Across the Universe - Beth Revis [12]
I nod.
“Do you really?” he asks more urgently, gripping my hands so hard that some of my knuckles crack.
I nod again, unable to take my eyes from his.
“What is the greatest danger of this ship?” His voice has fallen into a raspy whisper.
Um. Maybe I didn’t understand. Eldest stares at me, expecting a response. I stare back.
“Mutiny. It’s mutiny, Elder. More than technical error or ship malfunction or outside dangers, mutiny is the greatest threat to this ship. So, after the Plague, the Eldest system was created. One person, born ahead of the people he would lead, to act as patriarch and commander to the people younger than he. Each generation has an Eldest to lead. You will one day be an Eldest. You will be the strong central leader who prevents discord, who preserves every living person on this ship.”
5
AMY
I AM AS SILENT AS DEATH.
Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me.
Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever.
And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes and wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can’t.
I can’t.
6
ELDER
“SO, WHAT’S THE THIRD CAUSE OF DISCORD?” I ASK ELDEST AS silence creeps around us in the Learning Center.
He contemplates me. For a moment, anger flashes in his faded eyes, and I wonder if he’ll strike me. When I blink, though, that crazy idea is gone. Eldest puts both hands on his knees and pushes against them to raise himself, creaking, into a standing position. The Learning Center is small, and with Eldest standing, it feels oppressively so. The chair he’s pushed back butts against the wall; the table feels like a chasm between us. Behind him, the faded globe of Sol-Earth looks miniscule, even smaller and more insignificant than me.
“I’ve told you enough,” he says, heading to the door. “And I’ve got work to do. I want you to go to the Recorder Hall, do some research, see if you can figure out some of the reasons Sol-Earth had so much discord. You’ve got the first two reasons for their reign of blood and war; you should be able to figure out the third. It’s not hard, not when you look at Sol-Earth history.”
I recognize the challenge in this. Eldest is testing my ability to be a leader, testing my worthiness to follow in his footsteps as the next Eldest. He does this a lot, actually. Although the Elder who should have been between me and Eldest died a long time ago, Eldest didn’t like him. The most I’ve ever heard Eldest speak of him was when he’d compare him to me. And the comparisons have never been positive. “You’re slow, like him,” Eldest would say. “That idea is something he would have said, too.” I learned almost as soon as I started living on the Keeper Level to keep my ideas to myself and my mouth shut. Eldest still tests me often just to make sure I won’t turn out as bad as that other Elder. I try to look confident, assertive—but it’s wasted, because Eldest hasn’t looked back at me once.
Part of me wants to call Eldest back and argue with him, remind him of his promise to tell me everything and insist he teach me the third cause of discord.
The other part of me, the part that could spend all day looking at vids and pics of Sol-Earth on the floppies, is relishing an assignment by Eldest to do just that.
On the far side of the Learning