Across the Universe

“The forties?”



Doc looks up at me. “They’re all numbered.”



“Yes, I can see that.” I can’t keep the impatience from my voice. “But what does it mean? Why are there numbered doors and frozen people here?”



Doc stares down at the girl with sunset hair. “You should ask Eldest that.”



“I’m asking you.”



Doc turns to me. “I’ll tell you if you tell me how you got down here. All the doors that lead to that elevator are locked.”



“Not the one on the fourth floor,” I say. “It was unlocked.”



He narrows his eyes. “And you just happened to come across an unlocked door on the fourth floor?”



I hesitate. “I found some blueprints of the ship in the Recorder Hall. I saw the second elevator there.” I’m not going to scamp out Orion. It’s not his fault I got caught.



I can tell Doc’s thinking fast—his face has become blank and emotionless.



“So,” I say, looking down at her again. “Who is she really?”



Doc walks past her glass box to a work desk on the far wall and comes back with a floppy. He slides a finger on it to open a program, punches in a code, and presses his index finger on an ID square. Then he types one-handed.



“Number 42, Number 42. Ah. She’s nonessential.”



“What?” I crouch down so that my face is even with her face. Her hair looks as if someone has poured yellow, orange, and red ink into a glass of water; the strands swirl around, pouring from her head, curling up at the ends at the bottom of the glass box. How could anyone say someone with sunset hair is nonessential?



“Her parents, apparently, put in a special request for her to be included,” Doc continues, scrolling down the floppy. “They seem important enough—mother in biological engineering, father rather high up in the military. Lucky her. Not many nonessentials were allowed on. Not enough cargo space.”



I blink. She’s “cargo”? Nonessential cargo?



“Why is she here? Why are any of them here? Why is there a level full of frozen people?”



“That,” Doc says as he puts down the floppy, “is for you to ask Eldest.”



“I don’t think I can trust Eldest,” I whisper to the girl with sunset hair, but Doc doesn’t hear.



I wonder what color her eyes are. I squint through the ice. I can see that her eyelashes are long and reddish-yellow—frex! I didn’t know they made eyelashes like that!—but they are sealed firmly shut. All I know is if a girl can have skin that pale and hair that red and eyelashes that sunshiny, then who knows what colors live in her eyes?



“Elder.”



I don’t have to turn around to know it’s Eldest speaking, but I do, one hand on the girl’s glass box, as if I could protect her from Eldest’s attention.



“How did you get down here?” Eldest’s words are terse. He’s angry, but maybe not at me.



Before I can speak, Doc announces, “I must have left the door unlocked. I got distracted when one of the nurses couldn’t find one of the patients in need of meds; I wasn’t careful.”



Now that’s a frexing lie. I know Doc didn’t leave that door on the fourth floor unlocked because he hadn’t known how I got down here. Still, you have to respect the man; it takes chutz to lie to Eldest.



“Come,” Eldest says to me.



“I want to know why she—why there are so many frozen people down here,” I say. “What’s the point? Where did they come from? Why does she look so different?”



Eldest turns his cold stare to the girl with sunset hair. Then he looks back at me, slowly. “She looks odd because she is from Sol-Earth,” Eldest says. “They all are. Now come.”



“But—”



“Come.” He turns and strides to the elevator. He’s walking fast and has one fist pressed into the hip above his hurt leg.



I follow him, obedient as ever.



9



AMY



BUT THERE ARE ALSO DREAMS.



Wonderful dreams. Beautiful dreams. Dreams of a new world.



I don’t know what it will be like. No one does. But the nightmares rarely touch the new world, and in my mind, it is always paradise.



It is a place worth giving up Earth for.



Warmth. I always notice the warmth first.



And in my dream, I wake up, and I’m home.



My grandmother makes pancakes in the kitchen. She always mixes just a squeeze of syrup in with the batter, so the kitchen is already filled with a sticky-sweet smell that reminds me of home.



Grandma looks up at me and smiles—



And sometimes I’ll lose the dream right then, because having Grandma again is the most unbelievable part of any dream—



She smiles, and it seems to make all her wrinkles disappear.



“Let’s go!” Daddy says. He’s dressed in sweats. He jogs a little in place, and his sneakers squeak on the linoleum. Then Mom runs up behind him in running shorts and a sports bra—



And sometimes I lose the dream there, because Mom never ran with me, it was always just me and Daddy—



And we start running.



And the new world spreads out around us as we run. It’s always beautiful. It’s the best parts of home made better. It’s sandy beaches where the sand doesn’t slip under our racing feet and the water’s gold, not blue. It’s cool forests with breezes that smell like lemons and honey, where strange woodland animals with soft fur play with us. It’s deserts with towering sand sculptures that offer us sweet water to drink.



The new world is always beautiful, always perfect.



And if I’m lucky, the dream stays here.



I’m not always lucky.



As we run, the path curves around. We start to circle back. And I see our house, a mixed-up house that looks a little like our home in Florida where we lived when I was young, but it’s brick like the one in Colorado, and Grandma’s on the porch, waving and calling us in.



And Mom leaves the path and goes to the house.



“Come on,” Daddy says, and he jogs up the steps of the porch.



But I can’t quit running. My feet won’t turn toward home.



I can’t stop.



I have to race, round and round, in a world that’s beautiful and serene and perfect.



I try to stop. I circle back to the house, and Mom and Grandma and Daddy are there, eating pancakes, and sometimes Jason’s there too, and my dog from when I was little, and my friends from high school.



And I can’t stop.



Because sometimes the dreams of the new world turn into nightmares.



10



ELDER



ELDEST HAS APPARENTLY DECIDED TO PUNISH ME WITH LESSONS. He was silent during the long ride up the elevator, and did nothing but grunt at me in disdain when I tried to question him about the girl as he led me down the path from the Hospital to the grav tube. Now, in the Learning Center, he throws me into the hard blue plastic chair beside the faded globe of Sol-Earth.



I start to ask about the girl again, but Eldest collapses in the chair opposite me, shifting his weight uneasily. He grimaces as he props his leg up on the globe. His shoe covers Australia.



“Well?” Eldest growls.



“What?” I am unable to keep the whine from my voice.



“Well, did you figure out the third cause of discord?”



“No,” I say, my eyes on the mountainous bumps on the globe.



“Oh, so you had plenty of time to go poking around places you don’t belong but not to do the one thing I asked you to?” Eldest’s sarcasm is cruel; he spits the words out at me.



“Why didn’t you tell me about that hidden level filled with frozen people?” I shout back. “I’m the next frexing leader of this ship! I should know everything about it!”



“You should know everything, huh? Then why don’t you tell me the third cause of discord?”



“I don’t know!” I shout.



“Then stay here and learn!” Eldest roars, and he throws a floppy at me, its screen already flashing Sol-Earth history. Before I can hurl it back at Eldest, he tears from the room, knocking over the globe on his way out. Sol-Earth spins in his wake, a blue-green nothing, clattering against the table’s leg.



Eldest’s temper is worse because he’s held it in until we were in private. I know that if we weren’t here, in the Keeper Level, alone, he wouldn’t have spoken like that.



Eldest leaves the Learning Center door open, and as he storms away, my eyes drift up to the metal screen, behind which are the twinkling lightbulbs I thought were stars.



Why lie about the screen, about the hidden level of the ship?



And what other lies has he been telling?



I tap my fingers on the table made from real Sol-Earth wood in front of me, trying to drum up new plans. If Eldest isn’t going to tell me what’s going on, I’ll just find out for myself. My eyes drift to the metal circle covering the grav tube in the corner of the room. I could escape, take the tube back to the Feeder Level, see what else I could find. Maybe Orion knows something more. I can’t think in this tiny room. I’d like to just walk about the fields a bit, visit the sheep pastures, wander aimlessly on a ship whose path was determined centuries ago. Gather my thoughts together so I can see them all in a straight line.



But to disobey a direct order from Eldest?



Even I don’t have the chutz for that.



11



AMY



MORE THAN THE SOUND OF MY OWN BEATING HEART, I MISS the sound of a ticking clock.



Time passes, it must pass, but I have no more assurance of moving through time than I have that I am moving through space. In a way, I’m glad: this means perhaps 300 years and 364 days have passed, and tomorrow I will wake up. Sometimes after a cross-country meet or a long day at school, I’d fall into bed with all my clothes on and be out before I knew it. When I’d finally open my eyes, it would feel like I’d just shut them for a minute, but really, the whole rest of the day and half the night was gone.



But.



There were other times when I’d collapse onto my mattress, shut my eyes and dream, and it felt like I’d lived a whole lifetime in that dream, but when I woke up, it had only been a few minutes.



What if only a year has gone by? What if we haven’t even left yet?



That is my greatest fear.



Jason said, “When you get there, think of me when you look at the stars.”



I said, “I won’t limit myself to the stars.”



A cool breeze, like the day we—



What was that?



—met, with the music from the party pounding so loudly that the ground under our feet vibrated. When I wore my heels, I was taller than Jason, but I was barefoot now, the cool grass a comfort to my tired feet as I looked up into his eyes.



Did I move?



The dream fades, the sensation of grass-breeze-Jason disappears. Darkness. Nightmares tickle my mind.



Something’s happening.



No, no, no. Nothing’s happening. Nothing ever happens. It’s that nightmare again, that same nightmare. Ed/Hassan will unfreeze me, and I will be like now, and they’ll throw me back in. Or the ship will crash, and I’ll be stuck here, forever, never unfrozen. Or maybe this is the nightmare where—



Thunk.



—where they forget to unfreeze me at all, the ship lands and everyone’s so excited they just leave me behind, and—