The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anything bad happen to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  Why couldn’t the stupid AI just give her what she wanted? She forced herself to calm down and think the next question out. “Did Ellis Knight record the conversation?”

  “No.”

  “You’re infuriating.”

  “You called me.”

  “If you were physical I’d thump you for being so difficult!” Her hands were claws on the side of the bench. She forced the fingers to relax. “Did anyone else access your recording before Ellis blocked it?”

  “Yes.”

  She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Can you tell me who?”

  A masculine voice came from the opening between common and the corridor. “I did. And I shared it with my friends. And they shared it with their friends.”

  She twisted around, catching a flash of blue and then a shock of red hair.

  Fox!

  Her breath caught in her chest, and she put a hand up to smooth her hair.

  “And I’m sorry if you’re frustrated. I told Ix to keep you talking so that I could get here.”

  She felt her mouth open, as if she had things to say, even though she didn’t have a single idea in her head at that moment. Except maybe that she should have dressed better.

  Fox walked normally, with no limp. He stopped a few feet away from her, his red hair slightly long, hanging almost to his shoulders, his blue eyes warm, happy to see her—not severe like Ellis Knight’s had been yesterday. Fox looked more confident than the man who had sat scared and injured on the bench beside her the day the sky fell.

  He smelled like cleanliness and hope, like the world she wanted, like the long moments under the broken roof when suspicions had become truths.

  He held a hand out to her. She wondered if this was a fevered dream from her lack of sleep.

  His hand felt solid and real.

  She leaned into him, drawn into his arms, which he closed around her, folding her inside of him, his palms a warmth on her cold back. He held tight. Her head fit into his shoulder and she pushed it there, putting her weight into him, feeling him brace and absorb her. She didn’t dare a kiss yet, but wanted one, confused at the way her heart beat and her belly felt raw and fiery. She should be mad instead of weak. She should be worried, maybe even afraid, or angry.

  But right now she felt safe.

  Fox pushed her gently away and stepped back from her, looking down at her face. He kept his hands on her arms, a current of . . . something, passing between them. “You’re as pretty as I remembered. I came as soon as I could this morning.”

  “Why not mornings ago? Why now?” Why after everything has fallen apart?

  He spoke so softly she could barely hear him, and while he talked his hand ran along the curve of her cheek, distracting her. “I wanted to forget that I’d met you. But your song—'The Owl’s Song'—played up there. On the regular vid, over and over until people started singing it in the halls. Because we talked, I knew what you were singing. Most of the others started out believing you sang about hope, but I knew it for defiance.”

  Something in her stuttered, a moment of mistrust. He was a blue, he was one of the ones who had just destroyed her dreams.

  But he was Fox, and she had saved him.

  And he had kissed her. Once. She turned her face up to him, hoping now for a kiss. He bent close, but only to whisper in her ear. “We need to go before Ellis or anyone else stops me.”

  “Go where?”

  He whispered one more word. “Home.”

  She swallowed and stepped back. He would take her? Really?

  “I couldn’t bear to watch yesterday, the test and you being so brave and getting nowhere. But we were. A lot of us were watching, in a bar, on a . . . never mind. Ix helped. And I couldn’t sleep, so I came here. We can talk later.”

  Her nerves screamed at her. If she went, it would be irrevocable. It might kill her, might get her locked up, might do anything. It was like stepping into blackness through a black door and hoping for light.

  But she was already dead here.

  This was what she had wanted, what she never, ever thought she’d get. She knew for sure now that she’d never actually expected to leave.

  Onor and Marcelle.

  She hissed, “I need to tell people I’ll be safe. People need to know.”

  “It will make you less safe,” he said, his voice laced with urgency, his hand on her back, propelling her toward the corridor. “We can find a way later. You’re going to be a hit, you’ve already got a following. We can get a message through.” He smiled. “We’ll write a song for them later.”

  She didn’t quite understand his words, but she understood the pressure of his arm and the urgency in his voice.

  He walked fast, his boots softer than hers. They passed Jinn’s parents, who glared at her. The woman, a tall blond with a scar on her nose and greasy hair caught back in a ponytail, smiled at Fox and said, “Thank you.” The circles under her eyes hinted that she might have been crying, and her mate pulled her close to him and nodded at Fox as well, ignoring Ruby entirely.

  Fox smiled back at them but didn’t slow at all. He pulled Ruby harder down the corridor, making sure she didn’t interact with the couple.

  It took her a breath or two to realize he was playing the part of powerful blue taking the troublemaker in hand. For a moment she wanted to pull away from him and protest her innocence, tell Jinn’s mom that she had done what she did for Jinn, for all of them, even for her. But the woman had looked tired and worn out, like she hadn’t slept. Like life had nearly finished with her.

  If she didn’t go with Fox now, and if she didn’t have any accidents, she would look like that woman all too soon, and keep her head down and hide.

  She had her head down when they rounded a corner, and she spotted the bottom half of a red uniform. Fox sped up. Ruby glanced at the man. Ben. “Wait!” she called.

  Fox tightened his grip on her arm, stopping just at the edge of pain. A warning.

  Ruby read the set of Ben’s face, saw worry there instead of mistrust.

  He hadn’t given up on her. Ben’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Fox.

  “It’s okay, Ben,” Ruby said. “Tell Onor and Marcelle I’m okay. Tell them to . . . tell them to keep going. To be safe.”

  Ben opened his mouth as if to respond, and in that moment, Ruby realized she might never see him again, or see any grays again, whatever happened. She threw her arms around the old red and squeezed tight. The hard nub of his stunner dug into her hip, and even as old as he was, he felt solid and safe and comforting. She didn’t let go until he patted her back awkwardly.

  “It’s okay,” he said, as if he understood the situation. “Do what you need to do.”

  “Keep them safe if you can. Marcelle and Onor, and my mom, and Ean and Daria and Hugh and . . . even Macky.”

  Ben hissed at Fox, “Keep her safe, or I’ll find you myself.”

  Fox took a step back, then laughed. “It’ll be okay, old man. Go on.”

  He almost sounded disrespectful to Ben. “He’s my friend,” she told Fox.

  “I know who he is. I saw him in the ‘Owl’s Song’ vid. Let’s go.”

  Ruby followed, her stomach now twisted with hope and fear all together. She had to go. She would lose herself if she didn’t follow. But she felt pulled apart, one arm into the future and one arm into the past.

  After they left Ben, there were two more turns. Fox took her behind the school, in a corridor she’d never really noticed, a place scratched by the uneven wheels of bots and dented by carts. They came to a metal door with no handle, something she might have mistaken for a repair to the wall or a hatch to a storage closet.

  Fox waved his wrist in front of it and it opened.

  He went in and she followed him.

  On the other side, light illuminated a long corridor that sloped up, lined with a metal
handhold along one side and no-grav handles on the ceiling. It was cleaner than the place they had just left, unpainted and uncolored, a bit stark.

  A fitting place to pass between lives.

  The door closed behind them, a sharp metal on metal click that sounded like change and felt like it severed her from herself, made her lighter, and stole the ground from her feet.

  Fox turned to her and took her in his arms. “Thank you for trusting me.”

  “I dreamed you would come.”

  “I did.”

  As they walked up the sloped wall, side by side, Fox near the handrail, what she heard wasn’t their footsteps, but the metallic sound the door made closing behind them.

  PART TWO: LEARNING

  22: Becoming Blue

  After the door closed on the gray world she’d grown up in, Ruby stayed close behind Fox, holding a hand out to touch him from time to time, to assure herself that this was no fevered dream. His closeness made her breath shallow and fast. She felt almost overwhelmed, as if an impossible thing had happened, as if Fox being here made the cruel events of the day before impossible, too. He felt like safety and the unknown all at once, warm and scary.

  They hurried, breath and steps echoing in the corridor. Just when Ruby wondered if they’d walked all the way through the next level to the heart of the ship, Fox whispered, “Sorry. This is an old passage we found, and we thought it would be a better way to sneak you in.”

  “Sneak? Ix must know I’m coming.”

  “It’s people that worry me. I want to get you into a better uniform.”

  She snapped out, “Clothes won’t turn me blue,” before she thought about it. Then she added, a beat late, “Maybe that’ll help.”

  “Trust me.”

  She’d already made that decision.

  A bot stood beside an airlock door, opening and closing the thick slab of metal so silently she didn’t even hear the whisper of contact as the bot’s metal hand grasped the metal door. The door squeaked as it moved. Ten steps up a rigid tunnel, holding the handrails this time, staring at the dented, graffitied walls that were inches in front of her nose. The tunnel swayed slightly. It looked thicker than the distance she’d seen between levels above the park, so they must be near the intersection of pods. If only she had a better picture of the details of the ship in her head.

  She followed Fox through yet another lock monitored by another polite and complacent robot. She expected the second door to open into the blue level. Instead, it was another corridor with no interesting features except handholds and seams here and there, bland and clean. A few—far too few—deep nicks in the metal itself. No part of the Fire could possibly be newer than any other, but her senses told her she had come to a newer place.

  A hundred more uphill-into-gravity steps later, Fox said, “Here. Be quiet.”

  A door she would never have seen opened, sucking light and the murmurs of conversation from the other side. She couldn’t make out words, but the voices seemed hushed and curious.

  Ruby pulled on Fox’s shirtsleeve. When he turned back to face her she took a deep breath, looked at him as hard as she could, and searched for any sign that he might betray her. Seeing none, she reached up and touched his face, then nodded. They passed through the door, Fox in front, Ruby sliding around him to see a crowd of unfamiliar eyes filled with curiosity and welcome.

  She didn’t recognize a single face. Oh, one. Dayn, who’d driven the scooter and seen her kiss Fox under the broken sky. They were all near Fox’s age or a bit older or younger, with neat hair and unscarred features. Clean. Here and there, a red.

  Sweat stuck strands of hair to her forehead. She had not set out to leave home forever; her clothes were thin and stained.

  The people were silent, curious. Their faces suggested they’d expected someone different. More downtrodden, or less?

  A friendly voice, a little over-loud. “Hello, Ruby.”

  A woman she couldn’t quite see. “Welcome.”

  “We knew Fox’d get you.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “Hello.”

  “Welcome.”

  And to Fox: “Was there any trouble?”

  The warmth of the conversation fascinated her, making her stand a bit straighter, smile, hold out her hand. This was her first impression, her first chance, and she had to ace it, no matter that she stank and her hair was two-days-unwashed greasy. She smiled as hard as she could, stood straight, spoke charming words through tired lips. Fox stood beside her. He kept one hand on her back, steadying her.

  She struggled to gather in the new names and remember them. Harold: a tall blond man with a wide smile. Lanie: a wisp of a blond-haired and fair-skinned woman who stuck close to Fox. Bo: a pale man with pale blue eyes and a slight limp. Harold was serious; Lanie had a warm smile that spread across her cheeks like a light turning on; Bo’s hand felt clammy with sweat, and his handshake was a bit soft.

  A tall woman with dark skin and dark hair and very light green eyes passed a thin stack of clothes above the small crowd. Fox stood on tiptoe and reached. “Thanks, Ani.” He grabbed the clothes from above the head of a brunette woman and passed them to Ruby. “Take these.”

  A blue uniform, new and smelling of something sweet, soft against the exposed skin of her arm.

  He pressed her forward and then pointed her into a privy. “I’ll guard,” he told her. “Hurry.”

  The dark woman, Ani, walked in right behind Ruby, carrying a bag over her shoulder. “Glad you’re here, girl,” she said, crowding in, filling more than half the small space. The bathroom looked like the ones at home except a tad brighter. Desperately thirsty, Ruby ran water into her cupped hands and sipped.

  “Your singing is so pretty it makes me want to cry.”

  “Thank you.” Ruby tried to hide her surprise as she grabbed a thin towel from a neat stack near the sink and scrubbed at her face. “What have you heard?”

  “Just ‘The Owl’s Song,’ so far. But that’s why we wanted Fox to get you. We want more. We were all rooting for you. We couldn’t bear the idea of you being a cargo-bay girl, not when you can sing like that.”

  Ruby wiped the sink and threw the dirty towel into the recycler, wondering if Ani knew the real risks of the cargo-bay job. “Why would you guys even notice someone like me?”

  “Fox has been showing you to us. Making us listen.” Ani looked down for a second. Her skin was so dark it was hard to tell if she blushed, but Ruby thought so. “We wanted you to pass the test.”

  Ruby looked away, sure her face would give away her confusion.

  Ani laughed and pushed Ruby toward a privy stall. “Change into those and give me your old ones. Hurry.”

  The blue uniform slid easily onto her body, perfect except for the legs, which were a tiny bit short. She saved the necklace Daria had made her, the tri-color beads worked into clever lace that Ruby would never have had the patience to re-create. She also saved the blue beads she’d worn around her wrist. She found a pocket to fold them into. It felt good to keep a tiny secret.

  Ani took her old clothes, muttering at Ruby. “We’ll disappear these permanently.”

  Okay by her. Not that Ani seemed to need a reaction from Ruby. She dropped Ruby’s old, gray clothes into the bag, tied the top tight, and tossed the clothes—bag and all—through a small, square hatch in the wall. A dull thud declared that they’d fallen into something below. A hairbrush appeared in Ani’s hand, and she helped herself to Ruby’s hair, pulling snarls out and muttering about showers.

  When the brush disappeared again, Ruby wiped her face with her hand and stood up to stare at herself in the mirror, off-balance from the change. In blue, clean, with her hair brushed back, she looked older and smarter. More capable. She even felt different from her old self. “Thanks.”

  “Fox has extra uniforms for you. Let’s go.”

  For an irrational moment, she expected to walk out and find Fox gone and Ellis waiting for her, but Fox stood very close to
the door and came immediately to her side. “You look great.”

  “Now what?”

  “We pretend we know what we’re doing. I don’t think you’ve been noticed yet. Follow me.”

  Ruby kept close to Fox, just behind, and he put his hand in hers, pulling her along. The danger they must be in made her feel tingly and hyperaware.

  Fox stayed in the lead.

  He pulled her into a big room full of tables and chairs and couches. People filled half of the seating, some in uniform, some not. Music played in the background, a song she didn’t recognize but wanted to tap her foot to.

  The sharp scent of fresh stim rose from a gleaming metal dispenser on a table. Bread and bunches of yellow orbfruit scattered across half-picked-over plates. Fox leaned down to Lanie, grinning at her, and pecked her cheek. “Find us a table? I’ll bring you some stim.”

  He helped himself to two cups, handing one to Ruby. “I had breakfast, but if you want something, take it.”

  This place looked neater than the common kitchen back home.

  Fox’s entourage settled around Lanie at a table near the wall, Fox and Ruby next to each other and facing the door. The table held twelve. Ruby would be willing to swear she’d met more than that, and for sure Ani was missing.

  Tasting the fruit reminded her she’d skipped breakfast. “What happens next?”

  He swallowed. “We make our case.”

  “To who?”

  “Ellis, I suppose. And the peacers.”

  He didn’t sound particularly worried. Rather, he sounded like he was looking forward to something. “I want us in a public place when we get found.”

  Like her confronting Ix in the class yesterday. “That strategy only kind of worked for me.”

  He grinned. “It worked great. You’re here.”

  “It didn’t work so great for anybody else. The goal is to get all of the grays free.”

  “Impossible.”

  Ruby looked away from him, stung.

  She glanced around the table. She knew the names of about half of them now. Three were reds. At home, she would never have sat down to eat by reds.

  Two humans worked in the kitchen, supervising a set of five or six shiny silver bots that cleaned up tables, carried out trays of fresh food, and refilled the stim. At home there would have been a bot or two most of the time, but just for the jobs that people weren’t strong enough or flexible enough to do. She had never seen some of these designs, and the mechanicals she worked on were all in worse repair. These didn’t squeak in the wrong places or have parts of the wrong color welded on where something had broken a decade or a lifetime ago.