The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  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.”

  5: The Dangers Inside

  Ruby shivered in the cold park as she watched Fox absorb her request. The very act of asking him to take her with him had opened all the possibilities in the world. She could eat well. She could sing. She could advocate for her people.

  His jaw tightened.

  She lifted her hand, touched his cheek, and let her hand fall again, holding her breath.

  When he spoke, he didn’t look at her. “It’s dangerous where I live. You’d be eaten alive.”

  Heat flushed her cheeks. “It can’t be more dangerous than this!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I learn fast. I haven’t been killed here yet, or hurt. I haven’t ended up in lockup yet. I’m first in my class.” Damn it, she sounded desperate and young. She took a deep breath. “I’ll do well there, I know I will. I’ll have a better chance of singing—”

  He cut her off, laughter licking at the edges of his face in spite of the way his lips were blue with the cold. “You don’t understand.”

  “You think I’m not good enough. I am. I can do anything.”

  “Shhhhh . . . I know. You’re good, but you don’t understand. What’s dangerous here and what’s dangerous there are different. In my world, people aren’t always nice to each other.”

  “Like they are here?” she shot back. “I didn’t tell you the bad parts.”

  “Whatever they are, they’re simpler than the risks I live with.”

  “I don’t want to be a gray all my life.” She plucked at his shirt. “I want nice clothes, and to sing,
and to learn more things. I don’t know who helps run the ship, but it’s not robot jockeys.” Her mind raced. “You could teach me. Help me.”

  He shook his head, still looking amused.

  Her right hand rested on his shoulder and her left wrapped around him to rest on his chest. She felt hyperaware of every place her body contacted his. She clutched him closer, desperate for a way to convince him. His heart beat under her fingers.

  The dangers and the breaking had made her stronger and faster and scared, but now all that fear had run out, leaving her too tired and cold to think as fast as usual. There had to be a way to convince him. If his ankle worked, they’d have gone a long time ago and found more people. Instead, it was just the two of them, nothing and no one else. That, and the cold, and the way the broken park looked surreal all around them made her feel like she was in a dream.

  She had to think of something.

  A low buzzing sound grew louder. She had taken it for background, but she was wrong.

  Fox took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.” A farewell.

  She realized the sound was related to a cargo cart so quiet she’d not known what she was hearing. The cart sped just above the paths, the driver moving neither slow nor fast, inexorably growing nearer.

  She glanced back at Fox. “You’re welcome,” she whispered, feeling him slip away already. “When will I see you again?”

  “Maybe never.”

  “Take me with you,” she repeated, hating the slightly desperate edge in her voice.

  He didn’t answer, but it felt like he wanted her to come, like something in his gaze told her yes.

  She held her breath, drinking in the curve of his cheek, his dark eyelashes resting against pale skin, the specific blue of his eyes.

  “Ruby!”

  Her head snapped around at the familiar voice. Onor. At first she thought he might be on the cart, but he was on foot, racing toward her across the broken park. She winced. Trust Onor to show up when she didn’t want him, or need him.

  Fox’s hand still rested in hers, warm in spite of the cold. He pulled it away, and she had to resist the urge to reach and take it back. He levered himself up, careful of her legs and of his ankle, squinting at the approaching vehicle.