The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  Marcelle and Ruby apparently didn’t suffer the same imbalance, since they plunged into the room. Onor took a deep breath and followed.

  The Adiamo players were young. Five kids around one console. Two standing nearly mute in front of the other one, using input boards.

  The five played the advanced version of the game, glassed and wrapped, their every move creating change. Their only communication would be through the game interface, unavailable to watchers.

  The two were younger, maybe five years old, and still fat fingered. They wouldn’t be allowed to immerse yet. If they did, they’d probably pee their pants and scream at the scary parts.

  His hands itched to try it again. He’d beat Adiamo as early as most people and hadn’t played since he was eight years old. Now, he’d have a new eye for the game.

  The new information made him fidget.

  Onor yearned to see a planet. Always had, ever since The Jackman first told him that the park was designed to look like someplace where people didn’t have to live inside a metal shell and do whatever the reds told them.

  Ruby wandered the room, peering at various games. Onor and Marcelle stood behind the two boys with Adiamo input pads and watched them play. Since they were too young for immersion, it was easy to see what crops and animals and weapons and transportation they chose. Players did better against each other if they cooperated. But that was a late lesson, one of the ones you really understood just before you won the game. They only had to wait a half hour for the boys to starve each other out. When they were done, they walked off, chattering about what game to play next.

  He and Ruby and Marcelle claimed the game chairs. They strapped in, goggled, gloved, and switched on communication.

  The opening sequence played.

  Adiamo spun up in front of them, tiny so that the whole system showed. A single brilliant sun, two gas giants. Cradled between, two inhabited planets. Game play took place on Lym, the planet with the most ground and the least water. Enough water for fish and birds and large mammals and humans, and air that didn’t have to be scrubbed and rescrubbed inside a closed system.

  On Lym, the breath of humans was no inconvenience at all.

  The planet spun brown and busy in front of him, scattered with colonists and farms. Factories waited for players to gain control and grow them into cities and industrial bases, into centers of art and math, and—if you were winning—into active spaceports.

  Onor paid so much attention to his own lakes and cities that he forgot strategy until he realized that he had less land than Marcelle and that three of his farms had lost crops because he forgot to check his water allocation for shrinkage.

  Ruby was ahead of them both, but she had an instinct for the politics of games. She seldom played, but when she did, he no longer expected to beat her. He hadn’t beaten her since they were eleven.

  The game moved faster than he remembered. Ruby won twice before it was time to go to common. Even though they arrived fifteen minutes early, common was already almost full.

  Hugh and Lya showed up right after them with Owl Paulie in a wheelchair, surrounded by a small crowd. Most everyone greeted the old man, who smiled at them and offered a bony hand to most. There had not been any one person that popular at home.

  The promised time came and went.

  An old woman on a seat near Onor began to cry. Three children raced through the few empty spaces, giggling. Their parents called them down with sharp tones and they obeyed for a few minutes before they went back to racing.

  Marcelle tapped her toes. Ruby started walking the room, introducing herself.

  Onor paced. He wasn’t as outgoing as Ruby, didn’t really understand why she wanted to meet everyone right away. They were stuck here. There was time. Besides, if he started shaking hands with people, they’d know his hands were sweating.

  He felt nervous anytime he knew he was about to be told what to do. He hated it—hated people making him do things he didn’t want to. But his parents had died fighting the reds. Ruby. Ruby was always a rebel, and he was a planet to her sun. He couldn’t help himself, even though she scared him.

  At least when the voice came it was human and not Ix, a man’s voice that he hadn’t ever heard. “Please take your seats.”

  There weren’t enough seats for everyone.

  More time passed, people slowly stilling until the group noise had been reduced to whispers and the quiet shuffling of bodies.

  “Remain calm. C-pod may be uninhabitable for some time. The walls are too weak to provide safe life support and the gravgens remain unreliable. Students are to begin attending school immediately in the pod they now reside in.”

  A thin, willowy woman next to them chewed on her lip as she stood stiffly; her entire body looked like it was listening.

  “Some people will be shifted in order to place elders and children back with their caregivers. This will take place after the Festival of Changes.” The thin woman let out a long sigh and whispered, “So long?” as if she might break.

  The voice repeated itself. “Approved moves will take place in two weeks at the Festival of Changes.” There was a pause before it continued. “In the meantime, everyone is on ten percent reduced rations.”

  He’d expected that.

  “No marriages will be allowed for a year. No pregnancies.”

  He looked around at the dismay on people’s faces. If they knew they’d be home in a year, would they feel differently?

  8: Ix’s Explanation

  Ruby tried to walk the park path fast enough to outdistance her nerves. Her belly tightened, the way she felt just before she sang for a crowd. She’d staged her conversation with Ix in the emptiest public place she knew.

  Besides, public places meant cameras, and she wanted a record of the conversation.

  The park was as empty as she expected it to be. Only one pair of reds, two serious men walking side by side deep in conversation. They might be a threat, but they hadn’t noticed her so far. Reds at home knew her; in this new place she wasn’t watched as much.

  She walked a long time, keeping an eye on the reds, trying to look like she was there for exercise. Waiting for the others.

  The last-years had been given two weeks of alternate work assignments in place of going to class. Ruby had been assigned grunt work in bot-repair. She recognized most of the pieces she was given to clean up as having come from C-pod. Onor and Lya worked on the C-pod reclamation. Air had been blown back into the pod after the initial repairs, but they had to wear pressure suits and face masks the whole time in case of failure. Marcelle helped with elementary classes in the crèche. Hugh chafed because medical kept him on rest.

  Setting aside the idea of looking for her Aunt Daria, Ruby had returned to Owl Paulie four times in ten days, slowly pulling details out of him. The second time, Hugh had shown up to stand like a ghost in the background, his black eye and bruises goading her. He’d become a silent partner in Ruby’s talks with his grandfather, bringing them water but adding neither comments nor questions.

  This park was the same size and shape as her old one, but the controls refused to respond to her. The default breeze felt soft and warm. The flocks of birds and the fake flowers were more stylized and brighter, as if a different artist had worked on them. On the far edge, the orchard’s branches hung heavy with bright yellow-gold and fully ripe breakfruit, half a season away from the orchard at home.

  “Rruuuuuuby.”

  Marcelle, calling her. Loud as a three-year-old, as always. Ruby waited for her to catch up. “How did it go?”

  Marcelle grinned. “The kids are damned cute. The extras put a stretch on lessons.”

  “Still got the five-year-olds?”

  “Seven-year-old boys. It’s a promotion.”

  “It’s ’cause you know how to say no.”

  “Are you ready?” Marcelle asked.

  “If Onor would hurry up.”

  “He’s always here when you don’t want him.”

  “An
d never here when I do.” That wasn’t really fair. “He’s been my friend forever.”

  “He follows you around.”

  So do you. Ruby almost said it out loud. Nerves? That was probably what was getting to her stomach, too. The fluttering of her dreams. No, not dreams. Needs. “They’ll be here soon.”

  “I heard about your story at work today. From one of the regular B-pod teachers. A little bit of a thing, shy as anything. She sidled up to me and almost whispered, wanting to know if I knew you.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said yes. She wants to know if you’re really going to get us a better life.”

  “Tell her I’ll try, but I need help.” She eyed the reds, still some distance away, and still not noticing her.

  Marcelle grinned. “It has to be Hugh and Lya, or that old man. Spreading stories about you.”

  “Lies, too, from the sound of it.”

  Marcelle pointed. “Speak of the devil.”

  The ravages to Hugh’s face had subsided to a red scar and the yellowed ghosts of bruises. He and Lya held hands. Onor walked on Lya’s other side. All three looked tired and worn out, and Lya had a fresh red scratch across one cheek. Behind them, a couple of runners came up and then passed, moving easily right next to each other and talking in low tones. By the time the runners were out of earshot, the others all caught up.

  Ruby wrinkled her nose at Onor, who stank of stale shipsuit and sweat.

  Her pacing had taken them a bit away from the grouping of three benches she’d chosen for them to use, so she started back, the other four following her.

  “I still think it would have been easier to use Kyle’s place while he’s at work,” Onor said.

  Ruby ignored him. The park and common were always recorded, and the recordings were kept for a long time, maybe forever.

  She sat and gestured for the others to sit, making a circle on the fake grass. She took out her journal and balanced it on her knees, screen off private, mic open. Then she sat up straight and took a deep breath.

  “Go on,” Marcelle whispered.

  Onor and Kyle and Lya watched her silently.

  “Request to speak with Ix,” she said, enunciating with care and maybe a bit too loud.

  All journals were programmed to pass messages to Ix. The trick was getting real answers.

  She got in three breaths before an answer came back. “Yes?”

  Ix’s voice. Or at least the computer voice that most often represented Ix. “Yes, Ruby Martin?”

  She plunged right in. “I want to talk about rites of passage.”

  “Such as marriage or the birth of a child?”

  “Passage inward. Passage between. I want to test to pass inward.” Obtuse machine. Ix knew what she wanted, but it was as good at avoiding direct requests it didn’t like as The Jackman was at avoiding orders from reds. “Ix, I demand to know about rites of passage.”

  “Laws,” Hugh whispered.

  Yes, that’s what she’d said wrong. Ix was often literal when it wanted to be obstructive. Ruby felt sure Ix pursued its own goals within the rules that constrained it. Just like she did.

  Ruby rephrased her request. “Laws of Passage. Tell me about the Laws of Passage.”

  “Laws of Passage apply to full adults.”

  She twitched. No fair!

  Hugh spoke louder this time. “Ix, I am a full adult. So is Lya. The other three will be in months.”

  “The Laws of Passage are not currently in effect.”

  Hugh frowned. “Why not?”

  “They aren’t needed right now.”

  Ruby sighed. “So what makes them needed?”

  Ix read from something. “The Laws of Passage may be invoked in times of need, when populations are at risk, and in war.”

  Hugh furrowed his brows. “Surely the accident on C-pod has unbalanced the population.”

  How? Ruby hadn’t seen anything but a robot die. An inconvenience. There was another possibility. “Going home. Doesn’t The Creative Fire—don’t you—need more people who know more? To prepare to be at Adiamo?”

  “The Laws of Passage cannot be opened from the gray areas.”

  Ruby wanted to scream. She settled for digging her nail into her palms. “But they’re there to let us in. Why else have the laws at all?” Another thought came to her. “You need us. They need us. Without us, the Fire won’t run for long.”

  Lya elbowed her and made a shushing shape with her lips. The reds were walking by them, looking at them this time. Ruby gave them her brightest smile and waved. They couldn’t get them in trouble for talking to the ship’s computer. It was allowed.

  The reds kept going, not waving back, but not questioning them either.

  Ix, who had also been quiet while the reds went by, asked, “Why do you care where you work?”

  Sometimes Ix was as bad as her mother. “Look, you’re a machine. You live and work everywhere. You don’t get hungry or cold or feel bad when someone you love gets killed. You don’t fear death and you don’t need life like we do. We need to make a difference. We need to matter.”

  “Every crew member on the ship matters.”

  “Not equally,” she shot back. “We deserve our share of whatever good happens when we get home.”

  “And bad?” the machine queried.

  “And bad.” Of course. She repeated it. “Good and bad. We want our share.”

  “There are no Laws of Passage to govern movement into the gray levels. Blues may visit you anytime they want.”

  “Fox? Fox can come here?”

  Onor gave her a sharp look.

  “Fox has no reason to be on the gray levels.”

  Ruby’s whole body felt tight, like an instrument string. Ix was being even more obtuse than usual. She must be on to something important. “How do we study for the test? Whether the laws open up or not? If we just want to be ready?”

  “First, you have to finish your last-year studies and do well. You have to be a full adult. The logistics section must authorize the potential for movement. And you must pass a test.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “What kind of test?” Ruby asked.

  “All of the things that you learn in your ten years of study matter. They will all be tested. So will your knowledge of the planets and people of Adiamo and the history of The Creative Fire, and the power hierarchy of the ship.”

  Onor whispered in Hugh’s ear, and Hugh spoke. “We don’t have access to that data. All we know about power is what happens here, in gray.”

  “The information has been classified.”

  Crap. Ruby broke in again. “What are the reds planning for us when we get to Adiamo?”

  “That information is classified.”

  If Ix were sitting beside her instead of being air and sound and everywhere, she’d launch herself at it and wrestle it to the ground. She spoke loudly. “Ix. Consider me on record.” Keywords to make the conversation publicly available. “I want to test into the inner levels. I am going to do exceedingly well on my last-year exams. So will my friends, and everyone else who wants to join me.”

  She closed her eyes and centered on her breath so she finished strong. “We want to know how to learn about the ship’s structure and history. If you won’t help us, we’ll figure out how to help ourselves.”

  Ix said, “I cannot help you.”

  Nothing about it acted like a human. She could force it with more questions, but instead she turned her journal off. Damned machine.

  9: The Festival of Changes

  Common had been transformed to a feast of light and scent. Children’s pictures and digital artists’ work covered the walls. People perched on benches and low walls, scrolling through the new stories and songs that had been released to journals for the festival. Gold and green cloths covered tables. Flowers had been grown and picked, fruit ripened, and the fermented leftovers from the previous harvest canted into large clear bowls. Tables ringed the edges, laden with food and drink all along
one side, clothing and jewelry on another.

  A small crowd formed around Kyle’s table as he arrived, reaching for cookies while Kyle laughed and held his platter out of reach.

  Onor, Marcelle, and Ruby each cradled heavy decanters close to them. Onor’s smelled sweet, Marcelle’s tangy and salty, and Ruby’s was filled with musky spices so good she inhaled repeatedly.

  Ruby felt happy enough to hand the still over to Kyle. She’d have a cup later, when it was time, but for now she preferred a clear head.

  Kyle took a handful of cookies and distributed them in bite-sized pieces.

  Ruby heard her full name called and turned to find a woman who could only be her Aunt Daria. She had aged more than Ruby’s mom; her hair had gone the color of her uniform and been cut short and a bit ragged. Her eyes were dark green, almost unnaturally green. The shape of her face was so close to Suri’s that Ruby almost cried out at the sudden realization that she did, after all, miss her mother.

  Daria smiled thoughtfully. “You do look like her.”

  “Not as much as you do.”

  Daria looked serious. “Suri asked me to look after you until she gets here.”

  “Mom’s coming here?”

  “There was more room for people to go from D to B than anything else. Besides, I’m here, too.”

  She was going to lose her freedom.

  “I’ve room for you.”

  Ruby nodded, stiff with resistance.

  “We can get your stuff after the festival.”

  “I’m settled now. I was going to look for you.”

  “Today,” Marcelle added unhelpfully.

  Daria didn’t look convinced.

  If only Ruby’d asked someone—anyone—before Daria found her. Now she didn’t have any proof that she hadn’t just been hiding. “Look, I’ll visit you. But I can stay where I am.” She pointed at Kyle. “We’re staying with him, me and my friends.”