by Beth Revis
Bartie can’t be thinking what I’m thinking: that the only reason I was born to rule was because I was plucked as an embryo from a tube full of other genetically enhanced clones whose DNA had been modified to make the ideal ruler.
“But even Plato says that the ideal state of an aristocracy can decay,” Bartie says.
The word decay reminds me of the entropy Marae mentioned, how everything is constantly spinning out of control, including the ship. Including me.
“An Eldest is like an aristocrat,” Bartie adds. He’s searching my eyes now, the book forgotten, as if he wants me to pick up some deeper meaning to what he’s saying. I pull my mind away from the broken engine and Marae’s lies and back to the conversation at hand.
“But the Eldest system isn’t decaying,” I say. “It works. It is working.”
“You’re not Eldest,” Bartie points out. “You’re still Elder.”
I shake my head. “In name only. I can rule without taking on the title.”
“Titles confuse me.” Bartie picks up The Republic again, closing it and staring at the cover. “This book talks about aristocracy and tyranny like they’re two different things, but I don’t see a difference.” He slides it across the table. “There are other forms of government, though.”
“What are you saying?” I ask warily.
Bartie stands and so do I. “You don’t have to be alone in this,” he says. “Look at the reality of the situation. Even if you are the one aristocrat on this ship, the one leader—you’re sixteen years old. Maybe you will be a great leader . . .”
“Will be?” I growl.
He shrugs. “People don’t respect you now. Maybe in another five or ten years.”
“People respect me because of what I am!”
Bartie drops the book on the table; its thud echoes on the metal surface. He heads toward the door, shouldering past me when he nears. “You’ve given us all the chance to think, to choose for ourselves what we want.” His voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “I respect that. But you’ve got to realize that maybe, when we’ve had a chance to think about it, we’re not going to choose you as our leader.”
Bartie picks up two books from the table—the history of the French Revolution and a book from the science room, Technical Instruction on Communication Systems. He abandons Plato’s Republic on the table and carries the other books across the room without speaking. When the door zips closed after him, though, it feels as if there are a lot of words drifting through the silence he leaves behind.
The last cause of discord. Individual thought.
He has no idea that I haven’t slept a full night in three months. That I do nothing but try to figure out how to keep a ship full of angry, passionate, self-aware people from self-destruction. That now, on top of everything else, I have the dead engine to worry about. All he sees is my failure.
If I can’t rule without Phydus, that’s all any of them will ever see.
Failure.
For giving them back their lives and not being able to save them from themselves.
When I step back outside, I have to blink to adjust to the brightness. Everything seems calmer here, more still, almost reverent. The Recorder Hall wasn’t loud, exactly, but it wasn’t quiet, either.
Something catches my gaze. I turn slowly.
Beside the door to the Recorder Hall is a painting, a portrait of me, held in a place of honor. It was one of the last paintings Harley ever made.
And someone’s shredded it.
It looks as if a giant claw of knives ripped through the canvas—five long gashes slice through my face and chest, spilling out strings and dried paint like bleeding wounds. The background behind me in the painting—a mirror of Godspeed’s fields and farms—is mostly untouched. Whoever did this took care to dismantle my face and leave the rest of the painting unharmed.
And it wasn’t like this when I entered the Recorder Hall. Whoever did this waited for the perfect opportunity—to make sure I saw, and to make sure I knew it was done when I was nearby.
I force myself to turn. My eyes dart around the fields and down the path. There’s no one here. The vandal fled already . . . or simply strolled into the Recorder Hall to fade among the crowd, watching me as I walked past.
14
AMY
BACK IN MY ROOM, I CAN’T QUIT PACING. ORION LEFT CLUES—for me? About something important, something life or death, apparently. Could it be about the death of the ship? The stopped engines?
And—how has he already given me the first clue?
I stop pacing and stare at my bedroom wall, catching sight of the chart I’d painted there. It’s been three months since Elder stopped Orion from murdering the frozens in the military. Before that I’d tried to identify the murderer by painting the list of victims on my wall. I trace the sloppy letters, the paint so thick that the edges leave tiny shadows on the white wall. Thin lines of black drips have dried like witches’ fingers reaching for the floor. One line is longer and thicker than the others. It cuts through the dusty ivy Harley had once, long ago, painted for his girlfriend, whose room this once was.
Black scrawls on a dirty wall. That is all Orion ever gave me, other than the bodies of victims.
I close my eyes and breathe deeply, remembering the way the paint smelled as I dipped Harley’s paintbrush into it.
Paint.
Harley.
That’s what Orion gave me. The only thing he ever really gave me. Harley’s last painting. When Harley was in the cryo level, piecing together bits of wire so he could open the hatch and slaughter himself in the vacuum of space, he gave his last finished painting to Orion—who gave it to me. After Harley’s death, I was too sad to look at it and asked that Elder take it to Harley’s room for me.
Which is where it must still be. . . . I race out of my room and down the hall. Harley’s room is easy to find—smudges of color create a rainbow path straight to his door.
His room smells of dust and turpentine, like old mistakes. The slats over his window stream artificial light over a small plant in a homemade pot that has long since died. Speckles of dust glitter in the bars of light.
It feels like a violation, stepping into this room. My hand lingers by the door frame, my thumb still resting on the biometric scanner.
I step inside slowly, still holding onto the door frame with one hand, reluctant to dive fully into this den of Harley’s past. My fingers slide from the wall to the dresser pressed against it, leaving four shiny paths in the dust on top. Is this three months worth of dust, or more? I never saw Harley in his room, only saw him leaving it once as we passed in the hall. I cannot picture him in it now. It is too small, too cramped. This is more like storage than a home.
But Harley was an artist, a true artist, and his storage is more precious than anything I’ve seen in a museum. Canvases are stacked against the wall. I flip through a row of them, all facing the room. One is nothing but splatters of paint and black ink, an experiment failed, I think. There’s another koi fish, the same kind of painting Harley did for me, but this one is more cartoonish and less realistic, with lighter colors that would be pastel if they weren’t so brightly clashing.
The last painting faces the wall, but even before I turn it around, I see the rips in the canvas, ragged edges leaking threads.
It’s a painting of a girl. There’s a smile on her lips, but none in her deep and watery eyes. She looks like she’s just emerged from a bath or a swimming pool; her hair is dripping wet, and droplets leave dark stains trailing down her face.
The cuts on the canvas were made in anger—they’re jagged and rough. Someone—Harley?—has gone back and tried to repair the canvas, but no one could put her face back together again.
Kayleigh. It has to be. My fingers run down the thick paint of her hair. This is the girl Harley lost, the one that made him lose himself.
Suddenly, I feel like a trespasser, violating Harley’s sanctuary. It doesn’t matter that he’s gone: this room is still his, an
d I do not belong.
I came for the painting. I should get it and go. I scan the room, looking for the one painting that belongs to me. There, there, under the window—the black black sky. The silver-white sprinkles of stars. The orangey-gold koi swimming around his ankle. Harley.
I rush across the room toward the canvas, and my hip knocks into a ruler on the edge of the table, sending the papers stacked on top of it flying. I drop to my knees and try to gather as many as I can. I can see sketches—a girl swimming, a girl floating, an empty pond filled with belly-up fish—but while I want to take my time and look, really look, at the drawings, I feel like I shouldn’t, that it’s forbidden to even be touching them.
“What are you doing here?” a voice hisses from the doorway, and all my fears are confirmed. The wrongness of being in this room tugs at my navel.
I look up. Victria is outlined by the light of the hall. She steps inside, and a blanket of shadows falls over her.
“Well?” From the angry impatience of her voice, I can tell that whatever happened between us in the library doesn’t count. What counts is that I’ve violated the sanctity of one of her only friends’ rooms.
She clutches a small leather-bound book so tightly that her knuckles are white. I can’t understand this girl—she hates me for telling her about the sky; she ignores the fact that I saved her from Luthor; she despises me for just being in Harley’s room.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she spits out.
“I know—I—”
Victria crosses the room and snatches the papers from my hand, gripping them so forcefully that the thin sheets crumple and a few rip. “These aren’t yours!”
My eyes narrow. “This is.” I draw the canvas closer to me. It is mine.
“Whatever.” She gingerly starts to pick up Harley’s scattered drawings. I could not be more clearly dismissed.
I start to leave, lugging the canvas with me. When I turn around at the door, Victria’s ignoring me. She’s replaced the papers on the table and is smoothing one down. I glance over her to see the sketch. It’s supposed to be Elder, I think, but he looks older, and there’s a smirk on his charcoal lips that I’ve never seen on Elder’s real lips. It’s odd for Harley’s drawings not to be spot-on.
She doesn’t notice me as I step closer. I have never seen that look of longing on Victria’s face before. I haven’t seen it on anyone before—except when Harley told me about Kayleigh.
“Victria?” I ask.
She jumps, jerking her hand and sending Harley’s sketch of Elder skidding across the table. “You have your painting, now go!”
I study her face. Her eyes flick once more to the table and the drawing, betraying the love I see hidden there.
I go without saying another word.
It’s not until I’m back in my room, dipping the brush into the thick white paint, that I realize the sketch wasn’t of Elder at all. The wrinkles at his eyes, the crooked twist of his lips—that had to be Orion.
15
ELDER
Doc coms me as I leave the Recorder Hall.
“Where are you now?” he asks.
“Recorder Hall.”
“Good. Come out to the wall near the garden.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it. Just come on out.”
“But—I wanted to speak with . . .”
“Speak with Amy?” he asks, biting off each word.
Yes. I did. All Bartie’s outburst and the slashed painting have done is remind me that Amy is one of the few people on this whole frexing ship who isn’t waiting for me to fail. I have to apologize—again—for calling her a freak. I want to tell her that I don’t care what she needs to feel safe on Godspeed, I’ll give it to her. I want to tell her that if the only thing that will bring the smile back to her eyes is waking up her parents, maybe we should do it. And even if I know I can’t actually tell her that last bit, I want to look her in the eyes and make sure she knows that I would if I could.
My silence is answer enough for Doc.
“Elder, this is your job. You can’t decide when you’re Eldest and when you’re not. You. Are. Always. Eldest. Even if you don’t take the title.” Ah. There’s the berating I’d been waiting for.
I sigh. “Fine. Be there soon.”
Doc’s apprentice, Kit, meets me in the garden. Doc didn’t want to take on an apprentice, but he’s of the age that he will need a replacement, and I insisted. Of all the nurses that applied for apprenticeship, Kit was the best. Not the best with medicine—Doc constantly complains about what a slow learner she is—but she’s the best with the people, and I decided that Doc needs someone more human beside him as he works. Doc wasn’t happy with my decision, but he accepted it.
“Thank you,” Kit says. “We just weren’t sure what to do.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, following her down the path, past the hydrangeas and the pond to the metal wall behind the garden.
Doc crouches on the ground, for once negligent about the dirt and grass stains that must be seeping into his pants.
A woman kneels in front of the wall. She looks a little like some of the pictures of people praying on Sol-Earth—her hands rest on the ground, palms up, and her body bends forward, her face resting on the metal wall.
“She won’t get up,” Doc says.
I squat down beside her. “What’s wrong with her?”
Doc shakes his head. “She just won’t get up.”
I put my hand on the woman’s back. She doesn’t flinch—she doesn’t acknowledge my presence at all. My hand creeps up to her shoulder, and I apply as gentle pressure as I can until her body weight shifts back. She leans away, sitting on her ankles.
I know her.
I try to know everyone on the ship, but I can’t. There are too many of them, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t know them all. But I do know this woman.
Her name is Evalee, and she works in the food storage district in the City. I stayed with her family when I was a little kid; I don’t remember exactly when. I don’t think she was on Phydus when I lived with her family, but she definitely was on it later, when I visited her before moving to the Keeper Level. Even so, she was always kind to me. She put salve on my hand when I burned it while learning how to can string beans, and she ignored the way I cried even though I was old enough to know that such a small burn didn’t deserve tears.
“Evie,” I say. “It’s me. Elder. What’s wrong?”
She looks at me, but her eyes are as dead as if she was still drugged. Deader. Evie doesn’t turn away as she reaches one hand up and scratches against the wall in front of her.
“No way out,” she whispers.
She turns her head, slowly, to the wall. Like a child sinking into her pillow, Evie rests her face against the metal. Her fingernails scrape slowly down the wall, so softly I can barely hear it. Her hand hits the dirt and relaxes, palm up.
Doc watches us with a grim expression on his face. I look up at him.
“What’s wrong with her?”
Doc’s mouth tightens as he breathes a heavy sigh through his nose, then he speaks. “She’s one of my depression patients. She went missing yesterday; I think she was just walking along the wall until she got exhausted and wound up here.”
I glance at Evie’s feet. They are stained reddish brown, even in the arches, and dark lines of mud cake under her toenails.
“What can we do?” I ask. But what I really want to know is: Will everyone else react this way when they find out that the ship is stopped? I always thought the worst that could happen was a rebellion, but this dead-inside depression makes me feel hollowed out too. Would it be better for us to rip the ship apart in rage or silently scratch at the walls until we simply quit breathing?
Doc glances at his apprentice. Kit reaches into the pocket of her laboratory coat and pulls out a pale green med patch.
“This is why I commed you,” Doc says as Kit hands the patch to me. “I’ve developed a new med patch for the
depression patients.”
I turn the patch over in my hand. Doc makes them himself, with the help of some of the Shippers in the chem research lab. Tiny needles adhere to one side like metal filings stuck to tape; when you press the patch into your skin, the needles stick to you and inject medicine directly into your system.
“So use it,” I say, handing it to Doc.
Doc takes the patch, holding it carefully. “I have to ask you—I wanted you to see why it’s necessary, but then I have to ask you—I made the patches using Phydus.”
I stare at Doc. Phydus? I’d told him to destroy all the stores of the chemical. Clearly he hasn’t—and he doesn’t fear me enough to lie and say he has.
But he does have enough chutz to ask my permission before using it.
Kit shifts nervously behind us. Even Doc looks worried about my reaction to the illicit drug. Only Evie, her face mashed against the metal wall, her feet muddy and calloused, doesn’t care.
“Use it,” I say, standing. Doc rips the med patch open, and I can hear the sigh of submission from Evie as the chemical seeps into her system. Doc asks her to stand and follow him to the Hospital, and she silently obeys.
I trail behind them. Evie’s emptiness was worse than the mindlessness I’d seen in the Feeders when they were still on Phydus. I think back to Amy’s dull, Phydus-drugged eyes—Doc said she had a bad reaction to it. Is Evie having a bad reaction to being off it?
“Take her up to one of the rooms on the fourth floor,” Doc tells Kit.
I shoot Doc a look as Kit walks Evie to the elevator.
“The fourth floor just holds regular patient beds now,” Doc says firmly. He knows what I’m thinking—about the grays, and the clinical way Doc killed them under Eldest’s orders to make room for more younger people. “Would you like me to give you my weekly report now, while you’re here? We can go to my office.”
