Across the Universe

4 ELDER

A CRANKING NOISE MAKES ME LIFT MY FACE UP TO THE broken window, where the glass has split evenly in two. Why am I not dead yet?

Glass doesn’t break like that, not in a perfectly straight line.

And… that’s not the black emptiness of space beyond the glass.

That’s metal. A metal ceiling behind the window?

The two halves of the window slide down, down, and the stars go with them. But that’s… impossible. The stars are supposed to stay in place, not move with the window.

Wait… it’s… it’s not a window. It’s, well, I’m not sure what it is. The Great Room’s ceiling is domed, and the metal covering has folded up along the edge of the room at about chest height. The window — the thing I thought was a window — is really two halves of a giant glass and metal screen sprinkled with sparkling lights, held up by hydraulic arms that hiss and moan at me. The two folded halves rest on either side of the domed room at about shoulder height, and behind them is the real ceiling of the Keeper Level, more metal. More blank, empty, starless metal.

The stars, the beautiful shining stars, aren’t stars at all. It’s just glass and lightbulbs made to twinkle like stars. Fake stars on a screen sandwiched between two metal ceilings.

Why?

I reach up to touch the half of the universe that’s closest to me. The tiny bulbs aren’t quite hot to the touch, but warm enough to make me snatch my fingers away. The straggling remains of a spiderweb stretch from the base of a star-bulb to a tiny metal plaque on the bottom of the pane.

Navigational Tracking Chart

Patent No. 7329035

FRX—2036 CE

A navigational chart? Here? My eyes scan the section of screen in front of me, and, sure enough, I see a light blinking near the bottom of it, under the plaque, next to two close-together star-bulbs. A red light, triangular and pointing to the stars. I notice that the blinking red light isn’t fixed like the star-bulbs; it’s on a little track, and it’s nearly at the end of its path.

My ship. Nearly at its new planet, its new home.

���Elder? Elder! What’s happening?” Eldest shouts from the hatch connecting the Keeper Level to the Shipper Level. I can visualize him beyond the hatch door: angry face, blazing eyes, and long white hair brushing against his shoulders as he beats on the heavy metal door.

I turn back to the pieces of fake window. The stars are lies. I had them for a moment, but they weren’t real.

Beep, beep-beep fills my left ear. My wireless communication device beeps, letting me know that someone is trying to link with me. Each of us has a wi-com implanted behind our left ear at birth — it’s how we communicate with each other as well as the ship.

“Com link: Eldest,” the computer says directly into my left ear through my wi-com.

“Ignore,” I say, pushing the button under my skin.

The stars are lies. What else is?

Beep, beep-beep. “Eldest override,” my wi-com says cheerfully. “Com link: Eldest.”

“Elder!” Eldest’s voice fills my ear, a low growl. “What happened? Why did you throw the Keeper Level into lockdown?”

“The stars are lies,” I say hollowly.

“What? What happened? Is something wrong?”

Everything’s wrong. “Nothing’s wrong,” I say.

“I’m going to release the lockdown.” Eldest disconnects the link. A moment later, the floor rumbles and the hatch door opens. Eldest climbs up into the Keeper Level, slamming the hatch door behind him.

“What happened?” he demands.

I glance up at the biometric scanner by his door. “I scanned my access, and this—” I stop, indicating the two halves of the “window” still lowered.

“Why were you messing around with that?” Eldest roars. He strides across the room, and in his anger, he’s forgotten to be gentle with his leg. It was wounded before I was born and never truly healed, but his limp has grown worse with age. His feet make an uneven beat against the metal floor: stomp, step, stomp, step, stomp. He’ll be sore later, and he’ll blame me for that, too.

When Eldest reaches the biometric scanner, he rolls his thumb over the bar. The glass rises first, pulling the stars up along the ceiling, the hydraulic arms sighing in relief. Then the grinding metal screen tucks them away, hiding their false light.

“You’re loons! You put the Keeper Level into lockdown over this?” Eldest’s rage almost makes me cower. Almost.

“I thought they were real! I thought the ship was being exposed to space!”

“They’re just lightbulbs!”

“I didn’t frexing know that! I thought those stars were real! What are they even there for?”

“They’re not there for you!” Eldest bellows.

“Then who are they there for?” I shout back. “It’s just you and me on this level!”

Eldest sets his jaw. A lump rises in my throat, but I swallow it down. I won’t let Eldest think I’m nothing more than a little boy who throws a tantrum when he discovers the stars aren’t real.

“You can’t do this, Elder. You could cause the whole ship to panic!” Eldest looks both enraged and weary at the same time. “Don’t you understand? You are Elder. When you take my role as Eldest, you must dedicate your whole life to this one idea: you are the caretaker of every single person on the ship. They are your responsibility. You can never show weakness in front of them: you are their strength. You can never let them see you in despair: you are their hope. You must always be everything to everyone on board.” He takes a deep breath. “And that includes not panicking and throwing an entire level of the ship into lockdown!”

“I thought the ship had been exposed,” I say.

Eldest stares at me. “And you put the ship into lockdown.”

Does he have to remind me of that? I’m a frexing idiot, I get it.

“While you were still here.” His voice is different now. Calmer. I meet his eyes, and I see something in them I’ve never seen before.

Pride.

“You were going to sacrifice yourself to save the ship,” he says.

I shrug. “It was stupid. Sorry.”

“No.” Eldest drawls out the word. “Well, yes, it was stupid. But it was also noble. That took courage, boy. That took leadership. To be willing to sacrifice yourself for the rest of the ship? Shows you think. You thought about how the Keeper Level’s on top, didn’t you? That if the Keeper Level was exposed to space, the explosive decompression would affect the level below it, and the one below that. You thought before you acted. You thought of all the people below.”

I look away. Maybe it had been noble, but all I can see is how the stars aren’t real.

“I’m sorry,” Eldest says. When he sees my confused look, he adds, “I’ve ignored you. It’s my fault. You reminded me of the other Elder, and we… did not get along. When I trained him, I told him too much, too soon. And he acted foolishly, selfishly. But you’re different. I forget that you’re different, but you are.”

Eldest has my full attention now. I know perfectly well there had been another Elder, one between me and Eldest. He died before I was born, but Eldest never talked much about him before.

“I’d already trained that Elder. He was supposed to train you, leaving me to care for the ship. When he died and I had to train you, too… I was never supposed to be saddled with another Elder, and I’ve lapsed in my responsibilities with you.”

I search his eyes. When we’re on the Feeder Level, Eldest is a kind grandpa. When we’re on the Shipper Level, he’s like an old king, commanding but attentive. But when it’s just him and me, he lets his real self show — or at least what I take to be his real self — and his real self may be old, but it isn’t kind and it isn’t weak.

Something in the silence makes me realize Eldest has allowed me, and only me, to see this. And that, more than anything, makes me forgive his neglect.

“Well?” I demand. “Are you going to start training me properly now?”

Eldest nods once, then motions for me to follow him into the Learning Center. His uneven gait is more pronounced than usual, his leg already making him regret his stomping rage.

There are only four rooms on the Keeper Level: my and Eldest’s chambers, the Learning Center, and the Great Room. The Learning Center is the smallest of the rooms, with only a table and the portal to the grav tube. The Great Room is the largest. It’s big enough for everyone on board the ship to stand there at once, if they don’t mind standing close together, but only Eldest and I are allowed on this level. It’s leftover from before the Plague, before we used an Eldest system to rule. My and Eldest’s chambers, as well as the Learning Center, were offices back then, for the crew, and, judging from the glowing star chart behind the metal screen, the Great Room was used for navigation.

After the Plague so many decades ago, the ship changed. It had to. The Plague Eldest renamed the levels, reserving this one for himself and the Eldests who would follow.

Including me.

Eldest sits on one side of the table in the Learning Center. I sit on the other. The table is a rare antique from when the ship departed centuries ago, made of real wood, wood from Sol-Earth. I wonder at the life hidden in the wood: a tree that breathed Sol-Earth air, lived in Sol-Earth dirt, then was chopped down, crafted into a table, and thrown out into space aboard Godspeed.

“There are things you should know,” he says. He picks up a floppy — a digital membrane screen nicknamed for its, er, floppiness — from the table and runs his finger over it, turning it on. When the screen lights up, he scans his thumb over the ID box.

“Eldest/Elder access granted,” the floppy chirps. Eldest taps something onto the screen, then slides the floppy over to me. I can almost see the wood grain through the thin membrane, but then I grow distracted by what Eldest is showing me.

It’s a floor plan of the Shipper Level — I recognize the main central hallway branching into the large rooms used for science and industry, manufacturing and research. Brightly glowing dots are scattered across the map, blinking and moving around.

“You know what this is?” Eldest asks, taking the floppy back.

“The wi-com locator map.” The wireless communication devices implanted behind our left ears not only allow us to com with each other and the ship, but also serve as locators.

I lean over the table to better see the wi-com map. Eldest’s long white hair brushes my face before he sweeps it behind his ear, and I can smell a whiff of soap and something stronger that bites at my nose.

“See all these dots? Each one is a Shipper. Each one has a very specific job: to ensure that the ship runs smoothly. The top Shippers are here.” Eldest points to the energy room, then traces his finger beyond that, into the engine room I’ve never been in, then farther, into a room past that. “The command center is here. Although the ship runs by itself, if anything goes wrong—”

“You’ll steer the ship?” I ask, awed. I imagine Eldest as the brave commander, almost like the captain of one of those ancient Sol-Earth ships that sailed across water, not the uni. Then I imagine me taking the wheel.

Eldest laughs. “Me? No. That’s ridiculous. Elders are not trained to run ships; the Eldest’s job is not to command the ship. An Eldest’s job is to command the people. These Shippers”—he gestures at the blinking dots—“all receive training in specific roles of operating the ship in the event of an emergency.” He glances up. His eyes are milky with age, but he can still see right through me. “You understand, don’t you? The Shippers run the ship — not us.”

The image of everyone cheering me as I sail the ship to Centauri-Earth fades and dies.

“The Shippers are here to take care of the ship, but the ship is just cold metal. You’re the one who has to take care of the people.”

He taps the zoom-out box, and for a moment, the three levels of the ship all light up at once, a dizzying maze of crisscrossing lines. The interior of the ship itself is mostly round. A tiny sliver on top is the Keeper Level. Below that, slightly larger, is the Shipper Level, all chopped up into offices and labs. By and far the largest part of the ship is the Feeder Level. There are two blinking dots for me and Eldest on the Keeper Level, fifty or more on the Shipper Level. Eldest taps on the Feeder Level. On the right side of the circle there are several dozen dots for the people at the Hospital, but none at all in the Recorder Hall. In the middle, dozens of dots are scattered around, each one representing the people living at the various farms. Eldest taps the left side of the screen, where the City is. There are so many dots there that it would be impossible for me to count. Not that I need to. I know everyone on board the ship, all 2,312 of them.

Each one of those 2,312 blinking red dots feels like a pounding weight on my shoulders, each one crushing me down just a little bit more. They’re all, each one of them, my responsibility.

Eldest pulls the Shipper Level up again and rests his fingers on the level’s largest room, just where the engine is. “Between the engine and computers and the nav system and everything else, there’s a lot that can go wrong. This journey… it’s long.” He says this as if he’s felt all 250 years of travel. “The builders of the ship knew this; that’s why they named her Godspeed.”

I mouth the name with him, tasting it like metal on my tongue.

“It’s an old Sol-Earth expression for good luck.” Eldest snorts. “They shot our ancestors into the sky, wished them all good luck, and forgot about us. We lost com with Sol-Earth during the Plague, and have never been able to regain it. We can’t go back. They can’t help us. All the people on Sol-Earth could give us was Godspeed.”

I’m not sure if he means that they gave us luck or the ship, but they both seem a bit inadequate right now.

“But we need more than luck. The ship needs someone to protect the people, not just the ship itself. You will be that leader.” Eldest takes a deep breath. “It’s time for you to learn the three causes of discord.”

I scoot my chair closer. This is new. Finally—finally—Eldest is really going to train me to be the leader after him.

“On Godspeed,” he says, “do we all speak one language?”

“Of course,” I answer, confused.

“Do we have any differences in race?”

“Race?”

“Skin color.”

“No.” Everyone on board has the same deep olive skin, the same dark brown hair and eyes.

“You’ve studied the myths of Sol-Earth: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. Does anyone on Godspeed ‘worship’?” He says the last word with dripping derision.

“Of course not!” I laugh. One of the first lessons Eldest gave me when I moved to the Keeper Level was about Sol-Earth’s religions. They were magic stories, fairy tales, and I remember laughing myself silly when Eldest told me how people on Sol-Earth were willing to die or kill for these fictional characters.

Eldest nods once. “The first cause of discord is difference. There is no religion on Godspeed. We all speak the same language. We’re all monoethnic. And because we are not different, we don’t fight. Remember the Crusades I taught you about? The genocides? We will never have to worry about those types of horrific events on Godspeed.”

I am on the edge of my seat, nodding, but inside I’m hoping Eldest can’t see what a chutz I actually am. I remember those lessons. They were among my first lessons, when I was thirteen and had just moved to the Keeper Level to live with Eldest. Stars, I was such a kid then. I remember pictures on the floppies of people of different skin color and hair color, of people dressed in long gowns or loincloths, of the sounds of languages whose words I could not understand. And back then I thought it was all kind of brilly.

I slouch further down in my seat. No wonder Eldest has been slow to train me — clearly I never picked up the real lessons he’s been teaching me.

“The second cause of discord,” Eldest continues, “is lack of a strong central leader.”

He leans forward, reaching his gnarled, wrinkled hands toward me. “Do you understand the importance of this?” he says, his eyes watery from old age or something else.

I nod.

“Do you really?” he asks more urgently, gripping my hands so hard that some of my knuckles crack.

I nod again, unable to take my eyes from his.

“What is the greatest danger of this ship?” His voice has fallen into a raspy whisper.

Um. Maybe I didn’t understand. Eldest stares at me, expecting a response. I stare back.

“Mutiny. It’s mutiny, Elder. More than technical error or ship malfunction or outside dangers, mutiny is the greatest threat to this ship. So, after the Plague, the Eldest system was created. One person, born ahead of the people he would lead, to act as patriarch and commander to the people younger than he. Each generation has an Eldest to lead. You will one day be an Eldest. You will be the strong central leader who prevents discord, who preserves every living person on this ship.”