The Diamond Deep (19 page)

“Ix thinks there's more political power in the stations.”

She sat down again, clutching her hands between her legs. “There's enough power in any of these places to crush us.”

Now he put an arm around her and gathered her close.

She snuggled into him. “There was a legend at home that we can't start the
Fire
up again if we stop her. Is that true?”

“Ix thinks it would be hard. Starting is even harder than stopping, and the ship is falling apart.”

“I want to see a sky, but I think we should go where the power is.” She bit her lip and looked at him, watching his face for some clue about how he felt. This was big. Bigger than either of them, bigger than they had the tools for. But inaction was going to drive her nuts.

As if he heard her thoughts, he said, “We have to decide soon.”

“So decide now.”

He sat still, staring at nothing.

“It's not like you to hesitate,” she whispered. “It's a big decision, but if we don't make it, Ix will be sure we dock somewhere. Its job is to protect the ship.”

“And mine is to protect our people.”

He looked so torn. She'd never seem him this way. “Do you want to sleep and make up your mind in the morning?”

He stared at her for a long time, his face so tight it was possible to imagine she could see him thinking. He whispered, “No. We will go to
Diamond Deep
and throw ourselves into the teeth of a power we don't understand. You're right about the power.”

“We'll be all right,” she said. “We're strong.”

“Sing me a song?” he asked.

She started “Homecoming,” but he shook his head. “The seed song. The one about how strong we are.”

It was a good choice. She turned off all the screens and all the lights, and sat beside him in the dark and sang.

Ruby stood beside Joel in the crowded map room. The air was drenched with the taste of stale stim. People completely ringed the map table, including some who had never seen the map room before, perhaps never envisioned such a large display that a hundred people could stand side by side around it. Ruby had held an art contest to burn the month spent slowing, and one winner from each discipline stood around the table with their families. One of the women was visibly pregnant, a sign that their reversal of the decree against children mattered. It made Ruby feel warm. Even Allen had joined them from the cargo bay, and from the amazed look on his face when he came in, it was possible that he had not been here before either.

The ship's strength had scattered around the room to protect the leaders: KJ and his silent dancers, some of the fighters from the cargo bays, and Joel's bodyguards. This included Onor, who stood behind Ruby and Joel.

Ruby assessed the crew. The new uniform had turned out even better than Ruby imagined: Dark gray with a multicolored piping strip across each shoulder, and rank insignia on the top of the right arm and over the left breast. Jali and Ruby's aunt Daria and their entire army of willing hands had created a miracle. Daria was in the back, looking taller and thinner and more elegant, as if the simple act of working with Jaliet for a few weeks had given her new grace and purpose. Haric stood beside Ruby. She had put him on Jali's list of people to pay attention to, and his new uniform fit perfectly, although it made him look younger than Ruby had hoped for. It accentuated his thin shoulders and the smooth skin on his face.

If only they looked as strong and well-ordered as their uniforms. The people who had never been here before looked pale-face and wide-eyed, a little scared. Children were clutched tight to their parents' breasts.

This would be the first glimpse anyone outside of the inner circle would have of the
Diamond Deep
.

Through some magic Ruby found fascinating, Ix had removed the pinpoints of stars and even the sun, Adiamo, from the image that filled the table's flat surface. An image of the station sat in the middle of the screen, no bigger than Ruby's fist. It looked like a spill of colored beads had been spread across black, some lit from the inside in whites and yellows. Its shape looked as fractal as the edges of leaves.

People leaned in, squinting at it. They pointed and talked. “Look how many parts it has.”

“A piece just moved.”

“It's so complex.”

One of the children said, “Pretty,” and her mother stroked her hair and clutched her tighter. The girl was no older than three, trapped by her mother's fear, her little arms waving as if asking to be let free to go play.

Ix let the image of
Diamond Deep
grow to the size of a dinner plate, then double that, and then double again. It now filled a full third of the huge map table, big enough for people to begin to pick details out of chaos.

It was now possible to make out a variety of shapes. Each part was connected one to another, the outer texture and shape of the station appearing random. Darker blocks in a myriad of sizes had become visible at this resolution.

Ruby watched the wonder on people's faces as they realized each of these tiny dark blotches was a spaceship.

“Look at them all!”

“Are any as big as the
Fire
?”

“I bet that one's bigger.”

“What are all the lights about?”

“It looks thin.”

Ix responded to that last comment, which had come from Haric, by rotating the image. Haric had it right; the vast sprawl of ships and station was long and wild, but it was also thin, no more than two or three ships and bubbles of station deep.

“Is it that shape for light?” Conroy asked.

“Yes,” Ix replied. “What I've shown you so far is a static photo at varied resolutions. Close your eyes.”

Ruby ignored the machine and watched the crowd. Most people obeyed and stood with their heads bowed and their eyes closed. Here and there people held hands, including some she was sure had been near strangers.

She took the moment of quiet to reach for Joel's hand and squeeze it. His face showed no emotion, but his hand was warm and calloused in hers, and he gripped her fingers in a sharp hug before letting go.

Nothing before this—not even the ugly ship or standing below Aleesi and holding a conversation through the machine—nothing had prepared her for
The Creative Fire
seeming as small as a seed.

On the table, stars appeared and grew into bright points of light, and then faded as new brightness seeped from the corner closest to Ruby and Joel: the light of the sun, bathing the still-rotated and thin view of the station from above, setting parts of the structure to reflecting light through other parts, so that only a small bit of the station was actually dark. Light even reflected back, clearly hitting objects on the far side of the station from the sun and coming back from behind them.

“Mirrors!” Jali exclaimed.

“Almost,” Ix replied.

The little girl who had called the station pretty wriggled out of her mom's arms and onto the table, standing over the space station, her face rapt. The light from the table bathed her skin in shifting colors. She didn't speak, but she reached her hands out and touched the surface of the table.

Ruby took the opening. “She sees an opportunity. That is what we must make this. Our opportunity. Our chance to grow as a people and to learn.”

The mother called to the girl, who ignored her. Ruby loved it: the symbolism was beautiful.

“We will take care of each other and of our children.”

Ix darkened the table for a moment and the child returned to her mother. As soon as her little bare feet left the table, it came back alive. The station rotated again, the sense of light remaining. Ix caused the image to grow. Here and there a part moved. A ship left. A ship arrived.

The bright spots that had looked like beads with lights in them still looked like beads with lights in them. Just bigger. Some were clear and others clouded with swirls or color or full of things inside. Haric pointed to one. “Tell me about those.”

“I have been receiving some data from the station, and it has included a map. I don't understand it all. The bright places appear to be where the people who live on the stations instead of in the ships live, and where they grow their food and store their goods and attend school. It is like all of the rooms on the
Fire
separated and brightened and attached one to another by tubes. Some are not even attached.”

“So we might think of the station like a big ship?” Allen asked.

KJ answered him. “That would be a dangerous oversimplification.”

Joel cleared his throat. “
Diamond Deep
is so complex that parts of it might always be a mystery. It appears to be the most active place in Adiamo, and to have the most people. It is only one of many places people live, though. We think they trade with each other. Ix tells me we might not even recognize the things they trade. We will be strangers there. We'll need to protect what is ours: our stories, our goods. At least until we understand more about these new people.”

He paused and people whispered to one another. Ruby moved closer to him, wanting to show the solidarity they had been working to build. She had not yet made it into his secret meetings, but she stood beside him here and now.

When Joel picked the conversation back up, he said, “We'll be docking there in a week.
Diamond Deep
is not still; it moves. We are still moving as well. Three tugships will attach themselves to us and move us into the trailing edge of the station. It will take time to maneuver the ship to attach to the station.”

Allen asked, “Have you talked to anyone from the
Diamond Deep
?”

“No.” Joel managed to sound only slightly unhappy about this, although Ruby knew he mistrusted the situation deeply. “Machines have talked.”

One of the men from the outer pods, a water system worker, spoke up. “They aren't all machines, are they? Like the robots that killed some of ours?”

SueAnne answered him. “There are people there. Ix has verified that it is not a land of robot spiders.”

Ruby thought of Aleesi, who still sat trussed in a cargo bay.

Joel continued. “After we dock, we'll stay aboard the
Fire
. There will be a process of meeting and of waiting, a way to be sure of our safety and theirs. We will proceed carefully. Earn each other's trust. We should stick together as one ship, one people.

“Ix will broadcast what you have seen and what the station looks like as we approach it to every display in every common room after dinner tonight, and will do so continuously so that each and every crew member can see where we are going.

“Some of you may feel afraid. But we are a strong people who have journeyed across the stars. We bring value to this place, and whatever we find here, we must remember our strength.”

Ruby raised her voice and added, “We are people of the fire, and we will learn and grow here. We will create a home here. I promise you.”

Onor stood outside the lock in his pressure suit, about to visit the killer robot spider. This had been Marcelle's idea. Something about facing their fears. Onor still wasn't quite sure how he had been talked into this. The last time he and Marcelle had been here they were nearly killed, and he had lost himself in her afterwards. His insides felt plagued with unsettling knots of fear and arousal that didn't go together at all.