Across the Universe

46 ELDER

“SHE’S NOT HERE,” HARLEY SAYS. HE’S SITTING IN THE WARD common room, staring out the window at the wheat fields in the distance.

I head to the door that leads to the private chambers. “Don’t bother,” Harley snarls. “She wants to be left alone.” I open my mouth to ask why, but he adds, “For that matter, I want to be left alone too.” He rubs the side of his face, and I notice a dark bruise under his eye.

I make a mental note to check with Doc about the last time Harley took his meds. It’s not the standard mental meds I’m worried about — it’s the other pills Doc gives him, the ones that hold back Harley’s dark moods, make him less loons.

So I leave the Hospital alone. I pass the statue of the Plague Eldest, but I don’t pause. I don’t want him looking down on me, too.

Instead, I head up the path to the Recorder Hall. I see the people, still in full swing of the Season, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach, knowing that all of this is just contrived through Eldest’s water pump.

When I get to the Recorder Hall, I have to step over a pair of intertwined bodies to get up the stairs. Victria sits on a rocker on the porch, watching them, occasionally writing something in her small leather-bound book. I’m surprised she’s not with Bartie, not doing what the couple on the steps are doing, but Eldest did say the hormones affected the Feeders more than others.

Orion stands with his back to me, facing the picture of Eldest that looks out over the vastness of the Feeder Level. Before I can say anything, however, he lifts the picture from its nook on the wall and leans it against the floor of the porch.

“What are you doing?” I ask, shocked. The wall of the Recorder Hall looks naked without Eldest’s falsely welcoming face peering down from it.

“Time for an updated picture,” Orion says, picking the painting up and heading back inside the Hall. That makes sense. The painting of Eldest is at least a decade old. In the painting, his hair is still mostly brown, his eyes still clear, only a hint of wrinkles on his brow. I wonder what the new picture will show. Long white hair? Stooping shoulders that slope more because of years of limping? Maybe I’m off entirely. Maybe his age will make him regal.

“Hey,” Victria says without looking up at me from her book. She’s not talked to me much since Amy arrived, although we were really close before, when I lived in the Ward. She looks meaner now, more bitter than three years ago, when she was seventeen and I was thirteen. She was my first crush, then, but I don’t know why anymore.

“Hey. Writing another book?” Victria has authored nearly a dozen books and uploads them to the floppy network. They’re great — I don’t know how she does it. Really amazing stories about heroes during the Plague. Tragic stuff. My stomach sinks. I guess Eldest gave her “writing” goo before she was born.

“Not exactly.” She snaps her book closed and tucks it into the large pocket on her jacket. She doesn’t turn to me, though, she just stares out at the perfectly square and measured fields in front of her, dotted with couples.

I follow her gaze. “Hey, be careful out there. The Season’s pretty wild right now.” I’m glad Amy’s safe with Harley.

Victria doesn’t look at me. “Luthe walked me over. Orion’s here now; he can walk me back.”

Shrugging, I turn back to the wall and am surprised to see that the old painting of Eldest hid a plaque.

Hall of Records & Research Built 2036 CE Funded by FRX

Underneath that are letters I don’t recognize — from the Cyrillic or Greek alphabet, I’m not sure which. Then, beneath that:

“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.” —Aristotle

There are eight other lines of text, each in a different language, two of which are nothing but unrecognizable symbols, but it’s not hard to guess that it’s the same quote in other languages.

“This is old,” I tell Victria, who doesn’t seem to care. “Really old. This has been here since the ship’s creation.”

She grunts to acknowledge that she’s heard me.

I think about the plans of the ship Orion showed me a few days ago. How once, the Feeder Level was focused on “Biological Research” and this “Hall of Records & Research” was its hub. The couple I had to walk over to get to the Recorder Hall are moaning, loudly.

This can’t be the kind of records and research the ship builders intended.

Eldest talks so much about how we’ve progressed, how much better we are with monoethnicity and our strong system of leadership. But right now, it seems to me that the austere words of this Aristotle sneer down at us, at how our research isn’t more than fornication.

I wonder at the timing of the new painting. This is twice now that Orion has led me to discover something new about the ship. How much do I know about him, really? I’ve hardly ever seen him anywhere except for the Recorder Hall, and even there he mostly stays hidden behind books and shadows, a ghost among words and digitized information. I may know everyone aboard this ship — their names, even their faces — but do I really know any of them? He could be anybody.

“You think they love each other?” Victria’s voice cuts through my thoughts. She’s not looking at me — she looking at the couple finishing on the Recorder Hall steps.

“No,” I say.

“It’s disgusting,” Victria mutters. “Can’t they control themselves?”

No, I think. They really can’t.

“Orion says it’s human nature.” It’s not, I think.

“It’s not,” Victria says.

I look at her, surprised.

“If it was, I’d be like them,” she says, nodding at the couple by the steps. Well, frex. She’s right. “But I’m not. I have no… desire to be like that. Not with anyone I don’t—”

She cuts herself off, but I can guess what she’s going to say. Not with anyone she doesn’t love.

A week ago, I would have snorted at those words. Love was no more real than the “god” Amy worshipped. I’d heard of “love” in the same context that I heard of those religious fairy tales — as stories Sol-Earth people used to tell to make themselves feel better about the imperfect world they helped to create.

But now…

“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” Victria says.

“Is that from your new book?”

Victria snorts. She shifts in her seat, and I notice a stack of books — real books, from Sol-Earth — sitting on the porch floor beside her rocker. I frown. Orion, as a Recorder, should know better. Even Recorders are forbidden from messing with the ancient books. If Eldest catches him…

On the lawn in front of us, the woman’s hand rests on her bare belly, her fingers curling against her skin, as if she were clutching something invisible but precious.

“Do you think they’re happy, at least?” she asks, nodding her head at the couple. Before I can answer, she adds, “Because I never am.”

“Okay, let’s get this brilly painting hung!” Orion says cheerfully as he emerges from the Recorder Hall. The canvas he’s holding is so new that I can still smell the paint on it — it reminds me of Harley.

Orion twirls the canvas around to position it on the hook over the plaque, and I gasp. He looks up at me and smiles knowingly.

It’s not Eldest on the canvas.

It’s me.

“This Season is the start of your gen,” Orion says, sliding the wire on the back of the canvas over the hook and straightening the picture. “It’s almost time for Eldest to step down. For you to be the new leader.”

Painted me looks out on Godspeed from exactly where painted Eldest had looked. Harley’s done this — I recognize his style — although I never sat for a painting. He must have done it by memory — which would explain why he’s added all sorts of things into painted me that just don’t exist. The same confident tilt of the head that Eldest has, not me. The same clear eyes, the same assured posture. It doesn’t look like me at all. Is this how Harley really sees me? It’s not me at all.

“It looks exactly like you,” Victria says. She’s abandoned her rocker and stands behind me, peering over my shoulder to look at the painting.

“It looks like a leader,” Orion says.

A leader? No. A leader would know what to do.