Across the Universe

20 ELDER

ELDEST AND I DON’T TALK AS WE DESCEND IN THE ELEVATOR to the cryo level. We particularly don’t talk about how the alarm on the table on the fourth floor lay open and smashed, its guts spewing from it and spilling out on the floor. Broken. Useless.

When the doors slide open, the lights are already on.

“Back here!” Doc’s voice calls.

Eldest’s strides are long, although uneven with his limp, and I have to rush to keep up as we go down the aisle with the numbered doors. I seek out Number 42, but we’re going too fast for me to find it without stopping.

We round the corner and start down the aisle numbered 75-100.

One of the little doors is opened. The tray table has already been extended, and a cryo box lays on it. Doc is standing in front of it, his back to us, bent over the box, but even though he blocks our view, I can tell that something is wrong.

Eldest doesn’t hesitate as we approach.

I do.

The man inside the box is dead, floating in water with blue sparkles. His arms are bent, his fingers curled into claws, and I know he died trying to escape the box as the cryo liquid melted. I know because his eyes are open, and his mouth is a gaping maw, and his face is twisted in anger and defeat. There is a pool of blue-specked cryo liquid on the floor underneath him, and red marks around his too-pale throat.

Eldest and Doc lift the lid together. The dead man inside bobs, his fingers and nose and knees pushing up at the viscous layer of the water.

“Who was he?” I ask.

“Number 100.” The last box in the row, the last person cryogenically frozen.

This means nothing to me, but Eldest sucks in his breath. Doc nods at him in a knowing way.

The dead man’s head jerks and I jump back, startled. But Doc is just pulling at the tubes in the man’s mouth. With each yank, his body twitches violently. Water splashes from the box. I step back, but it still splatters on my boots. I go over to the table at the end of the aisle and pick up Doc’s floppy, running my finger along the edge to turn it on. The screen glows. I rest my thumb on the scanner square, and a message flashes: “Eldest/Elder override: full access granted.” The screen fills up with images — icons, folders, notes. I search for Number 100, and after tapping around a bit, I find it: the dead man’s folder.

NAME: WILLIAM ROBERTSON

NUMBER: 100

OCCUPATION: LEADERSHIP SPECIALIST

STATUS: ESSENTIAL TO OFFENSIVE ORGANIZATION

PRIOR EXPERIENCE: UNITED STATES MARINES, ACTIVE DUTY IN WAR OF—

Eldest snatches the floppy from my hands. With a swipe of his finger, he blacks the screen.

“Pay attention,” he growls. He jerks his head toward Doc, who is finally reaching the end of the tubing. A small electrical panel pops out of the dead man’s mouth, and he sinks further beneath the cryo liquid.

“Well?” Eldest says. “Was it a malfunction? Another one?”

“Give me a minute.” Doc is bent over the electrical box. He pushes a button, and a door springs open. He pulls out a tiny round metallic object that rests on his fingertip. Eldest hands Doc the floppy he had taken from me, and Doc presses the computer chip into it.

“Well? ”

“… It was turned off.” Doc’s voice is hollow.

“Turned off?”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“This.” Doc points to the blinking black box near the head of the glass coffin. The light flashes red. “Someone opened the cover and flipped the switch.” He shoots Eldest a look. “Someone with access.”

“This was done on purpose?” I ask, but I suspect the answer already.

Doc glares, and I hope that the anger in his eyes is not directed at me. “Someone came down here. Pulled this drawer out. And flipped this switch. Then walked away as the cryo liquid melted, walked away as the man inside slowly revitalized, slowly died, drowning in his own liquid.”

I want to look away from Doc, but what else should I look at? Eldest, whose rage is burning behind his stony face? Or the dead man with unblinking eyes that shimmer under the blue-speckled cryo liquid?

“Who would do that?” I ask.

“Who could do that?” Eldest asks, his deep voice rumbling behind me like the roar of the centrifugal machine in the labs.

“Few people know about this level,” Doc says. He looks away, and I can already see him slipping into his scientist-doctor mask, the one that’s cool and calculating, the one he wears when he diagnoses in the Ward. “Us,” he says, looking at both me and Eldest in turn. “But also some of the scientists. The ones who have worked in the”—he pauses, flicks his eyes from Eldest to me—“in the other lab, they know, of course.”

Other lab? I think, shooting Doc a look. I bite back the question — I’ve got to be careful what I say, or they won’t tell me anything. “Why?” I ask instead. “Who cares who knows about this place — why would anyone want to do this? Why would anyone intentionally kill someone frozen?”

Silence.

Then: “Why it happened doesn’t matter. What’s important is to find out who — and to take it from there.” Eldest’s voice is cold and horrible.

“But—”

Doc steps in front of me, drawing Eldest a few steps away. “Promise me,” he hisses. “Promise me this isn’t some sort of sick test you’ve devised for Elder.”

Eldest gives Doc a quelling, disgusted look, as if he’s affronted Doc would even think it.

But he doesn’t answer.

“Let’s take care of this,” Eldest says to me. He shoves past Doc and fiddles with a latch near the table that I’d not seen before. The table breaks away from the little door that had held the dead man’s box, and Eldest wheels the table down the aisle. The cryo liquid sloshes back and forth with his pace, spilling bubbles of sparkling liquid onto the ground. I can hear a soft thump, swish, thump over the thuds of Eldest’s feet, and I know it’s from the body hitting the glass, muffled by the liquid.

“Come on,” Doc says. We follow the splatters of liquid like bread-crumbs in that Sol-Earth children’s tale.

Past the rows and rows of little doors. Past three rows of narrow metal lockers, each with a simple combination lock on the door. Past a series of tables with papers and diagrams on them. Down a hallway. And at the end of the hallway: a hatch door, made of thick metal painted a dull yellow, with a round bubble glass window in the center.

The lock on the door looks old — it’s a keypad, not a thumb swipe. It must be original to the ship; we’ve upgraded a lot over the years. I watch as Eldest types in the code. It’s simple enough to remember: Godspeed.

Eldest swings open the door and pushes the table inside.

“What are you—” I start, but Eldest has already lifted the edge of the table and let the thick glass coffin and the body inside it crash to the floor. Mr. William Robertson, Number 100, bounces as half the liquid sloshes out. His body hangs over the edge of the box, twisted around in a position that would have hurt if he were still alive. His open eyes stare at the ceiling, and both his hands curl up from the floor.

Eldest shoves me back out into the hallway and slams the hatch door shut after him.

“What are you doing?” I say again.

Eldest pushes the button on the keypad, the big red one without any markings on it.

Through the bubble glass window, I see the hatch door on the opposite wall fly open, and then Mr. William Robertson, Number 100, is sucked out into the stars. And I see them — the stars — real stars, millions of pinpoints of light, like glitter thrown into the air by a child. Now that I have seen these, I can never be deceived by lightbulbs again.

These stars, these real stars, are the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The stars make me believe there is a world out there beyond this ship.

And for just a moment, I envy Mr. William Robertson, Number 100, who is floating in a sea of stars.