The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (16 page)

Sylva’s cheeks reddened. She stood, stock silent and glaring. Ruby wondered if there was nothing she
could
say. Sylva’s expression screamed that she wanted to rip Ruby out of her chair, but for some reason she wasn’t doing it.

Fox spoke. “Trust me. I’m helping you out.” He looked at Ellis, his face relaxing, his voice as casual as his slouch in the chair. “
This
is a better way to make her disappear than the one you were contemplating.”

Ellis pursed his lips.

Sylva narrowed her eyes and spoke to Ruby. “You should not be here. I will see to it that Fox pays for this, and if you misstep at all, you will pay for it, too.” With that, she spun around, and the four of them left.

In Ruby’s old world, if the reds wanted something they would simply take it. She let out a breath and then another, almost panting with relief.

Dayn sat back down.

Ruby was safe for now, and that was all she had ever been. “Thank you,” she said, nodding at the door the foursome had gone back out of. “Tell me about her, and about the reds.”

“Peacers,” Fox said reflexively. A correction. Not an entirely respectful one either. “Sylva thinks it’s her job to find everything hidden and wrong on this ship. She spends all day with her goons watching recordings and looking for mutineers.”

“Mutineers?”

He lowered his voice, added drama bordering on comedy. “They tell us tales of the evil grays and how you tried to take over
The
Creative Fire
the year we lost A-pod. They tell us how you’re dirty and need to be kept segregated and worked hard so you’ll be too busy to pick a fight. Oh, and entertained. That’s been part of my job.” He spread his hands wide, his eyes light with humor and relief. “The ship would fall apart without you, and we would starve or choke on our own poisons, but it will truly be the end of the world if you and I talk.” He grinned at her. “That’s why you scare them so.”

He was making light of the whole thing, even though she was the one who might die for being here. “But why did you come to get me?”

“To prove them wrong.”

And not because he remembered her and liked her and found her brave. Slightly stung, she said, “Surely for more than that.”

“Of course.” He squeezed her hand. “Later.” He looked around the table. “Thank you.”

The entire table full of people, except for Fox and Dayn, got up, swooped up their plates, set them in the sinks with a soft clatter, and left.

Fox held his hand out to Ruby. “May I show you around?”

23: Voices

Ruby stood between Fox and Dayn just inside a door on the narrow end of a long, narrow room. Along one wall, a row of swivel chairs had been fastened to the floor under a shelf. Attached to the wall were various levers and screens and headphones, punctuated here and there with tiny blinking gold or pale white lights that danced to sounds Ruby couldn’t hear.

It looked quite fantastic and entirely new.

Data blinked across the other wall, lists and pictures and numbers making dark, moving columns on the light surface. “My studio,” Fox said.

She didn’t understand. “That’s a workbench?”

“For recording. It’s what I do. I manage the production of songs from here. It is . . . what I have to offer.”

“Like I repair robots? You make sound?”

“Yes.”

“For the whole ship?”

He laughed. “Of course. But I’m not the only one.”

“All this exists just for songs? Just to entertain?”

“Of course not. This is one of two sound studios where we create and edit lessons, the formal histories of the ship, news, messages from command, and the stories you play for the children in the crèche. But I work with the singers.”

“Heaven Andrews? Do you work with Heaven Andrews?”

Fox looked like he was about to choke on her question. “Heaven Andrews has been dead for two generations.”

Oh. “Do you sing?”

He laughed. “Badly, and not in public. I produce.” He glanced at her, the look heavy with conspiracy she didn’t understand. “I needed a new voice, and I chose you. Our story will remain that simple.”

“So you do think I sing well?”

“I can make you sound perfect.”

Not quite the answer she wanted. She turned to Dayn. “What do you do?”

“Usually?” He grinned at Fox and gave a little bow. “Usually I help organize the output of the great producer here and prepare it for the ears of his waiting fans all over the ship.” He shrugged, an exaggerated gesture. “Today, I am playing bodyguard so he is not caught unawares and does not lose the gray girl he has brought up to our land to sing to us of the travails of her people.”

She savored the humor in his voice and the vague teasing look in his eyes. Both Fox and Dayn were very male, older than Onor or Hugh or her usual friends. Being close to them disturbed her belly and made her feel a tad bit giggly. Her reaction to Fox was the strongest, but her body wanted to speak to both of them or either of them, even tired and confused.

Or maybe she just wanted to be held and reassured. She couldn’t tell, still barely sure this wasn’t a dream.

She stepped out from between them to explore the room, running her hand along the cool surface and trying to puzzle out the meanings of the various controls. Surely this was a machine, and not entirely different from a robot. She could learn to do what Fox did. “Show me. How do you use this to record a voice?”

He came close enough to her to slide his arms around her from behind. She leaned back against him and Dayn cleared his throat.

She straightened, taking a step away from Fox.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, his voice warm against her neck. He brushed her hair back with his fingers and settled a thin wire across the top of her head. Then he cupped her ears with something warm.

She wanted a mirror, but there wasn’t one.

He brought a thin thread down her jaw on both sides. His fingertips brushed her cheeks as he made tiny adjustments in the bend.

When he stepped away, she felt the absence of his warmth at her back.

He stopped a few chairs down from her, settling himself in and staring at the lights and keys above him on the wall. “Will you sing ‘The Owl’s Song’ for me?”

“That’s all I’ve ever sung for you. That and the song I made it from. I know more than that.”

“Later. Sing me that one now.”

She nodded, the wires along her jaw a nuisance. She twisted her face up, trying to loosen them.

“Relax. Be natural.”

She blinked, the audacity of being here washing over her, making her almost swoon. What if she did this badly? What if the wires or the ear cup fell off? What if her voice wouldn’t work in this cold, metal place?

“Breathe,” he said. “Everyone worries. But you don’t need to. Breathe.”

The cups around her ears came alive, startling her, thrumming with the first few notes of “The Owl’s Song,” familiar and yet different, the instruments laying one atop the other, blending, clear and concise and exact.

She almost missed the in beat for her voice.

With the music in her ears, her voice sounded muffled and too soft, so she added to it, pulling strength up through her belly and closing her eyes, pretending she stood in the park.

After she completed the first verse she trembled with effort.

Fox touched the small of her back. “That’s enough. This isn’t a session. I just wanted to show you.”

She reached up to peel the cups from her ears, but he whispered, “Leave them. Sit down. Listen.”

He went back to his seat.

She sat, unsure what he wanted next.

He bent down, his hands moving gracefully over the surface in front of him. Then he nodded at her.

The music started.

She watched him. She took a breath as the in note approached but he put a hand up. She closed her mouth and listened to her own voice pouring through the cups in her ears.

She sounded . . . perfect.

“How did you do that?”

“Practice,” he said. “Here, listen to the recording from when you first sang it.” He made a series of gestures, then nodded, and she heard herself back at Owl Paulie’s actual funeral.

The recording was clearer than she remembered ever hearing it. “That sounds great!”

He looked a bit proud. “I fixed it up a little. I’ve been playing it for them since the day you sang it.”

Goose bumps rose along her arms.

Fox continued. “But that’s not nearly as good as what you just did.”

She blushed and listened.

He was right. The words she had just sung, tired and stripped down and raw, sounded great. He’d pulled her soul out of her voice, and sharpened it as well.

“That’s amazing. Can you teach me how to do that?”

“Then I wouldn’t have a job, would I?”

She frowned, not sure whether to take him seriously.

He came over, took the cups, and clipped them back onto the wall, holding out his hand to her. “Let’s go get you clean, and maybe a rest would be good.”

It would. She felt bone tired and a bit queasy. Her feet seemed heavy as she followed Fox and Dayn followed her, winding in a new direction that led to more crowded halls and rooms full of people working at desks, with interface sets on their hands and eyes. Everything looked and smelled different; she felt dizzy with the newness of it all.

Fox’s hab turned out to be about the size of Kyle’s back home. She had expected it to be bigger, more lavish, but the hab itself looked like it had been cut from the same plans as the ones on the gray levels. The walls were largely bare, the furniture simple. Fox dug out a towel and pointed toward the shower. “Go get cleaned up. There should be shampoo and soap.”

As soon as he said it, she knew how much she wanted to be clean.

The privy room was as spare as the rest of the place, and the shower water turned off after the same amount of time as on gray. But she found a brush and toothbrush. A complete set of new clothes, blue and soft and clean, had been set out for her. She dressed and once again stared at herself in the mirror. The blue went well with her red hair. But no uniform could cover her puffy face and sleepy eyes.

She hesitated before she came out. Now what? Fox was a man and she was an adult woman now. She knew what that meant, but she felt shaky and unready.

She straightened her back and told her blood to cool. She stopped in the doorway to the living room, cocking her head to one side and preparing a smile for Fox.

Dayn sprawled across one side of the couch.

Fox was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did he go?” she blurted, before thinking, angry at how small and thin her voice sounded. “Fox?”

Dayn grinned at her. “He told me to watch you, said I should invite you to get settled. He’s had three days worth of clothes brought in, and set you up with a sound system he downloaded his work into. He thought maybe you should sleep. He’ll be back later.”

Dayn looked like he was having entirely too much fun telling her what Fox had done and why he wasn’t here. She bit her lip to stop herself from telling him what she thought of his tone of voice.

But damn, she wanted Fox.

She kept her voice controlled. “Did he say when he’d be back?”

“I expect he’ll be back before morning.”

She walked into the room and looked around more closely. A couch. A table. An entertainment rig. A rug. “He lives simply, doesn’t he?”

Dayn laughed. “Want to play a game?”

Surely the entertainment rig here was up to it, but she didn’t want to play with Dayn. “I’ll just wait for him.”

“Suit yourself.”

She pursed her lips. “Where do you live?”

“Next door to you. That way I can keep an eye on you.”

“But . . .” She let the word trail off, dripping from her tongue. What had she thought? That Fox had come down to rescue her because she was a little bit in love with him? That he would never leave her side?

Dayn raised an eyebrow. “You’re a pretty bit to babysit, Ruby. Don’t get me wrong, and I don’t really mind the duty. You’re spunky. But don’t take it for granted. You’ll have to earn your place just like the rest of us, and you won’t always be Fox’s new girl on the block.”

Even with no meanness in the tone, his words felt like a slap.

“I think maybe I should sleep.”

“I can show you where the bedroom is.”

She glared at him. “I can find it. Go ahead and guard me, but do it from out here.”

He raised his hands, pretending innocence she didn’t think he felt.

She stalked into the bedroom.

An empty shelf and set of drawers and a big bed, big enough for three people, just like her mom slept on. The room was pale blue, the coverlet pale blue, the sheets brown. A door led to a small, private privy.

Maybe she shouldn’t have been so mad at Dayn. It wasn’t his fault Fox had other things to do. It wasn’t hers either for that matter. Maybe it was just the way the world was here. He must be important.

She lay down on the bed and smelled the sheets, hoping for a stray scent of Fox in the pillows. But it all smelled clean and fresh and of nobody.

She wished for Marcelle. She tried to send her a message, but her journal errored out. It errored on Onor and her mom and everyone else she knew. As she tried to sleep, her mind’s eye drew Sylva’s face glowering down at her. Though she drifted through an uneasy rest, sleep hid from her. It made her bones heavy and stole the feeling from her feet, but refused to settle over her brain and soothe. Her tired mind supplied her with thoughts about people she already missed. Onor and Marcelle and Ben and The Jackman and Daria and Hugh and Lya and Owl Paulie and even her mom.

“I’ll figure this all out,” she whispered to the silent faces. “I will set you free.”

24: Gray without Ruby

Onor and Marcelle watched Ben’s slightly slumped back as he shuffled away along his appointed rounds. Onor held on to Ben’s last words, which carried more hope than the old red’s body language. He’d said, “We couldn’t have kept her alive here.” He’d meant it, too, his voice full of the certainty of someone who knows more than he’s telling. Maybe Fox could do what neither Onor nor Marcelle nor The Jackman nor Conroy nor all of them together could do: keep people with power from killing Ruby.

How would they ever know? If she went up there and died, if it was a trap, they might never be certain what happened. News that trickled to journals and vid screens on this level never said anything about anywhere else on the
Fire
.

While Ben told them about seeing Ruby in the corridor an hour ago, Marcelle slid ever closer to Onor. Her thigh warmed his and her left foot rested against his, toes touching him. It felt odd to be so close, and Onor slid away a few inches.

“I don’t bite,” she said.

“I can’t believe she went with Fox.”

“Without us.”

Marcelle looked like she needed his arm around her, but he couldn’t make himself do that, not with Marcelle. But still, she looked so lost. He nudged her softly. “It’ll be okay. We have to pack.”

“And then I won’t see you ever again either.”

“You don’t even like me,” he said.

“Maybe not.” She gave a soft smile, stood up, and held her hand out for his.

He let her have it, but stood up on his own.

“I hate her for setting us up and then leaving.” Marcelle let go of his hand but stayed close. “Except I can’t hate her. But aren’t you angry, too?”

“No.” He didn’t elaborate, since Marcelle seldom understood subtle emotions like sadness that made your heart want to fall into the bowl of your hips and lay still. He would miss Marcelle later, but now he missed Ruby so much that there wasn’t room to miss anyone else yet, or even to show his pain.

Kyle waited for them in the kitchen. Somehow the story had gotten to him before they came home, but then bad news beat the speed of light regularly. Kyle had the common sense to remain quiet and not look directly at either of them until he’d put plates of food and cups of his special steaming hot stim in front of them. The smell made Onor curl his hands around the cup.

Something else he’d eventually miss. He wondered idly if he would miss Kyle more, or Marcelle, or maybe The Jackman, but there was no feeling attached to the question at all.

For years he had had a goal, and Ruby beside and in front of him.

Kyle pointed at the fruit cut into tiny, sweet-smelling stars and placed on top of flat crackers spread with nut butter. “That’s for you. A going away. You might need the strength.”

Onor took one. “Thanks for . . . everything.”

“It’ll be okay,” Kyle said. “It will. Everything seems worse when you’re young.”

Right. “I don’t need anyone to tell me things are as bad as they’ll ever be. I already know that.”

Marcelle poked him in the ribs. “Maybe they won’t make us stay away long; like a punishment.”

“This isn’t detention,” Onor snapped. “It’s jail.”

“No,” Kyle said. “Lockup on D is far worse.”

Onor shivered at the first-hand knowledge he heard in Kyle’s words.

“Making people hate them is stupid.” Marcelle sipped her stim and made a sour face at the cup. “They’ll figure that out.” She took a cracker and ate, looking more thoughtful than usual.

Kyle spoke into the small silence. “Everything is changing, with us getting near home. Nothing can go back to how it was ever again.” He slapped Onor on the back lightly. “Eat.”

And then go become a glorified janitor. Or, more likely, a not-very-glorified janitor. They didn’t need humans to clean. They had robots for that. So it was pure punishment. He ate, slowly, the food good in his mouth even though he didn’t want it to be.

Kyle went with them to the transportation station, Marcelle’s bags over his shoulder. People jammed the corridors, watching them, clearly curious about the exile; they stood in small groups, looking afraid or angry or empty. Marcelle walked close to Onor, her jaw clenched tight and her head up, her eyes glistening but tearless. Reds walked the halls in twos, their voices forceful as they broke up crowds and commanded people to keep moving.

Two reds stood at the entrance to the transportation station checking people in. They stepped in front of Kyle. “You can’t go any further.”

A flash of anger crossed Kyle’s face as he handed Marcelle her bag. He paused to look closely at each of them, as if memorizing their faces, his lips a thin line and his jaw tight. “Good luck.”

The look in Kyle’s eyes made Onor wonder why he’d ever characterized him as mild-mannered.

The train swayed, screaming too fast along its rails. Marcelle’s stop was first, and Onor squeezed her hand as they arrived. “Stop being so sad,” he whispered to her. “You’re stronger when you’re angry.”

She nodded, but she slumped against him a little, burrowing her head into his shoulder.

He held her closer than he ever had and then pushed her up and away. “You have to.”

Before she left, she stood in the doorway and looked back.

The door opened onto D-pod. Salli, on the same train, glared at him with near-hatred in her eyes. He mouthed a single word. “Sorry.”

“Are you?” she whispered back.

“Of course.” He pointed at their surroundings. “For me, too.”

“Then fix it.”

He didn’t answer, not sure what to say.

He’d received detailed instructions from Ix via his journal this morning. He carried them out to the letter, reporting for duty at the D facilities crew lounge before he even checked into his assigned hab. He had to pass the reclamation plant on the way, and he tried not to look at the door. He should be going in there for hazing right now, worried but only a little, getting clapped on the back. Of course, he should be reporting for duty in a reclamation plant in a pod that no longer lived, but the doors were marked the same, with symbols for water and transformation.

The big-machinery parts of the pods, where water and waste reclamation happened, were largely multilevel. The facilities lounge turned out to be a metal cave in the far back of the pod, under the sludge-processing part of the water plant. He half expected to smell the rotting stench of the waste-reducing bacteria at work, but apparently the gases produced there didn’t travel down. Instead, it smelled like grease and stale stim and the citrus and bark smell of a clean corridor, so strong his stomach felt like it had been slammed. As he’d suspected, the large windowless room had been designed more for robots than for people.

Four semihumanoid bots stood loose limbed against one wall, their four feet grouped in twos for the moment, so they looked even more like people than they did when they were working. Straps held them to the wall by waist and torso. They didn’t turn their heads to look at him or anything as he entered; their true eyes were sensors that circled them all over. Above the top row of sensors, they had painted-on eyes and metal faces sculpted to look human, but neither male nor female.

When he was little, he used to ask his mother where all the robots went at night. The memory brought a small, bitter taste to his throat.

There were about twenty other bots, sporting various appendages, most of them standing at the right height to bang his knees. Grease stains and the shiny scar lines of repair welds gave them individuality.

Hopefully he wouldn’t look as bad as the bots after he’d been here for a little while.

None of the other exiled students had joined him in this particular misery. The benches along the one wall that wasn’t full of bots held three hard-looking women, an old man, and a man with a bruised cheek and scars on his arms who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Onor. None of them looked like they used their shower rations.

Probably not. Probably they sold them for still.

He didn’t feel like talking to any of them, man or machine, so he didn’t. No one tried to talk to him either, although furtive glances passed between the others, often starting with a quick look in his direction.

A middle-aged and middle-weighted woman walked around the room unstrapping the bots from their cradles. As she loosed them by type, the machines lined up and went out the door together in small groups. In two cases, humans were sent with them, but most chores were apparently fine for the bots all by themselves.

A tall, thin man with a long ponytail of gray hair down his back called the other humans up one by one, speaking in hushed tones. Nothing passed between him and them except words, but Onor noticed they had their journals in small packs on their backs or bellies.

The last person called up before Onor was one of the women, a block on legs, with short, graying hair and a slight limp. As soon as she came up, the man nodded at Onor and waved him up beside her. “Penny here will take care of you today. She’ll show you where the supplies are and how to deal with various messes.”

Maybe he’d get lucky and the manual labor would drive Ruby’s face out of his imagination.

Penny looked at him and smiled, but her dark eyes looked wary and her smile shed no light on her face. She smelled like sweat and dirt.

The man kept talking. “I’m Jimmy, and you work for me. You can leave your stuff here and get it at the end of shift, and I’ll show you how to find your bunk. We take care of our own here.”

Since his smile didn’t touch his face either, Onor didn’t feel very comforted. Or very happy about leaving his stuff. He tried to smile but couldn’t. “Thank you.”

Onor followed Penny through the door.

She led him down a corridor, boots echoing on the smooth metal floor. Bright overhead lights illuminated enough wrinkles around Penny’s mouth that he revised her age upward. He should talk to her, but he didn’t know what to say.

D-pod was similar to every other pod, but the underpaths they walked were mostly strange to Onor, who lost his bearings after fifteen minutes of walking alongside the surly Penny. The dark corridors were anything but clean. They dodged bots from time to time, and once Penny kicked a broken wheel assembly into a corner beside a few other bits of metal.

“Shouldn’t you report that?” he asked. No trash was supposed to lay loose on the ship.

“Won’t hurt anybody that matters down here. Besides, the reclaimers will eventually find it.”

He and Penny both wore gray, but he felt like the world had bifurcated; in his old life he had been a rich and privileged slave and now he had been handed down to something darker.

At one point Penny was ahead of him by quite a bit, and she turned around and snapped, “Why are you dragging, boy? Think you’re too good to be one of us?”

He shook his head at her. “Didn’t sleep much last night.”

“The slower you work here, the worse work you get.” She sounded nervous, almost afraid. But he hadn’t given her anything to be scared about.

“Hey! I’m a hard worker.”

“Then keep up.” She rounded a corner.

Onor followed her.

A fist took him in the gut and the weight of a heavy body forced him back. A foot hooked around the back of his ankle and a hand slammed him hard, forcing him to the floor.

He put his arms up over his face.

Someone kicked the back of his hands.

He held them in place anyway, afraid to be kicked in the nose or the mouth.

Another kick in his side and he curled around his belly, a ball of Onor on the floor.

A work-boot toe slammed into his thigh.

His breakfast threatened to leave him.

He split his fingers wide enough to look through them.

Three. Three attackers. All men, he thought.

No sign of Penny.

How was he supposed to take on three?

They were grays.

He’d expected reds, but then he hadn’t seen any reds down here at all.

A man kicked his side so hard he let out an involuntary screech. He bit down on his lower lip, drawing blood, keeping back sound.

Nothing else happened immediately.

“Sit up,” a voice growled at him.

He slid his hands a little down from his face to get a better look at his attackers. Definitely three, and behind them, leaning against a wall and looking away from him, Penny.

Onor loosed his hands, used them to push up into a seated position and scoot back against the wall.

The man closest to him had a distinctive scar that split his lip. He said, “This is so you know we can hurt you and so we know you can take it.”

Onor’s breath was fast and reedy from fright and pain. “You haze people to death down here?”

A laugh. “You could call this hazing.”

“Who are you?”

The man shook his head. “We’re like you. Right now, you’re part of the reason we’re being watched so closely.” He cleared his throat, looking down at Onor. His face was thin, his eyes dark and full of confidence.

Onor would remember his face.

“This is a warning,” the man said. “You drew a lot of attention back in B-pod, and you’re to stop that now. Or we’ll make sure you’re never more than a cleaner. Got it?”

Onor bit his lip, looking up.

“Got it?”

“I heard your warning.”

The man turned and passed between the other two men, and they turned as well, the three of them disappearing around the corner.

Penny came to his side and held out a hand.

He glared at her. “You were part of that.”

She shrugged. “Not my decision. No way for me to stop it.”

He swallowed and contemplated her answer. “You led me here.”

“I didn’t hit you.” She was still offering her hand to help him up.

He took it. “Thank you.”

“They beat me for longer the first time,” she said.

“The first time? Do they beat people up regularly?”

A thin-lipped smile crossed her square face. “Only the ones worth bothering about.”

“Now what?”

“Now we keep going. Got work to do.”