by Beth Revis
It seems to take forever before everyone gathers at the pond. The people come slowly—I can see them crossing the fields toward us. I touch my hair—I’m not wearing my head wrap or even my jacket, but I don’t care. I’m not afraid of them anymore. Today I shot a man and watched a woman die. Beneath my feet is a shuttle that will take me far away from here. Their opinion of me means nothing.
I stand on the edge of the pond, on the side nearest the wall. As everyone crowds around the edges of the silty muddy remains of the pond, some of them draw closer to me. Many still keep their distance or sneer, but most ignore me. One girl accidentally brushes my arm.
“Sorry,” she says.
I can’t help but stare in wonder. She didn’t flinch away or look disgusted; she didn’t snatch her arm back as if it were now contaminated.
Elder walks straight into the muddy remains of the pond and stands near the hatch. Victria said before that we can’t choose who we love. I still don’t know if that’s true, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Because, choice or no, my heart is his.
Everyone looks down at him—we all stand on the edge of the pond, towering above him. He’s up to his ankles in muck, and he shifts uneasily as if he’s nervous. Even from here I can see the pale purple-green of bruises on his face, but he’s never looked stronger or more noble.
Elder taps into the wi-com system so that everyone can hear him clearly. He mumbles at first, something I can’t discern, then speaks clearly and loudly.
“In the centuries of travel on Godspeed, much has been gained. But much has also been lost and forgotten. Including this.” Elder sweeps his hand toward the open hatch.
“We thought that beneath our feet was another level of the ship. We were wrong. It’s not a level. It’s an escape shuttle. At the end of this hatch there is another bridge. The entire level can break away from Godspeed, and it will take us to our new home on Centauri-Earth.”
I glance around me—every eye is on Elder.
He clears his throat and explains more about how the shuttle works. Although he hesitates, he also tells them about the possibility of danger, Orion’s warnings.
“It’s not ideal,” he says, and this makes my head snap up. “When we launch the shuttle, we’ll be leaving behind Godspeed. I know this ship has been your home. It’s been mine too. But Godspeed isn’t stable. It was never meant to be a permanent solution. The cryo level is large, and we’ll pack it as tightly as we can. Focus on bringing essentials with you. Some things will have to be left behind.”
Elder motions for Bartie to come closer. Elder steps away from the center of the pond, and everyone’s attention shifts to Bartie.
“I wanted to say something too,” Bartie says through the wi-com system. “What Elder has told you is true. I was in the shuttle today; I saw it myself. And what he says about leaving things behind is true too. And . . .” He swallows deeply. “And I am one of the things that will be left behind. Godspeed is my home. I don’t want another. I’m staying here. And if you would like to stay here with me, you’re welcome to.”
My mouth drops open. I turn around, expecting the crowd to be shocked or skeptical, to think Bartie’s lost it . . . but a lot of them . . . don’t. They seem to agree.
They want the walls.
“Can we?” someone shouts.
“Is it safe?”
“It’s suicide,” I say under my breath, but I don’t feel so safe that I can shout back.
Elder crosses the pond and motions for someone to talk to him. The young woman nods and speaks to him, shooting glances at Bartie and the crowd behind her.
Finally Elder speaks again. “The scientists agree that the internal functions of the ship could last for at least a generation, maybe indefinitely if the biosphere is maintained and energy conserved.”
Conversation surges again through the crowd. Elder raises his arm—and they’re all silenced immediately.
“This is an important decision. Whatever you decide now—there will be no going back. Stay or leave—your decision will be permanent.”
He takes a deep breath.
“But your decision will be yours.”
71
ELDER
AMY CORNERS ME IN THE KEEPER LEVEL AT THE END OF THE DAY.
“You can’t be serious,” she demands.
“I can’t force people to go.” I roll my shoulders back, trying to ease some of the tension within them.
“It’s suicide! Godspeed can’t last forever—in a few generations, everyone will die out!”
“I’ve talked to Bartie about this,” I say, collapsing in one of the blue plastic chairs I’ve pulled into the Great Room from the Learning Center. “When the ship’s no longer sustainable, they’ll . . .”
“They’ll what?” Amy demands. “Make a suicide pact? Drink the bad Kool-Aid?”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Doc has an array of med patches. The black ones . . .”
“Kill?” She sounds disgusted.
“As humanely as possible.”
Amy throws her hands down and starts pacing around the Great Room. “This is ridiculous,” she says. “You can’t let them stay here! You have to force them to come! They’re killing themselves—”
I cut her off. “I’ve talked to the scientists. The ship isn’t going to disintegrate overnight. There will be enough energy to last for a couple more generations at least.”
“And then?” Amy demands.
And then black patches.
“It’s what they want,” I say.
“You’re the leader! Make them come!”
I wait until she stops pacing and faces me. “Amy, I have to consider more than just your opinion.”
She bites down as if she’s chewing on her words, then sits down opposite me.
“How many are staying?”
“About eight hundred.”
“Eight hundred?!” Amy jumps up again.
“About.”
“That’s . . .”
“More than a third of the ship,” I say.
“They’d rather die in a cage than live on a planet?”
“This is their home, Amy,” I say. “I know you can’t understand how Godspeed is a home, but it is.”
She sits back down, slowly. “You should make them go,” she snaps. “But,” she adds when I open my mouth, “I can see how they might want to stay. If they’ve never seen anything else . . .”
“Amy,” I say, “we have to let them decide for themselves.” I touch her knee, bringing her gaze back to me. “We’re going.”
A tentative smile spreads across her face. She leans forward, her elbows on her knees. “Oh, Elder,” she says, and it comes out in a rush, like a breath of relief, “you’re going to love it. Being on a world without walls. There’s so much . . . so much that you’re going to see. Trees—great big, towering trees. That pond—it’s tiny—there’ll be an ocean on the planet. Clouds. The sky—the sky. You’ll see birds. Birds!”
I laugh. “I’ve seen birds! We have chickens.”
“No!” Amy’s voice rings with music. “Those chickens aren’t even proper chickens. I’m talking about real birds! Birds that tweet so loud you wake up in the morning before your alarm clock. Birds that soar and swoop and fly!”
With that, she jumps up, twirling with her arms raised. She ends her spin facing me, her eyes alight. “You have no idea how wonderful it’s going to be!”
She sees birds and freedom and oceans.
I see the armory, with piles of explosives. I hear Orion saying, If Godspeed can still be your home, if it’s possible to stay on board—do so.
“Yeah,” I tell her, smiling as best I can. “It’ll be brilly.”
Amy collapses in her chair. She’s giving me this look that says, You have no idea, and all I can think is that neither does she. Centauri-Earth isn’t the Earth she came from. She doesn’t know what’s down there, no one does, the only one who had a clue about it was Orion, and it scared the shite out of him.<
br />
“What if he’s right?” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but she knows immediately who I’m talking about.
“It’ll be worth it,” Amy says immediately, not even pausing to question herself.
“But—”
“No. It will be. Whatever is down there . . . Maybe it’s too dangerous. Maybe we won’t survive. I don’t know. But I do know I’m leaving. I won’t die on this ship. I cannot live surrounded by walls. Not now. Not anymore.”
Not now that she’s seen through the honeycombed glass. Not now that the planet is within her grasp.
“Maybe it’s a good thing some are staying,” Amy says, more serious now. “There will be less trouble.”
I meet Amy’s eyes.
She narrows hers.
“Orion is . . . he is going to be left here, right? We’re not taking him to the new planet, are we?”
“Amy—I can’t leave him here.”
“What?”
“Orion’s coming.”
“If we left him here, he could be unfrozen. He could live here on the ship.”
I hold myself very still. “He’s going to be unfrozen anyway. The timer can’t be stopped, just delayed.”
She kicks her chair back and starts pacing. Her hair swings out every time she turns like an angry swipe of a red blade.
“Bartie and I talked about it. Doc will stay here and he will be punished, but Bartie’s going to give him a tree-all.”
“A trial,” Amy corrects me automatically.
I didn’t ask Bartie what Doc’s punishment would be. Not death—they need a doctor, and Kit’s coming with us to Centauri-Earth. But Bartie was closer to Victria than I was, and I know Doc’s punishment will be severe.
“So, that’s it?” Amy says, “You two are splitting up the bad guys? Bartie gets Doc and you get Orion?”
“Something like that,” I say. Bartie needed Doc, but neither of us knew what to do with Orion. If he wakes up on the ship, Doc will support him and undermine Bartie. If he comes with us to the new planet, he’ll still cause trouble. Neither of us was willing to unplug him or throw him out of the hatch. In the end, I volunteered.
“It’s not fair,” she says. “Why should he come? He’s just going to cause more chaos. Can’t you see that? He’s frozen, and people are still being killed and blowing up all kinds of crap for him. Imagine what he’ll do when he wakes up.”
I shake my head. “It was always the plan. He would wake up with the other frozens, and they would judge him for his crimes.”
“You don’t have to make them judge,” she shoots back. “You could just leave him here.”
I could. I know I could. It would be far simpler. But I also know—because, no matter how much I want to deny it, we’re bound—so I know, I know . . . he wants off. He left those clues for Amy to find, he left the decision for Amy to make . . . but the mere fact that he left clues, that he didn’t destroy our hope of leaving shows that, ultimately, he—like me—wants off Godspeed.
I can’t condemn him to a life behind the walls of Godspeed, even if he deserves it.
“I’ll let the frozens judge him, and I’ll stick by what they say,” I tell Amy.
Her lips tighten; there’s a narrow white line on the edge of them. “It won’t be as simple as that, and you know it.”
“He’s going to the new planet,” I say.
Amy stops in her tracks. “If you do this, things can’t be the same between us. I can’t believe you’re even considering taking Orion with us.”
“I can’t believe you’d take away the planet from anyone, even Orion.”
She looks at me as if my words have punched her, then runs to the grav tube without another word.
I go to Eldest’s room in the dark, alone. The Keeper Robe lies on the floor, wrinkled.
I leave it there.
72
AMY
ON MY LAST DAY ABOARD GODSPEED, I PACK EVERYTHING I own in a small bag. The clothes that once belonged to Kayleigh, who died for the secret Orion couldn’t keep. The notebook I wrote letters to my parents in, when I didn’t think I’d see them again. My teddy bear.
I leave behind the maroon scarf. I won’t have to hide myself on the new planet. As I fold the length of material and place it on the desk, I glance around this room that was mine for three months. I thought I would spend the rest of my life here. Or—maybe I’d move to the Keeper Level with Elder one day.
I swallow down the lump in my throat. Maybe Elder’s right and Orion doesn’t deserve to drown in his cryo box. But he doesn’t deserve the new planet, either. I try to remember the things I thought I loved about Elder, but all I can see now is the stubborn set of his eyes, the tone of his voice when he refused to leave Orion on Godspeed.
I carry my bag in one hand and Harley’s last painting in the other. There’s not much room for art, but I will make room for this.
The solar lamp clicks on just as I reach the edge of the pond. The bottom is dry earth now, cracked under the heat of the solar lamp, and the lotus flowers are wilted strands of green and pink, already dead.
I’m the first one down. I tuck my bag and Harley’s painting into an out-of-the-way corner on the bridge and then sit down in the chair opposite the honeycombed glass window. Past the bridge, the shuttle is packed nearly to the brim. The rooms are all unlocked, every square inch used for storage. Except for the armory—Elder has decided to keep that door locked, even if we could have used the space. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s afraid someone will try to steal a gun or if he wants to keep the extent of the armory hidden for now, but either way I think he made the right choice.
Every other room, though, is full of crates of food—enough to last us a month. Jugs of fresh water. Medicine. Clothing. Manufacturing tools. Shelves of tiny seedlings from the Greenhouses. Elder and Bartie divided the livestock. Several of the larger animals were slaughtered, the meat smoked and salted. Some of the smaller ones—rabbits and chickens—are crated. There’s a mini-barnyard next to the cryo chambers.
All that’s left now are the people.
They come in twos and threes. They bring with them only what they can carry. They come with pieces of handmade furniture, an old cradle, a rocking chair, a spindle. They come with bags of cloth, or butcher knives, or scientific equipment. They come with nothing in their hands, and they stare at the planet through the honeycombed window and they cry. They go straight to the cryo chamber, where the others were waiting, not bothering to turn their heads a fraction of an inch to see what they will be facing.
They see me and they smile, they hug me, they touch my pale skin and red hair with wonder. They see me and they scowl, they curse, they say they’re only coming because their friend, their lover, their mother is going, and they’ll risk a new world to stay with them.
They scurry down the ladder, they jump on the floor, they spin in the bridge, they go to the edge of the window and touch the glass. They sigh when they reach the floor, their shoulders slumping under the weight of their thoughts, their skin flushed and creased with worry, with sorrow, with fear.
But the important thing is simply: they come.
Elder arrives last.
“That’s it,” he says. “That’s all of them.”
All of them willing to go.
He hesitates, and I run to him, throwing my arms around his neck. I don’t care about our disagreements, I don’t care about our fight—not for this one moment. Elder wraps me in a hug that lifts me up, then sets me gently back on the ground. “I’m scared as shite,” he whispers into my hair.
“Me too,” I whisper back.
He searches my eyes. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t answer him, and after a moment, he looks away. He knows what’s wrong.
“I have to take him,” Elder says.
“You really don’t.”
Instead of answering me, Elder pushes his wi-com. “We will begin launch in a few minutes,” Elder says. “We’re relying on autopilot. I have
had some training on the operation of the shuttle, but . . .”
He doesn’t say that his training was little more than Shelby showing him the controls. Still, that’s more knowledge than anyone else has; only the top-ranking Shippers—the ones killed in the explosion on the Bridge—had any real experience with these controls.
“You should stabilize your belongings and find a secure place during launch,” Elder adds before disconnecting his wi-com.
We can hear the shuffle of movement from here. Elder closes the bridge door.
His face is hard, his shoulders squared.
He looks like a general about to go into battle, but without any armor or weapons.
He motions for me to follow him—we go to the control panel under the window.
“It’s worth it, right?” he asks, staring at the planet.
I lean over the control panel, trying to see as much of the planet as I can. It’s bright and blue and green, with swirls of stringy white clouds. I can make out lakes and mountains, a yellow-brown stretch that must be desert, a ribbon of green dots that are islands. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
But then I glance at Elder’s face.
His worry infects me, and now as I look at the surface of Centauri-Earth, I wonder: what’s down there?
Victria’s staring eyes fill my memory.
Death is easy, and sudden, and can’t be stopped. Maybe Centauri-Earth is just beginning to evolve, and dinosaurs will crush us. Or Centauri-Earth may be light-years ahead of Earth, my Earth, and the aliens there will laugh at our weapons as they kill us. It’s obvious that plants grow on the planet—there is so much green amid the blue—but what if all the plants are poison? What if all the blue water is salt?
“It’s worth it.” I move to touch him, but he grabs my hand first, squeezes my fingers, then lets me go.
