Across the Universe

50 ELDER

I POUND ON AMY’S DOOR HARDER THAN I’D INTENDED TO, MY mind stuck on Orion’s words.

Harley opens the door.

“Where’s Amy?” I push past him into her room.

She’s on her bed. I wonder what the two of them have been talking about. Alone. In her room. On her bed.

“What do you want?” Amy asks, and even though she doesn’t sound impatient, in my mind I wonder whether she’s trying to get rid of me in order to be alone again with Harley.

Harley steps into the bathroom and returns with a glass of water.

“Why are you upset?” I ask.

“It’s nothing.” Amy gulps down the water.

I sit down in the desk chair. Harley sits beside Amy on the bed. I wish I had left the chair open for Harley. “Why would anyone want to kill the frozens?” I ask. Harley and Amy seem surprised by the abruptness of my question, but I’ve had enough beating around the bush with Orion. “Two are dead now. Dead. For no reason at all.”

“What did Eldest say when you found him?” Harley asks.

I leave the question hanging long enough for the two of them to realize there’s something wrong. It’s not like I’m trying to be mysterious. It’s just that I don’t know what to say. That I don’t think I can trust Eldest? Harley’s only ever seen the grandfatherly-kind version of Eldest; to him, Eldest is his wise leader. How am I supposed to tell him that out of everyone on the ship, the one I most suspect of murder is Eldest?

“I think we’ve got to figure out why the frozens are being attacked,” I say finally. “That’s the key; that’s what we need to focus on. Meanwhile, I have an idea.” Taking the floppy from Amy’s desk, I tap in my access and bring up the wi-com locator map. “This is the cryo level,” I say, handing the map to Amy. Our fingers brush together, and I can feel the heat of her touch on my hand long after she moves away.

“What’s this?” Amy points to the glowing blue dot.

“Tap it.”

When she does, a name pops up on the screen. “Eldest/Elder? But you’re here.”

I nod. “That means Eldest is down there. We’ve got the same access to everything, so the computer always labels us alike, remember?”

Amy’s fingers clench, crushing the edge of the floppy.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say. “But he’s in the lab. The cryo chambers are over here.”

Amy doesn’t look comforted.

“Look.” Harley points as Eldest’s dot moves across the map and disappears.

“What happened?” Amy asks, surprised.

“That’s where the elevator is. He’ll show up on the Feeder Level now. But I thought you’d like to keep this. I set it up to work with your fingerprint when I scanned you in earlier. Then you can watch who’s coming and going.”

“Thank you,” Amy says. “But… that’s not good enough. We need to be down there. All the time. We should go now.” She stands up, but looks lost. “Right now. If we’re not there to protect them — that’s why people are being murdered! Because we aren’t protecting them!”

“No.” My voice is calm and sure. “People are getting murdered because there’s a murderer.”

Amy opens her mouth, probably to insist on going to the cryo level, but Harley thrusts another cup of water in her hands. I’d been so intent on Amy that I’d not noticed him get up and get water from the bathroom tap. Amy snatches it from his hand.

“Go easy on the water,” I say, thinking about the second water pump Eldest has hidden on the cyro level. Amy chugs the entire glass, though, and when she sets it on the table, her skin’s no longer red-and-white splotchy, and her breathing’s back to normal. Harley hesitantly sits down at the very edge of the bed, ready to leap up and run for more water at a moment’s notice.

“I’ll still keep guard when I can,” Harley tells Amy, a distant look in his eyes. I wonder if he’s only offering so he can be close to the hatch that leads outside to the stars. I wonder how many times he’s opened it, just so he can get one more glimpse.

A shadow crosses my mind. Harley was down there all that night. He could have slid open Mr. Kennedy’s tray and let him melt. I can see it in my mind’s eye: Harley standing over a melting man, watching him die. He could have done it.

But why?

Another shadow whispers to me, reminds me of Harley’s dark moods, of the extra meds Doc feeds him, of how he’s probably missed a week’s worth of those meds in all this chaos.

I take a deep breath to clear my mind.

Harley’s no killer.

Right?

No—no. Harley would never—

“And—” Amy starts.

Beep, beep-beep.

My hand jumps to my wi-com button just as Harley’s does. We glance at each other. It’s rare to get a com-link at the same time as someone else.

“What is it?” Amy asks, her eyes darting nervously between us.

Then that deep, aged voice fills my ear.

“Attention all residents of Godspeed. I have a very important announcement.”