Across the Universe Read online

Page 3

  I turn around and roll my thumb over the biometric scanner bar. “Eldest/Elder access granted,” the computer chirps in a cheerful female voice. As Elder, I always have the same security access as Eldest.

  “Command?” the computer asks.

  Huh. That’s odd. Usually, a door opens automatically once access is granted. What other command does a door need?

  “Um, open?”

  Eldest’s chamber door doesn’t zip open like I expect it to. Instead, the ceiling moves. I spin around, my heart banging around inside my chest. Above me, the metal ceiling splits into two pieces and drops down slowly, exposing—

  Exposing a window.

  That shows the outside.

  And the stars.

  There are hatches in the ship, I know there are, but Eldest has never let me see them, just like he hasn’t let me see the massive engine that fuels the ship, or some of the records of the ship before the Plague. I didn’t even know the metal ceiling over the Great Room covered a window to the uni.

  I’ve never seen stars before.

  And I never knew they were so beautiful.

  The entire uni stretches out before me. So big, so frexing big. My eyes fill with starshine. There are so, so many of them. The stars are abbreviated white dashes in the sky with streaks of faint colors—mostly reds and yellows, but sometimes blues or greens. And, seeing them all, I feel closer to planet-landing than I ever have before. I can see it: the ship disembarking for the first time, at night, with no moon or clouds, and before we set out to build our new world, we all stop and stare at the stars above.

  “Access override,” the computer says in its still-pleasant voice. “Screen lowering. ”

  Screen lowering? What?

  Above me, the stars glow brightly.

  And then the window to the universe breaks. A thin line cracks right at the center of the window, splitting open, wider and wider.

  Frex. Frex!

  A rumbling sound fills the Great Room. My head whips left and right, and left and right again, looking for something to hold on to, but there’s nothing here—the Great Room is just a wide-open floor. Why did I never notice how useless it is to have a room with nothing to hold on to? It’s huge, sure, but there’s nothing here except the vast floor and the walls and the doors—nothing that can save me from a broken window that exposes me to space. And what then? The ship will rip apart? And me? I’ll explode or implode or something. I can’t remember which, but it doesn’t matter. The end result will still be the same. My tunic weighs heavily on my shoulders, sticking to my sweat, but all I can think about is how thin the material is against the ravages of space.

  I’m going to die.

  I’m going to be sucked out into space.

  Implosion.

  Death.

  And then another thought hits me: the rest of the ship. If the Keeper Level is exposed, space won’t just suck me out—it will rip through the Keeper Level, into the Shipper Level and the Feeder Level below it. They’ll all die. Everyone. Every single person aboard the ship.

  My feet slip on the tiled floor as I tear across the room. (For one tiny moment, my feet try to turn to the hatch door, the door that leads to life and freedom, but I ignore my feet. They’re just trying to keep me alive; they don’t care about the rest of the ship. ) I throw myself at the big red lockdown button over the hatch. The floor shakes as the Keeper Level closes itself off from the rest of the ship. There’s no going back now.

  I turn toward the ceiling, toward the exposed universe.

  Toward death.

  3

  AMY

  THE PRESIDENT CALLED IT THE “EPITOME OF THE AMERICAN dream. ”

  Daddy called it the “unholy alliance of business and government. ”

  But all it really was, was America giving up. Bailing out in order to join the Financial Resource Exchange. A multinational alliance focused on one thing: profit. Fund global medical care to monopolize vaccines. Back unified currency to collect planet-wide interest.

  And provide the resources needed for a select group of scientists and military personnel to embark on the first trip across the universe in a quest to find more natural resources—more profit.

  The answer to my parents’ dreams.

  And my worst nightmare.

  And I know something about nightmares, seeing as how I’ve been sleeping longer than I’ve been alive.

  I hope. What if this is just a part of a long dream dreamt in the short time between when Ed locked the cryo door and Hassan pushed the button to freeze me? What if?

  It’s a strange sort of sleep, this. Never really waking up, but becoming aware of consciousness inside a too-still body.

  The dreams weave in and out of memories.

  The only thing keeping the nightmares from engulfing me is the hope that there couldn’t possibly be a hundred more years before I wake up.

  Not a hundred years. Not three hundred. Not three hundred and one. Please, God, no.

  Sometimes it feels like a thousand years have passed; sometimes it feels as if I’ve only been sleeping a few moments. I feel most like I’m in that weird state of half-asleep, half-awake I get when I’ve tried to sleep past noon, when I know I should get up, but my mind starts wandering and I’m sure I can never get back to sleep. Even if I do slip back into a dream for a few moments, I’m mostly just awake with my eyes shut.

  Yeah. Cryo sleep is like that.

  Sometimes I think there’s something wrong. I shouldn’t be so aware. But then I realize I’m only aware for a moment, and then, as I’m realizing it, I slip into another dream.

  Mostly, I dream of Earth. I think that’s because I didn’t want to leave it.

  A field of flowers; smells of dirt and rain. A breeze . . . But not really a breeze, a memory of a breeze, a memory made into a dream that tries to drown out my frozen mind.

  Earth. I hold on to my thoughts of Earth. I don’t like the dreamtime. The dreamtime is too much like dying. They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over.

  Pressure on my pinky where Daddy wrapped his finger around mine, and a whisper of his words promising me I could stay with my aunt and uncle. The heaviness in my chest, where I thought about it, where I really thought about it. I push the dream-memory down. That happened centuries ago, and it’s too late for regrets now. Because all my parents ever wanted was to be a part of the first manned interstellar exploratory mission, and all I ever wanted was to be with them.

  And I guess it doesn’t matter that I had a life on Earth, and that I loved Earth, and that by now, my friends have all lived and gotten old and died, and I’ve just been lying here in frozen sleep. That Jason lived and got old and maybe he married and had kids and everything, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s dead now. God, his great-grandchildren might be my age.

  A splatter of rain on my skin, but it’s bright and sunny under the blue sky. And Jason’s there, and we almost kiss, but then everything changes and we’re at that party where we met because dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they’re never real. They’re never real, and I hate them because they aren’t.

  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 hei
ght. 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.