Across the Universe

76 ELDER

IT CAME TO ME, THE FIRST NIGHT AFTER ELDEST WAS KILLED and Orion was frozen, that I shared the same DNA as both of those men, but I was nothing like them. The truth of the ship twisted both men differently, turning one into a dictator, one into a sociopath.

The three of us, we’re the same. We were raised with the same knowledge, formed from the same genetic material, given the same truth. But one of us hid the truth through lies and control, one tried to change the truth through chaos and murder, and me… well, I am still figuring out what truth is. And what I will do with it.

Was I lying to my people when I didn’t tell them about Orion?

Was it wrong to give them access to a truth that might kill them like it killed Harley?

And what right do I have to make any mandates about truth when my greatest joy is that Orion never had a chance to tell the truth to Amy?

In the end, am I really all that different from Eldest or Orion if I let her believe a lie?

THE PAST

ELDER

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED.

This is truth.

I saw her lying there, frozen in her glass box. And she was different. Really different. I could never have the sunset of Sol-Earth, but it was all there, in her hair, floating immobilized in ice, pale skin like lamb’s wool. And young. Like me.

She will never understand.

I went down there, later, to stare and dream. To think of what she could tell me of Sol-Earth. To think of how she — unlike every other person on this frexing ship—she would be my age during my Season.

And I wouldn’t have to be alone.

And then I heard it. A tiny whisper in my mind, a barely heard voice I almost — but not quite — ignored.

And the voice held a question. And the question was:

What if I unplug her?

And at first I did ignore it. But the question got louder. And louder.

It roared.

And so, just to make it shut up, I reached out, and I flipped the switch in the box above Amy’s cold head, and I watched the light blink from green to red.

And the voice inside my head sighed in relief and whispered words of comfort and told me she would smile at me when the ice melted.

I was going to wait, right there, be there for her when she yawned and stretched and emerged from the box. Be there as her eyes fluttered open, as her lips curved into a smile.

But I heard—

— Orion, scuffling in the dark, listening to his own voice — but I didn’t know that then. I swear I didn’t know it was him, watching.

So I ran to the elevator and went to the garden and tried to pretend I had not brought a girl back to life with the flip of a switch.

Then came the alarm.

And the scream of it—aroo! aroo! — blended into Amy’s scream.

Of pain.

And later — of regret. Sorrow. Broken dreams and hopes.

I broke those dreams.

Me.

And nothing comforted her, not even the love she never saw from me.

And Doc said she couldn’t go back; she could never go back.

And I knew — I knew—

I could never tell her the truth.