One of the rockers on the porch moves slowly, as if someone has just left it, but there’s no other sign of life. Elder reaches to open the door for me. I see eyes then, and I smile, expecting Orion, but instead, Elder’s painted face peers up at me from the brick wall.
“Oh!” I say, leaning over to inspect the new portrait by the door. Elder’s face has replaced Eldest’s dour one.
“Yeah. ” Elder sounds sheepish. My first thought was that he was going to show off with the painting—that’s what Jason would have done, hammed it up—but I can tell he wishes I hadn’t noticed it.
“Come inside,” Elder says. The Recorder Hall is empty except for us, silent and dark. Elder shows me the big model of Earth and the ship that I saw earlier. I pretend to pay attention, but I’m distracted by the flashing images on the walls. The last time I was here with Orion, these were blank; I’d barely noticed them.
“Wall floppies,” Elder says when he notices my distraction. “This is what Godspeed has been doing while you slept. ”
He grins at me, but I barely notice. I’m fascinated by all that’s flashing in front of me: a diagram of how wi-coms work, and more of grav tubes. Art: I can pick out several scans of Harley’s artwork—several of them koi fish, which seems to be his favorite subject—but there’s more: sculptures, pottery, drawings, hand-sewn quilts. One of the floppy computers lists different titles, and when Elder taps on the screen, music fills the entryway.
For the first time since I woke up, I feel as if this is a place I could learn to love. It’s not Earth, not by any stretch of the imagination—but I’m seeing art and inventions and life that Earth will never know.
And all this happened while I dreamt nightmares below generations of people’s feet. They didn’t know about me any more than I knew about them.
“That’s odd,” Elder says, rapping his knuckles on one of the big wall computer things.
“What?”
“The image won’t change,” Elder says.
If it weren’t for the label at the top—LEAD-BASED FAST REACTOR PROTOTYPE—I wouldn’t know what it was at all. Not that the name helps me. I still don’t know what it means.
“It’s locked,” Elder says. “Let me see if I can . . . ” He steps over to one of the black boxes on the wall and runs his thumb over the scanner. “Eldest/ Elder access granted,” the computer chirps.
All around us, the pictures change. Now, images of Earth intermingle with images of Godspeed. A landscape painting of the Hospital and garden are replaced with a photograph of Monument Valley. Although I didn’t live there, it does remind me of the place out west where the space lab was, an hour from Colorado, where I met Jason, the last place I called home.
“Most people aren’t allowed to see this,” Elder says, still trying to get the one monitor to show something other than the engine schematics. “Whenever the new gen is born, school will start again. The children will see the model of Sol-Earth and the model of Godspeed. But they aren’t allowed to see this. ”
“Why not?” I ask, brushing my fingers against the screen showing Monument Valley just before it melts into the Sphinx in Egypt.
“Eldest says it’s best for people not to dwell too much on Sol-Earth. That we should think about the future, not the past. ”
“But he lets you see it. ”
Elder turns to stare at the screen, and for a moment, he looks a photo of Kim Jong-il in the eyes, but then the picture fades into one of the old presidents. I can’t remember which one it is, the fat one with the big mustache.
“It’s part of his lessons. He wants me to learn about Sol-Earth, so that I can prevent its mistakes. Why won’t this frexing thing work?”
I want to say that Earth did not have mistakes, but I know that’s not true. And I want to say that Eldest’s method of running a world isn’t right, but I’m not sure that’s true. There is so much about this world inside a ship that I just don’t understand.
“Orion!” Elder calls. “One of the wall floppies is stuck!”
“Is he here?” I look around—the place looks empty except for us.
The screen behind Elder shifts, fading from one old president to another.
“As I was saying, Eldest wanted me to learn from Sol-Earth. A lot of your leaders had it right—they just didn’t get their people to follow. Like him. ”
I glance back at the image on the screen. “Who? Abraham Lincoln?”
Elder nods. “Sixteenth governmental leader of the United States of America, located in the northern hemisphere of Sol-Earth
, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He was leader during the Civil War, a war between the states. ”
“Yes, I know. ” I am wary now. There is something in the way Elder speaks of Abraham Lincoln, so cold and disconnected, that makes me unsure—either of what he knows, or of what I know. I see a flicker of movement in the shadows near the door.
“He is the kind of leader Eldest wants me to be like. ” The picture starts to fade, but Elder touches the screen, and Lincoln’s picture stays. I wait for him to continue. “When the states wanted to break up into discord, Lincoln provided the strong central leadership that kept them together. ”