I slide the robe off the hanger and slip it over my shoulders. Before, it felt like the robe was too big for me. Tonight, I stand straight and tall, my chest puffed out, and the robe fits perfectly.
In a few minutes, I can hear people start to arrive. Amy won’t be here; there’s no way she’d come among a crowd of this many people—and while I’m glad she’ll be safe in her room, I wish I could walk away from all the other residents of Godspeed and take her to the Bridge myself, just the two of us.
The people’s footsteps are heavy on the metal floor, and their talk is loud, totally unlike the quiet, polite whispers that filled the Great Room the last time Eldest called a group meeting.
It will take a while for everyone to arrive. I can hear Shelby and the other Shippers organizing the group, making sure there is enough room for everyone. The Shippers are also, I know, stationing themselves among the people most likely to cause trouble. In the meantime, I sit down on Eldest’s bed. I breathe in. I breathe out. I don’t want to have to speak, not to everyone, but words will be required. I will have to do this.
There’s a knock on the door. I walk across the room and open it. Shelby slips inside and shuts the door. I wonder how she knew I’d be here rather than in my room, then realize—she probably always assumed I’d be here. This is the Eldest’s room, and whether I take his name or not, I’m still him now.
“I—oh,” she says when she sees me.
“Yes?”
“Um . . . Is that wise?”
“What?” I follow her gaze. “The robe? Eldest wore it.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“What did you need me for?”
“I think everyone’s here now, sir,” she says, squaring her shoulders.
For a moment, the robe seems to swallow me. I force my spine straighter and head to the door. It zips open.
A wave of silence washes over the entire crowd—those standing nearest the door cease talking immediately, then those behind them follow suit. And it is a crowd. I’d never realized how big over two thousand people looked when they were all looking at you.
Their eyes all follow me as I cross the short distance to the dais the Shippers have set up for me.
“You chutz!” a voice bellows across the crowded room.
The people in the room seem to move as one to make a path—and marching through that path is Bartie.
“What right do you have to wear that robe?” he shouts. His face is red, even the tips of his ears.
“I’m—” I stop. I can’t say I’m Eldest—I never claimed that title. And the robe is for an Eldest only.
In the end, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t have anything witty to say to Bartie, because once he gets close enough to me, he knocks me aside so forcefully that I stagger back against the wall.
“The frex?” I say, but my words are drowned out by Bartie’s voice.
“Are we going to put up with this?” Bartie roars, turning to the crowd. “How can this child dare call us all together and parade in Eldest’s robe? He’s no Eldest—he’s no leader!”
And they cheer him.
Not all of them, certainly, but enough. Enough to make the sound of their support swirl inside my brain, soaking into my memory like water into a sponge.
“We deserve a new leader. One chosen by us!”
I grab Bartie by the elbow and spin him back around to face me. “What the frex do you think you’re doing?”
“Your job,” he sneers.
“I can do it myself!” I shout back.
“Oh, really?” He pushes me, hard, and I stumble back into the wall. Bartie’s talking in a quieter voice now—and everyone is listening to him. He’s evoked a truer silence than I did. When they quit talking for me, that’s all they did, but now they’re not just quiet, they’re listening to him. Listening to his every word. “What have you done since Eldest died? Nothing.”
“I took you all off Phydus!”
“Not everyone wanted to be off Phydus! What did you do for them? Let them huddle in their homes, scared. Let them die in the streets. Did you even notice how many of us aren’t here? Have you noticed how many people don’t work? How many have broken down, are scared, are alone? Do you even care?”
“Of course I care!”
Bartie takes a step back, looking me up and down, measuring me. “You can’t be Eldest if you’re still Elder,” he says finally in a voice calm and quiet, but still loud enough for everyone to hear. “And,” he adds in a voice so low only I can hear, “you can’t be Eldest if you care for Amy more than Godspeed.”
I don’t know if it’s because of his sneer or because a part of me is afraid he’s right, but I rear back and slam my fist against his face with all the force I have in me.
Bartie looks shocked for a second, but then he recovers and throws an uppercut that catches me under my chin. My head jerks back so hard my neck pops, and my teeth snap over my tongue. I taste blood inside my mouth, and droplets of dark red stain the top of the Eldest Robe.
The entire crowd surges forward, and the silence they held before is broken. A chant erupts near Bartie and me as his closest supporters shout, “Lead yourselves! Lead yourselves!” Shelby’s voice screams out over the chanting, directing orders to the other Shippers. I move to help her, but Bartie nails me in the stomach. I double over as Shelby jumps into the fight to defend me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much good. As she’s blocking Bartie, one of his lackeys rushes forward and slams me against the wall. My elbow cracks against the metal, and I hiss in pain as I draw my leg up and knee him in the stomach.
I race to the dais and leap over the small step.
“Enough!” I roar.
Apparently it’s not.
This is what I’m king of: a whirling mass of humans who either hate me or ignore me.
I jab my finger into my wi-com—wincing, because the sudden movement makes my elbow hurt more. “Direct command: Tonal variation. Level two. Apply to entire ship.”
Now they look at me, some of them with the same look they reserved for Eldest.
“End tonal variant.” I disconnect the wi-com link. “I didn’t call you here to lord over you!” I shout. “I called you here—oh, frex, just follow me.”
I shove my way through the crowd and throw open the hatch in the floor that leads to the Shipper Level. I lead the way down the ladder and head directly to the Engine Room. Shelby calls after me, but I ignore her—she’s going to tell me that this is a forbidden area, that I shouldn’t do this—but they deserve to see. They have to see.
I open both Bridge doors, and the people pour inside. I hear shouts of wonder and amazement from many just at seeing the engine—only the first-level Shippers have ever come this far. Not everyone will fit on the Bridge, and Shelby and the first-level Shippers man the room, directing people where to stand, cutting off the entrance when the Bridge becomes too crowded. Other Shippers jump in to help, sending the message down the crowd that everyone will get a chance to see.
I roll my thumb over the biometric scanner and open the covering that hides the windows. The metal panels fall away slowly, revealing first a sprinkling of stars that soon give way to the glow of the planet spilling its light over the edges of the windows, brimming with promise and hope. I forget about the crowd. I see only the swirling white over blue and green. This is the world, the whole world, and it’s ours.
“We’re going home!” I shout.
For one second there is ringing silence throughout the Bridge.
Then the chaos returns—but instead of fighting and shouting, there is cheering and screams of joy. Some of the people surge forward, their arms outstretched. They can’t even reach the window, but they’re straining up, as if they think touching it will make the planet more real. The Shippers rush forward to create a barrier and protect the control panel.
Shelby organizes the group to move out in rotation, and the Shippers have to use force sometimes to get the crowd to continue on, seizing those who linger too long at the window by their arms and dragging them away. Some of the people don’t react with joy. Victria looks at the planet for only a moment, then bursts into tears and runs from the Bridge. I see another woman slip a pale green patch from her pocket and place it on the inside of her wrist, over her dark blue veins. The intelligence slips from her eyes as the drug takes effect. Others talk, casting suspicious, dark looks at me and the Shippers. They have seen the false stars Eldest gave them; do they really think I could engineer a false planet? Perhaps they simply refuse to believe that a world exists outside the ship.
Bartie’s one of the last to go.
“Tomorrow we’ll be there?” he asks, facing the planet.
“Yes.”
He shakes his head, and with each slow turn, I can see the incredulity shift to belief. He was raised with the idea that the ship would land when he was an old man, then told he’d never see the planet. If it were not in front of him now, he still wouldn’t believe in it.
Bartie clenches his fists, then releases them. “When we land . . . who will lead?”
“I—what?”
“Are you still going to be the leader, or will it be one of the frozens on the cryo level?” Bartie asks.
This is a new question. No one else has thought past the actual planet-landing—including me. “I—er—I don’t know. No—I’ll lead. It’ll be me, still.”
Bartie raises his eyebrow. “But leading the colony will be different from leading the ship,” he says. “Maybe we’ll need a new leader.”
I stop fully now. “What are you saying?”
“I want you to think—really think,” Bartie says slowly, not meeting my eye, “if you’re the best leader. If you’re what we all need.”
“Of course I am!”
“Why?”
It should be such a simple question, but I find I don’t have an answer. The best I can come up with is that I was born to this job. But that’s not enough. Amy’s shown me enough history for me to know that princes born to kingdoms aren’t always the best leaders.
I’d like to say that there’s just me to lead.
But that’s not true. Bartie’s right in front of me.
54
AMY
I IGNORE THE ALL-CALL ELDER SENT INVITING EVERYONE TO the Keeper Level. He couldn’t have meant that I should go too. My support would hurt him more than help, and I can think of nothing more dangerous than being crammed into a close-fitting room with every other person on the ship. Instead, I’ve spent the last hour with my face pressed against the bubble window in the hatch door, thinking about how, just beyond my vision, there’s a planet waiting for me.
I don’t move until I hear footsteps and the sound of a door zipping open on the other side of the cryo level.
My first instinct is to freeze, but then I remind myself of how few people have access to this level, and so I creep forward until I get to the main room. The door to the genetics lab is open.
“Hello?” I call out.