Across the Universe

28 ELDER

WHEN I GET OFF THE ELEVATOR, THE TALKING DROPS TO A whisper. It’s not hard to guess what they’re discussing. I leave them with their whispers and lies. I don’t care what they think. I want to know what Amy thinks.

There is a brown stain just outside her door: the crushed remains of the flowers I’d left for her.

I knock. “Come in,” a deep male voice says. Harley. My stomach lurches. I run my finger on the door release button, and the door slides open.

Amy sits before her window, gazing out. The light shines on her upturned face, spilling over on her red-gold hair, making her clear green eyes sparkle. I stare, unable to tear my gaze from her.

“Beautiful, huh?” Harley says. He’s rearranged the desk so that it’s not leaning against the wall; instead it is cockeyed in front of Amy, with his table-easel propped on top. A small canvas leans against the easel, and Harley has already sketched out the scene before him with charcoal.

“You quit painting the fish?” I ask, hoping the bitterness doesn’t sound as obvious to them as it does to me.

“Yup!” Harley chirps. He dabs a tiny bit of blue on Amy’s painted face, giving her a hint of a shadow under her lips. “Funnily enough, I’m using almost the exact same colors on her as I was on the koi. Hey!” he adds, peeking from behind the canvas to Amy, “that’s your new name: from now on, you’re my Little Fish!”

Amy laughs cheerily at her new nickname, but I am glowering at Harley for calling her “his.” It’s true, though: her red-gold-orange-yellow hair is the same color as the scales on Harley’s koi fish.

“So, Little Fish, ignore the boy and tell me about the sky.”

My back stiffens at how Harley calls me “boy.” I want to punch him. I really want to punch him, even if he is my best friend.

“The stars were my favorite, ever since I was little and my parents would take me to the observatory.”

I’m not sure what an observatory is, but I do know this much: Amy’s first memory of seeing stars is with her family, and mine is with a dead man.

Amy looks at me, and I’m glad she can’t tell what I’m thinking. She picks at the meat pie on a napkin in her lap, and pops a piece in her mouth. She swallows it quickly, then drops the rest of the pie in the trash chute. She and Harley must have eaten here, instead of in the Ward cafeteria. Good. I can only imagine how the Ward residents are treating her after Eldest’s all-call. She takes a sip of water from the glass beside her and winces.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Headache,” she says. “So, will you tell me what happened to make everyone think I’m a freak?”

“You didn’t tell her?” I ask Harley.

“Of course I didn’t,” Harley growls, stabbing his canvas with his paintbrush. “Why would I insult her with such lies?”

Part of me is very glad that Amy doesn’t know what Eldest has said. But Harley has always been this way, for as long as I’ve known him: he thinks ignorance is the best way to protect someone, and he doesn’t understand that what we imagine is often worse than the truth.

“Will you tell me?”

I look up, and Amy’s eyes draw me in. “It was Eldest,” I say. “He sent out an all-call to everyone about you.” I pause. Does she know what an all-call is? “A, er, message. He sent everyone a message. About you.” I pause again, unable to meet her big green eyes. “It was mostly lies.”

Amy senses my hesitance to continue. “What kind of lies?” she asks.

“That you’re the product of an experiment gone wrong, and you’re, uh, simple. Slow.” I pause again. “A freak.”

Amy’s face scrunches as she absorbs this information. I can tell, from the distaste curling her lips, that she has met Eldest and can probably guess what it is he said. “Ah,” she finally says, and turns back to the window. Harley straightens up, stares at her face again, and then turns back to his canvas. He is shaping her sadness onto the painted image of her face.

“So, there were lots of stars in the sky?” Harley asks, turning to the nighttime sky in the background of the painting. The word “stars” is heavy on his tongue, as if he’s not used to the idea of them.

“Millions,” Amy says. “Billions.” There is longing in her voice.

Harley flicks silver paint on the canvas.

“But,” I say, leaning over Harley’s canvas, “they’re scattered about, not so clustered together. Spread them out more. And they’re different sizes. Some are bigger; some are just tiny specks.”

It is as if I have done something foul in the room. Harley turns slowly toward me. Amy’s eyes are wide.

“You’ve seen the stars?” Harley’s voice accuses me.

“I…er…”

Amy’s eyes search mine, and I know she’s looking for starshine in them.

“Just once,” I say.

“How?” Harley breathes.

“There’s a hatch door. For the dead.”

Amy’s head snaps toward mine.

“Where is it?” Harley asks, an eager tone in his voice that reminds me of the last time he had what Doc called a “downward spiral.”

“It’s not on the Feeder Level.”

Harley sinks in on himself. He’s not one of the select few with access to the other levels and has spent his entire life here, on the Feeder Level.

“Can we see it?” Amy asks. “Can we see the stars?”

And, oh, I want to show her. I want to show her, but not him, not now, not with her. I want to be the one to give Amy back her stars.

But what would Eldest say? What would Eldest do? To me? To her?

“No,” I say. “Eldest wouldn’t like it.”

Amy’s eyes narrow into pinpricks of jade. “I met Eldest,” she says, disgust dripping from her voice.

Harley snorts, and Amy turns her glare on him. Eldest is not a laughing matter to her.

“What in the uni could he have said to make you not like him?” He laughs.

“You know that hatch Elder was talking about?” Amy holds back the rage in her voice, like a man holding back a snarling dog on a leash. “He wanted to throw me out of it, just so I wouldn’t create a ‘disturbance’ on the ship.”

Harley laughs. “He wouldn’t do that!”

Amy doesn’t crack a smile.

“Yes, he would,” I say. Harley’s laughter dies and he looks at me.

“Maybe he said something as a threat, but he’d never—”

“Yes,” I say as firmly as I can. “He would.”

Harley attacks the canvas with paint again, a frown creasing his forehead.

“He doesn’t like ‘disturbances,’” I tell Amy. “He doesn’t like anyone to be different at all. Difference, he says, is the first cause of discord.”

“He sounds like a regular Hitler to me,” Amy mutters. I wonder what she means by that. Eldest has always taught me that Hitler was a wise, cultured leader for his people. Maybe that’s what she means: Eldest is a strong leader, like Hitler was. The turn of phrase is unusual, another difference between us, another difference I’m sure Eldest would hate.

Amy hops up from her seat at the window. She twirls her hair into a quick bun and secures it with two dry brushes she snatches from the desk before Harley can protest. She paces the room, an animal unsatisfied with the smallness of her cage.

Harley snorts again, but images flash in my mind: Eldest, walking throughout the Feeder Level, showing all the farmers and workers his kind-grandfather face, and then going up to the Keeper Level with me, and snarling with distaste at their stupidity. Eldest, pounding lessons into me that stressed control above all else. Eldest, revulsion souring his face when I first came to the Keeper Level and did anything out of the ordinary. In my mind’s eye, Eldest’s face is growing twisted, just like I suspect his soul has become.

And I realize that, yes, this man who I have lived with for three years, who is leader of this entire ship, whose control over everyone on board is absolute… this man is capable of killing whomever, whenever.

He could have. “But why would he?” I ask.

“Dunno. And — why me? I’m not important. Why try to kill me?”

Harley’s brush is paused midair. Silence permeates the little room.

“You weren’t the only one,” I say, my words like arrows slicing through the air. “A man was killed. That’s where I saw the hatch — I was helping Doc and Elder send the body to the stars.”

“Who?” Amy breathes, terror in her voice.

“Mr. William Robertson.”

“I didn’t know him.” Amy sounds relieved. It is only then that I realize she was afraid it was one of her parents floating dead amongst the stars.