A Million Suns atu-2

by Beth Revis

  Elder plods along down the path, his eyes down and his face troubled. I know the way silence and secrets can eat at you from the inside.

  I touch his elbow and he stops, startled.

  “Tell me how she died,” I say.

  21 ELDER

  I WAS THIRTEEN AND STILL LIVED AT THE HOSPITAL. THE SHIP was going to land in 53 years and 147 days, and by that point, I would be the one to lead everyone off Godspeed and onto the new world. I’d been at the Hospital long enough to know that Harley was my best friend, that Doc was mostly okay, and that it would not be too long now before I would — finally — start my training as Elder.

  Life was good.

  Then.

  Harley had dared me to climb the statue of the Plague Eldest that stood in the Hospital gardens. I hadn’t gotten past the pedestal, but he was hanging from the Plague Eldest’s benevolent left arm, gazing down the path to the pond near the back wall of the ship.

  “Something big is floating in the water,” Harley said. He swung his body and released his grip, landing with a thud in the fake mulch beside me. He left a purple paint stain on the Plague Eldest’s elbow. “Let’s go see.”

  Harley was taller than me and walked with longer strides. Even so, I was tempted to ask him to race. But Harley was also four years older than me, and racing was for children.

  “Race ya,” Harley said, kicking up mulch as he leapt away. He looked over his shoulder, laughed, and almost tripped over a blooming hydrangea spilling out onto the path. Little blue petals went flying, whipping past my ankles before drifting to the ground.

  I had almost caught up with Harley, was reaching for his shirt to jerk him back and throw him off course so I could speed past him—

  — when he stopped cold.

  Harley threw his arm out. It caught me in the chest, painfully, winding me and bringing me to a stop.

  “What the frex was that for?” I gasped, bent over.

  Harley didn’t say anything.

  His face was sweating from the race, but underneath he was pale, giving him a deathly sheen. I turned from Harley to the pond.

  I knew immediately the girl floating facedown in the still water was dead. Her hair was pulled over her head, the long dark strands of it sinking beneath the surface as if they were anchors being dragged along the silty bottom of the pond. Her arms lay relaxed on either side, palms down, and as I watched, they slowly disappeared under the depths.

  There was something about her—

  — something familiar…

  All along the hem of her tunic were tiny white dots.

  Almost like the tiny white flowers that Harley had painted for his girlfriend, Kayleigh. The ones he painted on her favorite tunic, the night he’d spent eight hours straight covering her room with ivy and flowers.

  Kayleigh’s flowers.

  Kayleigh’s tunic.

  Kayleigh.

  Harley made a barbaric noise and lunged toward the water’s edge, leaving a deep brown-red scar in the earth from the force of his foot. He swept the water away with his arms as he threw himself into the pond, as if he could wipe away everything he saw before him.

  The water didn’t want to give her up. Her head sank lower.

  Harley dove and grabbed Kayleigh by the wrist. He turned her over in the water and slapped her face as if to awaken her, but her head just bobbed gently. He swam a little, then jerked her body forward, then swam some more, then jerked her again. She floated willingly by his side, her arms and legs dancing like a wooden puppet’s when all its strings are yanked at once.

  Harley slipped, going to one knee, then found footing on the wet bottom of the pond and trudged through the thick mud. With one final, mighty heave, he tossed Kayleigh’s body onto the bank and collapsed beside it.

  A dribble of muddy water trickled from the left corner of her mouth, just where she used to twitch her lips up in a laughing smirk. Grime slid down the side of her face, pooling at the edge of her cheek and falling unceremoniously into the ground below.

  Harley was shouting and sobbing something, but I couldn’t understand the words.

  All I could do was stand there, a witness, my mouth hanging open a little.

  Like Kayleigh’s mouth.

  Her left leg was twisted backward, her ankle under her backside and her knee jutting forward in a sharp angle. One arm was thrown across her stomach, the other stretched out as if it were pointing up the path toward the Hospital. It suddenly became very important to Harley to position her body just right. He straightened her leg and smoothed her trousers down. He placed her arms by her sides and rubbed his thumb over the palm of her right hand, like he used to do when he thought no one was watching, just before he’d lean in for a kiss, and they forgot about everything but their love.

  “Harley,” I said, breaking the spell. I took a step forward, squelching the mud by the banks. I knelt down and felt the warm water seep into the legs of my trousers and reached — toward him or Kayleigh, I’m not sure.

  “Don’t touch her!” Harley snarled.

  I didn’t move quickly enough. Harley lunged at me and threw the full force of his fist against my jaw. My teeth snapped over my tongue, and I tasted blood. I let myself fall away into the mud and cowered behind my arms.

  When I dared look again, Harley was staring up. One hand still held hers, his thumb going methodically over her cool, lifeless palm, back and forth, back and forth.

  “Why did she leave me?” he whispered to the painted metal sky above us.

  Because this wasn’t an accident.

  It couldn’t have been an accident.

  Kayleigh loved the pond. Loved to swim with the koi. She’d dive under with handfuls of feed in her grip and uncurl her fingers underwater so the shy fish would dance up to her and nibble from her hands. She could hold her breath longer than anyone I knew. No one could catch her when she swam, not even Harley, who always tried.

  Kayleigh couldn’t have died by accident. Not in the water.

  I stared at what was left of her.

  Pale yellow square patches lined the inside of both her arms. Doc’s med patches — the ones that made you fall asleep. This — this was what killed her. Not an accident. A choice. Kayleigh put herself into a watery bed and made sure she would never wake up. Suicide. We knew it must have been suicide. She’d been talking about how much she hated living, trapped on this ship, for weeks. Months. Just little things, a comment here, a snide remark there. Nothing we noticed. Not until—

  My eyes drifted from her body to the lapping, almost-still waters behind her. I looked farther, over the reeds and lotus flowers on the far edge, my eyes skimming across the bright green new grass.

  Where they crashed against a metal wall.

  A hard, cold, relentless metal wall, studded with rivets and stained with grease and age. My eyes burned as I followed a seam in the wall up, up, curving higher up, until it met with the bright solar lamp in the center of the ceiling. Above that, I knew, was the Shipper Level, and above that, the Keeper Level.

  And beyond that — beyond tons and tons of impenetrable metal — was a sky I had never seen.

  A sky Kayleigh had never seen.

  And she couldn’t live without the sky.

  22 AMY

  ELDER FINISHES HIS STORY AS WE ENTER THE CITY. I WANT TO say something to comfort him, but this memory happened years ago, and there’s nothing to really say, anyway.

  I’ve never been this far into the City before. The whole Feeder Level looks different now, in the middle of the day, even though there’s not that much difference in the solar lamp between morning, when I used to run, and day — this false sun doesn’t move across the sky, doesn’t paint the horizon with pink and orange and blue.

  The City is bigger than it looks from the other side of the Feeder Level. When I look at the City from the Hospital or the Recorder Hall, it seems like it’s made of Legos. The buildings are brightly colored boxes stacked one on top of the other, and the people are almost too tiny
to see.

  But here, it’s different. The streets are crowded. Men — and a few women — pull carts, running through the paved streets and pulling their loads behind them as if they were nothing. Produce, meat, boxes, bolts of cloth — all fly from one street to another. It’s louder than I expected. People call to each other across the street, and a couple at the corner are shouting at each other, waving their arms about. I smell smoke, and I’m worried that something bad has happened, but no — it’s wafting from an outdoor grill.

  The City itself seems more chaotic too. There are so many people. And for the first time, I really think of them as individuals, each with their own story. I try to imagine their lives. The man behind the window, slamming his cleaver into a rack of ribs. Is he bored or hiding anger behind the brutal attack on the meat? The girl leaning against the building, sweating and fanning herself — what’s made her want to leave the comfort of her home to just stand there? What’s she waiting on?

  And what will they all do when they find out the truth? How much of the City will be destroyed when they discover, as they inevitably will, that Godspeed isn’t even moving?

  Although I keep my head down, wary of these people who could so quickly turn on me, Elder greets them all with a smile. He seems to know everyone, and they grin back at him.

  Their grins fade when their eyes slide to me, though. They hiss “freak” so softly that Elder doesn’t notice. I carefully pull my hood back up over my hair, making sure all of it is hidden.

  “Harley’s family lives in the weaving district,” Elder says, leading me down the street. “That’s in the middle of the City.”

  Each block is named for what the people there do. We must be in the meat district — there’s a lingering scent of blood in the air mixed with a trace of rancid fat. Flies buzz in the windows and drift lazily over the slabs of meat waiting to be processed.

  “Can you wait here a moment?” Elder asks. “I see something I should take care of.”

  I nod, and he walks into the butcher’s on the corner. I creep closer to listen. Two men, both of the older generation, are working, even though there are five workstations in the building.

  One of the men looks up when Elder enters. He nudges his partner.

  “Oh, um, hello, Eldest,” he tells Elder, wiping his bloody hands on the stained smock in front of him.

  Elder doesn’t bother telling the man that he prefers to be called Elder. “Where are your other workers?”

  The men glance nervously at each other. The first turns back to the cow he’s butchering, sawing away at a leg bone with a hacksaw. The other man stands at his counter, unsure of what to do. “They — well — they didn’t come in today.”

  “Why not?”

  The man shrugs. “We told them yesterday we would need help, that Bronsen was bringing in at least three head, but…”

  “But they didn’t come in.”

  The man nods.

  “Why didn’t you do something about it?”

  He keeps wiping his hands on his smock, but they’re as clean as they’re going to get against that dirty thing. “It’s… it’s, uh… it’s not our place.”

  “Not your place to do what?”

  “To tell others to come to work.”

  Elder’s jaw clenches. He leaves, letting the bell at the door say his farewell.

  He storms down the street, and his scowl wards off any further greetings from those who pass us. “Eldest never had these problems,” he growls at me in an undertone. “People just not working. Lazy. He never had to deal with that. People obeyed him, and they didn’t dare miss work. Eldest made sure that everything on this ship ran smoothly.”

  “Eldest didn’t do that,” I say. My words startle Elder enough that he stops in his tracks. “He didn’t,” I insist. “Phydus did.”

  Elder smirks, and some of the anger in him fades. We pass a group of spinners sitting on the sidewalks, chatting merrily with each other as the threads slide through their fingers. In the next block, though, the buildings that house the looms are dark and quiet, no weavers in sight. Elder glowers at it as he leads me to an iron staircase set against the side of a series of brightly painted trailers stacked on top of the working area.

  “The yellow one,” Elder says, pointing to a trailer three flights up. “That’s where Harley used to live.”

  I follow Elder up the steps. The higher we go, the more paint splatters there are on the railings and steps. Even here, Harley has left his mark. Elder hesitates before knocking, his fist poised over an aqua blue smear of dried paint.

  No answer.

  He knocks again.

  “Maybe they’re not here?” I ask. “It is the middle of the day.”

  When no one answers on his third knock, Elder pushes the door open.

  23 ELDER

  IT’S DARK INSIDE, AND IT STINKS OF SOMETHING SOURED. There are traces of Harley here still — the inside is painted white with yellow swirls along the top. A table sits in the center of the room, but all but one of the chairs have been stacked in the corner, and the top of the table is littered with scraps of cloth, scissors, and tiny bottles of colored dye — accouterments of being a weaver.

  “Hello?” Amy calls. “I think someone’s back there,” she adds, nodding at the cloth covering the doorway that leads deeper into the trailer.

  I step in front of her and peel back the curtain. This room is darker still and smells of musk and sweat. It’s the main bedroom — beyond this room is another curtained door leading, I know, to a bathroom and a smaller bedroom.

  Curled in a tight ball in the center of the bed is Harley’s mother, Lil. Her hair is messy, but she’s fully dressed, although her clothes are stained.

  “What are you doing here?” Lil asks, her voice quiet and defeated.

  “Where’s—” I struggle for the name of Harley’s father. “Where’s Stevy?”

  Lil shrugs without getting up.

  Amy moves forward, hesitates, then sits on the edge of the bed. “Is everything all right?” She reaches for Lil, but Lil, startled by Amy’s fair coloring, cowers back. Amy’s hand drops into her lap. After a moment, she gets back up and moves behind me.

  “Where’s Stevy?” I ask again.

  “Gone.”

  “For how long?”

  Lil shrugs again.

  From under the covers, I hear her stomach growl.

  “Let’s get you something to eat,” I say. I step forward, reaching down for her hand. Although Lil doesn’t flinch from me, she doesn’t respond to my offer, either.

  “No point,” she says. “No food.”

  “No food?” I ask. I instinctively look to the curtained door; the wall food distributer is in the main room of the trailer. “Is it broken? I’ll have maintenance come and check on it.”

  “No point,” she says softly. I ignore her and com the Shipper level, requesting they send someone as soon as they can.

  Once I break the com link, I turn my full attention back to Lil. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why aren’t you working? Should I com Doc?”

  She stares at the ceiling. “I can’t work. The dyes remind me of him. The colors. Colors everywhere.”

  “Lil,” I say, making a mental note to com Doc later, “did you take any of Harley’s paintings from the Recorder Hall?”

  Now she sits up. “No!”

  But her eyes dart to the curtain.

  She notices my glance in that direction. “They’re mine. He’s my son. He was my son. It’s all I have left of him.”

  “We just want to look,” Amy says in a small voice from behind me.

  Lil flops back into her pillow. “What’s the point? He’s not coming back. Neither of them is coming back.”

  She doesn’t look up again, so Amy and I creep around the bed to the curtain on the far wall. I lift it up, and Amy follows me into the room.

  A bathroom. The toilet’s unflushed and the sink is stained. We move quickly to the side, where another curtain blocks a doorway.r />
  This is Harley’s room — or, at least, it was until he moved out to live in the Ward. There are traces of what the room used to be — a narrow mattress against one wall, a small nightstand that still holds a clock — but clearly in the years since he left, the room has become something of a storage space for his family. I maneuver past the boxes until I see what we came for: Harley’s painting, Through the Looking Glass.

  “It’s beautiful,” Amy breathes. I suppose she’s right, but when I see it, I only remember the way it really happened, not the way Harley painted it.

  The painting is vividly bright, even though in my memory everything was dark: the water, the mud, her eyes. Five figures stand at the top of the painting, looking down into the pond — me, Harley, Victria, Bartie, and, behind us, Orion. Harley had used some sort of reflective paint on the surface of the pond — but just beneath the mirror-like surface of the water, a girl swims, floating on her back, her laughing eyes peering up toward the surface. Koi swirl around her fingers, and a lotus plant’s roots tangle in her loose, thick black hair.

  “He really liked koi,” Amy says.

  “They were Kayleigh’s favorite.”

  I can taste the murky pond water. I can feel the clamminess of Kayleigh’s skin. I can see the bloated way her face squished under Harley’s touch.

  “Let’s look for the clue,” Amy says gently, pulling me away from the edge of the pond. “It’s probably on the back, like the other one.”

  I lift the canvas up to the light, then flip it over.

  “Look,” Amy says.

  A rectangle is sketched in light ink on the back and, in the center of it, another tiny mem card. I pry it off with my fingernail. Another message is written on the back of the painting in the same faint handwriting as the first clue:

  1, 2, 3, 4. Add it up to unlock the door.

  “Does he mean the door on the fourth floor of the Hospital? The one that leads to the elevator that goes down to the cryo level?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so. He told you about that door; he knows I’ve seen what’s behind it. If he left these clues for me to find, then he must mean one of the other locked doors.”