He stands. “Thank you for telling me this, Amy,” he repeats.
“Elder?”
He walks away, fists still clenched and stained brown and green from the ground.
49 ELDER
“ELDER, THERE’S — YOU NEED TO COME TO THE CITY.”
Doc’s com arrives just when I don’t need it to. I’d gone to confront Luthor as soon as Amy had told me everything he’d done. I’d never been so mad in my entire life. I can still feel the rage coursing through my blood, although it’s somewhat cooled now.
“Frex!” I shout. “All I’ve done is run across the ship from one place to another! I’m frexing tired of this!”
Doc’s silent on the wi-com a moment. “You won’t be doing that soon.”
For a moment, I think he’s talking about the planet, but no — I’ve not told him about that yet. Only Amy and the first-level Shippers know.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Elder, it’s chaos. It’s — mutiny.”
“Frex!”
“I think it’s Bartie, but — look, you’ve got to come out here.”
It takes me a while to get from the cyro level to the City, but I race as fast I can, driven by the urgency in Doc’s voice. I can tell before I’m at the City that something is very, very wrong. I hear it first — or, rather, I don’t hear it. I don’t hear the regular noises of the City, the undercurrent of sound that is always there during the day merely from the people living. Instead, muffled voices and footsteps reverberate.
That’s when I see it.
The Food Distro is at the end of the main street, and that’s where everyone’s pressing together. They’re all looking at one thing.
Fridrick, dead.
His body is plastered with so many med patches that they cling to his skin like scales. Someone’s taken a great swath of cloth, probably from a bolt in the weaving district, and hung it from the windows of the third floor of the Distro. Fridrick’s body hangs from the center, sagging the cloth down precariously, his arms and head flopped over the front.
In big bold letters painted in black across the front of the impromptu banner: Follow the leader.
“This is a message!” a voice roars. My eyes drop from the banner and the body down to the front of the Food Distro, where Bartie stands.
I realize that the people hadn’t been silent in order to observe Fridrick’s death. They had been silently waiting for Bartie to speak.
“Anyone who won’t blindly obey the leader”—he sneers the word—“will be dealt with! Have we not seen it with Stevy? As soon as he protested against Elder — dead!”
“Protested against me” is a bit of an understatement — the man beat me across the face.
“And we all know Fridrick’s protests! He was trying to save us all, keep the food stores in check — and look! Elder forced him to distribute food, and now there isn’t enough! And Fridrick’s protests”—he pauses dramatically, swooping his arm up to the body above him—“have been silenced!”
If Bartie’s trying to stir up a revolution, it’s not working that great. Although the front of the crowd cheers him on, I can’t help but smile smugly at the fact that at least two-thirds of the crowd is silent — worried, but not ready to overthrow the only government they’ve ever known.
Still, I’m not going to let him stand there and frexing lie about me.
I push my wi-com and order an all-call.
“Attention, all residents of Godspeed,” I say. The group at the front of the crowd stills. Many turn to look at me. “As you are well aware, the Eldest system has worked on this ship for countless gens. I chose to work a little differently from my predecessor. I chose to give you the ability to make choices for yourself.”
Beep, beep-beep.
“Attention, all residents of Godspeed,” Bartie’s voice says in my wi-com. My head snaps up. Bartie’s looking over the crowd, straight at me. “Elder is not the only one who can control the wi-com system. But he is right. He gave us a choice. And for that, I thank him.” He bows his head a fraction of an inch in my direction. “Because he gave you the ability to choose someone other than him.”
The crowd’s attention is entirely on Bartie now. How the frex did he break into the wi-com system? Only a few select members of the crew — me, Doc, the First Shipper — have the permissions needed to do all-calls. Bartie must have hacked into the system.
I slam my hand into my wi-com. “System override,” I order, then begin another all-call. “People of Godspeed,” I say in as loud a voice as I can. “Calm down. This is not the time for mutiny and dissent. This morning, I discovered we are much closer to Centauri-Earth than we ever thought. We will begin planet-landing — soon. Very soon. You only have to—”
“LIES!” Bartie roars, not through his wi-com, but from his perch at the Food Distro. His face is twisted, enraged, and the word expels from him like a rock thrown into the crowd.
“It’s not a lie,” I insist, my voice crackling over the wi-com. “Please, everyone, calm down. The mission—”
Beep, beep-beep.
“Frex the mission!” Bartie roars into the wi-com all-call system. “This is just one more way that Elder wants to manipulate you! Look around you, friends! This—this—is all we have! Godspeed is our home, there’s no point in trying to reach Centauri-Earth anymore! There is only this — and freedom!”
“I gave you freedom!” I shout, then remember to use my wi-com. Before I can, though, Bartie overrides me.
“He may say he’s given you freedom, but think about how much he still controls. He makes all the decisions. He controls who eats, and how much. He controls who gets what meds — and he is the one who let the poison Phydus back on this ship. That was his decision, his choice, and you paid for it.”
I remember that day I found him in the Recorder Hall. Technical Instruction on Communication Systems. And a history of the French Revolution. He was probably the one who hacked into the floppy system — but I wonder, if I had handled things differently, would his rebellion have stopped there rather than escalating into a mob gathered around Fridrick’s dead body?
“What about the food?” someone calls from near the back.
Bartie pushes back the doors of the Food Distro. “Take what you can,” he shouts. “There’s little left.”
And that does it.
The people stampede into the Food Distro. The windows in the front are smashed open and people start running through them. The mob swarms forward in a surge so fast that Bartie has to dive out of the way. People fight their way out of the building, rolling barrels or hefting heavy sacks of food on their backs. Others start fighting them, ripping open the sacks and brawling over the contents. In the rush, Fridrick’s body flops out of its tenuous hold on the banner, crashing into the ground. The mob swells back, then washes over where he landed, ignoring the body in the rush for food.
Fighting breaks out. It starts out as shoving as people wrestle their way to the front of the crowd, closer to the food stores. Shoves turn into punches, punches turn into brawls. Food is forgotten as two men turn on each other. The larger man punches the smaller one in the mouth, and an arc of blood sprays out over the crowd. The smaller man’s friends leap into the fight, and soon there are so many punching and kicking and shouting that I can’t even find the original two fighters amid the fists and blood, the sound of flesh hitting flesh.