Across the Universe

62 ELDER

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE WAS NO PLAGUE?” I ASK, MY MIND racing. This is one of the few things all of us — me, the Feeders, the Shippers, all of us — were taught. It is the first lesson every child on the ship learns: We must work together, be diligent, or risk another Plague. It is such a part of our lives that we slap a med patch on if we even think we’re getting sick, and every sneeze is reported to Doc.

“There was no Plague. Sure, there’s been sickness on the ship — some of it quite damaging, honestly — but no widespread Plague.”

“But the deaths… we’re still recovering from the death tolls from the Plague. We’re not even up to original numbers now, and the Plague was so long ago.” I think of the empty trailers in the City, of how there is still growing room for us aboard the ship, even though the Plague was longer ago than any living memory. “You taught me about this. You told me three-fourths of the ship’s population died under the Plague.” I cannot hide the note of accusation in my voice. But really, I should not have been surprised. The lightbulb stars in the room beyond are proof enough of that.

“There were deaths. But not from a Plague.”

“What do you mean?” Roles are reversed now. Eldest is the calm one; I am the one bordering on panic. How much more of my life will I discover has been built on lies?

“Come on.” Eldest sighs as if he’d rather not show me anything, but before he can change his mind, I jump up and follow him out of the Learning Center, across the Great Room, and down the hatch to the Shipper Level. His shoes tap unevenly on the tiled floor, making his limp more noticeable. He ignores both me and the Shippers who snap to attention.

The Shipper Level reminds me, in a strange way, of the cryo level where Amy was. There are no living quarters here. All the Shippers live in the City on the Feeder Level and take the grav tube here. Instead, this level, like the cryo level, is all metal. Hallways branch off into laboratories and offices, some fitted with biometric scanners and some so old-fashioned that they have actual locks from Sol-Earth. For the most part, I’m ignorant of what lies behind the doors. Eldest has never bothered to let me learn the intricacies of what the scientists and Shippers study and do. I know, vaguely, that the importance of the job is determined by where it is on the level. The offices nearest to the grav tube are the least important, dealing with things like weather manipulation and soil-sample testing. The farther down the hallway you go, the more important the research. The farthest I’ve been is about midway down, where the solar lamp research is done.

Eldest takes us all the way to the end of the hall. I’ve never even walked this far down the hall, let alone gone through these doors. I know from studying the ship diagrams what is there: the energy room, where nuclear physics is studied, that leads directly to the engine room, where lies the massive heart of the ship. Beyond that is the nav con, where Eldest said only the top Shippers go, the ones who will finally land Godspeed in 49 years and 263 days… no, I mean, 74 years and 263 days—74 years. Frex… 74.

Eldest scans his thumb on the biometric scanner at the energy room’s doorway. “Eldest/Elder access granted,” the scanner says pleasantly. I pause. I’ve never gone past this room. But Eldest keeps going to the door on the far wall. When it opens, I hear the deep growling of the ship’s engine.

I’m finally going to see the engine.

The engine room is hot, oppressively hot. I tug at my collar and push up my sleeves, but Eldest does not show any indication that he’s even uncomfortable. All around us, scientists rush around. Some hold vials or metal boxes, nearly all of them have floppies under their arms, flashing important looking charts and diagrams.

“Follow me,” Eldest says.

But I don’t.

My eyes fill up with the thing in the center of the room: sunken into the floor, and huge, is the engine.

For some reason, I never imagined the engine in the engine room. I mean, I knew the engine was there, obviously, but I never bothered to think about it. I knew from Eldest’s lessons that, in its crudest form, the engine is a nuclear reactor running off uranium. The thing before me looks almost like a test tube, although giant and with heavy metal pipes extending from its head and wrapping around it. An undercurrent of whirr-churn-whirr cycles over and over and over. This is the heartbeat of the ship.

“It’s loud,” Eldest grunts when he sees where my attention has wandered. “And it smells.”

I hadn’t noticed the odd scent of grease and cleaner before. “It’s beautiful.”

Eldest snorts, then stares at me more intently. “It’s not beautiful.” His gaze shifts to the engine. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says in a flat voice. “Do you know what kind of engine that is?”

“Nuclear,” I say.

Eldest rolls his eyes. “Be a little more specific, why don’t you?”

“A lead-cooled fast reactor?” I guess, remembering the engine schematics in the Recorder Hall.

Eldest withdraws the scale model of the engine, the one I last saw on his desk when I snuck into his room, from his pocket. He breaks it apart so that I can see the tiny innards. The engine is like a living thing with veins and organs and the slow whirr-churn-whirr of life.

“We use uranium,” Eldest continues. “The uranium goes through the reactor, then here—” He points to a small box that’s outside the test tube of the engine, connected by tubes and wires. “The uranium is reprocessed in the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. We are supposed to be able to use and reuse the uranium over and over again, a constantly recycled fuel system.”

The key words — supposed to be — are not lost on me. “Is that not what’s happening?”

“The reprocessing part of the fuel cycle isn’t working like we thought it would,” Eldest says. “It’s supposed to maintain the uranium’s efficiency.”

“But it’s not?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No.”

“What’s happening?”

I can tell Eldest wants to look away, but I don’t break eye contact.

“The short answer? We’re going slower. And slower. At first, we were at 80 percent maximum speed, then 60. Now we sometimes hit 40 percent maximum speed, but it’s usually worse.”

“That’s why the ship’s landing was delayed? That’s why it’s taking extra years to land?”

Eldest snorts — his first betrayal of emotion since we entered the Engine Room. “Twenty-five years behind schedule? I wish. We’re not even halfway there. As of now, we’re 250 years behind schedule.”