Across the Universe

Page 7

My eyes drift down. “Was this what you were talking about?” I ask, pointing to the unlabeled part of the diagram under the Feeder Level. “It’s probably just electrical stuff, or pipes, or something.”
“I thought that, too,” Orion says. “But look.” He taps the screen and goes back to the main menu, then taps “Before Plague.”
The same chart shows up, but everything’s labeled differently now. The Keeper Level is now labeled “Navigation,” just like on the plaque I saw on the screen hidden under the ceiling. The Shipper Level is sectioned off into three portions: technological research (where the labs are now), the engine room, and something called a “Bridge.” That’s not far off from what we have now, just different words for the same things. It’s the Feeder Level where things really start to change. The left side, where the City is, is marked “Living Quarters (inclusive)” and all the rest of the Feeder Level is labeled “Biological Research.” Biological Research? That’s what they used to call goat herding and sheep shearing?
But it’s what’s under the Feeder Level that really fascinates me. What was blank space on the other diagram is now all filled in. It’s like there really is another level of the ship below our feet, a level I never knew of, one that has, apparently, a genetic research lab, a second water pump, a huge section marked “Storage—Important” and a very small area labeled simply “Contingency.”
“What is this?” I ask, staring at it. “I know they changed the names of the levels and moved some things around after the Plague, but this? This is more than just rearranging. There’s a whole other level.” What I don’t say is: Why didn’t I know about this already? Why didn’t Eldest teach me? I already know the answer: because he doesn’t think I’m ready or—worse—he doesn’t think I’m worthy of knowing the secrets of the ship.
“They changed a lot of things after the Plague,” Orion says. “There was no Eldest system then.”
I know this much, at least. Everyone knows about that. After the Plague killed off around three quarters of the ship, dropping our numbers from over three thousand to little more than seven hundred, the Plague Eldest took control and remade the government into the peaceful, working society we have now. In the gens since then, we’ve rebuilt our population to over two thousand, developed new tech like the grav tubes, and maintained the peaceful society the Plague Eldest originally envisioned.
But I hadn’t known just how much he changed the ship, or what all of those changes meant.
“Don’t you want to know what’s down there?” Orion asks, staring at the fourth level.
And now that he’s said it—yeah, I really do. “Here, let me see that.” I push Orion out of the way and tap on the wall floppy, searching. It takes me a few minutes, but then I find what I’m looking for. “Let’s see what the designers put there,” I say, grinning in triumph.
A blueprint flashes on the screen, but it’s much more complicated than the diagrams of the ship’s levels. I squint up at the lines, trying to trace pipes and electrical wiring and separate them from the walls and doors. The image is so big that I either have to zoom in and scroll, or zoom out and squint.
“I don’t understand any of it,” I say finally, throwing my hands up.
“I started with the elevator.” Orion scrolls the blueprint up, and suddenly I recognize the building whose blueprints I’m seeing. The Hospital. He points to the fourth floor. “There’s a second elevator.”
“There’s no second elevator!” I laugh. I’ve spent my share of time in the Hospital, and there’s only one elevator there.
“At the end of the hall, there’s another elevator. The blueprints don’t lie.”
“All the doors on that floor are locked,” I say. I know. I’ve tried them all. And they’re not locked with biometric scanners—I could get past those with a swipe of my thumb. No, those doors have old-fashioned Sol-Earth locks, made of metal. Harley and I once spent a week trying to break in until Doc caught us.
Orion’s shaking his head. “Not the last door. That one’s open. And there’s a second elevator there.”
I laugh again. “There’s just no way. If there was some secret elevator leading to a secret level of the ship, I’d know.”
Orion just looks at me. His silence is an accusation: Would I really know?
Eldest has kept things hidden from me before. Maybe there is another level.
7
AMY
I HEAR SOMETHING.
A creak. My door is open, my little morgue door is pulled open, and it’s brighter here, I can see a tinge of light through my sealed-shut eyelids, and now something, someone is pulling out my glass coffin.
Something makes my glass coffin lift up; there’s a sensation in my frozen stomach like being pushed on a swing, and I try to hold on to the feeling, assure myself it is real. Did they lift the lid off? I can hear—I can hear!—muffled cadences of speech through the ice. Growing louder! The sounds are not just vibrations through the ice, they’re sounds! People are talking!
“Just a little more,” a voice that reminds me of Ed says.
“The ice melts quickly.”
“It’s the—” I don’t catch those words—a whooshing sound washes over me.
And warmth. I feel warmth for the first time in 301 years. Not ice—but a tingly sensation, crackling against the nerve endings in my skin, washing me with a feeling I thought I had lost forever. Warmth!
“Why hasn’t she moved yet?” says the first voice again. It doesn’t sound like harsh, careless Ed now, but gentler Hassan.
“Add more gel.” Something is being rubbed into my skin. I realize that, for the first time in over three centuries, someone is touching me. Gentle hands knead my cold flesh with a goo that reminds me of the Icy Hot lotion I used on my knee when I twisted it at a cross-country race my freshman year. I am so happy I might explode.
And that’s when I realize I can’t smile.
“It’s not working,” says the gentle voice. It sounds sad now. Defeated.
“Try—”
“No, look, she’s not even breathing.”
Silence.
I will my lungs to pump air; I will my chest to move up and down with the rhythm of life.
Something cold—I never want to feel cold again—is pressed against the top of my left breast.
“No heartbeat.”
I concentrate all my will on my heart—beat, dammit! Beat! But how can you tell your heart to beat? I could no sooner have told it not to beat before I was frozen.
“Should we wait?”
Yes! YES. Wait—I’m coming. Just give me some time to thaw, and I will rise from the ice and live again. I will be your frozen phoenix. Just give me a chance!
“Nah.”
My mouth. I concentrate everything I have within me on my mouth. Lips, move! Speak, shout—scream!
“Just put her back in.”
And the table bows under the weight of the lid lowering over me. And my stomach lurches as they shove me back into the morgue.
The door clicks shut.
I want to scream, but I can’t.
Because none of this is real.
It’s just another nightmare.
8
ELDER
DOC IS IN THE LOBBY OF THE HOSPITAL, HELPING ONE nurse lead an old man toward the front desk where another nurse starts to check him in. When Doc sees me, he heads my way.
“Have you seen Harley?” he asks.
“No.” I can’t help but smile. Harley’s famous for escaping Doc when med time rolls around.
Doc runs his fingers through his thick hair, then notices my smile and scowls. “It’s no laughing matter. Harley needs to take his medication on a regular schedule.”
I make an attempt to sober up my expression. Harley does sometimes get intense and dark, but I think that has more to do with how artistic he is than how crazy Doc thinks he is. Besides, he’s my best friend; I’m not going to scamp him out to Doc.
“I ain’t going!” the old man at the front desk yells. Doc whips around. The old man has shaken off the nurse who helped him walk in and is leaning toward the one sitting at the desk. “You can’t make me! I ain’t going to no ’spital bed, I ain’t sick!” He punctuates this with a hacking cough and spits out a mouthful of phlegm on the floor.
“Now, now, calm down,” Doc says, striding over to the man.
The old man turns his cataract gaze to Doc. “Where’s my wife? You got her?”
“Ms. Steela isn’t here,” Doc says, putting his hand on the man’s arm. “She isn’t sick. You are.”
“Ain’t sick!” the old man roars, but immediately after he speaks, a glazed expression falls over his eyes. His breathing calms, and he sags under the weight of his own clothing. When Doc moves his hand, I see why: Doc has slipped him a med patch. The lavender square of sticky cloth on the old man’s arm is already calming him into submission.
Doc shoots me a triumphant grin as he helps the man settle into a wheelchair and then sends him and the nurse to the elevator. I swallow, hard. Doc is a good man, but his answer to everything is always medicine. He doesn’t like emotion, any emotion. He prefers things quiet, controlled.
That’s why he’s so frexing close to Eldest. They think alike.
“So, what are you doing here?” Doc says once the old man is safely ensconced in the elevator and on his way to treatment.
I scuff my shoes on the smooth tiled floor. There’s no way I’m going to tell him that I’m off to explore a secret elevator on the fourth floor. I’m not even sure if I believe Orion enough to try it.
“Just thought I’d see Harley,” I say finally.
Doc frowns. “If you find him, send him straight to me. It’s long past med time.” He glances at the clock over the nurse’s desk. “For that matter, have you taken yours?”
I flush. I’m not proud of the year I lived here. On the third floor, the Ward. Where the mental patients are. I think living with the Feeders cracked me. It was fine when I was little, but the older I got, the more I felt like I was different from the rest of them. I couldn’t make myself care about crops or cows the way they did.
(I remember, when Doc first made me start taking mental meds, I asked: Should I still be Elder? I was on mental meds, after all! I spent a year at the Ward! I was all ready to step down. But Doc and Eldest wouldn’t let me.)
“I took them this morning,” I mutter, my face hot. I hope the nurse at the desk hasn’t heard. What would she think of a future leader who’s on mental meds?
Doc scrutinizes me. “Is there anything wrong?” he asks.
Eldest lied to me about the stars, and there might be a secret level on the ship, and Orion looks more like me than I’d ever care to admit, but no, nothing’s wrong, because if Doc thinks anything is wrong, he’ll just give me more meds. I shake my head.
Doc doesn’t look convinced. “I know it’s hard on you. You’re different.”