Across the Universe

Doc narrows his eyes at me, but he bends down, looks at the front of the metal door. “Number 42. I was examining all the forties today, just a visual check that all is clear.” He shakes his head. “I should have finished before going up to the Ward,” he mutters to himself.

“The forties?”

Doc looks up at me. “They’re all numbered.”

“Yes, I can see that.” I can’t keep the impatience from my voice. “But what does it mean? Why are there numbered doors and frozen people here?”

Doc stares down at the girl with sunset hair. “You should ask Eldest that.”

“I’m asking you.”

Doc turns to me. “I’ll tell you if you tell me how you got down here. All the doors that lead to that elevator are locked.”

“Not the one on the fourth floor,” I say. “It was unlocked.”

He narrows his eyes. “And you just happened to come across an unlocked door on the fourth floor?”

I hesitate. “I found some blueprints of the ship in the Recorder Hall. I saw the second elevator there.” I’m not going to scamp out Orion. It’s not his fault I got caught.

I can tell Doc’s thinking fast — his face has become blank and emotionless.

“So,” I say, looking down at her again. “Who is she really?”

Doc walks past her glass box to a work desk on the far wall and comes back with a floppy. He slides a finger on it to open a program, punches in a code, and presses his index finger on an ID square. Then he types one- handed.

“Number 42, Number 42. Ah. She’s nonessential.”

“What?” I crouch down so that my face is even with her face. Her hair looks as if someone has poured yellow, orange, and red ink into a glass of water; the strands swirl around, pouring from her head, curling up at the ends at the bottom of the glass box. How could anyone say someone with sunset hair is nonessential?

“Her parents, apparently, put in a special request for her to be included,” Doc continues, scrolling down the floppy. “They seem important enough — mother in biological engineering, father rather high up in the military. Lucky her. Not many nonessentials were allowed on. Not enough cargo space.”

I blink. She’s “cargo”? Nonessential cargo?

“Why is she here? Why are any of them here? Why is there a level full of frozen people?”

“That,” Doc says as he puts down the floppy, “is for you to ask Eldest.”

“I don’t think I can trust Eldest,” I whisper to the girl with sunset hair, but Doc doesn’t hear.

I wonder what color her eyes are. I squint through the ice. I can see that her eyelashes are long and reddish-yellow — frex! I didn’t know they made eyelashes like that! — but they are sealed firmly shut. All I know is if a girl can have skin that pale and hair that red and eyelashes that sunshiny, then who knows what colors live in her eyes?

“Elder.”

I don’t have to turn around to know it’s Eldest speaking, but I do, one hand on the girl’s glass box, as if I could protect her from Eldest’s attention.

“How did you get down here?” Eldest’s words are terse. He’s angry, but maybe not at me.

Before I can speak, Doc announces, “I must have left the door unlocked. I got distracted when one of the nurses couldn’t find one of the patients in need of meds; I wasn’t careful.”

Now that’s a frexing lie. I know Doc didn’t leave that door on the fourth floor unlocked because he hadn’t known how I got down here. Still, you have to respect the man; it takes chutz to lie to Eldest.

“Come,” Eldest says to me.

“I want to know why she — why there are so many frozen people down here,” I say. “What’s the point? Where did they come from? Why does she look so different?”

Eldest turns his cold stare to the girl with sunset hair. Then he looks back at me, slowly. “She looks odd because she is from Sol-Earth,” Eldest says. “They all are. Now come.”

“But—”

“Come.” He turns and strides to the elevator. He’s walking fast and has one fist pressed into the hip above his hurt leg.

I follow him, obedient as ever.

9 AMY

BUT THERE ARE ALSO DREAMS.

Wonderful dreams. Beautiful dreams. Dreams of a new world.

I don’t know what it will be like. No one does. But the nightmares rarely touch the new world, and in my mind, it is always paradise.

It is a place worth giving up Earth for.

Warmth. I always notice the warmth first.

And in my dream, I wake up, and I’m home.

My grandmother makes pancakes in the kitchen. She always mixes just a squeeze of syrup in with the batter, so the kitchen is already filled with a sticky-sweet smell that reminds me of home.

Grandma looks up at me and smiles—

And sometimes I’ll lose the dream right then, because having Grandma again is the most unbelievable part of any dream—

She smiles, and it seems to make all her wrinkles disappear.

“Let’s go!” Daddy says. He’s dressed in sweats. He jogs a little in place, and his sneakers squeak on the linoleum. Then Mom runs up behind him in running shorts and a sports bra—

And sometimes I lose the dream there, because Mom never ran with me, it was always just me and Daddy —

And we start running.

And the new world spreads out around us as we run. It’s always beautiful. It’s the best parts of home made better. It’s sandy beaches where the sand doesn’t slip under our racing feet and the water’s gold, not blue. It’s cool forests with breezes that smell like lemons and honey, where strange woodland animals with soft fur play with us. It’s deserts with towering sand sculptures that offer us sweet water to drink.

The new world is always beautiful, always perfect.

And if I’m lucky, the dream stays here.

I’m not always lucky.

As we run, the path curves around. We start to circle back. And I see our house, a mixed-up house that looks a little like our home in Florida where we lived when I was young, but it’s brick like the one in Colorado, and Grandma’s on the porch, waving and calling us in.