I start to ask about the girl again, but Eldest collapses in the chair opposite me, shifting his weight uneasily. He grimaces as he props his leg up on the globe. His shoe covers Australia.
“Well?” Eldest growls.
“What?” I am unable to keep the whine from my voice.
“Well, did you figure out the third cause of discord?”
“No,” I say, my eyes on the mountainous bumps on the globe.
“Oh, so you had plenty of time to go poking around places you don’t belong but not to do the one thing I asked you to?” Eldest’s sarcasm is cruel; he spits the words out at me.
“Why didn’t you tell me about that hidden level filled with frozen people?” I shout back. “I’m the next frexing leader of this ship! I should know everything about it!”
“You should know everything, huh? Then why don’t you tell me the third cause of discord?”
“I don’t know!” I shout.
“Then stay here and learn!” Eldest roars, and he throws a floppy at me, its screen already flashing Sol-Earth history. Before I can hurl it back at Eldest, he tears from the room, knocking over the globe on his way out. Sol-Earth spins in his wake, a blue-green nothing, clattering against the table’s leg.
Eldest’s temper is worse because he’s held it in until we were in private. I know that if we weren’t here, in the Keeper Level, alone, he wouldn’t have spoken like that.
Eldest leaves the Learning Center door open, and as he storms away, my eyes drift up to the metal screen, behind which are the twinkling lightbulbs I thought were stars.
Why lie about the screen, about the hidden level of the ship?
And what other lies has he been telling?
I tap my fingers on the table made from real Sol-Earth wood in front of me, trying to drum up new plans. If Eldest isn’t going to tell me what’s going on, I’ll just find out for myself. My eyes drift to the metal circle covering the grav tube in the corner of the room. I could escape, take the tube back to the Feeder Level, see what else I could find. Maybe Orion knows something more. I can’t think in this tiny room. I’d like to just walk about the fields a bit, visit the sheep pastures, wander aimlessly on a ship whose path was determined centuries ago. Gather my thoughts together so I can see them all in a straight line.
But to disobey a direct order from Eldest?
Even I don’t have the chutz for that.
11 AMY
MORE THAN THE SOUND OF MY OWN BEATING HEART, I MISS the sound of a ticking clock.
Time passes, it must pass, but I have no more assurance of moving through time than I have that I am moving through space. In a way, I’m glad: this means perhaps 300 years and 364 days have passed, and tomorrow I will wake up. Sometimes after a cross-country meet or a long day at school, I’d fall into bed with all my clothes on and be out before I knew it. When I’d finally open my eyes, it would feel like I’d just shut them for a minute, but really, the whole rest of the day and half the night was gone.
But.
There were other times when I’d collapse onto my mattress, shut my eyes and dream, and it felt like I’d lived a whole lifetime in that dream, but when I woke up, it had only been a few minutes.
What if only a year has gone by? What if we haven’t even left yet?
That is my greatest fear.
Jason said, “When you get there, think of me when you look at the stars.”
I said, “I won’t limit myself to the stars.”
A cool breeze, like the day we—
What was that?
— met, with the music from the party pounding so loudly that the ground under our feet vibrated. When I wore my heels, I was taller than Jason, but I was barefoot now, the cool grass a comfort to my tired feet as I looked up into his eyes.
Did I move?
The dream fades, the sensation of grass-breeze-Jason disappears. Darkness. Nightmares tickle my mind.
Something’s happening.
No, no, no. Nothing’s happening. Nothing ever happens. It’s that nightmare again, that same nightmare. Ed/Hassan will unfreeze me, and I will be like now, and they’ll throw me back in. Or the ship will crash, and I’ll be stuck here, forever, never unfrozen. Or maybe this is the nightmare where—
Thunk.
— where they forget to unfreeze me at all, the ship lands and everyone’s so excited they just leave me behind, and—
Something is happening.
No. The nightmares are getting more real, and they’ll be so much worse because of it. I think I hear something. I can’t hear anything. It’s all in my mind. It’s not real. Think about something better. Think about Jason. Think about Mom, about Daddy, think about—
Click.
No. I did not hear a click. A click did not vibrate through the ice. That did not happen. It’s just the nightmares… it’s another nightmare. It’s as simple as that.
If I could, I would squeeze my eyes shut. Instead, I try to focus my mind, like I used to be able to focus my eyes in and out when I looked at something really close. Memories. Memories always kill nightmares.
My mind’s eye flashes images, a slide show of memories. Hiking the Grand Canyon. The middle school trip to the beach. Gymnastics when I was a kid. The first time I drove. The first time I scratched the car (same day) and Daddy yelled at me, but got me ice cream afterward anyway, and we pinky-promised not to tell Mom. Baking Christmas cookies with Mom and Grandma the year before she went to the nursing home. Cross-country meets. Marathon training.
I feel something. I feel something. Warmth in my stomach. And I hear… the hum of electricity. I realize I hear it because it is coming from the tubes down my throat.
My body slips. Just a fraction of a millimeter, but it slips.
The ice is melting.
Oh, God.
Thump.
My heart.
Thump-thump.
Water leaks onto my left eye’s lash-line. I twitch involuntarily. The yellow crust that has sealed my eyes for who knows how long cracks as — for the first time since I was frozen—I move.
OhGodohGodohGod.
12 ELDER
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
I jump, then grimace. Nothing could have given away my guilt more.
“It’s almost dark,” Doc continues. “Does Eldest know you’re here?”
“Don’t!” I say as Doc reaches for his wi-com button. “Look… I snuck out. I was tired of reading! C’mon,” I add when Doc doesn’t lower his hand. “I just… needed to get out for a bit. Don’t scamp me out. Give me a break.”
Doc’s smirk tells me he’s not happy with me, but at least he doesn’t call for Eldest. I breathe a little easier.
For a moment, we both just stand there, me on the path that leads deeper into the garden behind the Hospital, Doc on the steps. I love this garden. When Eldest sent me to the Ward for that year, I spent a lot of free time here in the garden. Steela, an old woman who lived in the Ward long before I moved there, had made the garden blossom from a grass lawn with hedges around it into a veritable jungle of flowers and vegetables and vines and trees.