The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)
Page 12
The room smelled of sweat and adrenaline and nerves.
The red with the front position stepped forward and cleared her throat. She stood no taller than Marcelle. Her gray hair had been pulled back in a long ponytail that made her face look severe. “You may begin.”
The light scratch of pens on journal screens and the shifting of feet made a small background hum to an otherwise oppressive silence. Onor focused down.
Basic math should have been harder, and he felt disappointed when he knew the answers were all correct even before the timer on the system pulled the pages away from his journal and presented the next part of the test. But then, he used math in his job, or he had. At the reclamation plant.
He hadn’t actually had a job for the last few months, except for shutting their old pod down. When they finished, he’d been told to study. Most of the students had the last few weeks off. Maybe there were too many people for the Fire now that there was one less place to do work in.
The communication section came a little harder for him, but he finished on time. During the stretch break between test sections he squeezed his way to Ruby. “How are you doing?”
“Okay so far.” She looked around at the other students who had oriented around her—almost half the room. Her next answer was clearly for them. “I think we’re all doing okay so far. We all studied. We’ll win.”
Which meant she was nervous, or she wouldn’t sound worried about it. Or more likely, she felt like he did. A combination of sour stomach and excitement, the knowledge that soon they’d know if the risks they’d been taking were going to pay off or hurt them. “It’ll be okay,” he assured her. She rewarded him with a grateful look and a nod.
In that moment, she seemed so strong and beautiful that he almost sicked up his breakfast. It was as if she had become too good to be true, and nothing too good to be true survived on The Creative Fire. Beauty was always ground down, aged, worked to death, or just disappeared.
Two more sections.
The next section covered safety measures. First aid. Gravgen failure drills. Oxy failure drills. Outbreak procedures. No problem.
Last, descriptions of every job in the pod and how they all interacted. Nothing, of course, about any other level. He licked his lips and told his racing heart to slow down and let him focus. Failures got three more months to pass, and a second failed test earned jobs as cleaners and sweepers and lockup guards, which meant a short life in barracks on the maintenance levels of gray.
He got halfway through rechecking before the pages disappeared on him. Glances full of either triumph or doubt or worry went back and forth between students. Marcelle looked confident. He felt confident. He glanced back at Ruby, but she was looking around at everyone else and didn’t meet his eyes.
Were they all adults now?
Chairs scraped. People breathed a little loudly and someone coughed. It smelled like fear and exhaustion and excitement, or maybe Onor simply smelled himself.
Marcelle doodled on her journal, a picture of The Creative Fire hurtling through space toward a stylized sun.
Whispered conversations started.
The passage of time crawled through Onor’s nerves.
Ix usually evaluated tests instantly.
The same severe female red that started them off stood in front of the class, waiting as students stopped stretching, or doodling, or in one case, sleeping.
The woman looked directly at Ruby, then at Marcelle, and then at Onor. Her dark eyes looked as steely and inflexible as a humanoid robot’s eyes.
Then she looked at everyone else, one at a time. Enjoying the tension in the moment. She looked like one of the reds who would beat you in a dark corridor just for being there.
She cleared her throat. “Sorry for the delay.”
Chairs scraped on the floor. The woman stood still, waiting for total quiet. “Ix had to double check the tests and the tapes from the actual exam. The results from this exam were hard for us to believe.”
She looked at Ruby again.
Ruby gazed back at her, face implacable, strands of blue beads spilling down the gray front of her shirt, another strand wrapped around her wrist. Flamboyant and beautiful and defiant, even without saying a word.
No one made any noise at all.
“Everyone passed.” Another beat of silence, the students all seeming to exhale at once and then inhale, and then the red said, “This class passed with the best test scores that Ix has ever seen.”
19: Unexpected Results
A split second after the freakishly severe red announced that they’d passed, the class erupted in hoots and congratulatory calls, in hand slapping and grins. Ruby sat still in the middle of the happy chaos, letting the idea of accomplishment fill her but not carry her away. They had achieved the little goal, the goal she knew was available.
She looked behind her at the tall red standing against the wall, openly displaying his mixed-color beaded necklace. He was middle-aged, serious-faced, as much like a typical red as you could get. He caught her watching him and gave her a warm smile. She smiled back, offering a thumbs-up sign. He didn’t return the sign, but the smile remained on his face.
She tapped her foot, waiting for the room to quiet down. She’d waited this long, so long, but the next few minutes were surely going to feel like forever. She’d told everyone she could to stay, to be there when she challenged Ix.
It wasn’t like this test, where they knew what to study for. But look how well they’d done so far.
Ruby watched the students spend some of their joy at passing. Of course, back home, if everything were still the way it had been, they would have all had jobs to start in three days. Some did, but not everyone. Onor, for example, had known what he would do at home. But not here.
She finished looking over the whole circle of the room. Something felt wrong.
Ruby swung around again and counted. Two more reds had come in after the announcement, during the excitement. She started toward Onor, careful not to run. She slapped his back as if giving congratulations—well, really giving congratulations—it was due. What mattered was the whisper of her breath against his ear as she hissed, “Look behind you. Casually.”
He squeezed her hand. He’d heard her. He’d get it; he was good at worrying.
She went toward Marcelle, pushing past Salli and Jinn, who stopped her and grinned, silly, like girls at their first dance. Then they really looked at her, Salli wrinkling her brow. She looked about to ask a question, and for a split second Ruby hesitated, didn’t know what to say, then she smiled and went on to Marcelle.
She glanced toward the door. Two more reds.
None of the reds in the room was Ben or Chitt.
The severe woman still stood in front of the group, watching Ruby. In fact, Ruby hadn’t caught her looking at anyone else since she’d announced the good scores.
Ruby’s skin itched. The oblivious chatter of the other students seemed louder and more cacophonous. For a second she thought someone might have slid her banned drugs, but surely it was just nerves, and too much stim, and not enough sleep.
And too many reds.
The room felt over-full with tension, even though the sounds were almost all still congratulations and even whooping. She reached Marcelle, who turned around and engulfed her in a relieved, excited bear hug, squeezing so tight that Ruby’s chest muscles hurt.
Ruby pushed free, caught Marcelle’s eye, tried to give her a brief warning.
Marcelle saw the look and stopped, confused.
Fair enough. Ruby didn’t know herself what she was warning Marcelle and Onor about. Extra reds might or might not mean anything.
Maybe they’d come to offer congratulations.
Right.
It was time to take control, not give up.
“Stay near me,” she told Marcelle, who nodded.
She looked for a place where she could be seen by the whole room. Close behind her, a table had been bolted to a long, doorless wall as well as the floor.
Ruby swallowed hard and climbed up on the tabletop. It felt a little wobbly, but it held her.
She turned around to look the room over again quickly. Seven reds now, two leaning on each of the other three walls, and the woman in front, all of them quiet but very, very aware. The man who had smiled at her earlier guarded the door on her left.
Many of the students stood in a knot in the middle, mostly happy, talking, their voices still filling the room.
The severe red woman watched Ruby, her eyes rounded now. But something kept her from speaking.
They were waiting for something. Or someone.
Ruby caught Marcelle’s eyes. She mouthed a single word. Record.
Marcelle fingered her journal, so apparently she got the message.
Ruby stood as straight as she could and whistled.
The chatter lowered; some looked at her.
She whistled again.
The room quieted. Two of the reds moved forward, but then they stopped as if jerked silent. Ix talking to them?
“Ix?” Ruby queried. Not right. She said it again, more demanding. “Ix! Speak to me.”
It would have to. Ship’s rules would make it.
She swallowed.
Damn. She tapped her toes, struggling to stay in control.
The room waited, everyone in it eerily still and quiet except for the shifting of stances and the drift of friends toward each other.
Ix’s voice, choosing to sound like a machine. “Yes, Ruby Martin.”
“I am a full adult now.”
“Yes, Ruby Martin, you are.”
Good. She needed to establish that. In her peripheral vision, two reds looked at each other uneasily, as if sure they should be doing something. She raised her voice. “We spoke in the park weeks ago. I’m sure you remember the conversation.”
Ix didn’t answer.
The students looked anticipatory, or in some cases confused. Not everyone had been drawn into the orbit of her talks and plans and songs and beads and dreams.
Two that she barely knew slipped out a door. No one stopped them.
She had made a statement. Ix didn’t have to answer a statement. “Do you remember that we talked in the park?”
“Yes.”
“We talked about the Laws of Passage, which were designed to allow people from one level of the ship to move to another. From gray inward.”
The door opposite her opened, admitting a thin, bony man dressed in blue. She had seen him twice before. He had power. She’d heard him speaking sharply to Conroy once, and once with the head of the school. Even though he wasn’t a big man, he felt like authority. He walked about ten steps toward Ruby, stopping almost in the middle of the room, as if he stood with his toes on a line that crossed the center, claiming the middle ground.
Maybe a table against a wall hadn’t been a good choice.
“Ix?” Loudly, again, her throat constricting so she had to force the syllable past her fear. “Ix!”
The man spoke. “I will answer, Ruby Martin.” He stepped so his legs were slightly apart and clasped his hands behind his back. She noticed his eyes as he looked directly at her, dark like grease and wide for his face. When he spoke, his voice was mild and cold. “Your understanding is correct. The Laws of Passage existed. They were created in the past, in a time when The Creative Fire was a different ship and the crew also different.”
She didn’t understand. Should she hope?
Everyone stood quiet, waiting.
“They were part of our beginning, but many things changed in the time we flew between stars.” He almost sounded like he was reciting a lesson for the room, like he was a patient teacher and the subject was dry and factual, like math. “But laws are made by people, and for people. They change with time as we learn. One thing we learned about living in this ship is that it is easier to stay in one place and be part of that community than to yearn for things you cannot have.”
“Easier for who?” she blurted out.
He broke his gaze from Ruby and spoke to the others. “You just did well. You received excellent scores, finished a tough education. You have excellent lives here. The gray levels are critical to the success of this ship we all call home.” He paused, watchful, and then finished his speech, “These laws are for you; they protect you.”
Ruby wanted to spit at his condescending feet.
Everyone watched him, the focus of the room shifted to blue.
She had never spoken directly to a blue except for Fox. She hadn’t even had a conversation with the one at Owl Paulie’s funeral. He’d said his words the way he was supposed to, told them when to do what, and ripped her beads off of Ben’s neck, but they hadn’t talked.
What should she say? She cleared her throat and rocked side to side on the table, catching attention. She started talking to the room and not to the blue. “We did well. We studied hard. We learned the things we need to know to go beyond where we were born.” She nodded at the blue, trying to play his game. “To be useful to you in other places.” That was it. Keep up the we, make this about more than her. It was anyway, she’d made sure it was. Almost half the room watched her now. “This is a fine group of adults.” She spoke that word again. “Adults. We are down one pod in the gray levels, and there are too many people to easily support. Rations have been cut.”
No reaction. But he knew all of this.
“You need to use us well. You need more hands to help us get ready to arrive home. We will get there in our lifetime.”
The blue clamped his mouth shut, as if holding back words.
Surprise and doubt bloomed on faces. She hadn’t told everyone they were almost home. Only a few. She’d stopped after those few didn’t seem to believe her. She spoke as loud as she could. “We want to take the test. It won’t hurt you to let us show you what we can be,” she paused, “What we are!”
The blue blinked at her, not flustered, but at least looking like it cost him to stay calm. “No.”
The man was a wall. She had expected Ix to be her adversary today, not a blue. The damned machine could be manipulated. Anger stiffened her back and thighs; she crossed her arms in front of her then dropped them again. “Ix! I demand to talk to you. If the Laws of Passage have changed, it happened since we talked.” God, could they do that? Deny her this simply? Overturn an old tradition just to keep her from getting free? Ix had to answer direct, factual questions. “Ix. Tell me when the last change was made to the Laws of Passage.”
The machine voice again. “Three hours and two minutes ago.”
While they were already here, taking the test. Her instinct was to scream, but she forced herself to pause.
The red man wearing the multi-strand of beads stepped forward and spoke the words she held in her body. “That’s not fair.”
The blue didn’t bother to look at him. He just gestured to the red to step back while he kept his gaze on Ruby.
The red didn’t move. Not toward the man, not away. “That’s not fair to these people. They studied hard, and we could use extra hands. She’s right. Even if you make them peacers.”
Some of the control slid from the blue’s face. She expected anger, and it was there, but under the thinnest layer of anger, Ruby saw fear.
The Jackman had told her this. That they were afraid. So had Owl Paulie. Now she saw it.
The blue’s mouth moved, although he didn’t say anything she could hear. Six more reds walked quickly into the room. Two stood beside the one who had spoken back, taking one arm each. Her captured protector threw her a single glance, almost entreaty, as if she could do anything for him.
She smiled.
He saw she was watching him and smiled back, a brief expression replaced almost immediately by bewilderment. And then he and the other two reds left the
room, arm in arm. He didn’t struggle or fight it. He just went, head down.
After the door closed behind him and his escorts, she bit her lip, breathed. Onor and Marcelle had both made their way to her, and they stood by her side, although not up on the table. Three or four others had done the same. Almost half had drifted to the edges of the room. Others stood as if frozen in place. Salli and Jinn were in the center of this group. She should have known what to say to them.
Jinn turned away.
“No!” She breathed again, trying to breathe through her feet and up her spine, to get bigger. She spoke as loudly as she could without screaming. “We demand to test. We demand to be more free.” She spoke to her peers. “They do need us. They haven’t told you about Adiamo, about how close we are. They didn’t tell us we would live to see our home. There must be more they haven’t told any of us.”
Jinn had turned back to her, challenge on her face.
“Our history. They haven’t told us why they keep us separate. Why they changed the rules.”
The blue man glared at her, anger the only emotion in his eyes this time.
“Well, I’ll tell you. They changed the rules because they are afraid of us. Not of one of us at a time, not of me, but of all of us. Of all of us! There are more grays than all other crew on this ship put together.” The whole room stared. She had to pour it on. “Remember Owl Paulie! It is our time to make a difference. If we don’t do it now, we’ll get home with nothing. But if we work together, we can change the rules.”
Two reds shouldered their way to her, standing between her and everyone else, even between her and Onor and Marcelle. Onor looked stricken, almost ill. Worried. Marcelle simply looked like contained anger, switching her gaze fast between Ruby and Onor and the reds and the one blue who still dominated the room.
The blue spoke. “We can use you in other places. We have evaluated this entire graduating class and determined what jobs you should go to. We will read those off to you now, so that those of you going to other pods can prepare to leave tomorrow.”
To leave? She held her tongue. Thoughts raced.
The woman cleared her throat. “Jinn Martel, you are assigned to D-pod to work on train scheduling.” Jinn and Salli, who were never apart, somehow stood even closer together, bodies touching from shoulder to shin. From the stricken look on both faces, they had expected something else. Salli glanced at Ruby and her red escort. Her eyes narrowed and what looked like a curse passed silently across her face.