Across the Universe

Elder looks even more confused now. He has no concept that a race is part of a person’s identity—he just sees it as a difference, a difference that’s better off eliminated.



And I realize: That’s exactly how Eldest wants him to think.



I think I hear laughter, soft chuckling, from near the door, but when I whip around to see, no one’s there. Just Elder, who still doesn’t understand me. And why should he? How can he learn from history if history’s been altered?



I’m the only one who knows, and I don’t know enough to fix it.



Would they even believe me if I tried?



58



ELDER



AMY’S STARING AT THE SCREEN AS UPSET AS SHE WAS BEFORE we got here. This is not going as planned. This was supposed to be the thing that made her happy again. I tap the screen and let Lincoln fade. A picture of people during the German Inflation replaces Lincoln’s creased face, their wheelbarrows of money blending in with his chaotic hair.



“We should go back,” Amy says. “Harley’s been guarding the cryo level long enough. I’ll take a turn.”



There is so much more here I want to show her: the rooms of books, real books, from Sol-Earth. The artifact room on the second floor, where there are models and Sol-Earth artifacts, including an original tractor that we base our tractors on. The science records room that shows how we developed the wi-com systems and the grav tubes. But she doesn’t want to see any of it, so what’s the point?



“I know that man,” Amy says, awe and wonder in her voice. She pushes me aside so she can see the image on the screen.



I stare at the picture, but don’t remember him. He’s an older man, somewhere between Doc’s and Harley’s ages, with dark hair and eyes but that distinct oddness in his look shows how different he is from us—he’s not monoethnic, and he just looks ... different. He’s sitting in front of a trailer, holding a fat baby in his lap. Certainly, he’s no one important, no one Eldest made me memorize facts about.



“It’s Ed.”



“Who?”



“Ed. I met him just before I was frozen. He was actually one of the men who froze me and my parents.”



That doesn’t seem like an important enough reason for his picture to be located beside Abraham Lincoln’s. I reach past Amy and touch the screen. The picture of this “Ed” stops; when I touch the screen again, the text about him pops up.



“Edmund Albert Davis, Junior,” I read aloud. “The first child born on Godspeed, shown here with his father, Edmund Albert Davis, Senior, one of the recruits from Sol-Earth on the departing flight.”



“I knew him,” Amy says. Her head is cocked, and she’s gazing at the picture as if Edmund Albert Davis, Senior, were alive and she was talking to him. “I had no idea he signed up to leave Earth on Godspeed.”



I am thinking about Edmund Albert Davis, Junior, and how he was the first person born to captivity here. I wonder how he felt about it, growing up with people who’d lived on Earth, knowing he’d never ever see that.



“I wish I had known,” Amy says. “I wish I had talked to him more. I wish I had asked him why he’d joined the crew. He seemed so bitter when we met. But maybe that was just ...” She trails off, staring at the screen without seeing it. Suddenly, she laughs. “Just think! I met this man centuries and centuries ago, and now I could meet his ancestors on this ship! Descendants of the man who froze me! How cool would that be?” She turns to me, her eyes widening. “What if you were a descendent of Ed? Talk about a coincidence!”



I laugh because she’s laughing.



“I wonder if you are,” she says, her gaze dancing between me and the image on the wall floppy.



“Are what?”



“A descendant of Ed?”



“I don’t know.”



“Oh, please!” Amy snorts. “With all this technology, surely someone’s kept a genealogical chart. I bet Eldest or that doctor has one—they were the ones all concerned about incest.”



“They keep all the records here. This is the Recorder Hall,” I say. She doesn’t notice my hollow tone. I know that even if we find Ed’s descendant, it won’t be me. My birth records are hidden. We can trace Ed’s whole lineage back to Sol-Earth, but I can’t even go one step back on my family tree.



“Oh, come on! Let’s see if you’re related to Ed!” She grabs my arm, and I haven’t seen her this caught up in excitement since ... ever. The weight of worry she’s been carrying around is forgotten, if just for a moment. And I’ll do anything to keep it from coming back.



“It shouldn’t be too hard to trace,” I say. “With this being the first baby born on the ship, I’m sure they kept a record.”



My fingers run across the hotspots on the screen, pressing in an info spot, then tapping in key words. Amy watches me, fascinated. I tap faster. My fingers get all tangled up, the screen beeps at me in anger, and I have to start the search engine over.



Finally: “Here it is!”



Amy’s head tilts back as she reads the top of the screen. “Ed Senior leads to Ed Junior ...” she mutters. Her eyes slowly sink down the screen before she looks up, puzzled. She looks as if she’s going to ask me a question, but then she looks back at the screen and starts to count under her breath. “One, two, three ...” She finally looks up at me, her brows creasing. “Thirteen generations. There are thirteen generations on this chart. From Ed Junior all the way down to Benita, here, there are thirteen generations of people recorded.”



“So?”



Amy starts to pace from the model of Sol-Earth back to the screen. “How many generations can be born in a century? Maybe four or five? So thirteen generations would be around three centuries, right?”



I nod.



“But look at this.” Amy points to the bottom of the screen.



And just under Benita’s name are the words, “Killed by Plague.”



“When was the Plague?” Amy asks.



“A long time ago,” I say, slowly. I think of the statue of the Plague Eldest in the Hospital garden. It’s worn and weathered so much that the details of his face are gone.



“How long?” Her words are quick, urgent, and they are infecting me.



“Longer than Eldest. Longer than the Eldest before him.”



“So, like, maybe a hundred years. So that would mean that Benita, the thirteenth generation of this family ... she had to have been born around three hundred years after the ship left. But she was killed by this Plague ... and that happened like a hundred or more years ago. This ship’s been flying at least a century longer than it was supposed to ....”



“But the ship was supposed to have landed in fifty years. We’ve only been flying for two hundred and fifty years,” I say.



Amy stops pacing, turns, and faces me. Her eyes are wide, boring into mine.



“How do you know for sure?” she says. “Let’s look up the charts after the Plague. If we count how many generations were born after the Plague, maybe we’ll be able to figure out how long this ship has really been traveling.”



It feels as if there is a rock in my stomach, pulling me down, pulling the entire ship down. “There are no genealogical charts after the Plague. I just remembered: Doc told me once that the Plague wiped out so many people that they quit making the charts after that.”



“The Season,” Amy whispers more to herself than to me. “The Season started after the Plague, right?” She is staring hard at nothing. “This can’t be a coincidence. That thirteenth generation, Benita’s generation—that was when the ship was supposed to land. It must have been close to three centuries then, surely. But then this Plague happened, and the Season was started, and they quit doing genealogical charts—”



“And photography was banned,” I add. “There are no pictures of the ship from the year before the Plague till now. I was fascinated by the Plague when I was younger—it’s one of the first things Eldest taught me about—but there aren’t pics or vids of it at all, and now only the scientists on the Shipper Level can use photography, and only then as a record of their discoveries.”



“Something happened during that Plague,” Amy says slowly. “Something so bad that all the records of it were destroyed. And everything after—the Season, the way people act here—it all comes back to the Plague.”



59



AMY



ELDER STARTS TO SAY SOMETHING TO ME, BUT JUST WHEN he opens his mouth, the door to the Recorder Hall flings open.



“Elder!” Eldests voice, strong and cold, rings out across the empty hall.



Elder lunges for the control panels. All the forbidden images of the people and places of my home disappear. The telltale genealogical chart fades to black; the stuck image of the engine slides away.



“Don’t bother,” Eldest growls. He taps one finger behind his left ear, where the communicator is implanted. “I keep tabs on what you study on this ship. I know what you’ve used your access to open.”



“I’m sorry, sir,” Elder says automatically, but I can tell he doesn’t mean it, and he regrets saying it altogether. He stands straighter and regains some of his composure. “But since when do you keep ‘tabs’ on me? And honestly, I’m surprised you even noticed. The last time I saw you, you were dru—”



My head whips around to Eldest. Drunk? Was Elder about to say Eldest was drunk?



The movement’s not lost on Eldest. He doesn’t address me, though, just Elder when he says, “A true leader is never out of control, nor drunk on anything.” Now he looks at me. “I seem to remember believing that you have the potential to disrupt my ship. Clearly, I am right.”



“I didn’t do anything!” I say. There is a hint of panic in my voice. I haven’t forgotten his original threat.



Eldest waves his hand dismissively at me. “Your presence is enough. It’s completely distracted my ... student.” He says this last bit with a sneer in his voice, as if he equates a student with an annoying, yapping little Chihuahua. He returns his gaze to Elder. “It’s time to resume your studies. I’ve been busy with the Season and let you play with your little girl here, but if you have time to look up what I saw you looking up, then clearly it is time to refocus your studies to something more productive.”



He walks back to the door. Elder chews on his lip, unsure of whether to follow or not.



“Wait!”



Eldest turns at my call, but does not come back.



“I want some answers, dammit,” I say, striding toward him. “You and I both know there’s some crazy crap going on. That Season was bad enough, but now the doctor’s calling me crazy, and I’ve got to take that pill Elder takes, and this place has—”



“Enough.” Eldest cuts me off with cold authority. “I told you not to become a disturbance. You clearly did not listen.”



“I think this ship needs some disturbance!”



“The last man who thought that way no longer thinks anything at all.”

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