Across the Universe

Page 44

I taste bile on my tongue. This isn’t right. All those times Amy paced in her tiny room, declaiming the abnormality of life aboard this ship—I was just humoring her, never understanding what she really meant. Now I do. For a brief moment, my vision goes as my rage surges, and I literally see nothing but red.
“If this Phydus is in the water, and it takes away our emotion, why am I so frexing furious right now?” I grip the edge of the table, feeling the hard, smooth wood under my fingers. I wonder if I have the strength to overturn it on Eldest.
“You’re upset? Why?”
“This isn’t right! You can’t go around taking away emotion! You can’t kill one emotion without killing them all! You’re the reason all those Feeders are so empty! You and this drug!”
“Not everyone is affected.”
“It’s in the water!” I shout, beating my fist on the table and making the water pulse within its glass. “We all drink the water!”
Eldest nods, his long white hair swishing. “But this ship cannot afford to be run by imbeciles. We need the Feeders to grow our food unquestioningly, but we need some people, people like you, to think, to really think.”
“The Hospital ...” I say, thinking furiously. “All of us who are ‘crazy.’ We’re not crazy at all—we’re just not affected by the Phydus in the water. But how ...” Before Eldest can answer, it hits me. “The mental meds. The Inhibitor pills. They inhibit Phydus; they prevent Phydus from affecting us.”
“We need creative thinkers,” Eldest says. “We need you to think for yourself, we need the scientists to think so they can solve the fuel system problem. We provide the genes—you saw the DNA replicators—and then we give those with inborn skills the Inhibitor pills so they can bypass Phydus. We need their minds clear.”
“Why artists?” I say, thinking of Harley, of Bartie, of Victria.
“Artists have their purpose. They provide a level of entertainment to occupy the Feeders. They may lack emotion, but even monkeys grow bored. Some artists also think outside their DNA replication. We are facing a problem in the engines that decades of intensive research have not solved. We don’t know how creativity will manifest itself. Your friend, Harley? He was given spatial and visual creativity. He became a painter—but he could have just as easily become a drafter, or even, with the right twists of mental desire, an engineer.”
“We’re just pawns. A means to an end. Toys you manufacture to keep playing your game.”
“This game is life, you chutz!” Eldest says, his voice rising. “Don’t you understand? We’re just trying to survive! Without the Season, the people would have nothing to live for. Without Phydus, they would tear down this ship in mad fury. Without the DNA replicators, we’d all be inbred imbeciles. We need this to survive!”
“What if one of those ‘brainless’ Feeders could grow up to solve the engine problem?” I ask. “But you’ve got him so drugged up with Phydus he can’t think? Why not let them all think, let them all work on that problem?”
Eldest narrows his eyes at me. “Have you forgotten your lessons? What are the three main causes of discord?”
“First: differences,” I say automatically. I don’t want to play his game, but it’s habit to answer him immediately.
“Then?”
“Lack of leadership.” Now I just want to see his point.
“And last?”
I sigh. “Individual thought.”
“Exactly. Phydus takes away individual thought, except from those specifically designed by us, who can help us. It’s our best chance.”
Eldest leans across the table and taps his fingers on the metal until I meet his eyes. “It’s very important for you to understand this,” he says, gazing at me intensely. “This is our best chance to survive.”
He pauses.
“This is our only chance.”
65
AMY
THE DOCTOR BRUSHES MY ARM ASIDE. “I WANT YOU TO SEE this.”
“What’s happening?” I ask hollowly.
The doctor glances impassively at Steela’s empty body. “Oh, that.”
“That? That?” I scream. “That was a person just a moment ago! What did you do?”
The doctor walks around the bed and taps one of the clear IV bags. “There’s a very high concentration of Phydus in here. It’s a drug,” he answers me before I can ask. “One that makes people passive.”
I think of Filomina, of Steela’s daughter, of myself. “You’re drugging the ship,” I whisper.
“Most of it.” He shrugs.
“Why?”
“Medicine is a marvel,” the doctor says, squeezing the IV bag. “If there is a problem, even a problem with a whole society, medicine can fix it.”
“You’re evil,” I say, the words creating a dawning realization of the fact within my mind.
“I am realistic.”
I reach down and grasp Steela’s hand. It is cold and lifeless.
“What is happening?” I say, dropping her hand and stepping back in disgust.
The doctor’s oblivious to both me and his patients, intent on the IV. “I told you: Phydus induces passivity.”
“What does that mean?” I shout, a note of panic tingeing my words.
“Passivity? It makes them calm. Peaceful. Passive.”
“But she’s not moving!” My voice grows louder and louder. “She’s not even blinking! Just staring straight ahead!”
The doctor looks surprised at my distress. “Don’t you see that Steela—all of them—are beyond usefulness? She and the other grays are no longer physically useful; they can’t do labor like the younger gens can. They are no longer mentally useful—long-term exposure to Phydus deteriorates the mind, even if they are on Inhibitors like Steela was. Their neurons are skipping around the Phydus, and they either become confused about what’s real and what’s not, or they become rebellious as they break through the drug’s influence. Either way, they can no longer be anything but a burden to our society. So, we take from them what we can.” He nods toward the bag with Stella’s blood. “Her DNA held particular perception and intelligence; we might be able to recycle it. Once we’ve harvested what we can use from the grays, we put them to sleep.”
Steela doesn’t look asleep. She looks dead.
I remember the puppy my parents got me when I was eight. It got Parvo disease and grew sick. My mom told me the vet had put it to sleep.
“You’re killing them?” I whisper, horrified.
The doctor shrugs. “Technically.”
“Technically?!” I screech. “They either die or they don’t; there’s no middle ground there!”
“We are in a contained environment,” the doctor says. “This ship must sustain itself.” His gaze roves from Steela to me. “We need fertilizer.”
I choke back the bile rising in my throat.
“Take it out!” I scream. I lunge for the IV.
“It’s too late. The drug is already in her system.”
I rip the needles from Steela’s arm, and I can tell the doctor isn’t lying. A drop of blood falls from the IV needle’s point, nothing else. The bag is empty. Steela’s arm has flopped over the side of the bed, but she doesn’t notice it.
“Amy,” the doctor says coolly, “I tell you this because you need to understand reality aboard this ship. I have seen you question Eldest; I have seen you talking with Elder. You must know the danger of causing trouble, of getting on Eldest’s bad side. The hatch is not the only way Eldest can dispose of you. Eldest is dangerous, Amy, very dangerous, and you’d do best to keep out of his way in the future.”
He sighs, and for the first time, I wonder if he has sympathy or empathy or any feeling at all for these patients. “I knew when Elder brought you to me that you were being affected by Phydus. Eldest and I are responsible for distributing Phydus to everyone on Godspeed. It’s our duty. However, although I believe that Phydus maintains peace, I do not believe it is best for everyone.” He meets my gaze full on. “But if you disrupt this ship, Eldest will order me to take you here, to the fourth floor. And I will put that needle in your vein. And you will at first feel a sense of warmth, and comfort, and joy.”
His gaze shifts to Steela, and mine follows. A tiny, tiny smile lingers on her wrinkled lips. “When Phydus has calmed your mind, it will calm your body. Your muscles will ease, and you will feel more relaxed than you’ve ever felt before.”
Steela’s body is sagging against the pillows. The smile slides off her face, not because she seems sad, but because the muscles in her mouth aren’t working to keep her lips curved up.
“Your body will become so calm that eventually your lungs won’t bother breathing, and your heart won’t bother beating.”
I watch Steela closely, my eyes flicking all over her body. I imagine that her chest is rising and falling, that I can hear ever so softly the beat of her heart.
But it’s all just wishful thinking.
My hands shake as I close her staring eyes.
“It is a merciful death,” the doctor says. “But still, it is death. If Eldest finds you useless—or worse, a nuisance—this is what awaits you.”
66
ELDER
I CAN HEAR HER SOBBING THROUGH THE DOOR. I RUN MY thumb over the scanner, and the door slides open before I realize what I’ve done—entered a room without permission. But that doesn’t matter now—what matters is Amy lying on her bed, sobbing so hard that her whole body is shaking.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, rushing forward.
Amy looks up at me, her eyes melting jade. She makes a bleating sound and lunges for me, wraps her arms around my waist, and buries her head into my stomach. I can feel the warm wetness of her tears through my tunic.
For a moment, I just stand there. She’s attached to my middle, and I’m not sure what to do with my arms. She gives a little hiccup of a sob, and I act on instinct: I wrap my arms around her, holding her against me, being the strength she needs to stay up.
Eldest thinks power is control, that the best way to be a leader is to force everyone into obedience. Holding Amy against me, I realize the simple truth is that power isn’t control at all—power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own.
This is what I’ve been looking for since the first day I was told that I was born to lead this ship. Leading Godspeed has nothing to do with being better than everyone else, with commanding and forcing and manipulating. Eldest isn’t a leader. He’s a tyrant.
A leader doesn’t make pawns—he makes people.
Amy pulls away and looks into my face. Her pale skin is blotchy red, her eyes are veined and shadowed, and a shiny line of snot trickles from her nose to the top of her lip. She wipes her face with her arm, smearing tears and mucus.