Eldest takes us all the way to the end of the hall. I’ve never even walked this far down the hall, let alone gone through these doors. I know from studying the ship diagrams what is there: the energy room, where nuclear physics is studied, that leads directly to the engine room, where lies the massive heart of the ship. Beyond that is the nav con, where Eldest said only the top Shippers go, the ones who will finally land Godspeed in 49 years and 263 days… no, I mean, 74 years and 263 days—74 years. Frex… 74.
Eldest scans his thumb on the biometric scanner at the energy room’s doorway. “Eldest/Elder access granted,” the scanner says pleasantly. I pause. I’ve never gone past this room. But Eldest keeps going to the door on the far wall. When it opens, I hear the deep growling of the ship’s engine.
I’m finally going to see the engine.
The engine room is hot, oppressively hot. I tug at my collar and push up my sleeves, but Eldest does not show any indication that he’s even uncomfortable. All around us, scientists rush around. Some hold vials or metal boxes, nearly all of them have floppies under their arms, flashing important looking charts and diagrams.
“Follow me,” Eldest says.
But I don’t.
My eyes fill up with the thing in the center of the room: sunken into the floor, and huge, is the engine.
For some reason, I never imagined the engine in the engine room. I mean, I knew the engine was there, obviously, but I never bothered to think about it. I knew from Eldest’s lessons that, in its crudest form, the engine is a nuclear reactor running off uranium. The thing before me looks almost like a test tube, although giant and with heavy metal pipes extending from its head and wrapping around it. An undercurrent of whirr-churn-whirr cycles over and over and over. This is the heartbeat of the ship.
“It’s loud,” Eldest grunts when he sees where my attention has wandered. “And it smells.”
I hadn’t noticed the odd scent of grease and cleaner before. “It’s beautiful.”
Eldest snorts, then stares at me more intently. “It’s not beautiful.” His gaze shifts to the engine. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says in a flat voice. “Do you know what kind of engine that is?”
“Nuclear,” I say.
Eldest rolls his eyes. “Be a little more specific, why don’t you?”
“A lead-cooled fast reactor?” I guess, remembering the engine schematics in the Recorder Hall.
Eldest withdraws the scale model of the engine, the one I last saw on his desk when I snuck into his room, from his pocket. He breaks it apart so that I can see the tiny innards. The engine is like a living thing with veins and organs and the slow whirr-churn-whirr of life.
“We use uranium,” Eldest continues. “The uranium goes through the reactor, then here—” He points to a small box that’s outside the test tube of the engine, connected by tubes and wires. “The uranium is reprocessed in the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. We are supposed to be able to use and reuse the uranium over and over again, a constantly recycled fuel system.”
The key words — supposed to be — are not lost on me. “Is that not what’s happening?”
“The reprocessing part of the fuel cycle isn’t working like we thought it would,” Eldest says. “It’s supposed to maintain the uranium’s efficiency.”
“But it’s not?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“What’s happening?”
I can tell Eldest wants to look away, but I don’t break eye contact.
“The short answer? We’re going slower. And slower. At first, we were at 80 percent maximum speed, then 60. Now we sometimes hit 40 percent maximum speed, but it’s usually worse.”
“That’s why the ship’s landing was delayed? That’s why it’s taking extra years to land?”
Eldest snorts — his first betrayal of emotion since we entered the Engine Room. “Twenty-five years behind schedule? I wish. We’re not even halfway there. As of now, we’re 250 years behind schedule.”
63 AMY
DOC IS WAITING FOR US ON THE FOURTH FLOOR. HE’S NOT surprised to see either of us, which I take to mean that the fat nurse downstairs used her ear button to call ahead. I knew we couldn’t trust her.
“Steela, how are you?” the doctor says in falsely bright tones. “Amy, I can handle her on my own; you go on back to your chamber.”
“No, thank you,” I say as Steela’s hand clenches on my arm.
“What?” The doctor looks surprised.
“I’m sticking with Steela.”
“But—”
“I want her to,” Steela says without a quaver in her voice.
The doctor frowns.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
There is a thin white line around the doctor’s lips. “Fine,” he says. He looks down at the floppy in his hand. “Bed 36 is available.” He turns to the third door in the hallway. There are no biometric scanners on the door — instead, the doctor withdraws a big iron key from his pocket.
The large room has ten beds, five against each wall. The doctor leads Steela to the bed all the way across the room, the only one not occupied.
“We were waiting for you,” the doctor tells Steela. A chill goes down my spine. “It’s so much easier to do a room all at once,” he mutters.
The doctor indicates a neatly folded hospital gown on the bed. Steela looks at me. She doesn’t want to let me go; I don’t want her to let go. When her hand releases my elbow, it is like a goodbye.
The doctor just stands there as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Steela’s hands shake as she unfastens the top button of her tunic.
“Give her some privacy,” I hiss at him. When he doesn’t register what I’ve said, I take his elbow and turn him around. While we’re waiting for Steela to change, I inspect the doctor — his back is turned as he fiddles with the instruments on the table by the wall. He’d not intended to peep on Steela — why would he want to? She’s so old. No, he’d just forgotten that Steela might be sensitive about undressing in front of him. He doesn’t look at her as a human with feelings. He’s been playing doctor too long with the simple Feeders, and forgotten what a real person is like.
“I’m done,” Steela says in her crackling voice.
She sits on the hospital bed with her legs sticking out straight in front of her and the sheet pulled up to her knees. Glancing around the room, I see that every other patient in the room is doing the same, but that they are all, as Steela would say, “brainless twits.” She’s emulating them, perhaps unconsciously.
Her tunic and trousers are folded neatly on the end of the bed. The hospital gown, so much thinner than her regular clothing, makes Steela look smaller, weaker, sicker than before. And so much more scared. She is shivering, but I don’t think it’s from the cool air blowing through the room.
“What are those?” Steela asks, her voice catching.
“Just IVs.” The doctor holds them out. “For… nutrition.”
“Why can’t you use those med patch things?” I ask.
“Med patches are just for simple things, like headaches and stomach aches. This is more serious than that.”
“None of the others have three IVs.” Steela says.
The room is so quiet I’d almost forgotten that anyone else was here. The elderly in the other beds are meek, staring at the ceiling. Feeders. But Steela’s right — the others have only two IVs — one each in the left hand and the left forearm.
“The third one’s special, because you’re special.”
“Hogwash.”
The doctor grins wryly. “It’s because you’re the only one here on mental meds.”