A Million Suns atu-2

by Beth Revis

  I don’t know what I expected from Elder — for him to suddenly remember another locked door somewhere on the ship or for him to magically add up the list to something other than twenty-seven, but all he does is say “Hmmm,” and toss the paper back to me. He slides out of bed, and once he’s past the covers, I see that he’s not wearing pants. In fact, all he has on are a pair of boxer shorts — made of thin white linen and considerably shorter and tighter than the boxers boys wore on Earth. I stare openly. When I’d raced up here and plopped onto his bed, I hadn’t thought about what he’d be wearing — but now—

  Elder laughs, and I notice his smirk.

  “Oh, shut up and put some pants on!” I say, throwing a pillow at him.

  I’m still blushing as Elder — now fully clothed — leads me back to the grav tube in the Learning Center. He pushes his wi-com to start the tube, then turns and holds his hand out to me.

  Wait, what?

  “I’ll go after you,” I say, stepping back.

  Elder raises an eyebrow, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “Come on, just ride with me.”

  We’d done it once before, of course. But that was when I was half-drugged with Phydus, and before… before I’d started thinking about how life stuck on a ship wouldn’t be so bad if Elder walked around pantsless more.

  Before I can protest again, Elder pulls me closer, the warmth of his body wrapping around me. He holds me loosely, knowing that I still don’t know what to do with his touch, but his grip is firm enough to make me certain that he’d never let me fall. Elder moves closer to the grav tube opening in a sort of sidestep-twirl. He uses his free hand to touch his wi-com.

  “Ready?” he whispers. The words float around my face like a summer breeze.

  I nod, because I can’t find any of my own words.

  The grav tube comes alive, the cool winds rushing and swirling in and around, making my hair flutter and our clothes cling to our bodies. Elder tightens his grip around me, takes one step forward, and plunges us into thin air.

  We fall for a moment, in darkness between the levels, and my heart beats in my throat — not only from the exhilarating pull of the grav tube, but also from the way Elder’s arms encircle me, holding me closer than he’s ever done before. We’re not free-falling — we’re being sucked down, fast, faster than a person should fall. I cower against Elder’s grasp, clutching my hands around his neck and burrowing my face into his shoulder, but his hold on me doesn’t falter. He’s the only stable thing in the swirling chaos.

  A burst of light — we’ve gone through the entire Shipper Level and are already being sucked down into the Feeder Level. The tube bends — the Feeder Level has a curved roof, and the angle makes me feel as if I’m not just falling down, but falling on top of Elder. I think about wiggling away, but my body doesn’t want to abandon the safety of Elder’s arms.

  I glimpse past his shoulder, once, and see the Feeder Level stretched out before me. I don’t feel anything seeing it, not hate or love, and so I don’t watch the fields and buildings zoom closer as we near the ground.

  And then the winds calm, my hair floats down — an impossible tangled mess now — and we bob next to each other in the air for a minute before the winds stop and we’re standing on the platform on the Feeder Level.

  “See?” Elder says, tucking my hair behind my ears. “Not so bad.”

  I step back, off the platform, resisting the urge to smooth his hair down.

  As we step onto the trail, our shoulders brush. I step away and walk a little in front of him.

  “Come on,” I say, unable to meet his eyes.

  31 ELDER

  AMY LEANS AGAINST THE CRYO-LEVEL WALL, WATCHING AS I approach the keypad by the locked door to the left of the hatch.

  “I told you,” Amy says, “twenty-seven doesn’t work.”

  “Let me see the list again,” I say. Amy thrusts the wrinkled paper into my outstretched hand. My wi-com beeps, but I ignore it.

  “They look like submarine doors.” The catch in Amy’s voice makes me look up at her.

  My mind races, trying to remember what a submarine is. One of those underwater things. I didn’t think they were real. But then again, I used to think the ocean couldn’t possibly be as big and deep as Amy said it was.

  “They’re all seal locked,” I say. “The door to the Bridge is that way, too, and the hatches that connect the different levels. In case there’s damage to the ship and one level’s exposed, we can seal it off and…” I drift off, my attention turning back to the list.

  “My father took me to see the USS Pampanito when I was kid — I only remember it because the name was so ridiculous that I sang it about a million times as I raced through the tiny hallways. Pampanito! Pampanito! Pam-pa-NITO! My dad tried to catch me, but he hit himself on the head trying to crawl through one of the small doorways. Almost knocked himself out.” She gives a tiny laugh, but the sound dies quickly. I glance up from the list — Amy’s staring at the wall, her eyes glassy.

  I will do anything to make her happy again, so I give her the stars. I type the key code in quickly—Godspeed—and the hatch door flies open, exposing the millions of glittering dots in the sky.

  I remember the first time I saw the stars. I thought they changed everything. I thought they changed me, like I’d become a different person just by seeing shining specks of light a million miles away. Now when I stare at them, I feel nothing. I don’t believe in them anymore. When I first told everyone on the ship that I was giving them the freedom to be themselves, I took those interested in seeing the stars — the real stars — here. Some came. Far fewer than I’d expected. And then I realized: when you’ve lived your entire life within ten square miles surrounded by steel, it’s easier to forget the outside. It makes it less painful to be trapped on a ship if you tell yourself it’s not a trap.

  That’s the whole reason why I can’t tell everyone about the stopped engine.

  My gaze shifts to the red paint by the keypad. Maybe one day the smears of paint Harley left throughout Godspeed will fade, and maybe the stars never will, but I’d rather have Harley’s colors.

  Harley died for… well, I don’t know what he died for. I just know he’s not here anymore, and I miss him. But Kayleigh died for a truth, according to Orion.

  His words echo in my mind, and I’m grateful. I don’t want to think about hollow stars and Harley.

  Instead, I think about Orion’s puzzle. Orion seems to have known more about the ship’s engine than anyone else. If I can figure out his frexing clue, I might actually figure out why the engine’s stopped, maybe get us going again. Add it up…

  I turn back to the list Amy found. Beside each of those twenty-seven names is their cryo-chamber number. What if I add those numbers together…?

  1,270.

  “What are you doing?” Amy asks.

  I try 1270 on all four doors, starting with the biggest door at the end of the hall.

  The last door opens.

  Everything is darkness. The room smells of dust and grease. I think about what Orion said, just before I froze him. The frozens plan to work us or kill us.

  I want to see these weapons for myself.

  Amy finds the light switch before me. It flickers on reluctantly, spluttering as if unwilling to show what the room contains.

  And I can see immediately what made Orion fear that, when we land, we’ll be made into soldiers or slaves.

  You know what’s really going to twist you? Orion had said just before I spun the dial to freeze him. The fact that Elder sort of agrees with everything I’m saying.

  Pistols, rifles, larger guns than that. Blister packs of mustard bombs. Missiles — most about the size of my forearm, three that are bigger than me. Everything’s sectioned off in compartments, sealed in heavy red plastic bags that are stamped with labels and FRX symbols.

  “We don’t know what’s going to be on Centauri-Earth,” Amy says, already defensive. “It could be aliens, or it could be nothing. It co
uld be monsters or dinosaurs. We could be giants on the new world. Or we could be mice.”

  “Better to be armed mice, huh?” I say, picking up a filmy bag that protects a revolver.

  “I know this looks bad.”

  “It looks like everything Orion said before was true,” I say.

  “It’s not,” Amy says immediately, but how does she know? I can see her thoughts warring — on the one hand, she believes absolutely that her father and the rest of the people from Sol-Earth would never use the weapons spread before us, but on the other hand, she can’t deny that the weapons are here. And they seem so much more… I don’t know, violent than I expected.

  I head to the other side of the room, where the largest weapons are stored. I recognize torpedoes and missiles and bazookas from the vids of Sol-Earth discord Eldest showed me. A shelf lines the back of the room, cluttered with small round things, small cakes of compressed powder carefully packaged in clear plastic.

  Amy picks one of the powder cakes up. “These look like toilet bowl cleaners we’d use on Earth, the kind you’d drop in the back of a tank.” She turns it over in her hands, the heavy plastic package crinkling. Then she notices my confused expression. “Oh, yeah, the toilets here don’t have tanks.”

  On the bottom of the heavy, clear, thick-plastic packaging is a warning label etched into the container:

  Anti-agricultural Biological Chemical

  For use with Prototype Missile #476

  Range: 100+ acres

  To employ: See Prototype Missile #476

  FRX

  FRX… Financial Resource Exchange. The group that funded Godspeed’s mission in the first place.

  On the next shelf is a similar cake-tablet, but this one is black, and the label on the bottom calls it an Anti-Personnel Biological Chemical.

  I put the things back on the shelf cautiously, careful not to set anything off. It takes all the strength I have not to throw them away, hurtle them as far as I can, shove them all out the hatch.

  “Don’t tell me you still think this is all for self-defense,” I say. I don’t want to pick a fight with Amy, but surely she can see these weapons are extreme. “This is chemical warfare. It’s preparation for genocide.”

  “My mother’s a geneticist and every bit as important as my father in the military,” Amy counters immediately, but her voice is guarded, and I don’t know if it’s because she doesn’t want me to question her beliefs further or if it’s because she can’t bear to let herself doubt them. “If the FRX was intent on wiping out all life on Centauri-Earth, then why would they enlist a biologist to help? Why have a scientist who studies life if all they want to do is kill everything? There are twenty-seven people in the military — but seventy-three who aren’t.”

  I nod at her. She’s right. Of course she’s right. But that doesn’t mean Orion’s wrong.

  Amy turns her back to me, surveying the armory. She gasps.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Instead of answering me, Amy bends down and slides a mustard-colored blister pack off the shelf. “This thing looks like half a softball,” she says, handing it to me. I turn the blister pack over and read the warning label on the bottom.

  Warning: explosive; mild irritant

  Explosive Compound Formula M

  Range: 10 feet

  To detonate: depress top center;

  detonation time: three minutes

  FRX

  I put it back on the shelf as gently and quickly as I can, turning to see what Amy found under the blister pack.

  “Look!” Amy says excitedly, waving a floppy. “The next clue!”

  I lean over Amy’s shoulder, wondering if this new vid will be about the weapons we’ve just discovered or if it will help us fix the ship. “Why did he use a floppy instead of a mem card this time?” I ask idly.

  She shrugs. It doesn’t matter — here’s the next clue, and we’re one step closer to finding what Orion hid before we froze him. And one step closer — I hope — to discovering just what that secret is.

  And if it has anything to do with bringing the engine back to life.

  I barely dare whisper the thought in my mind — but — there’s no denying the fact that Orion knew much more than any of us thought he did, and it somehow revolves around the stopped engine. This giant secret he keeps hinting at — it must be the key.

  “Ready?” Amy asks, swiping her fingers across the screen.

  Instead of seeing Orion sitting on stairs and talking, though, the screen remains black. I lean closer. Amy’s grip tightens, making the floppy curve.

  “Why isn’t there a video?” she asks. “Did I do something wrong?”

  I shake my head just as white words start to scroll across the black screen.

  You’ve made it this far. That’s good. I expected nothing less from you.

  First, I have a question for you. Why do we have these kinds of weapons?

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering,” I mutter.

  “Mm?” Amy asks, her eyes bouncing from word to word.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  There has to be a reason for it. You have to be asking yourself the same thing I asked Eldest: If we are on a peaceful, exploratory mission like Eldest said — why are we armed for war?

  Eldest never really answered me. It’s for when we land. That’s all he’d tell me. That the frozens have a reason for needing this kind of weaponry. But you don’t have guns like these unless you plan on killing something. It’s either us or them — whoever, whatever is on Centauri-Earth.

  Either way, we — all of us born on the ship — are going to be caught in the middle when we land.

  The last words fade to nothing but black, and then static fills the screen, quickly replaced with an image of Orion on the bottom of the big staircase. This video is different from all the other videos — not just because it was prefaced with scrolling text, but because Orion is much younger here, maybe twenty or so. The camera films at a crooked angle, and Orion reaches out and readjusts it. He keeps looking around, as if nervous to be discovered.

  ORION: I just learned the secret. The big one.

  “He’s younger here,” Amy says.

  “He looks like me,” I say.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  He does.

  Orion leans forward on the steps, closer to the camera.

  ORION: This is bigger than the cloning, bigger than Phydus. It’s the reason for Phydus.

  “He sounds like me too.”

  Orion swallows hard. A few moments pass before he speaks again. Amy casts a worried look in my direction, but I ignore her, focusing on the way Orion chews on his bottom lip.

  ORION: Eldest doesn’t want anyone to know this secret. I don’t think he even wanted me to notice, but…

  Orion speaks in a hurried voice now, low and urgent. We both lean forward too, neither of us breathing as we strain to hear.

  ORION:… the outside of the ship needed maintenance. He told me to send First Shipper Devyn, but instead, I did it. I–I saw what he wanted me not to see. He’s angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen him. I’ve thought before that he might… But this time, I really think… I might have to…

  The camera pans to the left, behind the staircase. A bundle of supplies lies open on a makeshift cot, along with a few sealed boxes.

  ORION: I’ve been preparing for a while. Ever since I first saw the icy hell in the cryo level. Ever since I learned about the cloning. I know I can be replaced. It won’t take much for Eldest to follow through with his threats.

  The camera pans back to Orion, who looks defiant. He looks, I think, like me.

  ORION: I may know Eldest’s secrets, but he doesn’t know mine. He hasn’t figured out where I’m hiding or how. He’s been watching me on the wi-com system, but I’ve figured out how to trick the signal, make it look like I’m at the Hospital when I’m not.

  Orion raises a hand to his left ear and gently touches — but doesn’t depress — the button
there.

  ORION: He doesn’t know about this place. But it’s not enough. I might have to…

  Orion’s fingers seize over the wi-com, his nails scratching the skin and leaving pink welts in their wake. I glance at Amy as she touches the bracelet wi-com on her wrist with one finger, a worried frown on her lips.

  ORION: But the secret… it should stay a secret. No one should know this. Not even me. It’s… too much.

  Orion stands and begins pacing. His feet come off camera and on camera; his voice fades in and out.

  ORION: I don’t know what’s frexing right anymore. Do I tell the truth? Or is the lie better?… And what about…?

  Muffled sounds echo as Orion moves away from the camera.

  ORION: I can’t cover it up. Someone may need to know — there might be a time when we have to… But the floppy network’s not safe…

  I strain my ears to make out the indistinguishable sounds in the background — Orion’s muttering something, words I can’t make out over the sound of his footsteps marching back and forth in front of the camera. He picks up the camera, and a jumble of images wash over the screen. After a moment, he turns the camera back to his face, now cast in shadows.

  ORION: I’m leaving this for whoever finds it. If something happens to me… if Eldest… you know. Well. If something happens to me, I figured someone ought to know.

  Orion takes a deep breath, then opens his mouth to speak.

  The video cuts off abruptly.

  “That’s it?” Amy asks.

  “No, look — there’s more.”

  Scrolling words fill the screen again.

  That was a long time ago, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Amy, you’ve seen the truth for yourself. You’ve seen the weapons. You know — you must know — that if we need weapons like this, then whatever’s on Centauri-Earth isn’t worth it. Lock up the armory, forget the passcode, and walk away.

  32 AMY

  “WELL, FREX,” ELDER SAYS, LEANING AWAY AND LOOKING AT the blank floppy in disgust.

  I look up at him inquiringly.