“Of course not!” I laugh. One of the first lessons Eldest gave me when I moved to the Keeper Level was about Sol-Earth’s religions. They were magic stories, fairy tales, and I remember laughing myself silly when Eldest told me how people on Sol-Earth were willing to die or kill for these fictional characters.
Eldest nods once. “The first cause of discord is difference. There is no religion on Godspeed. We all speak the same language. We’re all monoethnic. And because we are not different, we don’t fight. Remember the Crusades I taught you about? The genocides? We will never have to worry about those types of horrific events on Godspeed.”
I am on the edge of my seat, nodding, but inside I’m hoping Eldest can’t see what a chutz I actually am. I remember those lessons. They were among my first lessons, when I was thirteen and had just moved to the Keeper Level to live with Eldest. Stars, I was such a kid then. I remember pictures on the floppies of people of different skin color and hair color, of people dressed in long gowns or loincloths, of the sounds of languages whose words I could not understand. And back then I thought it was all kind of brilly.
I slouch further down in my seat. No wonder Eldest has been slow to train me — clearly I never picked up the real lessons he’s been teaching me.
“The second cause of discord,” Eldest continues, “is lack of a strong central leader.”
He leans forward, reaching his gnarled, wrinkled hands toward me. “Do you understand the importance of this?” he says, his eyes watery from old age or something else.
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 Center is the entrance to the grav tube Eldest and I use. This one is just for us, a direct link to the Feeder Level. The one that runs between the Shipper Level and the City in the Feeder Level is for everyone else.
I press my wi-com button behind my left ear.
“Command?” the pleasant female voice of my wi-com asks.
“Grav tube control,” I say.
Beep, beep-beep fills my ear as my wi-com connects to the grav tube control. I roll my thumb over the biometric scanner on the far wall of the Learning Center, and a circular section of the floor slides open. There is nothing under it but empty space.
My stomach lurches — as it always does — when I step into the empty air of the grav tube. But the wi-com has linked to the ship’s gravitational system inside the tube, and I bob gently over the air before sinking down like a penny dropped in a fountain’s pool. Darkness envelops me as I slip down the tube through the Shipper Level, and then light floods my eyes. I blink; the Feeder Level is below me, distorted through the clear grav tube. The City rises up along the far wall, and the farms spread throughout the center, vast fields of green dotted with crops, cows, sheep, goats. From here, the Feeder Level is huge, a world in and of itself. 6,400 acres designed to support over 3,000 people looks like forever when you’re gazing down at it. But when you’re actually there, in the fields or the City, crammed up next to people whose eyes are always on you, it feels much more crowded.
The grav tube ends about seven feet from the ground of the Feeder Level. For a second, I bob in the air at the end of the tube, then beep, beep-beep fills my ear as my wi-com connects with the ship’s gravity system, and I drop to the little round metal platform under the tube. I hop off the platform and begin walking down one of the four main roads on the Feeder Level. Only a few yards ahead is a tall brick building, the Recorder Hall, and beyond that is the Hospital.