Across the Universe (Across the Universe #1)

Across the Universe (Across the Universe #1) Page 27

“I can look that up,” I say. I go around her to the table at the end of the row and pick up the floppy on it.

“What were their names?” I say.

“Maria Martin and Bob—Robert Martin.”

I tap their names onto the on-screen keyboard. “Numbers 40 and 41,” I say. Before I can put the floppy down, Amy’s running up the rows, counting under her breath. She stops in front of the two side-by-side doors labeled with her parents’ numbers.

“Do you want me to open it?” I ask.

Amy nods her head, yes, but when I step forward with my arm outstretched, she grabs my hand. “I’ll do it,” she says, but she doesn’t, she just stands there, looking at the closed doors.

35

AMY

I WANT TO SEE THEM.

I want to trace Mom’s laugh lines with my eyes. I want to touch Daddy’s scruffy beard with my smooth cheek.

I want to see them.

But I don’t want to see them as frozen meat.

36

ELDER

“AMY?”

Amy and I both whirl around. Harley is standing at the end of the row.

“What have you been doing down here?” I ask.

Harley yawns as he walks over to us. “Standing guard. Like we said we would. No one’s been down here but you two.”

“I’ll stay tonight,” I say guiltily, looking at the dark circles under Harley’s eyes.

“Nah, you won’t.” Harley grins at me. “You can’t. Eldest would notice. I don’t mind it down here. It’s quiet and gives me a chance to paint.” I know Harley. I know how obsessed he can get. He’s probably spent more time looking at the stars than guarding the frozens.

I lean in closer, so Amy won’t hear. “But your meds—”

I’m not just talking about the blue-and-white Inhibitor pill we both take, that everyone in the Ward takes. Harley’s been on more meds than that, for his “episodes,” ever since—

“I’ll be fine,” Harley says and even though I’m not sure I believe him, I can tell from the way he’s looking at Amy that he doesn’t want to discuss this issue in front of her.

“Why don’t you come with us? Amy’s finding her parents,” I say.

Harley hesitates—he wants to return to the stars. But when he sees me staring at him in concern, he changes his mind.

“Okay,” he says, even as he glances toward the hallway leading to the hatch. There is something in the empty hollow of Harley’s eyes, a greedy sort of longing, that makes me worry about him. It’s the same sort of obsession he fell into last time.

“I’m done here,” Amy says from behind me.

“Are you sure?” I ask. She nods.

“But... don’t you want to get your trunk?” I ask her, glancing at the floppy.

“My trunk?”

“The one you packed before you were frozen? It’s recorded here that you and your parents each have a trunk.”

37

AMY

MY HEART THUDS AS HARLEY AND I FOLLOW ELDER PAST the rows of little metal doors to a wall lined with lockers.

I never packed anything for this. Mom and Daddy never told me that I could take anything with me.

Elder pulls open a locker; a stack of ten suitcase-size trunks lines the inside.

“Here you are,” he says, pulling out three trunks.

Harley and Elder stand over me as I push the button on the first trunk. The lid opens with an audible pop—the airlock preservation seal breaks.

This one must be Mom’s trunk. Her perfume wafts up as soon as the lid opens. I breathe deeply, eyes closed, remembering how her clothes smelled of this same perfume when I played dress up so many years ago. I breathe again and realize that all I can smell is the bitter preservation gas they must have filled the trunk with, and Mom’s perfume is nothing but memory.

I pick up the clear preservation bag filled with pictures.

“What’s that?” Harley asks.

“The ocean.”

He stares at it, open-mouthed.

“And that?” Elder asks.

“This was our family trip to the Grand Canyon.”

Elder takes the picture I hand to him. He traces the stone carved by the Colorado River with his finger. He looks incredulous, as if he doesn’t quite believe that the canyon behind my parents and me is real.

“This is all water?” Harley asks, pointing at the picture of me making a sand castle on the beach when I was seven.

I laugh. “All water! It’s salty, which is gross, but the waves are always going up and down, in and out. My daddy and I used to jump in the waves, see how far out we could go, and then ride them back to the shoreline.”

“All water,” Harley mutters. “All water.”

The other pictures aren’t as exciting. They are mostly of me. Me as a baby. Me as a toddler, in my grandparents’ garden, among the pumpkin vines. First day of school. Me at prom in my black slinky dress, standing next to Jason, accepting his cornflower corsage.

I root around deeper in the trunk. There’s something I know Mom wouldn’t have left on Earth. When my fingers close on something small and hard, my heart gives a little lurch. I withdraw the round-topped velvet box from the trunk and hold it in my palm.

“What’s that?” Elder asks. Harley is still staring at the ocean.

Inside the box is a gold cross necklace. My grandmother’s cross.

Elder laughs. “Don’t tell me you’re one of the ones who believed in those fairy tales!”

His laugh dies as I put the cross around my neck, never once breaking eye contact with him. “This ship is named Godspeed,” I say, adjusting the cross to lie at the center of my chest.

“Godspeed just means luck.”

I turn from Elder, stare out at the frozen morgue doors. “It means more than that.”

I swallow and put the pictures back into the trunk. Except for the one of my family and me at the Grand Canyon.

The cross swings forward as I reach for Daddy’s trunk. It’s filled with mostly books. Some I recognize: the complete works of Shakespeare, Pilgrim’s Progress, the Bible, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Ten or twelve books on military tactics, survival, and science. Three books filled with blank paper and a pack of unopened mechanical pencils. I set one notebook and three pencils aside.

I hesitate, then reach back in the trunk for Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I’ve never read the book, but I’m judging by the title that it’ll give me some pointers on what to do with whoever’s unplugging people. I tuck it away under the notebook, hoping Elder didn’t notice the title. Somehow, some way, I’m sure his mentor Eldest is at the bottom of all this, and I’m afraid that if it comes down to it, I might have to wage a war against him all by myself.

And then I see it.

My teddy bear.

I lift her up. The big green bow at her neck is lopsided and the felt is worn off her nose. The fur on her right paw is almost gone, because when I was a baby, I used to suck on it instead of my thumb.

I hug Amber to my chest, longing for something I know felt and stuffing can’t give.

“Last trunk,” Elder says, pushing it toward me as I close Daddy’s trunk.

I take a deep breath. I squeeze Amber.

But that trunk is empty.

“Where’s your stuff?” Harley asks, leaning over my shoulder.

Tears prick my eyes.

“Daddy didn’t think I was going to go,” I said. “He didn’t pack anything for me, because he didn’t think I was really going with them.”

38

ELDER

“BUT IT’S OKAY,” I SAY. “WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED here on the ship. You won’t have to worry about clothes or anything.”

Harley punches me in the arm.

“What?”

Amy hugs her stuffed animal and picks up the notebook, pencils, book, and photograph she’s selected from her parents’ boxes. “I’m done here,” she says in a hollow voice.

Harley helps me load the trunks back into the locker. He keeps shooting me these looks and waggling his eyebrows at Amy, but I have no idea what he means by it.

Click. Whoosh. Thud.

Amy drops the stuffed animal and books, the pencils clatter on the floor, and the photograph drifts down. “I know that sound,” she breathes, and she’s off, running down the aisle toward the rows of frozen bodies.

“Amy, wait!” Harley calls, but I just chase after her. She skids around the corner in the row of sixties.

“Hurry up!” she screams.

I round the corner. Fog is rising from a glass box resting in the center of the aisle.

“Did you do this?” I ask, even though I know the answer.

“Of course not!” Amy says, her voice raspy, as if she’s trying to say everything at once. “Is she going to wake up like me?”

I glance at the box—there is a woman inside, a taller, heavier woman than Amy with dark kinky hair and darker skin than mine. The light at the top of the box blinks red. I look at the black electrical box. The switch inside has been flipped.

I jab my finger into my wi-com button. “Com link: Doc. Now!”

“What is it?” Doc’s voice fills my wi-com.

“Doc! There’s been another one! There’s another box out here! Come quick!”

“Wait, what?”

“Down in the cryo level. One of the other frozens. She’s been pulled outside. The light is red!”

“I’ll be right there.”

Doc disconnects the link. I hope he’s close. If he’s in the Hospital, he’ll be here in minutes—if he’s in the City or on the Shipper Level, it will be longer.

“What’s going on?” Harley asks.

“Someone’s done to this woman what they did to me,” Amy says. “Someone just unplugged me, left me here to die.”

“So will she wake up?” Harley asks.

“I don’t know. I think if we flip the switch back, put her back in... but I don’t know. I’m afraid to mess with it. It looks so simple, but...”

“Don’t let her wake up,” Amy says softly. “It’s bad, being frozen, but it’s better than waking up alone.”

My heart jerks. She still thinks of herself as alone.

“Elder?” a voice calls.

“Here!” I call back. “Number... ” I glance at the open door. “Number 63!”

Doc races down the aisle. He shoves Harley aside as he bends over the glass box. He wipes away the fog blurring the glass. “She’s not been out long,” Doc says. “She’s hardly melted at all.”

“That’s good, right? Right?” Amy’s fingers press against the glass box, like she’s trying to reach through the ice and hold the woman’s hand.

“Good,” Doc says. He bumps into me. I step back. Doc leans over the glass, looking at the electrical box. He plugs a floppy into a wire on the box and reads the numbers that pop up on the screen. He grunts, but I can’t tell whether it’s a good grunt or a bad grunt. He taps some more numbers onto the floppy, then unhooks it before flipping the switch. The light fades from red to green.