Mementoes
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Across the Universe Trilogy
Copyright: Beth Revis
"My God," I whisper, leaning on the doorframe with both hands. "Where did you … how … ?"
Bartie clears his throat and shifts in place, looking down at the trunk under his arm.
"'Lo, Amy. Are you … are you gonna let me in?"
"Oh! Yes. Yes, of course."
I move out of his way and close the door behind him. My ears are still ringing; blood rushes to my head out of sheer disbelief. When Bartie puts down the trunk on the floor, it takes all my hard-earned self-control not to pounce on it immediately – because it's mine, and I thought I'd never see it again.
It's my trunk. The one from Godspeed, labeled with the same number 42 as my cryo chamber. The one my father left empty, which I had to fill with things from my parents' trunks. The one which, in the chaos and the excitement of those last days, I left behind.
I force back my tears.
"Thank you," I tell him. "Thank you so much … but you didn't have to do this."
I've known that Bartie disliked me from the first, that he thought I was distracting Elder from his duties. He was one of the many shipborns who referred to me as a freak. That's what makes this gesture so strange.
"I had to," he corrects me quietly. "It's what Elder would have wanted."
And then I see it. My hybrid eyes can count the blood vessels in his irises, trace the premature lines around his mouth and on his forehead, count the first gray hairs on his head. It's not just exhaustion, delayed stress from the shuttle flight, or anxiety about the future of his – our – people. Looking at him now, I don't see the angry musician who tried to lead a rebellion. I see a man in mourning.
"How did you know?" I ask him. "Did he … did Elder tell you to bring this? Did he tell you what he was going to … "
Bartie shakes his head. "No. He just … the last thing I said was, 'see you on the ground?' And … he didn't answer me. Just broke the com."
His voice trembles; he turns away, watching the darkening sky and the brightening solar cube in the windowsill.
"I had this feeling … intuition, maybe ... that he didn't plan on seeing me there. So I thought, if he's doing something completely frexing loons to protect you, you must really matter to him."
For once, there's no accusation in his tone, but I still blush at the implication that's been thrown at me so often, that I am – was – Elder's weak spot and drove him to make stupid decisions. Defensive anger is such a habit for me now that it's almost impossible to break.
"He did it for all of us, not just me!" I retort. "Destroying the weapon was the only way to stop the hybrids from killing us all – "
"I know." He holds up both hands in surrender, then lowers them, signaling me to calm down. "That's not what I meant. It's just … " He looks down at the trunk, then back at me.
"It's just," he says, with a sigh, "Those things are all that's left of your family. And you're all that's left of mine."
Of course. Bartie the songwriter, the orator, the poet, has found a way to show his feelings so simply, so meaningfully, that once again my tears come pouring down my face. Bartie loved Elder, and Elder loved me, and that love survives in us even though Elder is gone.
"You want to have a look?" I ask, smiling as I kneel down by the trunk to open it.
"Sure," he says, crouching down to join me.
It's a treasure trove of bittersweet memories for both of us: Kayleigh's old clothes, my father's books, my mother's photographs. I carry Amber, the best-travelled teddy bear in the known universe and the silent witness of so much joy and pain, to my sleeping bag to give her pride of place. Bartie picks up The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and actually laughs; it feels like centuries since I last heard someone laugh. He even starts folding my clothes, somewhat to my embarrassment; it seems that not all the shipborn men are slobs after all.
When I hand him Harley's portrait of me, the second-to-last painting he ever made, Bartie sits very still for a moment. Nothng moves except his eyelids, and the canvas trembling in his hands.
"You can have it," I offer. "You were friends for so long ... "
"No way," he says, with surprising vehemence. "It's yours. I mean, frex, look at this! It's better than a photograph!"
He smiles, his sorrow for the moment lost in a flash of awe. I know what he means. The girl in the painting may have my face and my coloring, but she's not me. She's magical, mysterious, a mermaid with fire hair floating in the ocean. It's a tangible reminder of Harley's friendship, and I'll never, never leave it behind again.
"Some of them don't get it," Bartie says suddenly, setting down the painting with care. "They say it's just things. Just stuff. All that matters is that we survived and can start over. But it's more than that. This … stuff … is part of who we are, you know? Part of our history. It's like losing an arm or a leg."
His hand moves to his shoulder, where the strap of his guitar case used to be, an old habit which he stops with a shake of his messy hair.
"You didn't bring your guitar?"
"I gave it up." He snorts. "Fridrick chopped it into frexing firewood."
The Food Distro foreman. I remember. Elder almost got killed in that riot, and just for a moment, I resent Bartie all over again for taking part in that mess. But I can't resent him, not really, for doing what I probably would have done in his place as well. All he wanted was what Elder and I wanted, a fairer system of leadership. We just went about it differently.
When he gave up his guitar, he did it to show the people that he didn't consider himself above them. That, Ward resident or not, he could still make himself useful. Just like Elder digging latrines along with the colonists. I'm beginning to understand why they were friends.
"We can build you a new one," I tell him. "There are engineers among the frozens. If you know how it worked, if you can tell them – "
To his credit, he doesn't bat an eye at the idea of asking the frozens for help.
"It can wait," he says, with a shrug of forced indifference. "I understand that music isn't exactly a top priority right now."
He's right. We need to dig a well, plant crops for next year, repair some of the more ruined houses before it gets colder, figure out which plants and animals are safe to eat, and so on … we're going to need all our time, work and resources just to survive.
Still, as I told the FRX, I am the acting commander of this colony. And I don't want to be the kind of leader Eldest was, or even my father, the kind that dismisses art as something to keep the Feeders entertained. Creativity will always matter here, as long as I have anything to say about it. My mother was a scientist, but she would agree with me. And if Elder and Harley were here, they would expect nothing less.
"You can still sing," I tell Bartie, raising a challenging eyebrow. "Right?"
He grins and, to my surprise, claps me on the back in the same way he probably had with Elder.
"You're kind of brilly, Amy, you know?"
"Thanks, Bartie." I smile back.
"Seriously, though," I add, picking up Amber again and holding her close. "It would mean a lot to me and to the shipborns, if … if you'd sing at the ceremony tomorrow."
Tomorrow is the day we'll finish burying the dead from the battle with the hybrids. I've arranged it with the military and with some of the older shipborns: we're going to each take a handful of solar sand, scatter it over a slab of the dark clay the scientists found, and maybe say a few words about someone who died. By the time it's finished, we'll have a monument that shines into the stars every night.
Part of me thinks it's ridiculous, that no ceremony could possibly matter if I can't have Elder or my parents back. But Maddie and Adam, my mother's colleagues, tell me people need this for their spiritual recovery, and the more rational part of me agrees with them.
And Bartie does have a nice voice, smoky and low, like an old-time country singer's. I haven't heard anyone singing since the early days of Elder's leadership on Godspeed, and I'm surprised to find I miss it.
"I can't think of anyone better," I tell him honestly.
He wipes his eyes openly at that, no longer a stranger, no longer ashamed to be seen crying.
"I'd be honored."