Glow (16 page)

Sarek acknowledged Kieran’s presence with a brief nod.

“Don’t worry,” Kieran said as he hovered over the boy. “I won’t throw up on you.”

“You better not.”

Kieran had always thought zero grav would be fun, but it was disorienting and frustrating. It upset everyone’s stomach, made faces and hands swell up, and gave everyone headaches. Every motion sent Kieran’s body into an unpredictable spin, and the only way he could function was to strap himself to something.

“Any word from the shuttles?” he asked, knowing what the answer would be.

“Don’t you think I’d tell you if I’d heard something?”

“But have you checked all bands?”

Sarek rolled his eyes. “Are you deaf? There’s no word. From anyone.”

Kieran trembled, from exhaustion mostly but also from anger. All the boys had begun speaking to Kieran this way, and now even Sarek was joining in.

“Sarek,” Kieran said, his voice pinched with anger, “I asked you a question. Did you check all frequencies for communications in the last hour?”

Sarek stared at Kieran as though he were an idiot.

“If shuttle B42 is trying to communicate with us, don’t you think we’d better be listening? They could be injured, dead, drifting, anything.” Kieran was so tired, his tongue felt clumsy in his mouth, but he made himself enunciate each word. “Every hour, on the hour, you are to check every frequency for any kind of communication. Text. Voice. Video. And when I ask if you’ve done that, you are to answer…” Kieran waited for Sarek to finish his sentence for him.

The boy stared, mouth stubbornly closed.

“You are to answer
yes
. Because you will have done it. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Because if you don’t, I will assign someone to the com console who does understand.”

Without acknowledging Kieran, Sarek extended his finger and tapped the console, rhythmically, pointedly, scrolling through each frequency. His posture, his expression, the way his eyes fixed on the screen, all indicated supreme and utter boredom. When he was finished, Kieran said, “That’s right. Every hour, Sarek. We don’t know who’s on that shuttle, or who they might be trying to reach.” Kieran’s anger had subsided, and now he felt exhausted. “Maybe your parents—”

“No! They’re all gone. Everyone’s gone.”

“We don’t know—”

“You don’t know
anything
!” the younger boy spat, and turned his back on Kieran.

Kieran knew that Sarek was only feeling what everyone felt, what Kieran himself felt. The only remedy would be if the missing shuttles docked and everyone’s parents and sisters poured back into the Empyrean so things could go back to the way they were before.

They never could, though. Their peaceful way of life had been destroyed forever by people who were supposed to be their friends. To think of Waverly under their power? That was unbearable. If they laid a hand on her …

Kieran ached at that thought, so he pushed it away.

He decided to try lying down again. He hadn’t been able to sleep in so long, maybe now he could quiet his mind.

Kieran unhooked his harness, drifted up to the ceiling, and pulled himself along the conduits that housed the electrical wires. It was the best way to get around in zero gravity, and he wondered if the engineers had designed the ship this way on purpose. He drifted into the bunker dormitory, hooked his harness loosely to a cot, slipped into the blanket envelope, and closed his eyes. Dreams flickered, and he wanted to give himself up to them, but he could hear a conversation from across the quiet room.

“One of us will have to override the bulkhead doors from Central Command,” said one voice.

“We can do that before we leave.”

“No. Someone should stay behind.”

“I want to come with you guys.”

“You’re the only one whose folks aren’t down there.”

“I don’t know
where
my dad is!”

Kieran wanted sleep so badly. But he knew what the boys were planning. It worried him that he hadn’t anticipated it. Wearily he unhooked himself from his cot, pushed up to the ceiling, and pulled himself along the conduits until he was hovering over the four boys.

“You can’t go down there,” he told them.

Tobin Ames glowered at Kieran. “We weren’t talking to you.”

“I don’t care who you were talking to. If you try to go down there, you’ll kill everyone on the ship.”

“No, we won’t. We’ll have to open the first bulkhead, but we’ll seal the second, which will keep the radiation out of the upper levels.”

“Okay. And then how will you get back? You’ll have to seal off the third bulkhead, right? So we’ll have lost another level.” Kieran passed his hand over his face while he considered. “So there goes all the exotics and tropicals, the entire rain forest. The lungs of the ship. We’d run out of oxygen before we got to New Earth.”

“My mom’s down there!” Austen Hand protested. “And they won’t answer the intercom anymore. I can’t just let her…”

The boy couldn’t finish the sentence. He buried his face in his hands.

“We’ll just open the bulkhead for a second,” Tobin pleaded.

“A second is all it would take to kill us all. Not right away, maybe, but slowly and painfully. Not to mention what it would do to our fertility. And if that goes, the mission is over.”

“There are no girls anyway,” Austen pointed out sullenly.

“The girls are coming back,” Kieran said firmly.

“But how are we going to get them
out
?!” Tobin’s freckled face twisted in anguish.

Kieran had no answer. The boys were starting to understand the situation on their own: The adults weren’t coming back. No one had to tell them, but someone should have.

“Wait here,” he told the boys. He dragged himself across the ceiling and into Central Command. He found Seth Ardvale talking in whispers with Sarek, whose face wiped clean as soon as he saw Kieran enter the room. Kieran ignored both of them, pushed himself down to the com console, and tapped the call button for the engine room. It took a long time, and as he waited, he could feel Seth and Sarek staring at the back of his head. The vid screen flickered, and Kieran was looking at the face of Victoria Hand, Austen’s mother. She was barely recognizable. Her face was badly swollen, and the veins under her skin had burst to create frightening bruises.

“Kieran, this has to be quick—”

“Mrs. Hand, the kids here need to talk to their parents.”

“We can’t spare the time. We want to, believe me—”

“Victoria,” Kieran said firmly, “get all the parents to the video terminal right now. Otherwise the boys are going to try to come down there, and I don’t know if I can stop them.”

Victoria’s face went slack. What she said next came in a whisper, and tears spilled from her eyes. “We don’t want them to see us this way.”

“They know what’s going to happen, Vicky. They’ve figured it out on their own. They need to see you so you can explain. But also…” He paused. “Vicky, there are … a lot of … losses. In the port shuttle bay.”

She swallowed. “I know.”

“What do we do?” Kieran whispered.

For a second she only stood there, hanging her head. When she could finally speak, she said, “You’ll have to put the bodies in the air lock and blow them out. All at once.”

Horror spread through Kieran, but he found his voice. “Okay.”

“Can you do that, Kieran?” she asked gently. “I’m so sorry it falls to you.”

Kieran nodded. He dreaded the task with his whole being. But there was another task he dreaded even more.

“I’ve been able to make a list of … who they are. Who didn’t … make it.” Kieran could speak only with his eyes closed. “But their sons don’t know yet, and I don’t know how—” His voice caught on the words, and he couldn’t go on. “You’re a nurse, right? How do you tell someone…”

The woman stared at the screen, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’ll tell them.”

Kieran gathered all one hundred and twenty-two boys and lined them up, floating in the corridor outside Central Command. Tobin Ames and Austen Hand came along with the others and waited their turn quietly.

Everyone agreed that whatever boy was talking on the console should be left in privacy. No one entered or left Central Command except for the boy who was speaking to his parents. Sometimes Kieran could hear them wailing through the metal walls, but for the most part, it was a silent procession.

Arthur was one of the first to come out of Central Command. He had hooked himself onto one of the electrical conduits in the corner of the ceiling, and he hovered outside, looking sullen and lost. Kieran knew that Arthur’s parents were unaccounted for, so he hadn’t gotten any terrible news today. Kieran tapped his shoulder and beckoned him down the hallway. “I need your help.”

“What?” Arthur floated after him, keeping himself straight by hanging on to the upper conduits.

“Have you seen the vid screens from the port shuttle bay?” Kieran whispered.

“Yes.”

“Can you help me … deal with it?”

The boy blanched.

“You’re the only one I can think of…,” Kieran began. “I can’t go there alone. I know I’m asking a lot—”

Arthur cut him off. “I’ll do it.”

The ride down in the elevator was grim. When the doors opened onto the quiet corridor that led to the shuttle bay, Kieran felt such terror that his bones shook. He couldn’t make himself leave the elevator.

“They’re not going to be floating around, are they?” Arthur whispered. He hadn’t moved from the elevator either.

Kieran couldn’t answer.

Finally, the boys left the safety of the elevator and propelled themselves into the bay. At first glance it looked as it always had, and for an insane instant, Kieran hoped that somehow the bodies had already been taken care of, that he wouldn’t have to do this after all.

But no. This place was a crypt.

They were all around, so utterly still that they’d escaped his notice. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to see, and his mind had rejected them, wiped them away. But when Kieran made himself look, they were there, lying where they’d fallen. Waiting.

Dozens of shapes on the floor or hovering just over it, pools of blackish, dried blood spread underneath them. Staring eyes. Twisted limbs. So many. He saw Mrs. Henry, Mr. Obadiah, Lieutenant Patterson, Harve Mombasa. They’d been lying down here all this time, turning to clay.

His gorge rose to his throat, but he swallowed it. His body shook, his limbs felt drained of blood, but he squeezed his fists as he floated over them toward the air lock doors.

Arthur floated parallel to him, looking around at the inert forms, his expression dark, his skin pale.

“How do we do this?” Kieran asked.

Arthur’s eyes snapped onto his. “We’ll need a rope.”

They worked for hours, tying the bodies to the end of a rope and, using a pulley attached to the inside wall of the air lock, pulling the bodies across the shuttle bay. Arthur did most of the pulling, but it was Kieran who had to loop the rope around the dead crew members, trying not to look in their eyes, trying not to notice how they smelled. When he was finished with one he’d somehow maneuver to the next, and the next, cursing under his breath at the awkward way he had to move, horrified by how he had to hang on to the bodies themselves to keep from drifting away from them. Still, if it weren’t for the zero gravity, this task would be impossible for them.

As he lifted dead limbs, closed empty eyes, he made himself remember Waverly, the first time he’d gotten up the courage to take hold of her hand. It was during the Harvest Cotillion. There’d been beer and roasted vegetables with chestnuts and briny olives. The adults were dancing steps they remembered from their childhood on Earth while Waverly sat at one of the tables, eating the last of a strawberry upside-down cake she’d made for the occasion. Kieran had taken the seat next to her, pointed out Waverly’s mother dancing with Kalik Hassan, twirling and giggling. Waverly had laughed when her mother tripped, and he’d taken her hand and pulled her closer. She’d turned to him, surprised, and then she’d smiled.

Kieran felt inhuman by the time the last crew member was put into the air lock, as though the part that made him a person had died and had left behind a creature that didn’t think or feel. Arthur looked exhausted as he worked the controls, overriding the system that pumped the air out of the air lock. They had to leave the air inside or there would be nothing to push the bodies out and away from the ship. When Arthur had it all set up, his thumb hovering over the red button, Kieran put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Shouldn’t we say something?” Kieran whispered.

“You mean like a prayer?”

The two boys looked at each other, blank. Kieran couldn’t think of what to do. It was Arthur who finally began. He sang, his voice a true tenor that filled the shuttle bay. After a few bars, Kieran joined in. He knew this ancient melody and those words. He realized as he sang how beautiful they were: “Blackbird singing in the dead of night. / Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”

When the song was done, Arthur pressed the button to open the outer air lock doors. The sound was explosive. Kieran looked through the window to make sure they’d all gone.

The air lock was empty.

Kieran and Arthur were silent in the elevator on the way back to Central Command. When the elevator doors opened, Arthur drifted out wordlessly, looking wrecked.

Desperate for some comfort, Kieran drifted down the corridor to Captain Jones’ office. Kieran needed some idea of how to go on, and he had no idea where else to look. At first it felt wrong to be here, as if he were intruding. The room felt small and dark without the Captain sitting in his chair looking out the porthole. He hooked himself to the desk chair, and he ran his fingers over the smooth writing pad. He longed for the big man to come and tell him he was doing a good job, that he and Arthur had done the right thing. But there was no one to tell him that. He couldn’t even tell himself. He wasn’t sure he believed it.

Through the walls, he could hear the other boys crying their hearts out.

What could he do for them? They were lost and grieving. But if they fell apart, they’d never survive this. They would make some stupid mistake, like forget to clean the air filters or fail to check the water purification system. Then it would be all over. The boys needed a leader.