A Million Suns

Page 10

Bartie doesn’t answer me, just flips open the smaller green book. His eyes don’t move over the letters, though, and I get the feeling he’s waiting for me to say or do something. I’m not so sure I’m just being paranoid anymore.
“Something’s going to have to change, and soon,” Bartie says, his eyes on the book. “It’s been building for months, ever since you turned them.”
“I didn’t—” I say automatically, defensive even though there was no real accusation in his voice. “I just . . . I mean, I guess I changed them, but I changed them back. To what they’re supposed to be. What they are.”
Bartie looks doubtful. “Either way, they’re different now. And it’s getting worse.”
The first cause of discord, I think, is difference.
Bartie turns the page of the slender green book. “Someone’s got to do something.”
The second cause of discord: lack of a strong central leader.
What does he think I’ve been doing? Shite, all I do these days is run from one problem to the next! If it’s not a strike in one district, it’s complaints from another—and every problem is just a little worse than the one before it.
Bartie glares at me. There’s no question about it now: there’s contempt and anger in his eyes, although his voice remains soft-spoken. “Why aren’t you stepping up? Why aren’t you keeping the order? Eldest might’ve been a chutz, but at least you didn’t have to worry about getting through the day when he was in charge.”
“I’m doing what I can,” I protest.
“It’s not enough!” The words bounce around the room, slamming into my ears.
Without thinking about it, I pound my fist onto the table. The noise startles Bartie; the shock of it makes me forget my anger. I shake my hand, pain tingling up my arm.
“What are you reading?” I growl.
“What?”
“What are you frexing reading?”
When I glance up, Bartie’s eyes meet mine. Our anger melts. We’re friends—even without Harley, we’re still friends. And even if the ship hasn’t exactly been a friendly place lately, we can still hold onto our past.
Bartie lifts the smaller book for me to see the title: The Republic, by Plato.
“I read that last year,” I say. “It was confusing as frex. That bit about the cave made no sense at all.”
Bartie shrugs. “I’m at the part about aristocracy.” He pronounces it “a-risto-crazy.” Eldest told me it was “ah-rista-crah-see” but he probably got it wrong too, and besides, what’s the difference?
I know the part he’s talking about well—it was the center of the lesson Eldest had prepared for me. It was also, essentially, the base of the entire Eldest system. “An aristocrat is someone born to rule,” I say. “Someone born with the innate talent to guide everyone else.”
Bartie can’t be thinking what I’m thinking: that the only reason I was born to rule was because I was plucked as an embryo from a tube full of other genetically enhanced clones whose DNA had been modified to make the ideal ruler.
“But even Plato says that the ideal state of an aristocracy can decay,” Bartie says.
The word decay reminds me of the entropy Marae mentioned, how everything is constantly spinning out of control, including the ship. Including me.
“An Eldest is like an aristocrat,” Bartie adds. He’s searching my eyes now, the book forgotten, as if he wants me to pick up some deeper meaning to what he’s saying. I pull my mind away from the broken engine and Marae’s lies and back to the conversation at hand.
“But the Eldest system isn’t decaying,” I say. “It works. It is working.”
“You’re not Eldest,” Bartie points out. “You’re still Elder.”
I shake my head. “In name only. I can rule without taking on the title.”
“Titles confuse me.” Bartie picks up The Republic again, closing it and staring at the cover. “This book talks about aristocracy and tyranny like they’re two different things, but I don’t see a difference.” He slides it across the table. “There are other forms of government, though.”
“What are you saying?” I ask warily.
Bartie stands and so do I. “You don’t have to be alone in this,” he says. “Look at the reality of the situation. Even if you are the one aristocrat on this ship, the one leader—you’re sixteen years old. Maybe you will be a great leader . . .”
“Will be?” I growl.
He shrugs. “People don’t respect you now. Maybe in another five or ten years.”
“People respect me because of what I am!”
Bartie drops the book on the table; its thud echoes on the metal surface. He heads toward the door, shouldering past me when he nears. “You’ve given us all the chance to think, to choose for ourselves what we want.” His voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “I respect that. But you’ve got to realize that maybe, when we’ve had a chance to think about it, we’re not going to choose you as our leader.”
Bartie picks up two books from the table—the history of the French Revolution and a book from the science room, Technical Instruction on Communication Systems. He abandons Plato’s Republic on the table and carries the other books across the room without speaking. When the door zips closed after him, though, it feels as if there are a lot of words drifting through the silence he leaves behind.
The last cause of discord. Individual thought.
He has no idea that I haven’t slept a full night in three months. That I do nothing but try to figure out how to keep a ship full of angry, passionate, self-aware people from self-destruction. That now, on top of everything else, I have the dead engine to worry about. All he sees is my failure.
If I can’t rule without Phydus, that’s all any of them will ever see.
Failure.
For giving them back their lives and not being able to save them from themselves.
When I step back outside, I have to blink to adjust to the brightness. Everything seems calmer here, more still, almost reverent. The Recorder Hall wasn’t loud, exactly, but it wasn’t quiet, either.
Something catches my gaze. I turn slowly.
Beside the door to the Recorder Hall is a painting, a portrait of me, held in a place of honor. It was one of the last paintings Harley ever made.
And someone’s shredded it.
It looks as if a giant claw of knives ripped through the canvas—five long gashes slice through my face and chest, spilling out strings and dried paint like bleeding wounds. The background behind me in the painting—a mirror of Godspeed’s fields and farms—is mostly untouched. Whoever did this took care to dismantle my face and leave the rest of the painting unharmed.
And it wasn’t like this when I entered the Recorder Hall. Whoever did this waited for the perfect opportunity—to make sure I saw, and to make sure I knew it was done when I was nearby.
I force myself to turn. My eyes dart around the fields and down the path. There’s no one here. The vandal fled already . . . or simply strolled into the Recorder Hall to fade among the crowd, watching me as I walked past.
14
AMY
BACK IN MY ROOM, I CAN’T QUIT PACING. ORION LEFT CLUES—for me? About something important, something life or death, apparently. Could it be about the death of the ship? The stopped engines?
And—how has he already given me the first clue?
I stop pacing and stare at my bedroom wall, catching sight of the chart I’d painted there. It’s been three months since Elder stopped Orion from murdering the frozens in the military. Before that I’d tried to identify the murderer by painting the list of victims on my wall. I trace the sloppy letters, the paint so thick that the edges leave tiny shadows on the white wall. Thin lines of black drips have dried like witches’ fingers reaching for the floor. One line is longer and thicker than the others. It cuts through the dusty ivy Harley had once, long ago, painted for his girlfriend, whose room this once was.
Black scrawls on a dirty wall. That is all Orion ever gave me, other than the bodies of victims.
I close my eyes and breathe deeply, remembering the way the paint smelled as I dipped Harley’s paintbrush into it.
Paint.
Harley.
That’s what Orion gave me. The only thing he ever really gave me. Harley’s last painting. When Harley was in the cryo level, piecing together bits of wire so he could open the hatch and slaughter himself in the vacuum of space, he gave his last finished painting to Orion—who gave it to me. After Harley’s death, I was too sad to look at it and asked that Elder take it to Harley’s room for me.
Which is where it must still be. . . . I race out of my room and down the hall. Harley’s room is easy to find—smudges of color create a rainbow path straight to his door.
His room smells of dust and turpentine, like old mistakes. The slats over his window stream artificial light over a small plant in a homemade pot that has long since died. Speckles of dust glitter in the bars of light.
It feels like a violation, stepping into this room. My hand lingers by the door frame, my thumb still resting on the biometric scanner.
I step inside slowly, still holding onto the door frame with one hand, reluctant to dive fully into this den of Harley’s past. My fingers slide from the wall to the dresser pressed against it, leaving four shiny paths in the dust on top. Is this three months worth of dust, or more? I never saw Harley in his room, only saw him leaving it once as we passed in the hall. I cannot picture him in it now. It is too small, too cramped. This is more like storage than a home.
But Harley was an artist, a true artist, and his storage is more precious than anything I’ve seen in a museum. Canvases are stacked against the wall. I flip through a row of them, all facing the room. One is nothing but splatters of paint and black ink, an experiment failed, I think. There’s another koi fish, the same kind of painting Harley did for me, but this one is more cartoonish and less realistic, with lighter colors that would be pastel if they weren’t so brightly clashing.
The last painting faces the wall, but even before I turn it around, I see the rips in the canvas, ragged edges leaking threads.
It’s a painting of a girl. There’s a smile on her lips, but none in her deep and watery eyes. She looks like she’s just emerged from a bath or a swimming pool; her hair is dripping wet, and droplets leave dark stains trailing down her face.
The cuts on the canvas were made in anger—they’re jagged and rough. Someone—Harley?—has gone back and tried to repair the canvas, but no one could put her face back together again.
Kayleigh. It has to be. My fingers run down the thick paint of her hair. This is the girl Harley lost, the one that made him lose himself.
Suddenly, I feel like a trespasser, violating Harley’s sanctuary. It doesn’t matter that he’s gone: this room is still his, and I do not belong.
I came for the painting. I should get it and go. I scan the room, looking for the one painting that belongs to me. There, there, under the window—the black black sky. The silver-white sprinkles of stars. The orangey-gold koi swimming around his ankle. Harley.