“Lord, I don’t know. I remember when you got that all-call. And we rode in that tube thing. That was fun. But by the time we got to that big room with the lights, I was starting to feel kind of . . . woozy. ”
“Doc said that you’ve had a reaction to the ship. He’s put you on ment—on the Inhibitor pills. ”
“Inhibitor pills? The same pill you and Harley and everyone ‘crazy’ takes?” Amy pushes me aside to sit up straight.
“Well—yes. ”
“Gah!” Amy screeches. She leaps off the bed, pacing, her hands curling into fists. “This ship is so effing messed up! I’m not crazy! You and Harley aren’t crazy!”
I don’t say anything because I half believe her. She takes my silence, however, for contradiction.
“What happened to make you and everyone else on this stupid ship think that things like—like screwing around with anything that walks, like being mindless drones—what made you think that—that—was normal!?”
I shrug. It’s the way it’s always been. How can I explain to this girl, who was raised among differences and lack of leadership and chaos and war that this is the way a normal society is run, a peaceful society, a society that doesn’t just survive, as hers did, but one that thrives and flourishes as it hurtles through space toward a new planet?
Amy marches to the desk and picks up the floppy. “How do you make this freaking thing work?” she demands, fiddling with it. “This thing is like a computer, right? Doesn’t it have information on Earth? Let me show you what real people, normal people, are like! Let me show you how weird this place is!”
She’s not doing it right—she’s swiped her finger across the screen and brought up the wi-com locator map I showed her before, but she doesn’t know how to access anything else. She taps it, then jabs it, then balls her hand into a fist and pounds it against the table. I stand, walk to her, and gently take the floppy from her hands. There are tears in her eyes.
“I can’t stand it,” she whispers. “I can’t stand these people, I can’t stand this ‘world. ’ I can’t live here. I can’t spend the rest of my life here. I can’t. I can’t. ”
So. Enough of Eldest’s speech on the Keeper Level penetrated into her mind. She knows how trapped she—all of us—are.
I want to take her into my arms and hold her tight. But at the same time, I know that is the exact opposite of what she wants. She wants to be free, and all I want to do is hold her tight against me.
“I think I know something that will help,” I say.
57
AMY
AS WE WALK ALONG THE PATH LEADING AWAY FROM THE Hospital, Elder is very mysterious. He won’t tell me anything, and I suppose that’s what really lifts my mood—he is like a little kid, eager to show his friend a new toy. That alone is enough to make me forget about the weird, fuzzy, slogging-through-water feeling of the day.
A couple sitting on the bench by the pond wave at us as we pass. The woman’s face is aglow, and she leans against the man’s chest with a look of utter bliss. Her right arm is wrapped around her stomach, and the man’s arm cradles hers.
The woman bends her head down, and I realize she’s talking to her unborn baby, not the man she’s leaning against. “And the stars all had streaks of light chasing them, all shining down on us, on you. ”
“Eldest told me it wasn’t for me,” Elder says under his breath as the couple’s chatter fades behind us.
I give Elder a confused look.
“The star screen in the Great Room. Eldest told me it wasn’t there for me when I found out they weren’t real stars, just lightbulbs. ” He looks away from me and says in a very small voice, “That was the day you woke up. ” His words hang in the air between us. It feels like a long time ago, for both of us.
Elder motions back at the happy couple on the bench. “Eldest said the fake stars were for them. ”
“Oh, I see. ” Typical that Eldest would want to control even the stars. He used them to manipulate the people of the ship, so that when they were told they would not be alive at planet-landing, they could at least have a taste of the stars to tell their children about. I look behind me at the woman sitting on the bench, holding her stomach with gentle hands and whispering to her unborn child about the stars they saw, promising it a lifetime under the heavens.
“It’s cruel,” I say. “To tantalize them with the outside, and then to take it away. ”
Elder shakes his head. “It’s not like that. It gave them a story to feed their children. It’s the way hope is passed down. ”
I stare at Elder. “You sort of agree with Eldest, don’t you?”
“Sort of. ”
I want to argue. Eldest is like a spoiled child throwing his toys around. Waiting for an excuse to break us, watching for any sign that we don’t want to play his game. Always watching, with eyes that remind me of Luthe’s. He’s not helping people, like Elder almost seems to think—he’s twisting the situation to make no one really care about the fact that we’ll all be dead or super-old before we land on the new planet. But before I can say anything, Elder announces, “We’re here!”
He’s so proud of himself that I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve been to the Recorder Hall before. Then again, the last time I was here, I was a mess, covered in mud and tears. I remember the man who helped me then, Orion. His kindness kept me sane.