A Million Suns

49 ELDER

“ELDER, THERE’S — YOU NEED TO COME TO THE CITY.”

Doc’s com arrives just when I don’t need it to. I’d gone to confront Luthor as soon as Amy had told me everything he’d done. I’d never been so mad in my entire life. I can still feel the rage coursing through my blood, although it’s somewhat cooled now.

“Frex!” I shout. “All I’ve done is run across the ship from one place to another! I’m frexing tired of this!”

Doc’s silent on the wi-com a moment. “You won’t be doing that soon.”

For a moment, I think he’s talking about the planet, but no — I’ve not told him about that yet. Only Amy and the first-level Shippers know.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Elder, it’s chaos. It’s — mutiny.”

“Frex!”

“I think it’s Bartie, but — look, you’ve got to come out here.”

It takes me a while to get from the cyro level to the City, but I race as fast I can, driven by the urgency in Doc’s voice. I can tell before I’m at the City that something is very, very wrong. I hear it first — or, rather, I don’t hear it. I don’t hear the regular noises of the City, the undercurrent of sound that is always there during the day merely from the people living. Instead, muffled voices and footsteps reverberate.

That’s when I see it.

The Food Distro is at the end of the main street, and that’s where everyone’s pressing together. They’re all looking at one thing.

Fridrick, dead.

His body is plastered with so many med patches that they cling to his skin like scales. Someone’s taken a great swath of cloth, probably from a bolt in the weaving district, and hung it from the windows of the third floor of the Distro. Fridrick’s body hangs from the center, sagging the cloth down precariously, his arms and head flopped over the front.

In big bold letters painted in black across the front of the impromptu banner: Follow the leader.

“This is a message!” a voice roars. My eyes drop from the banner and the body down to the front of the Food Distro, where Bartie stands.

I realize that the people hadn’t been silent in order to observe Fridrick’s death. They had been silently waiting for Bartie to speak.

“Anyone who won’t blindly obey the leader”—he sneers the word—“will be dealt with! Have we not seen it with Stevy? As soon as he protested against Elder — dead!”

“Protested against me” is a bit of an understatement — the man beat me across the face.

“And we all know Fridrick’s protests! He was trying to save us all, keep the food stores in check — and look! Elder forced him to distribute food, and now there isn’t enough! And Fridrick’s protests”—he pauses dramatically, swooping his arm up to the body above him—“have been silenced!”

If Bartie’s trying to stir up a revolution, it’s not working that great. Although the front of the crowd cheers him on, I can’t help but smile smugly at the fact that at least two-thirds of the crowd is silent — worried, but not ready to overthrow the only government they’ve ever known.

Still, I’m not going to let him stand there and frexing lie about me.

I push my wi-com and order an all-call.

“Attention, all residents of Godspeed,” I say. The group at the front of the crowd stills. Many turn to look at me. “As you are well aware, the Eldest system has worked on this ship for countless gens. I chose to work a little differently from my predecessor. I chose to give you the ability to make choices for yourself.”

Beep, beep-beep.

“Attention, all residents of Godspeed,” Bartie’s voice says in my wi-com. My head snaps up. Bartie’s looking over the crowd, straight at me. “Elder is not the only one who can control the wi-com system. But he is right. He gave us a choice. And for that, I thank him.” He bows his head a fraction of an inch in my direction. “Because he gave you the ability to choose someone other than him.”

The crowd’s attention is entirely on Bartie now. How the frex did he break into the wi-com system? Only a few select members of the crew — me, Doc, the First Shipper — have the permissions needed to do all-calls. Bartie must have hacked into the system.

I slam my hand into my wi-com. “System override,” I order, then begin another all-call. “People of Godspeed,” I say in as loud a voice as I can. “Calm down. This is not the time for mutiny and dissent. This morning, I discovered we are much closer to Centauri-Earth than we ever thought. We will begin planet-landing — soon. Very soon. You only have to—”

“LIES!” Bartie roars, not through his wi-com, but from his perch at the Food Distro. His face is twisted, enraged, and the word expels from him like a rock thrown into the crowd.

“It’s not a lie,” I insist, my voice crackling over the wi-com. “Please, everyone, calm down. The mission—”

Beep, beep-beep.

“Frex the mission!” Bartie roars into the wi-com all-call system. “This is just one more way that Elder wants to manipulate you! Look around you, friends! This—this—is all we have! Godspeed is our home, there’s no point in trying to reach Centauri-Earth anymore! There is only this — and freedom!”

“I gave you freedom!” I shout, then remember to use my wi-com. Before I can, though, Bartie overrides me.

“He may say he’s given you freedom, but think about how much he still controls. He makes all the decisions. He controls who eats, and how much. He controls who gets what meds — and he is the one who let the poison Phydus back on this ship. That was his decision, his choice, and you paid for it.”

I remember that day I found him in the Recorder Hall. Technical Instruction on Communication Systems. And a history of the French Revolution. He was probably the one who hacked into the floppy system — but I wonder, if I had handled things differently, would his rebellion have stopped there rather than escalating into a mob gathered around Fridrick’s dead body?

“What about the food?” someone calls from near the back.

Bartie pushes back the doors of the Food Distro. “Take what you can,” he shouts. “There’s little left.”

And that does it.

The people stampede into the Food Distro. The windows in the front are smashed open and people start running through them. The mob swarms forward in a surge so fast that Bartie has to dive out of the way. People fight their way out of the building, rolling barrels or hefting heavy sacks of food on their backs. Others start fighting them, ripping open the sacks and brawling over the contents. In the rush, Fridrick’s body flops out of its tenuous hold on the banner, crashing into the ground. The mob swells back, then washes over where he landed, ignoring the body in the rush for food.

Fighting breaks out. It starts out as shoving as people wrestle their way to the front of the crowd, closer to the food stores. Shoves turn into punches, punches turn into brawls. Food is forgotten as two men turn on each other. The larger man punches the smaller one in the mouth, and an arc of blood sprays out over the crowd. The smaller man’s friends leap into the fight, and soon there are so many punching and kicking and shouting that I can’t even find the original two fighters amid the fists and blood, the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

I’ve seen the chaos of Sol-Earth from vids and pics on the floppy network. But this is different. I’m in it here.

A woman shouts, “Get out of the frexing way!” as a barrel of milk rolls down the street. She chases after it, screaming at anyone who gets too close to it.

“The Greenhouses!” a man roars, leading a group of twenty or so off the main road toward the produce section. Shite. They’re going to kill every crop we have.

I try to do another all-call. No one even notices.

A man shoves a woman out of his way; the woman crashes to the ground. Another man leaps to her defense, slamming his fist into the first man. Before I can even respond, two more men enter the fray. The woman scrambles out of the way as the fight grows. The bag of produce the man had been carrying crashes to the ground, spilling its contents — tomatoes and peppers — out onto the street. Some of the others pick up the smashed vegetables and start hurtling them at the fighters. The circle of fighting grows and grows.

And then one of them turns to me. I had lingered at the back of the crowd, away from the surging masses, when I should have run away.

“It’s Elder!” he roars. “Get him!”

They turn as one, a multi-headed monster ready to strike.

“Fire!” someone screams. A trail of smoke rises through the windows, snaking out around the Follow the leader sign.

In the distraction, I run for it. As I turn down a side street, I press my wi-com.

“Amy,” I say as soon as she answers. “Get to your room. Lock your door.” I disconnect before she has a chance to respond.

I head straight to the grav tube. As I go, I see others running too, hiding, going for their homes or the fields, racing, like me, to some kind of shelter. A man pulls a woman behind him into the butcher’s block. He grabs a cleaver and stands in the doorway, daring anyone to attack. Another woman collapses on the steps leading to her home, clutching her stomach and screaming.

As the grav tube sucks me up, I see the chaos spread out before me. The Food Distro is truly in flames now, the smoke heavy and black, already making the painted sky above it gray.

My eyes adjust slowly on the Shipper Level. It seems dark compared to the brightness of the solar lamp on the Feeder Level. And quieter. While the Feeder Level was all boiling action, the tension here feels like a dense fog.

Shelby rushes to me; she’d clearly been waiting for my arrival.

“What do we do?” she asks.

The entire level seems to come to a standstill as everyone waits for me to answer.

“Get the first-level Shippers — meet me at the door to the Bridge,” I say.

“But sir — what about the Feeder Level?”

“That’s an order,” I say. “Immediately.”

I stare her down. I try to assume the cold, impassive face that Eldest wore so well, the look that demanded obedience. I don’t know if I can make that face work, even though Eldest and I share the same DNA. I should be able to arrange my features — the same as his — into an identical look of power and command, but the more I think of it, the more I feel like a little kid trying on Daddy’s shoes.

She does it, though. She pushes her wi-com, gives the orders to the First Shippers, and then strides down the hall toward the Bridge.

Before I follow her, I have some coms of my own to make.

“Com link req: Bartie,” I say, pushing my wi-com.

A moment later, Bartie answers my com.

“You’re going to destroy us all,” I say.

“You opened the door.” Bartie’s voice is strained, as if he’s running — running from the mob he himself created. “I just pushed them through it.”