The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (3 page)

3: Conversations in the Dark

The cold stillness of the park felt completely wrong. Ruby wanted to be moving, needed it. But the pain in Fox’s ankle remained painted across his forehead in tiny, tight lines, and her belly remembered the loss of gravity. Every drill she could remember had taught her to stay put when the gravgens failed. Her teeth chattered with the cold, the only noise except for their breath and, sometimes, a far off screech of metal or the faintest hint of siren or loudspeaker.

She remembered something, or maybe it was just now sinking in. “You said we’re almost home. What did you mean?”

“We’re almost to Adiamo.”

“Adiamo’s a game.”

“Locked down, so no one can change it. Did you ever wonder why? Besides, why do you think it’s everywhere?”

“I don’t play games much.” She rolled the new meaning of the word around in her head.
Adiamo equals home.
She had seen the game, of course, had tried it a few times. It was where she’d learned about birds. “What do you mean by almost?”

He furrowed his brow at her, looking puzzled. “We’ve been slowing down since before you were born. We expect contact in a year or two. We’re not close enough to see the details of the system yet, but it’s changing how everybody acts.”

“Not how
we
act.” Why didn’t she already know something so important? She shifted her weight around on the bench, swinging her feet in and out as a way to keep warm. “No one tells us anything. We’re not too stupid to be told the ship’s almost home.”

He didn’t say anything at all to that.

She spoke into the awkward moment of silence. “So what’s Adiamo like? Is it much like the park?”

He laughed. “Black and dim?”

So he had a sense of humor. “Like the park usually is. Light. Happy.”

“I don’t know about the park.”

“Does Adiamo have birds and trees and grass and sky?”

“Adiamo’s the name of the star, but there are planets with birds and grass, I think. Like the parks.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“It’s probably like the game.”

All her life she’d known that the ship was going home, but never when it would get there. She’d assumed she’d die first. “So what happens when we get home?”

“I don’t know. There’s arguments about the value of the cargo and who owns what and all kinds of stupid nonsense going on.”

She felt an extra chill, one that had nothing to do with the cold of the air around them. “Who decides?”

“Garth, I guess. The same people who decide everything else. But we don’t even know what the choices are yet. First we need to get home.”

Ruby didn’t feel up to telling him she didn’t know about Garth. She closed her eyes, felt the anger that had driven her here in the first place rising in her body, warming her a little. The world inside the
Fire
had been the same for so long that the idea it could be different simmered slow inside her bones. This was big. Bigger than the sky falling or Fox beside her. “Someone else is going to tell us what to do when we get home? Going to decide?”

“For me, too, I suppose.”

“But you know about it.” Her voice sounded bitter, even to her own ears. “You know we’re going home. So you can talk about it. We can’t even do that.”

Fox narrowed his eyes at her, frowning. Ruby felt him reassessing, maybe withdrawing.

She settled, thinking hard about all she’d just learned.

Fox seemed content to be quiet as well. Their breath made faint white puffs in the gray air. The park sounded like silence. Spooky. There should be more noise.

“Tell me about your life,” she said into the semidarkness.

He countered. “You first.”

“I know about me. I want to know about you.”

He laughed again. “I feel the same way, and I outrank you.”

She wanted to say no, to make him go first, but he did outrank her. Damn him. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Start with your family.”

Why did he ask that? “My big brother Macky works reclamation. My little brother Ean wants to do something in medical, but he doesn’t know if he’ll get picked yet. Mom works where I’m going, repairing maintenance bots. That’s why I know the cargo holds have good air. We sometimes go to a special room that has parts.”

“You don’t seem to like your family.”

Ruby bristled. “Sure I do. They’re okay.” Except Macky, who hated it that she was smarter than him. And her mom, who cared more about looks than brains, and who slept with men for favors and hinted that Ruby would have to do the same some day. Ruby swallowed, the familiar loss threatening to overwhelm her. Not here. “I like my brother Ean pretty well.”

“Tell me about living down here.”

“We work. When there’s more to do than people to do it, we just keep working. Reds tell us what to do, mostly. Sometimes we’re made bosses, but there’s always a red calling the shots, even behind a gray boss.” She glanced at his clothes. “We only see blues sometimes, and they usually come to talk to reds.”

He didn’t look surprised. “What do you do?”

“I fix robots.” She held up her hands, so the grease in the creases of her fingers and the half moons of her nails showed.

He took her right hand and squinted at it and then let it go. She told him about the shifts and the crèches and the immersives. She didn’t tell him about the black market stim, or the small gangs that gray adults broke up to save their own children, or about how some women made extra money. He probably knew all that, and he didn’t need to know that she did. So she told him the surface of her life, which was bad enough.

He interrupted and asked her questions when she mentioned robots and parts breaking more easily, wanting to know the details.

She drew closer to him as she talked, his warmth welcome as the park cooled more. The cargo bays were always cooler than home, as if the cold of space crept into them. It had grown colder than that now, colder than she’d ever been. The chip in her wrist felt cold, and her earrings were like small ice picks in her lobes.

“What’s best in your life?” he asked.

“Tell me about yours?”

He shook his head. “It’s not important.”

“I want to know about it,” she whispered.

“Tell me what you love.” His eyes looked bright and genuinely curious, and he smiled, as if that would soften the fact that he was telling her nothing.

“My best friends, Onor and Marcelle. And music. I love music. Singing and plays, choirs and instruments. All of it. I sing, too.”

A funny look crossed his face, as if his curiosity had gone from the kind a teacher had to something deeper. “Sing for me?”

She swallowed. “It’s cold.”

“The breathing will warm you up.”

Truth. One of the women in her pod was teaching her, a tall blond named Bari, with a rich voice. Bari listened to recordings she took from the library and sang along to them, and she taught Ruby to sing along to them, too. Singing was a secret hope, a dream almost as fragile as the hope of getting inward to the places the blues lived. Her cheeks tingled with nerves. “It’s cold.”

“And do you wear a coat when you sing?” His laugh came out soft and low, and it wasn’t making fun of her at all. “Besides,” he waved a hand, dark movement in a dark place, “I may not hear any other songs ever.”

“They’ll rescue us.” She took a deep breath and sang the first thing that came to mind, something she knew was from the inner levels. The song, “Requiem for Grandmother,” told a story of love between a child and grandmother; it ended with the child standing outside a hatch and singing the chorus for the grandmother, whose body had been sent free into space.

Grandma, will you watch for me?

I’ll be right here, growing old.

Grandma, will you catch me

The day I go out the door?

She let herself feel it, the wistful lyrics drawing sadness into her core. It did warm her, although Ruby berated herself a bit for the choice. Fox was right; they might yet die.

As the last note trailed off, she waited for his reaction.

An extra bit of cold air blew in from above and rattled the broken pipes sticking out of the roof.

His next words didn’t tell her what he thought at all. He just asked, “What else do you know?”

A few songs about how awful the reds and blues were. She picked a lullaby she’d heard came from the very beginning of
The Creative Fire
, one about watchful stars loose in the black of space. The song was so soft that it drew tears to her eyes. When she was really little she believed stars watched over them and that she would always be okay because the stars made it so.

Fox let the last note die out. She searched his face, and while he hadn’t started crying, he looked soft. She’d affected him.

“Do you know ‘The Black Hole and the Nebula’?” he asked.

Of course she did. “My throat’s too dry to sing it. That’s a Seren Gold song.” Fox lived with blues. “Do you know Seren Gold?”

“I’ve met her.”

She swallowed, wishing for water. “Tell me about her.”

He sounded pleased. “She’s older now, of course. I was only twelve when I first heard her, and I thought she had the best voice I’d ever heard. I used to lie in my room and turn off all the lights and listen to her before I went to sleep every night.

“I met her ten years later. She’s very focused. That’s what it takes, you know. Focus. She never stops practicing and working on new things.”

“I’ve only heard three of her songs.”

“I think there are four in your catalog.”

The anger came back, a little, even after singing and even though she was hearing about Seren Gold. “So we don’t get all the songs either.”

“No one gets all the songs.”

She breathed in and out with as much control as she could exert, not wanting to stay angry with him. Surely hours had passed, and surely Ix would send someone for them soon. Fox’s head was turned far enough toward her that she could see his eyelashes, pale against the curve of his cheek. Everything about him felt different than the grays. He hadn’t run out of hope or energy or lost his soul.

He knew real singers.

She swallowed. This was a chance, a gift. He hadn’t said what he thought of her voice, but Bari had said that it was a great voice, and people did stop and listen to her practice.

“So take me home with you.” She didn’t expect the words until they were out of her mouth, but they sounded good and right. “Take me.”

4: The Jackman

The crowd in the corridors stank of fear. Lines of people restless with waiting shifted and re-formed, inched closer to each other and drifted apart. Onor worked his way to the outer edge of the crowd, avoiding two more strings of reds converging on the transport station. The enforcers looked as scared as the grays they were herding.

He struggled the wrong way through people still streaming in, many clutching large sacks, extra clothes, or boots. He shuffled his feet to avoid tripping over discarded possessions, a sure sign of the total lack of discipline that had descended on the pod. They knew better; stuff became projectiles in a gravgen failure.

Thirst clawed at his throat, along with his fear. The energy gels were supposed to be consumed with water, but he didn’t have any.

He stopped and sucked on a gel anyway, letting the corridors around him finish emptying. A red in full uniform came around a corner, brandishing a stunner. Onor quickly turned and knocked on the nearest door. The red stopped him, this one a rare woman in red. She had dark gray eyes that looked like a storm and didn’t hold any trust in them. “What are you doing here?”

“They told me to look for stragglers.”

“We can use the security cameras for that.”

Onor dropped his eyes and did his best to sound earnest and biddable. “I’m just doing what I was told.”

She pointed down the hall with her stunner. “Go on.”

“I don’t want to make the red who sent me mad. Besides, what if someone needs me?” Like Ruby. “Could be old, or sick.”

He thought she wasn’t going to buy it, but then she shook her head and said, “Be quick. I want to see you at the station before the last in line gets on the train. If you miss it, you might be stranded here when we power down the life support to do repairs. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

As if he hadn’t nodded, she stared at him and said, slowly, “You’ll die if you don’t come back.” Like he was stupid.

He nodded again and she left. He headed for The Jackman’s door.

It opened just as he reached toward it, throwing him off balance. The Jackman stood in the doorway, so tall his head just missed the top. His long, white beard fell over his ample belly, and he had a wide grin on his face. “Onor! About time.”

Before Onor could ask The Jackman anything, he found himself sitting down with a glass of water clutched in his hand, tilting the blessed sweet stuff into his mouth and feeling how it made him functional again. He drained the glass. “You’re supposed to be at the transport center right now. Both of us are. They’re herding folks to the other pods.” He remembered the red’s insistent voice. “They’re gonna blow air on this one.”

The Jackman raised a bushy eyebrow but didn’t seem nearly as disturbed as he ought to be. They needed to be hurrying. “Do you know what happened?” Onor asked him.

“The ship’s dying.” The Jackman must have seen Onor’s face, since he waved a hand. “Not today. But today it took a step closer, like when an old person breaks a hip. One of the metal struts that anchor the pod in place ripped, and that stressed some of the other parts, so the pod has been stretched like rubber. But they’ve already got bots working to stabilize the supports.” A sly grin floated across The Jackman’s face, and his eyes sparkled with a secret. “Worse for them, its torn holes between levels.”

Onor leaned back in the hard metal chair, which had seen better years, just like The Jackman, but was still around anyway, also just like The Jackman. He and Ruby and Marcelle had been right. There were other levels. “How many? How many other levels?”

The Jackman didn’t answer.

“I think there’s three or four,” Onor said.

“Not four. There’s no room in the ship for four. I measured.”

“I need to find somebody. Can you help?”

“Your girl.”

Onor’s cheeks got hot. “Ruby’s not my girl.”

“Would be if you could get her.”

There wasn’t anything to say to that. “I need to find her before they blow the air. Got views of the cameras?”

The Jackman had earned his name because he could access anything. But willing? That was always a harder one. The Jackman chewed on his lower lip for so long that Onor wanted to shake him. Finally he asked, “Where do you think she is?”

“I looked at the Transport Station. It’s all chaos. Better look there again, I guess. She’s probably not in common, since they moved everybody out of there. Maybe the park?”

The Jackman shook his head. “Park’s falling apart. Better hope she’s not there.”

“It would be a faster place to look. Then we could eliminate it.” The more he thought about Ruby being in the park, the more likely it seemed. “Please?
’
Cause if she’s there I have to warn her about the air getting spaced. It doesn’t matter if she’s at the Transport Station, except I don’t want to be separated. But it won’t kill her.”

The Jackman held up a hand, laughing. “I’ll help.” The wall in front of him bloomed into a full-sized picture of the work habs. It showed at least ten reds walking down the corridors and looking in doorways, calling out. As they watched, the reds flushed a boy and girl, teenagers, from one of the bars by common. They emerged, red-faced, the girl straightening her blouse. Carolyne and Jay. And after they raced off, the reds laughed.

“Nosy reds,” Onor said.

“Saved their lives.”

The camera switched to darkness. “What’s that? Is the camera broken?”

“No, that’s the park.” The Jackman grunted and pushed a button. The view changed to one high up, looking down in a wide angle. One area of the park was lighter than the rest. In the center of that, a hole gaped in the park floor. Something unidentifiable flapped in the camera’s peripheral vision, completely out of focus.

Onor gasped. It looked like a giant knife had stabbed the park and ripped.

“Easy,” The Jackman said, panning the camera. “There’s your girl.”

She and a red-haired man shared a bench. He took most of the available space, leaning against Ruby.

A blue.

The man’s eyes appeared to be closed. His lips moved. The camera gave up no sound.

The Jackman let out a long, low whistle. “Maybe you wish I hadn’t found her.”

Onor flushed, but at least part of the heat blooming on his cheeks was anger. “It’s not like that. That’s no one we’ve ever seen. Can you zoom in?”

“Yes.”

Onor peered at the image, Ruby and the stranger so quiet that it might have been a still frame except that the man’s lips were moving, the cadence of his words showing in the whitened air around his mouth. “He’s hurt—see his foot? He must have been in the park and got injured.”

“Maybe.”

“I gotta go.”

The look The Jackman gave him was part compassionate, part hard. “She’s not worth so much as you think, that one. She’ll break your heart.”

“I’ve got to warn her.”

“Of course you do.”