A Million Suns (Across the Universe 2)

Those times were all laughter and happiness.

The smile slips off my face, and Bartie’s grin fades. I don’t have to lo

ok at him to know we’re both thinking the same thing: everything changed after Kayleigh died. Kayleigh was the glue that held our friendship together, and with her gone, we were nothing. Harley spiraled into darkness that only Doc’s meds got him out of. By the time he’d started recovering, I’d moved to the Keeper Level, and Bartie and Victria had drifted in different directions. Victria spent her time in the Recorder Hall with Orion, and Bartie, as far as I could tell, found friendship only in his music.

“How have you been?” I ask, leaning forward.

Bartie shrugs. A stack of books surrounds him, but they’re all thick, regal-looking tomes from the civics section of the book room, not music books.

“It’s odd to see you without Amy,” Bartie says.

“I—it’s just—we—” I heave a sigh, running my fingers through my hair. Amy and I have spent a lot of time lately in the Recorder Hall, in this very room, actually, developing a plan for a police force. I know she’s wary of me, hesitant to trust me after I confessed to being the one to have woken her up, but . . . she’d quit flinching at my touch, she used to smile at me easier.

Until I called her a freak.

Frex.

“Everything okay?” Bartie asks, a hint of real concern in his face.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “It’s just . . . Amy . . . ”

Bartie frowns. “There are more problems on this ship than a freak from Sol-Earth. ”

“Don’t call her a freak!” I say, snapping my head up to glare at Bartie so violently my neck cracks.

Bartie leans back in his chair, throwing up both hands in a gesture of either defense or dismissal. “I was merely pointing out that you have more important things to worry about. ”

My eyes narrow, reading the title of the thick book Bartie had been scrutinizing. On the cover is a woman with skin paler than Amy’s and a dress so wide I doubt she’d fit through the doorway. I read the title—a history of the French Revolution.

“Why are you reading that?” I ask. I try to laugh in a genial sort of way, but the sound comes out like a garbled snort. I look at Bartie with new eyes, wary eyes. A lot of time has passed since we would follow Kayleigh and Victria to the Recorder Hall and race rocking chairs across the porch.

And the French Revolution isn’t a topic I would have thought Bartie would study.

Was he interested in the frea—I stop myself from even thinking the word—was he interested in the unusual woman on the cover of the book? Or was he interested in the guillotine cutting off the king’s head? I mentally shake myself. I’m being paranoid.

“Food,” Bartie says.

“Food?”

He nods, pushing the volume closer to me and picking up a slender book bound in green leather. “I thought it was . . . interesting. That ‘let them eat cake’ bit—I wonder if they would have even revolted if there hadn’t been the shortage of food. ”

“Maybe they were just revolting from dresses like that,” I say as I point to the voluminous swaths of silk pouring off the woman’s skirt on the cover of the book. I’m trying for levity again, but Bartie’s not laughing and neither am I—my mind is remembering the red line in the chart Marae showed me, the line that showed the decreasing food production. When the rest of the ship sees how quickly the food’s disappearing—that the ship is dead in the empty sky, and that soon we will be too—how long will it be till they, like the people in Bartie’s book, turn their farm tools into weapons and revolt?

Bartie doesn’t answer me, just flips open the smaller green book. His eyes don’t move over the letters, though, and I get the feeling he’s waiting for me to say or do something. I’m not so sure I’m just being paranoid anymore.

“Something’s going to have to change, and soon,” Bartie says, his eyes on the book. “It’s been building for months, ever since you turned them. ”

“I didn’t—” I say automatically, defensive even though there was no real accusation in his voice. “I just . . . I mean, I guess I changed them, but I changed them back. To what they’re supposed to be. What they are. ”

Bartie looks doubtful. “Either way, they’re different now. And it’s getting worse. ”

The first cause of discord, I think, is difference.

Bartie turns the page of the slender green book. “Someone’s got to do something. ”

The second cause of discord: lack of a strong central leader.

What does he think I’ve been doing? Shite, all I do these days is run from one problem to the next! If it’s not a strike in one district, it’s complaints from another—and every problem is just a little worse than the one before it.