farther and farther back.
Until they are up against the wall.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re all on a ship. A ship soaring across the universe, that’s not on the old Earth, but not on the new one, either.
There’s nowhere to go.
The wild-haired woman realizes it the same time I do. I can see it in her eyes. I can see it in the way she almost puts down the blade she’s fighting with…but doesn’t.
She’s against the wall, and she won’t stop.
It’s not the man in white who kills her. He’s not fighting—he’s already celebrating his inevitable victory. No, it’s some other boy-man who I don’t recognize. Some anonymous fighter, too young to have fought in many of these fast and furious battles, who slips a slender knife past the wild-haired woman’s defenses and slides it across the smooth skin of her neck, quick and neat, like a butcher (which I realize he might have been).
And then she’s dead.
Just like Eldest.
But not like Eldest—because instead of just giving up the mantle, she clung to it until it was ripped from her. I pick at the red stitching in my shirt, prouder of it than of the Eldest Robe.
The door zips open. Eldest stands, hesitant, a plate of food in one hand. “Are you done?” he asks.
My stomach roars as I stand. “Yeah.”
He hands me the plate, and we sit on the bed, the video screen between us as it fades to nothing.
“So you see now?”
I nod as I take a bite.
“We have to use control. We have to prevent something like this from ever happening again.”
“The way she died…And she was the source of the Eldest system?” I say, my mind still on the blossoming line of red dripping into the neck of her red tunic, darkening it until the red cloth is almost black.
“She?” Eldest asks. “No, it’s the man, the man in white—he was the first Eldest. He won. His rule is our rule.”
My food tastes dry, and I lower the plate. I should have realized—obviously, the woman’s death meant she’d lost, but I’d forgotten that such a noble death also meant that of course she was the other side, the bad side, the side we’re trying to prevent from happening again.
And I remember the look in the wild-haired woman’s eyes when she killed the man who killed the petite woman. Yes—the Feeders don’t have the bloodthirsty viciousness that made her hands squeeze the life from a man, but their eyes also don’t have the love she had when she saw the woman die.
I am a product of the man in white, not the woman in red. I am from the side that won, the controlled, even march across the ship to press the passionate, angry, fighting people against the walls until their blood stained the metal the same red as the shirts they wore.
“The first Eldest saw what violent emotions can cause. The woman in red is exactly what we’re trying to prevent from happening again. Did you see how close she was? How close to chaos she brought the whole ship? Don’t you see how
“Yes,” I admit, but my voice is laced with anger. “But I don’t see how that’s wrong!”
Eldest looks at me as if he doesn’t recognize me. “If we didn’t control the people, if we didn’t have the Eldest system, if the three rules didn’t exist, the ship would fall to mutiny and war. We cannot let people have the same sort of passion that led to this.” He sighs, his face full of regret. “We’re…trapped. It’s easier to forget how very alone we are but…there’s not that many of us. It’s only through the Eldest system that we’ve survived so far.”
I can see why he’s showing me this. I understand the lesson he wants me to learn. He wants me to see that passion is bad, that chaos is evil, and anything as intense as the wild-haired woman’s eyes were when she watched the other woman die can kill everyone on board this ship.
But…I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I mean, yeah. The death. That part was bad. But the fire in her eyes?
I’ve never seen fire like that.
Ever.
Even in myself.
“This can’t be wrong,” I say slowly, to myself—I’d forgotten that Eldest was there until he moves, and I notice he’s watching me intently. But that’s not fire in his eyes—it’s something cold and hard.
“This sort of passion,” I go on, “it can’t be wrong. It makes evil things, yes, the battles were terrible, the blood…but. But. It was worth it. It was.” My fingers curl into fists. “It can’t have been for nothing. It can’t have.”
“It wasn’t,” Eldest says. “It gave us the Eldest system. We had to purge that sort of thing from our lives, and then we could become this society. This perfect society.”
“I don’t want perfect! I don’t want control!”
Eldest stands. Slowly. He takes my plate even though I’ve eaten only a few bites. He walks out of the room. He locks the door.
“You can’t make me rule a society that has all the—the
I punch the door hard, denting the metal. But it doesn’t zip open.
“Are you scared?” the Eldest asked the young Elder, more boy than man. The older Elder stood off to one side, allowing the old man a chance to speak directly to the boy before facing the crowd gathered in the garden.
Elder shakes his head, but it’s a lie. He is. He doesn’t know what to expect.
Eldest cinches the robe around his shoulders.
“This is the changing ceremony. I will step down. You will step up. This has all happened many times before.” He arranges the cloth over him so the embroidery lies flat. In his palm is a black med patch.
“How many Eldests have there been?” Elder asks.
“Countless.” Eldest takes a deep breath. The patch feels cold in his hand, the med side up. He imagines how it will feel when he presses it against his neck.
“You’re going to see a series of vids today, after the ceremony. Watch them carefully. You will need to figure out what they mean. Sometimes… sometimes it’s hard to know what is right and what is wrong. But you are Elder. You will one day be Eldest. And you will know what is right by watching the vids and seeing the price we pay for the ship to live.”
Elder plays with the red stitching at the hem of his tunic. “Did you know what was right?”
Eldest straightens his spine, throws back his shoulders, feels the tension stiffening his neck. “I didn’t at first,” he says. “But… I came to see the truth.” His eyes pierce Elder’s. “You will too. And the Elder after you. And the Elder after him.”
“Forever,” whispers Elder.
Eldest nods. He remembers the wild-haired woman, the way her eyes flashed red with blood and love. He wonders how many Elders protested their first day of training…how many—if any—never stopped protesting, were like the woman who didn’t give up until her blood splashed the walls, and would rather die than become the man who took away violence at the cost of passion. It’s true there had been… aberrations in the past. He did not find this out until after he had accepted his role; only a generation ago, an Elder had protested the system and had been quickly and quietly replaced.
But he also knows—now that time has passed and the memory of that first day has faded, that he had been right to wrap the robe around himself, just as the black patch felt right in his hand, now, and would feel right later this day, when he pressed it against his neck.
“Forever.”
