“Nothing as far as I can tell. I think the rest of this deck’s space has machinery…maybe to take care of what’s below us, on Deck Four.”
His voice wavers when he speaks. He sounds anxious, and perhaps a little afraid. Whatever he’s afraid of, it’s down there.
“All right,” I say. “Show me.”
His lips press into a flat line. “Come on.”
I follow him down to the last deck. There is a wheel-door, just like the others, but this one has a circle-cross in the hub.
“I was able to open it,” he says. “According to the symbols in the pedestal room, I think you can, too.”
He waits for me to do so. Now I’m a little afraid, as if his anxiety is contagious.
I grip the wheel. It spins easily. I pull the door open and step through.
I am looking into a long space undivided by walls or doors. There is nothing here, in fact, save for what lies on the floor.
Two long columns of brown coffins, clean and shining, covered in carvings of jaguars, pyramids and suns.
O’Malley and I return to the top deck. People are playing, talking, even napping inside the white coffins.
I catch Bishop’s eye, tilt my head toward the pilothouse. He nods, picks up his axe and follows us.
Before we reach the pilothouse door, the wheel spins. Gaston and Spingate step out. They don’t look as rested as I’d hoped, but they look happy, and that’s something.
“Back inside,” I say. “I need to talk to you both.”
We enter. Bishop starts to swing the door shut behind us, but it stops halfway: smiling Aramovsky is blocking it with his body.
“Are we making plans?” he says. “Good. We need to discuss the spiritual needs of the people.”
Bishop glances at me, but when he does, skinny Aramovsky slides through the door and into the room. It would have been one thing to say he couldn’t come in—it’s entirely another to make him leave. Which, of course, Aramovsky knows.
Bishop shuts the door.
The first time I entered the pilothouse, the walls were black. Now it’s as if there are no walls at all. It looks like I’m standing in the middle of the clearing that ends in a tall, circular wall of piled vines. I see the shapes of the strange buildings beyond, and I seem to float high above yellow vines even though the pilothouse floor feels just as solid as it ever did.
Bishop leans the flat of his axe against his hip. He’s waiting for me to speak, as are the others.
“O’Malley accessed the shuttle’s lower levels,” I say.
Gaston glares at O’Malley. O’Malley is expressionless, as he always seems to be during discussions like these.
I don’t mention the room with the pedestals. If Aramovsky is going to make everything his business, I don’t want him messing around in there. I quickly describe the room we saw on Deck Four, making sure my friends understand these are not simple white coffins, but rather the same kind in which we all first awoke.
Bishop looks angry. Spingate and Gaston seem shocked.
Aramovsky is delighted.
“How wonderful,” he says. “Did you open them?”
Bishop huffs. “Of course she didn’t. Em wouldn’t do something that dangerous without me and the circle-stars there.”
“Dangerous,” Aramovsky says. “Ah, I see. Those new coffins might hold Grownups instead of people like us. Don’t worry, Bishop, I have absolute faith in you—if there are Grownups, I’m sure you’ll find a way to kill them all.”
Bishop snarls. “I did what I had to do.”
“You had to murder?” Aramovsky’s hands close into fists, open, close into fists. “Is killing the only thing you’re good for, Bishop?”
“Stop it,” I snap. “Aramovsky, your progenitor would have overwritten you, don’t you get that? Bishop saved you.”
“I didn’t need to be saved. I was made to join with my creator. Now he’s dead—his thousand years of wisdom and knowledge, lost forever.”
Aramovsky makes it sound like we’re not as important as the people who wanted to erase us.
“We have the right to survive,” I say. “The Grownups think we’re property, shells to be filled up. They are wrong!”
I realize I’m yelling. I take a deep breath, try to calm myself. Aramovsky is so infuriating.
“We shouldn’t open them,” O’Malley says, so calmly it makes my yelling seem all the louder.
Aramovsky holds up his hands as if to say, What choice do we have? “We must open them. And quickly. We don’t know what dangers we’ll face on this planet—there is strength in numbers.”
“There is hunger in numbers,” Spingate says. “Our food won’t last long as it is. And as far as we know, there could be people in there who look just like us but have already been overwritten—Grownups in young bodies.”
If that’s the case, would they accept us? Would they try to take over, marginalize us, because they think they know better how to live, how to run things?
Or maybe they would just kill us. We’re only receptacles, after all; empty vessels have no rights.
Gaston nods in agreement. “Spingate is right about our food situation. How many coffins were there?”