“The nurse downstairs informed me of the situation. ”
“What situation?” I ask, glaring. My glare is worthless; he doesn’t even look up. Steela’s watching us, though.
“She’s having delusions. Just like everyone here. ” In quick order, the doctor attaches two of the IVs to Steela’s left arm, then moves over to her right one with the third needle. The doctor pinches Steela’s skin at the crease of her elbow. He jabs the “special” IV needle deep into her big, thick blue vein. Steela gasps at the pain of it.
And even though the doctor had said that this was an IV to give her nutrition, a thick dark red stream of blood drips down into the waiting bag at the end of the tube.
I don’t think. I just ram my shoulder so hard into the doctor that he flies back and hits the wall. I pin him there with my arm. I may not be as big as he is, but I’ve got rage on my side.
“What are you doing?” I shout at him. “You said that was an IV—but it’s not. Why are you always lying? What are you hiding?”
When I am done yelling, silence fills the room. The nine other patients on their beds all stare blankly ahead of them, unaware that anything has happened.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Steela blink, staring straight ahead, oblivious to me shouting less than a foot away.
“Steela?” I whisper.
Nothing.
64
ELDER
WE ARE BACK IN THE LEARNING CENTER, AND I FEEL AS hollow as the model of Godspeed in the Recorder Hall, each of us lacking an engine to propel us through life.
“Two hundred and fifty years behind schedule?” I ask. The words echo in my mind, replacing the whirr-churn-whirr of the engine’s rhythm that had still been ringing in my ears.
Eldest shrugs. “Roughly. We were supposed to land about a hundred and fifty years ago—now it looks like we’ll land in another hundred years. Maybe. If the fuel systems hold. If nothing else goes wrong. ”
“And if something else goes wrong?”
“Then the ship floats dead in the water, so to say. Until the internal reactors cool. And then the solar lamp dies, and we’ll be in darkness. And then the plants die. And then we all die. ”
Inside the ship, we are always surrounded by one another, so much so that we cherish our tiny private rooms and time alone. Never before have I appreciated how truly alone we are on this ship. There is no one else but us. I always felt before that we were anchored between the two planets, and even if we couldn’t reach them immediately, they were there, on the other end of an invisible rope. But they’re not. If we fail, there is no one out there to save us. If we die, there is no one out there to mourn us.
“Do you see now?” Eldest asks, his eyes bringing me back aboard the ship.
I nod, not really registering his question.
“This is why you—you—must be the leader. A strong, assured leader. The Plague was not a plague. It was what happened when the leader of the ship told the people the truth, how long it would take to land the ship. When they learned that they would never see planet-landing, that their children, and
their grandchildren would not see it, that there was a chance none of them would see it . . . the ship itself almost died. ”
I raise my face to Eldest, wetness blurring my vision of him. “What happened?”
“Suicide. Murder. Riots and chaos. Mutiny and war. They would have ripped through the walls into space if they could have. ”
“That’s the Plague? That’s the three-fourths of the ship who died—the ones who learned the truth?”
Eldest nods. “So one man, the strongest leader, stood up and became the first Eldest. He worked with the survivors. They developed the lie. They came up with the idea of a Plague to explain the deaths to the next gen, and the gen after that. ”
“How did they survive?” How could anyone survive this knowledge Eldest has given me? The loss of planet-landing is so much worse now than when I heard of it before.
“The first Eldest noticed that most of the survivors were members of a family—or were pregnant. People will survive anything for their children. ”
Now I am confused. I cock my head and struggle to piece together this information. “You say the survivors were pregnant. But wasn’t everyone of that gen pregnant? If the Season had just happened . . . ”
Eldest rolls his eyes. “I thought you’d figured that out from the girl. The Plague Eldest developed the Season. Before this, people mated whenever they liked. Some were pregnant; some were not. The generations were blurred. The Plague Eldest came up with the idea of establishing the Season, ensuring everyone is pregnant at the same time. Every other gen, after the Season, we inform them they will not see the new land. But their unborn children will. This is motivation enough for them not to revert to chaos and riots. This is motivation enough for them to accept the delay for one more gen. And then another, and then another . . . ”