The Diamond Deep (20 page)

At least this time the suit fit, worked, and smelled more of cleaner than old sweat.

“You'll like this,” Ruby said, “Aleesi is a very social being. She was taken as a fairly young girl and put into her first robot body. She seems simple sometimes. I don't think of her as a child, just as someone who has been limited. She is used to having other copies of herself to talk to, and to being surrounded by others. I guess it's like a family.”

“A family of killers.”

Ruby already had the door to the lock open. He had offered to go through first and wait on the other side, but Ruby had decreed that Marcelle and Onor would go through first and she would follow. He suspected she knew how things stood between him and Marcelle, although she had never said anything about it.

The women probably talked.

On the far side of the lock, he and Marcelle stood on a wide beam and clutched the ribs of the bay. He had sworn he would be strong, but as soon as he saw the spiders—even trussed—fear washed over him and his hands shook. Maybe it was a good thing he was in the damned suit—it let him hide his physical reaction. “How do you feel?” he asked Marcelle. “Are you okay?”

“I'm scared. But I wanted to come.”

“I know.” He hadn't. “But you don't have to be tough.”

“Coming in that lock was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But I can't become a scared person.”

“You've always been brave.”

There was silence, then Marcelle said, “I promised Ruby I'd keep up what she's been doing. Learning from the damned thing. She says she's going to be too busy when we land.”

He glanced across the bay at three spider dancers, who hung on the far wall, watching them. Guards, in this case, but they spent time with Aleesi and gathered information. He'd read their summary reports. They'd learned more about the Edge than about inside, but they were also getting some language and culture. He glanced back at Marcelle. “Why you and not just the spider dancers?”

“She trusts me even more than them.”

“I do, too.” He told her. “I trust them with my life, but you with my secrets.”

She laughed, the first time her voice hadn't sounded tense since they cycled through the lock. “They used to
be
secrets.”

The sequence of lights that indicated the lock was about to open blinked white and red light across Marcelle's faceplate, and then Ruby joined them on the beam. “Let's go.”

They followed Ruby down a traverse line. She had become so fast and natural in here that he and Marcelle struggled to keep up with her. They stopped at the bottom beside the trussed robot. He had been this close when they were being chased, maybe closer, but he couldn't recall details. Only fear. Rushing blood made his fingertips feel like hearts beat in them.

There were so many chains holding the robot down that he shouldn't feel this way.

“Hello, Aleesi,” Ruby said. “These are my friends Marcelle and Onor. They may come back and visit you when I cannot. We'll be at
Diamond Deep
soon and I'll have other duties.”

The robot spoke in Ix's voice. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Talk to us about the
Diamond Deep
,” Ruby said.

“I have told you everything I know.”

“For my friends' sake. So they can ask questions. Just summarize the things that you've told me.”

Ix's Aleesi voice went off in Onor's helmet again. “
Diamond Deep
is the oldest station here, and the biggest. It was built as a project of a long-ago government, started just before your ship left the system. Old spaceships that could no longer move, but which could be lived in, became part of it. The station survived the sundering by staying neutral and letting ships from all sides of the fighting meet here.
Diamond Deep
came out ahead in that, winning so much material and metal from fleet salvage that it was three times as big after the war. Then the nano-tech revolution changed it yet again, remade it piece by piece, built the habitat bubbles and gave it manufacturing facilities. Ships are made here for the whole system, and have been since before the Edge was created.”

It sounded like a prepared speech or a memory of a lesson. “But you have never been to the
Deep
?” he asked.

“No. When I was a human child, I was on Lym.”

Onor asked, “Did you miss being on a planet?”

“Yes.”

It felt absurd to be having an almost normal conversation with something that had tried to kill him. “I heard you don't like it that we came here.”

“My kind is not allowed to live here.”

Marcelle asked, “Will they know you're here?”

“They will know everything about this ship.”

Ix broke in, using its deeper voice so they knew it wasn't the robot talking. “She is very convinced that there is no way to keep secrets from anyone inside.”

“Is she right?”

“Perhaps.”

“How long ago were you a human child?” Marcelle asked the robot.

“At the beginning of the Age of Explosive Creation, which was many generations ago, even though it began after you left. It is when robots created their intelligence, and when humans learned to live longer and younger and where beings like me were created and rejected and fled to the Edge if we wanted to survive.”

“So why are you talking to us?” Onor asked. “Why help us?”

“Because there is no one else for me to talk to. You will be like me. Cast-off and strange. I understand the math of star travel, and that you were gone from here for generations of humans. You are a small society, too small and too poor in resources to have changed much from when you left. The speed of change increases with the size of the network.”

“What?” Marcelle asked.

“The more people interact with each other, the faster cultural change happens. Change is driven by volume of information.”

Ruby broke in this time. “I'm still not sure I understand. If we had a ship with three times as many people on it, we would change faster?”

There was a machine's breath pause before the answer came back. “A little. But since the bigger the network grows, the faster the change happens, you would not see much of a difference. The
Fire
has thousands of people, at most, right?”

“Yes.”

“Adiamo has trillions of people.”

He understood the size of the number from a lesson in math class years ago, before they became adults. Numbers like that had been used to represent distances, or the number of stars in the universe. But numbers of people?

“You have been gone for years of your time, for generations. The
Fire
has travelled far and most of its journey has been at more than halfway to the speed of light. And in that time, humanity has gone beyond what you appear to understand.”

“So there will not be anyone like us?” Marcelle asked.

“I have never seen anyone like you, nor talked to anyone who understands as little.”

As soon as they were through the door, they all started jabbering at Ix.

“Did you know how many people were there?”

“Did you know about numbers of people and change?”

“Is it lying? Are there really that many people?” The rumor Onor had been most afraid was true had been that they were all dead, and the
Fire
was flying back to someplace empty and cold.

Ix replied. “I am learning about this system as we speak, and have been since we got close enough to get information about it. It truly is different from when we left.”

Ruby's helmet was off now, her long red hair sweaty and mussed and her face white. “So our classes haven't helped anyone. They've been lies.”

Ix said, “They've been history lessons.”

He could see Ruby bite her tongue. No use fighting with the machine. It always had a better way to fight back.

Now all their helmets were off, and they stood in the corridor in their suits. “It was talking down to us,” Marcelle said.

Ruby shook her head. “No. Aleesi is actually very simple. In many ways, she isn't as smart or as subtle as we are. But there are things she knows—like that bit about network effects—that we don't even know the questions for. That's why I keep coming back.”

Marcelle asked, “Did you know how many people are there?”

“We hadn't put that number to it, but we knew it was a lot. Think about it. Remember that picture of
Diamond Deep
? It's hundreds of times bigger than the
Fire
, maybe thousands. And the
Fire
has a lot more cargo space than people-space.”

Antony, another one of Joel's guards, came around the corner.

Ruby seemed to be expecting him. “Just a moment. Let me change into my uniform.” She started stripping off the rest of her suit. “Whoever designed this place should have put a shower right here,” she muttered.

Marcelle's laughter broke the worries that he'd left the cargo bay with, and he laughed, too. Not as good as running, but anything to release the thought of trillions of people.

After they'd all changed, Ruby left Onor and Marcelle hanging their suits up in the locker closest to the cargo bay. He watched Ruby's back as she walked away beside Antony.

Marcelle's hair was mussed from the suit and she looked worn out. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Walk with me to the cargo bars?” Marcelle asked him. “I was too nervous to eat before we went in there.”

“Of course. Did you get what you wanted from going in there?”

She rummaged in the pack she'd left stuck in a cubby on the locker, coming up with a hairbrush and starting in on her sweat-damped hair. “I wanted to be brave. I expected to hate her, to want to kill her when I stood in front of her. Or to be scared. She would have killed us if she could, at least on that first day. So I can't—really—feel sorry for her.”

“But it is a little pathetic.”

“I wouldn't have chosen that word.” She put her brush away and shouldered her pack. “Let's go.”

“What would you call it?”

“Dangerous.”

“Yes, but I like pathetic better. It's easier to think of it that way. Her that way.” They started down the corridor.

“I didn't understand everything she said,” Marcelle said.

“We learned how different we are from everything here.”

“I knew that the minute we saw six robots bigger than habs scuttle into the cargo bay.”

He walked next to her, debating whether or not to take her arm. “Have you got your assignment for docking day yet?”

“I'm on peacekeeping in common. C-pod.”

“Really? Did you ask for that?” She was a good warrior; she should stand on the front lines. Hopefully, defense would be for show, but still, it was the respectful place to put someone who had been by Ruby's side so long, and who had become a squad leader in practices.

“I want to be with the people. And with the families.”

“You could be with us.”

“I know. I'm just feeling tender about our people. Everything is going to change, and faster than we want. What happens if we never see each other again after we dock?”

“Ruby and Joel will keep us together.” He straightened. “And we'll keep us together.”

She put an arm around his waist, pulled him close to her. She was his size—well, his height. It felt good to be walking beside her. He put an arm around her as well, resting his hand on her waist where he could feel the glide of her muscles as she walked. It wasn't a commitment, but the damned robot always seemed to drive him closer to Marcelle.

Marcelle fell silent as they walked through the corridors. She seemed as awkward as he felt, her gait a little stiff. She didn't look at him. “I have a reason not to be up front.”

“What?”

“I'm pregnant.”

Ruby had done her best to turn docking day into a party while Joel's instinct was to use it as a military exercise. The result looked like an ideological fight had splashed itself across the map room. Everyone—even Ruby—wore the new uniforms. Serving robots squeaked through the few spaces between people with trays of fresh fruit from the gardens and crackers and cookies from the kitchens.

Ix played images of their approach to
Diamond Deep
on the map table. To Ruby's irritation, Ix had become unresponsive when questioned. They were close enough now that the station itself couldn't be seen in whole. It appeared as a large black structure against the black of space, edged in blinding white lights. The best thing that could be said about the image was that the station loomed. The worst was that it looked ready to consume the
Fire
.

Other people seemed to feel the same way. Some gathered in groups and watched the image in short little glimpses. SueAnne stared as if mesmerized. KJ and his dancers seemed to be everywhere.

Jaliet had managed to turn her own version of the uniform into a fashion statement by tucking it here and there and threading the multiple joined colors of the
Fire
through several tight braids in her black hair. Most of the men looked serious. Drinks abounded, all of them water or stim. Joel had ordered nothing but light food and drink, a choice Ruby had supported. She wanted the feel of a party; not the reality of one.