A Million Suns: An Across the Universe Novel

by Beth Revis

  I march to the railing and look out at the Feeder Level, my back to him.

  “You let Shelby die?”

  “I watched her beg for her life, and then I sealed the door anyway.”

  No, no, no, no, no.

  Bartie pauses for a moment, staring at me. I keep walking. He rushes to catch up. “Maybe you’re more of a leader than I gave you credit for.”

  “Go frex yourself.”

  “I’m trying to apologize here.”

  “For what? Why? Because I let some Shippers die, suddenly I’m a better leader? Shite. That’s Eldest’s logic. Not mine.”

  This time, I make sure to outpace him.

  I stand under the statue of the Plague Eldest. His concrete arms are raised in mock benevolence, but I wonder now, looking at his weather-worn face, if there was ever a time when there was something of him in me. We are, supposedly, genetically the same, but . . . would we have made the same decisions? Would he do what I’m about to?

  I don’t think so.

  The people arrive slowly. Most of them—I can tell by their forlorn faces, looks of fear and anger—already know what I’m about to say. Some—family and friends of the first-level Shippers—are among those that gather closest to me.

  When as many people as possible are crowded near the statue, I jump up on the base so I’m a little above them. I can spot individual faces, despite the fact that the garden is so crowded. Bartie stands in almost the exact center of the crowd. Doc and Kit stand by the Hospital. Amy’s near the pond, standing a bit away from everyone. She’s wearing a jacket, the hood pulled up over her face, but I know it’s her. She glances up just in time to meet my gaze, and the pride in her eyes gives me the strength to speak.

  “Hello,” I say, because I can’t really think of anything else to open with. “I have terrible news,” I add, raising my voice when I notice the people straining to hear me better. I turn on my wi-com instead of shouting—now I can speak like I’m having a normal conversation.

  “I have terrible news,” I repeat, my voice transmitting directly into their ears. “But I suspect that most of you have already heard about the devastating events I’m about to discuss.” I take a deep breath, preparing myself. Rather than trying to look at everyone, I seek out Amy again. It’s easier if I can pretend I’m only talking to her. “The Bridge was blown up today. We—I—don’t know who did it, but the attack was done purposefully. It resulted in the deaths of nine Shippers, including First Shipper Shelby.” Now I look away from Amy. “It also prevented us from ever being able to land Godspeed.”

  I pause. No one speaks. I let the silence stretch out to the edges of the ship.

  “Since I have assumed leadership, I have abolished the practice of contaminating the water system with Phydus. I have attempted to work with you, to find a way for you to carry on your lives aboard the ship without the drug. When I discovered that Centauri-Earth was within our reach, I attempted to fulfill the mission of Godspeed and land the ship.”

  I swallow hard, forcing myself to look at the whole crowd.

  “But in this—as in all aspects of my leadership—I have failed.”

  There are gasps of surprise, angry looks, confused looks, murmurs of questions. But as soon as I open my mouth, everyone’s silent again.

  “I’ll be honest: I thought my leadership would be as strong as Phydus had been. Clearly I was wrong. Since I took on the role of Eldest, the ship has spiraled into chaos. People have died. Not just from today’s bombing, which led to nine deaths, but murders done in my name, calling others to follow the leader. And before that—suicides I could not prevent, injuries, and worse.”

  Many of the people in the crowd are crying now. I can’t help myself; I look to Amy. She stands straight and tall, her gaze unwavering. I straighten my spine and throw back my shoulders.

  “This is why”—I take a deep breath—“I am offering now, before you all, to step down from my role as leader of Godspeed.”

  My words are met with stunned silence. They gape at me, shocked and unsure of how to respond. I let the silence grow. Slowly, one by one, everyone starts to turn, searching through the crowd to see who my gaze has shifted to.

  Bartie.

  But he stands wordless, watching me.

  After a while, when nobody moves, I say, “If no one else wishes to lead Godspeed, I will continue to do my best to serve this ship. That is all.”

  I disconnect the wi-com link and walk away.

  62

  AMY

  THE CROWD DISSOLVES SLOWLY. THIS ISN’T OVER; I KNOW that much. Bartie may not have seized power tonight, but I think that stemmed more from shock than anything else. That—or he had some other reason for not yet assuming control. I don’t trust him. If we don’t get off this ship soon, Bartie will take over—or destroy the ship trying to.

  Once everyone else has left, I wander up the path toward the statue. I used to think Elder looked nothing like the water-streaked concrete statue of the Plague Eldest, but now I’m not so sure.

  Elder emerges from the shadows and starts walking beside me.

  “How did you know?” I ask him.

  “Know what?”

  “That Bartie wouldn’t ask you to step down then? That he wouldn’t take over leadership of the ship when you offered.”

  Elder meets my eyes. “I didn’t.”

  I try not to show my surprise at his words.

  Although the Hospital has been cleared for occupancy, I steer Elder the other way, toward the Recorder Hall.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I say as we plod up the path.

  “About what?” Elder’s voice sounds tired and weak.

  “How different you are from Orion.”

  Elder huffs out a breath of air.

  “No, really,” I insist. “Orion had backup plans for his backup plan. You don’t. You just do what you think is right at the time and wait to see what happens.”

  “Maybe I should have a plan,” Elder says. “Things might work out better if I did.”

  “You can’t plan for everything. Orion couldn’t have known some nut job would blow up the Bridge.” I steal a glance at Elder and notice his frown. “And neither could you,” I add, but I don’t think he quite believes me.

  We don’t speak again as we mount the stairs to the Recorder Hall. It’s quiet here. The artifacts inside are just a reminder of everything we can’t have, and no one wants to be reminded of that.

  “I’m sorry,” Elder says. Light spills into the dark Recorder Hall from the open doors, then fades to nothing as Elder silently pulls them shut.

  “For what?”

  “You’ve lost your chance to leave the ship, to have your parents awoken—all of it.”

  I can wake them up. I don’t say this aloud, but I know it’s true. If we really have no chance of landing the ship, I will wake my parents up, no matter what.

  “I’ve still got you, haven’t I?” I say, reaching for his hand. Elder snatches it away. He doesn’t want to be comforted.

  “It’s all my fault. I didn’t think any of this would happen. . . .”

  “It’s not your fault,” I say immediately. “No one could have known. . . .”

  My voice trails off. But someone did know. Someone did guess. Orion. He really did have a plan for everything. A contingency plan . . .

  I point to one of the giant wall floppies. “Can you bring up the blueprints of the ship?”

  “Why?” Elder just stands there, begging me with his eyes to stop, to not make him think there’s any hope left.

  Except there is.

  I push Elder to the wall floppy and don’t leave his side until he starts tapping on the screen to bring up the blueprint. Once he does, I rush off to the other side of the hallway and grab a chair resting against the wall. I slam it down under the clay models of the planets and the little replica of Godspeed.

  “In the last video, the one that I found when I discovered the missing explosives,” I say, climbing up onto the cha
ir, “Orion told me that the last thing I need to find will be in Godspeed.”

  “Godspeed is huge,” Elder says. The wall floppy behind him shows the giant diagram of the ship. Seeing it there, projected on the wall, I can appreciate just how huge this ship is.

  “I know,” I say, “but isn’t it odd? That word choice. He didn’t say ‘on Godspeed.’ He said ‘in.’”

  “So?” Elder asks. His voice is still flat, and I know that while he’s physically in the Recorder Hall with me, he’s really still in the garden, giving up, still on the Bridge, watching his people die. He doesn’t care about Orion’s clues anymore.

  I strain, reaching for the tiny model of Godspeed hanging suspended between the two clay models of the Earths.

  “In Godspeed,” I say. “In it.” The chair wobbles as I stand on my tiptoes on top of it, my fingers brushing the bottom of the small model ship. I noticed before that it was on a hook, as if it could be taken down and inspected. I push against the bottom, and the hook slides off. The ship falls. I reach out, grabbing it with one hand. The chair topples, and I jump off before it clatters to the ground. Elder catches me around the middle, and I gasp in surprise. He sets me down gently on the ground.

  The model’s about as large as my head and caked in dust. I blow on it, and huge chunks of dust fly away and then drop to the floor, too heavy to float. There’s more dust on the top of the ship, in the grooves of the tiny model honeycomb window on the Bridge. I turn the replica over so the ship’s on its side. It almost looks like a broken winged bird—a beak for a nose and thrusters for tail feathers.

  I hand it to Elder.

  He weighs it in his hand as if it’s an alien thing, not a replica of the only home he’s ever known. His face is intense—a scowl so deep that the shadows seem like black marks on his face. The veins in his hand pop up, and his fingers tense. Very deliberately, he presses his thumb against the Bridge window until the tiny honeycombed glass breaks. I see a dot of blood on his thumb, but he shows no sign of pain.

  “It’s accurate now,” he says, handing the model back to me.

  I search his eyes, but they’re hollow inside.

  “There’s more glass here,” I say, pointing to the bottom of the ship.

  Elder shrugs, a sort of one-shoulder careless motion. “I saw it when I was outside. An observatory or something.”

  “It has to be on the other side of the last locked door,” I say. “Why lock an observatory?”

  I step over to the wall floppy. Elder stays where he is, by the chair, but his eyes follow me. I place the now-broken model on the ground and zoom in on the blueprints on the floppy. I use both hands to manipulate the image on the screen, sliding over the cryo level until I get to the section that shows the locked doors. Not all the doors are marked—the armory isn’t—but behind the last locked door on the level is one word.

  Contingency

  “He keeps calling me—this—his contingency plan,” I say under my breath. I turn and meet Elder’s eyes, and notice there’s a spark in them again.

  “This bit of glass here,” I say, picking up the model of Godspeed and pointing to it. I run my fingers from the broken Bridge to the bottom level of the ship. It’s the same basic shape, a beak protruding from the front of the ship. The only difference is that the cryo level beak is smaller.

  On the replica ship, a tiny metal line runs along the bottom, all around in a circle.

  “This isn’t Orion’s contingency plan,” I say slowly, turning the model over in my hand, “it’s Godspeed’s. I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before! What ship doesn’t have a backup plan? What ship doesn’t have an escape shuttle? It’s so obvious—the answer has been right in front of us the whole time!”

  I carefully pull against the metal line on the replica Godspeed. The bottom half breaks apart from the ship.

  Elder’s eyes widen. “The cryo level . . . the whole frexing cryo level—can break away from the ship? The entire level is an escape shuttle?”

  I toss the bottom part of the replica—the escape shuttle—at Elder. It soars through the air in a graceful arc, free from the rest of the ship. Free to find a home on the new planet.

  63

  ELDER

  I CATCH THE ESCAPE SHUTTLE REPLICA WITH ONE HAND. “This is impossible,” I say, staring at it.

  “Why?” Amy laughs. “Think of the design. The most important supplies are down there. The stairs I went down earlier today—they don’t go straight into the cryo level. They stop on the roof of it, and there’s a hatch you have to go down in order to get into the actual level. In fact,” I add, trying to remember what the area looked like through the yellow-tinted smoke, “I could see what was left of the elevator shaft behind a pillar, and there was a seal-lock hatch there too. Why else would you need a sealed door there? The builders of Godspeed didn’t waste any space.”

  When she sees the doubt in my eyes, Amy growls in frustration. “Elder, think! You know I’m right—that part of the ship can break away. And you know what this means! We can still get to the new planet, even if the Bridge is gone. We can leave behind Godspeed and take the cryo level down!”

  The possibilities swirl around me. Amy grins, knowing she’s won me over. “That level’s big—bigger than it needs to be if it’s just storage,” she says. “The roof is high—it has a higher oxygen capacity. And the floor’s large enough to hold everyone—”

  My shoulders sag. “But how the frex are we going to be able to get there if the elevator and the stairs are both blown up?”

  Amy’s grin is so huge all her teeth show. “Let’s go for a swim,” she says.

  I can barely keep up with her as she races down the path back toward the Hospital. No—not the Hospital. The pond in the garden behind the Hospital.

  “It was the fish that gave it away. I couldn’t get over how weird it was that there weren’t any fish in the pond,” Amy says. She’s practically running now, and I have to jog to keep up with her.

  “The fish?”

  “The koi. Harley painted koi. That’s what he was painting when I first met him, and that was one of the last things he painted, too. His room is filled with fish.”

  “So?” I ask.

  Amy stops so suddenly I crash into her.

  “He knew fish. He saw them. It’s not like he could just look those images up. And you told me—you told me—that it’s not that there were no fish, but that there were none ‘anymore.’”

  “Exactly,” I say. “There used to be fish.”

  “So where are they? Fish don’t just disappear.”

  I stop, thinking. It was so loons then, when Kayleigh died. I don’t remember anything but her body in the water when we found her. But after that . . . Harley didn’t go back to the pond for ages, and when we did, the fish had just . . . disappeared.

  “There’s something at the bottom of the pond,” Amy says. “Think about the blueprint. You know what’s right above the contingency area?”

  “The pond?” Hope bubbles up inside of me. Stars! There’s still a chance! We can still make it to Centauri-Earth . . . although it will mean leaving Godspeed behind.

  “The pond.”

  It’s all so simple—and now that Amy tells me about it, I can see the truth in it. If Kayleigh had drained the pond, the fish, of course, would have died. But before she could do anything, Eldest found her. Patched her up to make her immobile, then refilled the pond. To everyone else, it looked like Kayleigh had swum into the pond and let herself drown, but in reality . . .

  Amy’s off again, racing toward the pond. Orion said that Kayleigh’s death was murder, not suicide. When Harley and I found her body, she was plastered in med patches. I remember the way Evie became so placated when Doc pressed a Phydus med patch into her skin. Kayleigh didn’t have the new Phydus patch, but there are others, patches that make you sleep, for example. And with enough med patches, Kayleigh would have just stood in the pond and let herself drown while Eldest watched his secret sink benea
th the surface along with her.

  Amy kicks off her moccasins at the edge of the pond and strips off her jacket, tossing it on the ground. She unwinds the long strip of cloth that binds her hair up.

  “Turn around,” she says, and only then do I realize I’m staring.

  “It’s not like I—um—you know—uh,” I stammer, feeling my face grow hot with embarrassment.

  “Turn. Around,” Amy says again, but she’s smiling at me.

  I spin around, staring at the ground and trying very hard not to listen to the rustle of cloth as Amy undresses.

  A moment later, I hear a splash and turn back around. Amy’s pants and tunic lie in a crumpled pile; she must be wearing only her underwear and tank top under the water. My face grows even hotter at the thought, and I wonder how strange it would look if I stuck my head under the water to clear my mind.

  “What are you looking for?” I call out over the water to her.

  “A way down!” she says. The water’s clear, although a foggy brown rises up from the silty bottom of the pond near her feet.

  She dives under the surface and is gone for nearly a full minute.

  Then she bursts up from the surface, takes a huge gulp of air, and dives back down.

  Huge bubbles burst along the surface.

  My eyes scan the water. I see flashes of red, flicks of pale skin. I count the seconds.

  Then Amy breaks through the surface, sucking in air and letting it all out in one long whoop of triumph.

  “What’s going on?” a voice calls from the garden path.

  “Crap, crap, crap,” Amy mutters behind me as she wiggles back into her pants. I risk a look over my shoulder as she tugs her tunic back into place. She steps forward just as Bartie and Victria come around the hydrangeas and down to the pond.