The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (33 page)

“Would you like to go someplace more private?”

She would. She did. “As long as you know I have more to offer you than you think.” There. She’d got the words out. “I have a good head for strategy and for talking to people. I’m smart.”

He looked amused.

“I can help you with the grays. The workers. I can help us win.” She was talking too fast. “They matter to you. There are so many of them.”

He laughed out loud. “You are a vision. You are who I’m fighting for, you know.” He took her hand, pulling her up. “I’m off now. My people told me to rest. You need to rest, too.”

She let go of his hand and gestured for him to lead, confused. “I need to know what you believe. Why are you fighting on our side?”

He didn’t answer until they were out of the large room, down a hallway, and into what must be his own hab. A small kitchen, a living room, a bedroom. Tasteful, neat, military. Here and there, a splash of color or a bit of homemade craft that suggested a woman took some interest in him, but no real sign of anyone else living there. Of course, maybe this wasn’t even his hab.

He went through the door to the bedroom.

54: Song of Joining

Ruby settled down on an oversized light green chair and crossed her legs, waiting for Joel to notice she hadn’t followed him to the bedroom. It didn’t take long for him to turn around in the doorway. She watched his expression carefully as he reached for her and found she wasn’t there. His face registered a moment of surprise, but no anger. He came back to sit opposite her, his expression open and curious. She liked it that he didn’t comment, and that she didn’t feel pressured.

“The question you asked. About how things were and are. It’s a long story.”

“I have time. I want it all, but what matters most is how you want the future to be.”

“Of course, you want it all.” At least he was smiling. Sort of. “I’ll tell you the short version of the story. That’s all I’ve got the energy for.”

She leaned forward.

“We left Adiamo roughly four hundred ship years ago. You know that.”

She nodded. “We went to explore and to bring back the samples and other goods we have in cargo.”

“Close enough. Raw materials that Lym wanted. Knowledge. Frozen plants and animals. Video. Our ancestors all volunteered. They chose this life for us.”

He sounded a bit . . . put off. Ruby wouldn’t label his voice as bitter, but maybe mystified and sad.

“They’d done it before, five other generation ships. None of the other ships had come back by the time we left. So maybe no one knew how hard it is.” He shifted and stood. “I need water. Would you like some?”

“Yes.”

He brought back the water. “What do you think is the hard part?” he asked her.

“Keeping it all going? Keeping the orchards alive and the robots working and the ship in one piece. There’s a lot of ways we could have died, could still die.”

He set his glass down. “That’s a good answer. But the most true answer is that it’s nearly impossible to stay focused and driven.”

She laughed. “We have work to do every day, enough to fall into bed exhausted.”

“But we don’t. Not in command or logistics. The cruelty? The reds who cause trouble?” He must have seen the look in her eyes because he said, “That’s how it is. There’s nothing new, and this is a very tiny world.”

“It took me half a day to walk here.”

“We grew up on worlds where we could walk all of our lives and not see everything. You’ve played the game.”

Adiamo. “Is it real? Adiamo? And birds?”

He gave her a funny look. “I was born here, too. But I think so. I think it is, or it was. Let me see if I can get you to understand another way. Your work hasn’t changed. When you worked in the robot shop, you did what your parents and their parents and their parents and their parents did.”

“So? I’m proud of it.”

“Hey, I’m not insulting you. But you did outgrow it.”

“Yes.” She held a hand to her necklace. “We dream.”

“That’s exactly it. We all dream, but there’s no place to expand here. It’s so controlled that it kills our soul. We think it is the whole world, that the universe is inside this ship.”

Ruby was silent. Her whole universe was here, and right now it felt bigger than it ever had.

He pursed his lips and took a drink. His voice was so soft she could barely hear it. “None of us knows about the universe. Not you, not me. Not really. No one on this ship has been outside of it. Not even the oldest people, like Owl Paulie, have been outside of the
Fire
.”

He had a point. She finished her water and sat back, waiting.

“It’s a very bad thing for humans to have nothing new to learn or do. We have this inner drive to create. That’s what makes you sing. You’ve even made a situation where your songs have changed the little world we live in. Because that’s what we need to do. Humans. We need to change our world.”

“So?”

“Well, if we changed much on the ship, we’d kill it. And we know it. We know how to run the
Fire
but not how to make it or remake it.”

She nodded. “We recycle endlessly. But I couldn’t make metal from scratch if I had to.”

“You may have it better than we do. Workers. You’ve got things to do, and a way to dream. You can hope to get better jobs.”

“Or to be treated fairly by you or become more like you.”

He leaned forward. “I know it sounds wrong. But we have less to dream of becoming.”

“You have music and art and dance.”

He smiled, looking pleased with her. “That’s why we support those.”

“And now you dream of going home.”

“Now we all dream of going home.”

That was a good answer. She felt pleased with him, drawn to him. He’d made her think, and the thinking made her want to move, but she sat still and let him watch her. She felt undressed, as if this man was stripping her to bones, only what he was looking for was her soul instead of her body. In spite of that, she still wasn’t ready for his touch.

He started again. “Now, be patient with me. I’m going to talk about things that might make you mad, but they weren’t my choices. So don’t get mad at
me
.”

“Okay.” She stretched and fidgeted, almost pacing, thinking. Joel simply sat, letting her do half orbits around him.

“People fought. Someday I can share the details of that. Who and why. The outcome was that the peacers were given more power and more people. When we left home there was one peacer to a hundred people. Now there is one to ten.”

“But you just said that was part of the problem, reds with too much power.” She saw Nona’s face again, gone forever. Hugh’s now, as well. She felt raw, anger and loss powering some of her agitation. “It is, you know.”

“The solution to one problem often makes new problems.”

Unfair ones. “How do you know all this?”

“All of our history is available to everyone in command.”

“I want to read it all.”

“If we win, I’ll have Ix give it to you.”

“Really?”

“Do you want me to tell you this story?”

“Of course.” She stood on tiptoe and stretched up so her fingertips brushed the ceiling. “Then will you tell me what Ix’s job is?”

He raised an eyebrow and then laughed. “I don’t have to wait for that. Ix’s job is to get us home safe. It’s that simple.”

She furrowed her brow.

“Simple and easy are not the same.”

“All right.” She didn’t think that was all there was to Ix, but she had no way to prove it. She did some of the stretches KJ had taught her, leaking extra energy out on purpose, trying to ground herself and be in the moment. “So people fought.”

“They did. Then we put up walls so we could retreat if we needed to. Not me. Not my father. Before that. Before we even got to the first of the planets we went to, and we went to five, in three star systems. There has been more than one fight since then as people tried to free themselves, each from the other. Almost always it has been the workers in the outer pods because those of us on the inside are the only ones who’ve had time to be oppressors.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“I’m simplifying it for you,” Joel said. “Can you please sit down?”

She did. “Sorry. So Lila Red was just one of the people who fought one of the fights? But she wasn’t from the outer pods.”

“According to Ix, there have always been people inside who want a different solution.”

“Like you? What do you want?” She wanted to stand up again, to move, but she made herself stay as still as she could manage, though her hands wrung and twisted like live things.

“It’s time,” he said. “We’re coming home. We’re almost there. I’m positive we’re going to need all of our strengths, and that includes all of you. That’s you and Daria and Onor and Marcelle and Conroy and a hundred others I can name.”

She shivered a little that he knew so many names. Good.

“And I intend to bring as many of them home alive as I can, and to help us all listen to each other. That’s what I want. Because we’re going to see the stars.”

His tone of voice told her he was done. Everything about his story seemed true to her, a new idea on top of a new idea on top of a new idea. Her blood hummed with new ideas, new energy.

“See the stars,” she repeated. She believed him. She believed him completely. She sat back and closed her eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

He let her stay there in silence for a long time. And then he said, “You’re welcome.” He waited a few more breaths and then said, “Will you sing for me?”

She
had
promised him a song.

Instead of any of the songs he had almost surely heard before, she chose a lullaby in its original version. Well, he had surely heard that, too. But never from her.

He helped her sing the last verse, his voice untrained but decent.

She pleaded thirst.

He brought her wine and water and a small plate with three tiny, sweet snacks on it.

“You are romancing me,” she told him.

“You know that.”

“I do.”

“But you’re resisting. Some.”

“I am.” She took a sip of the wine. It had been pressed from the leavings of the juicing process for golden orbfruit, its color light and its flavor sweet. She only knew this because Colin had served her something like it once. This quality wine didn’t exist at home, where homemade stills produced beverages with more bite and less flavor. She let a second sip rest on her tongue and fall down her throat like silk. “I am worth far more than any simple lover. I can bring you the gray levels. I can help you.” Her hands shook in her lap. “I can’t just go to your bed.” Ruby swallowed, waiting. She was afraid to pick up the glass. More wine might cost her the small bit of resolve she had left, or she might spill it and waste a rare drink for nothing.

“Ever?” he asked. Bold. She liked that.

“Until we’re equal.”

He sat relaxed against the chair opposite her, his legs crossed casually in front of him. He watched her contemplatively, the way one might appraise a fine tool or a particularly good piece of music.

After what seemed like a very long time, he leaned forward. “You are much braver than me.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes. You are.”

“But you . . . you lead so many people. Our own leaders, like The Jackman, work for you.”

“And you make people smile.”

“I do.” She didn’t make it a question. It was true. “It’s a small thing. Without Fox, I would probably be dead now.” She winced, hearing her words sell her short. “But I fought to get his notice.” Her hand went to her chest, to the necklace beaded there. “I designed the sign that tells us apart.”

“And you wrote the song that brings us together.”

The conversation felt like a dance. “I can help you.” Her mouth felt dry and her throat thick. “I know I can. And I can learn. Truly, I learn very fast.”

His voice was just barely over a whisper. “I’ve watched you learn.”

She took a sip of wine.

“I can help you, too,” he said. “If you’ve lost Fox . . .” He trailed it off, like a question, as if it would matter to him.

“I have.”

“I can help you, give you a way for people to hear you. I can give you a voice.” He licked his lips, his next words slightly more bitter. “If we win.”

“I need to go now. Home. To use my voice. I need to talk to my people.”

“Now?”

“Soon.”

“It’s not safe.”

“If I ever let myself be afraid I might as well stop.”

He bowed his head. “I understand.”

Fox had been stronger than her when she met him, but she’d outgrown him, found he didn’t have passion for the same thing she did.

She would not outgrow this man.

He was going to run the ship when they won, and he would be surrounded with things to learn and do, with choices that mattered. “Will you help me get home? I can help us win. I’ve thought about it. I can go to them, to all the pods, and I can bring messages from you, and I can sing my songs, and I can give them heart. It will help them fight. I can also bring any weapons or knowledge you want them to have.”

“I don’t want to put you in that much danger.”

“You will be in an equal amount.”

“So then we are equal.”

“We are.”

He stood up and extended his hand, and Ruby took it. His hand felt warm and dry and strong.

The bedroom was bigger than any she’d seen on the ship. An intricately knotted hanging on the wall added texture and softness, and the bedspread looked handmade. When she leaned down to take a closer look, she saw that it had been decorated with colorful fabric renditions of birds.

Joel dimmed the lights and slowly stripped her clothes from her. He took her two hands and kept his arms a little stiff, keeping distance between them, simply looking at her for what felt like a very long time. The heat in his hands and his gaze warmed her, even naked. Eventually, she couldn’t stand simply being looked at. She pushed his arms to his sides, with effort, and stripped his shirt from him.

When he pulled her to him for a kiss, she tasted the fine wine.

She pushed him backward onto the bed and gave a little leap so she straddled him, leaning down to continue the kiss.