped out all the wires.

She holds the brightly colored wires in her hand. “Well, that did the trick,” she says, smiling.

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.”