A Million Suns atu-2 Page 4

  “What’s going on?” a burly man at the Agriculture wall floppy growls.

  Giant words in bright white letters scroll across the darkened screens, filling the hall with one phrase, repeated over and over.

  LEAD YOURSELF

  My eyes widen, and I pull my hood even farther down over my face, so hard that the seams strain against the back of my head. While everyone else is distracted, reading the words and puzzling about how they flashed on their floppies, I rush to the back of the hall, toward the book rooms. Something like this was bound to happen. Elder’s been spending all his free time with me in the Recorder Hall, reading up on civics and police forces, but I don’t think he really understood that some people are going to want to rebel just because, for the very first time, they can.

  “Who did this?” A male voice cuts through the mutterings of the crowd. He sounds wary, scared even, but also aggressive, as if he’d like to find and punish whoever hacked the floppy network.

  “What does it mean?” a woman near me says. Her friend shakes her head violently, her hair whipping her cheeks, her eyes wide with fear.

  A woman at the Science floppy starts tapping the screen, trying to make the message go away. The crowd around her starts whispering uneasily as nothing she does changes the message. Whoever hacked the floppies did a good job, apparently.

  “Eldest needs to fix this,” the first man says. It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about Elder. Many of the people around him nod, their eyes on the screen, their mouths gaping.

  “Those floppies didn’t change until the freak walked by,” one of the women who had been reading Romeo and Juliet says in a clear, loud voice. She starts searching the crowd in the entryway for me. I duck my head and run into the back hall.

  I don’t breathe until I’m in the fiction room and the door zips shut behind me. There’s no lock — hardly any of the rooms on the entire ship have locks — but if I can lie low here, the people in the entryway might eventually forget their anger and forget me.

  The fiction room is smaller than the others on this floor; clearly, the ship’s makers decided that history and science were more important than novels. I wish it looked more like my library back home, with huge plush beanbags scattered across the floor, dark carpet, posters of famous authors on the walls, and tiny square dusty windows filtering in the sunlight. Instead, the fiction room looks like all the rest — cold and sterile and entirely too clean. It’s like a hospital room with books instead of beds: white tiled floor, stark paneled walls, silvery-metal table.

  Even though the room is sparkling clean, there is an ever-present scent of dust and old paper rising from the tomes. Everything here is in alphabetical order regardless of subject matter. Chaucer is beside Agatha Christie; J. K. Rowling beside Dr. Seuss beside Shakespeare. When I get to the end of one row and look down the next, I see unreadable titles, some written in languages I can guess at — French, German, Spanish — and some I can’t even begin to decipher — Chinese? Korean? Japanese?

  I could get lost here, but I need to see if Orion really did leave a clue for me to follow in the phrase printed on my wi-com. I quit wandering among the fairy tales and poetry (Grimm and Goethe) and head to the first row of books, running my fingers along their bumpy spines. I head to the first bookcase, scanning the titles—The Pilgrim’s Progress, Ender’s Game, Mousetrap—until I get to the one I’m looking for.

  Inferno, Volume I of the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, shelved beside a slender volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Ironic — a book of love poems beside a book about hell. I pull out the poetry collection and toss it on the metal table near the door so it can be reshelved with the Ss; then I hook my finger on the spine of Dante’s Inferno.

  Just the title makes me remember those weeks in Ms. Parker’s English class. I can feel the hard seat of my class desk; I can remember laughing with Ryan and Mike as we worked on our final project.

  Funny how a book about hell reminds me of home.

  As I slide Inferno off the shelf, something slips out, wafting to the floor. I bend over to pick it up — a paper-thin sheet of rectangular black plastic, about the length and width of my open hand. The feel of it reminds me of a floppy, but it’s smaller, and there is a fingernail-size bit of raised hard plastic in one corner. I slip it in my pocket; Elder will probably know what it is. I stand back up and reach for Dante again.

  The door bursts open. I get a glimpse of a panicked woman’s face — eyes wide with fear, dark hair swinging. She races past me to the far side of the room and throws herself behind the last bookshelf.

  I run over and drop to my knees beside her trembling body. “What’s wrong?” I ask, reaching for her. Now that I have a chance to really look at her, I realize who she is: Victria. Harley and Elder’s friend. The girl who writes, stories or novels, I think. The last time I spoke with her, I told her about the sky on Earth and how it never ended, and she spit in my face, denouncing me in front of everyone.

  She snatches her hand away. Sweat beads on her face and arms, and she’s panting hard. “Luthe — Luthor. He’s…”

  Him.

  My stomach drops.

  He’s the one. The one who held me down three months ago, who used the Season as an excuse to try to rape me. He was like Harley and Elder — aware of the world around him without Phydus dulling his mind. He knew what he was doing when he slammed me to the ground and pressed his weight against me. When he watched hope leave my eyes. When I gave up struggling.

  He told me his name was Luthe, but Victria called him Luthor. Like Lex Luthor, Superman’s arch-nemesis… but the exploits of a bald super-villain seem comical compared to the evil that lies behind this Luthor’s skin. I realize then — Luthe is his nickname. The name his friends call him. The idea of calling him that fills me with revulsion. I don’t like to think of him in the same terms his friends do.

  The door zips open again. Victria whimpers softly, hiding her face. I jump up.

  He stands in the doorway, scanning the room.

  His eyes lock on me.

  And he smiles. Slowly.

  Seductively.

  7 ELDER

  THE DOOR IS LOCKED. JUST THE WAY I LEFT IT.

  After — after everything — after

  Orion was frozen and

  Amy found out the truth and

  Eldest died and

  I watched him die…

  I watched him die.

  After all of that, I crawled back up to the Keeper Level. The empty, hollow Keeper Level. And I broke into Eldest’s room, and I found his stash of alcohol, and I stayed drunk for two days straight. Then I threw up for two more days, and then I relocked his door, one of the few doors that even has a lock.

  And I put a table in front of it.

  Now I shove the table out of the way so forcefully that it tips over on one side and crashes to the ground.

  Before, the Keeper Level seemed too big, big enough for everyone on the ship to stand in it at one time so they could be lied to while they looked up at the ceiling and gasped at the light bulbs called stars.

  When it was Eldest and me, this place felt huge, the space between us filled with emptiness and silence. Now that it’s just me, the Keeper Level feels claustrophobically small.

  My wi-com beeps. I jab it with my finger to silence it.

  And before I can talk myself out of it, before I can walk away and promise to go into his room later—

  — I unlock Eldest’s door.

  Dust particles swirl in the light as I enter. I breathe deeply, expecting to smell Eldest’s musky soap, but instead it smells like mildew. My feet stick to the floor. Near the door lies one open and spilled alcohol jar, dried into a gummy mess. That’s my mark on Eldest’s room.

  The room itself is messy and cluttered, but that’s the way Eldest kept it. The bed’s unmade, the blankets a swirl of cloth at the foot. Spilling out from underneath the bed is a pile of wrinkled clothes. A dirty plate that’s still littered with a few crumb
s rests perilously close to the edge of his nightstand.

  I feel like an interloper, a trespasser in Eldest’s private space, but I remind myself that, technically, I’m Eldest now, and this is more my room than a dead man’s.

  On the desk are the scattered remains of a model engine. I pick up the small resin nuclear reactor core, wiping the dust carefully from the surface. The first time I saw the frexing thing was when Eldest hid it from me. I weigh the model engine in my hand. He knew something was wrong, even then. If he had just told me the truth from the start, maybe we could have worked together to solve the engine’s problems. If everyone would just be frexing honest, we’d probably be at Centauri-Earth by now!

  I hurl the model engine across the room. It crashes over Eldest’s bed, sprinkling cracked resin across his pillow, still dented from where he laid his head.

  Shite.

  I rub my hands across my face.

  Shite.

  With the hacked message on the floppy network and Marae’s eagerness to form my police force, I’d pushed from my mind the hardest truth of all.

  We’re not going anywhere.

  Stopped.

  Staring at the broken engine bits on Eldest’s bed, I realize something. I’m not going to tell the rest of the ship. I’m not. I never thought I’d get tangled up in the lies Eldest wove around Godspeed… but I can’t tell them. I can’t tell them we’re not just going slowly. We’re stopped. If just taking them off Phydus has calls for revolution leaking through the floppy network, then surely they’ll rip this ship apart if I tell them we’re not going anywhere; they’ll tear through the metal with their teeth and let themselves be swallowed into the black of space.

  Just like Harley.

  I run my fingers through my hair, snagging them on tangles. What am I doing here? Eldest might have suspected we were stopped, but it’s not like he hid the secret to reviving the engine in his bedroom.

  A floppy on Eldest’s desk flashes. The bright white words fade to black. The floppy beeps and reboots itself. After a moment, it shows the start-up screen as normal. Whatever Marae and the first-level Shippers did worked, and the hacker’s message is wiped from the screen.

  My wi-com beeps again.

  I start to answer the com when I notice something — another door. I silence the beeping in my left ear and move toward the door, stepping over piles of Eldest’s dirty clothes. Why is there another door here? There’s the one to the bathroom, of course, but I’ve never noticed this one before — I’ve only been in Eldest’s room twice, and both times I was focused on finding something else: first the model engine, and then later the alcohol.

  There’s a rainbow scratch along the floor; Eldest used this door frequently. My hands shake as I reach toward the old-fashioned knob — it’s metal, from Sol-Earth. It won’t twist, but when I pull, the door opens anyway. I stare curiously inside.

  A closet.

  Closets are rare; most bedrooms have wardrobes instead, but I must admit I was hoping for something more here. Disappointed, I turn away, but something catches my eye. A rag pokes out from the top box on the floor of the closet. It’s an odd sort of greenish blue, a color I remember in the deepest part of me.

  I suck in my breath, then forget to breathe out again. When I reach down and pull the scrap of cloth from the box, my hands are numb.

  When I first moved into the Keeper Level, one of the only things I brought with me was a blanket. Small, stained, and worn threadbare in spots. A particular shade of greenish blue.

  This blanket was the oldest thing I owned. At the time, I thought that it had come from my parents. As Elder, I was never allowed to know who they were, because otherwise I’d be biased toward them. Or so Eldest told me. In reality, I’m a clone, manufactured, not born.

  Eldest had me moved from family to family until I was twelve — six months with the shepherds, six months with the butchers, six months with the soy farmers.

  And with all that moving, I never knew which family belonged to me.

  But the blanket was mine.

  My earliest memory is hiding under the blanket when I was told I’d have to move again. I don’t remember which family I was with or which I was moving to, but I remember cowering under the blanket and thinking that maybe, when I was a little baby, it had been my mother — my real mother — who had wrapped me in it and held me against her.

  After the first few days on the Keeper Level, Eldest and I got in a fight, and he called me an impossible child, babied and spoiled. I promptly stormed into my room and punched the walls, knocking everything in sight off my shelf — and then I saw my blanket. The epitome of being a baby.

  I’d tried to rip it in half but couldn’t, so I chucked it in the trash chute.

  And, somehow, Eldest saved this piece of me. Kept it for years. I press it now against my face and think about all Eldest was, and all he wasn’t.

  The only thing hanging from the rod in the closet is a heavy robe, the ceremonial robe Eldest only wore on important occasions. I drop the blanket back into the box and reach for the robe. It’s much heavier than I expected. Definitely wool — I’ve carded and spun enough from my time before Eldest began training me to recognize the waxy-rough feeling of the cloth. The embroidery spans the entire length and breadth of the robe. Stars dance along the top, crops grow along the hem, and between them is a band of horizon that never ends.

  The clasp opens at my touch, and I slide under the robe. The weight of it pushes my shoulders down, makes me hunch over. The hem drags the floor by a good inch or two, and my chest isn’t broad enough to fill out the robe; the stars cave in around me.

  I look ridiculous.

  I pull the robe off and shove it back into the closet.

  8 AMY

  I HAVE TO GET OUT. I HAVE TO LEAVE. NOW. I CAN’T STAY here. Not with him. Escape. Must escape. Now. NOW. But there’s nowhere to go. He crosses the threshold and is at me in two strides. Luthor draws closer to me, so close that I can feel the heat of his body burning my skin. When I suck in a lungful of air to scream, I suck in some of his exhaled breath too. Luthor reaches toward me, and the scream in my throat dies, choking me and leaving me breathless.

  Luthor flips the hood away from my face. He grabs hold of my maroon head wrap, and I jerk away, my hair spilling out over my shoulders. The bookshelf behind me is an unyielding wall. Luthor slides his hand down the side of my face and grabs a fistful of my hair. He yanks it, hard, pulling me closer to him. I strain against his grip. I don’t care if he rips the hair out of my head, I am not going to let him control me. I reach behind me and grab two books from the shelf by their spines. As Luthor twines my hair around his hand, forcing me to face him, I whip out the books, slamming them on either side of his head.

  “Augh!” Luthor shouts, an inhuman roar of pain. He clutches the sides of his head, a string of curse words — some I know, some I don’t — following me as I drop the books and duck under his arm.

  “Come on!” I yell at Victria, who is still hiding behind the last bookcase. She steps out and I grab her wrist and drag her behind me, out of the fiction room and toward the hall.

  Luthor follows quickly, but we’ve got enough of a head start that we make it to the crowded entrance hall before he reaches us. I stop when we reach the center. The message that had filled all the screens before is gone, and the floppies have returned to normal. A short woman wearing the immaculately starched dark clothing favored by the Shippers stands near the Science floppy, deep in conversation with the group that had been studying the engine schematics earlier. A few people look up, startled by our sudden entrance, but for the most part, no one notices us.

  Luthor stands with both arms gripping the doorway that leads to the hall, glaring at us. He won’t do anything now. Not with everyone else here. It’s not the Season anymore; there’s no more Phydus. He doesn’t have an excuse.

  Victria yanks her hand out of my grasp. “Thanks,” she mutters, the sound more like a growl.

  “Hey!�
�� Luthor’s voice echoes throughout the entrance hall. Most people turn to look at him, but Victria dips her head low and hurries for the exit, abandoning me in the center of the hall as Luthor pushes up from the door frame and heads toward me.

  “You think you can just walk away from me?” Luthor shouts.

  “I know I can,” I say, and I actually make it a few steps closer to the exit before he grabs me by the elbow and spins me around.

  I scan the entrance hall. Everyone’s watching us. A few have drawn closer, and from the worry in their eyes, I can see that they’re on the verge of coming to my aid. Still — they hesitate. Because he’s one of them. And I’m not.

  “Things are different now,” I hiss at Luthor, yanking my arm out of his grasp. “You think you can take whatever you want, but you can’t.”

  I step away quickly, determined to escape this room without him laying another finger on me. His laughter rings out, a disgusting sound that sends chills down my spine. “Things are different!” he bellows after me. “We haven’t got a leader anymore!”

  I spin on my heel. “Elder is leader!” My voice is high and loud; it comes out as an angry screech. I can’t help but remember the message that flashed across the floppies earlier.

  Luthor snorts in contempt. “You think that boy can stop me? You think that boy can stop any of us?” He sweeps his arms wide, indicating the entire crowd of people who are now staring avidly as we scream in the middle of their usually silent hall.

  “We can do anything we want,” Luthor says in a low voice only I can hear. He grins broadly and looks around him, then lifts his voice in a mighty roar, “We can do anything we want!”

  I see it in the faces of the people around us.

  The realization that what he’s said is true.

  9 ELDER

  “ELDER?” A VOICE CALLS OUT AS ELDEST’S DOOR ZIPS SHUTS behind me.

  “The frex?” I mutter, peering around. No one has access to this level but me.