The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  Columns and poles held the pipes up here and there. Figures leaned against them, watching him come in beside Jimmy.

  He swallowed, his mouth dry and his heart fast. If they were here to beat him, he would die.

  He had always thought that only the reds killed grays, maybe at the direction of the blues or whatever cursed group held power. But here, he felt the danger of his own fellows deep in his gut.

  Jimmy did whisper this time. “Relax.”

  “Why am I here?” Onor whispered back.

  “To see if you are one of us.”

  The man with the split lip stepped out of a shadow and stood in front of Onor.

  Onor stopped.

  Beside him, Jimmy stopped.

  At first, the split-lip man said nothing. He watched Onor’s face closely.

  When he did speak, his voice was flat and unemotional. “You did not report us.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  This was the trap. Part of the truth had been so they wouldn’t beat him again, but that wasn’t the answer to this question. “Because there must be some secrets.”

  “Do you wonder why we beat you?”

  Onor licked his lip. “I don’t know why you’re here. Why I’m here.”

  “You don’t need to know that yet. But you can begin to learn. Will you promise to keep all that we say and do close to your heart? To keep it so close that you do not speak to Marcelle or Ruby or anyone else you know about it?”

  “Ruby? Is she okay?”

  “You don’t care about Ruby right now.”

  Onor swallowed. They knew more about him than he did about them. He didn’t even know the split-lip man’s name. Something hot gurgled and hissed through one of the pipes above him and steam escaped from a vent. “I promise.”

  “Then we will show you a little bit. Follow me.”

  “What would have happened if I didn’t promise?” he asked, feeling immediately foolish for asking.

  “We might have let you go back home and sleep.”

  He didn’t think so.

  A whistle stopped the conversation, and Jimmy led him to a gathering of about twenty people that centered around a tall man who stood with his back to them as they came up.

  Conroy.

  Onor didn’t need to see his face to know him.

  Other bodies pressed in from behind, and finally nearly fifty people had gathered, the whole group centered on Conroy. He nodded at the group, a quick glance. His eyes never fell on Onor. “Ten laps. Go.”

  There were thirty or so men and fifteen or so women, old and young, but all dirty and wearing gray. As one, they stepped out, settling on a pace that would push the slowest and warm up the fastest. Onor went with them, swept into a tide of running bodies. He had not tried to run since the day he came here, and one of his ribs suggested the idea wasn’t good. He held his side but kept up, the pace relentless.

  So many feet produced a soft thunder. There would be no one to hear it here.

  Part way through the second lap, Conroy came up beside him.

  Onor’s breath had already grown too labored for him to talk and keep the pace, but Conroy was in no such trouble. “Recovered from your welcoming?”

  “Yes.” He wanted to know how Conroy knew about the beating, but a full sentence was too much to say.

  “I transferred here.”

  “Rec” . . . pant . . . “cla” . . . pant . . . “mation?” Onor managed to grunt out.

  “Yes.” Conroy said. “But don’t get your hopes up. I’m only junior.”

  “Why?” They rounded a corner and started on the third lap. The space under the park felt bigger than the available walking space in the park. Of course, that wasn’t true, but he’d never gone so fast and been so tired all at once.

  “You’re here.” Conroy’s strides came easy to him. “Don’t ask about more now. Just do this. Run and work out every day. If you need me, find me in the plant. But there is no help for your sentence. Not now. So just do it well. When it’s time for you to know more, we’ll tell you.”

  And then he was gone, and Onor was alone to finish the last half of the last lap, the pain in his side sharp. But he knew this was no place to cry out. He held his side and focused on his steps and kept his world small and tight.

  Conroy hadn’t sounded upset about the beating. But he had come here for Onor. He had been very clear about that.

  27: The Morning After

  Ruby woke with the memory of Fox’s body imprinted in hers, the feel of his shoulder, the curve of his hip. His weight on top of her, light, part of it held by his hands and knees on the bed. The heat of him. She recalled the way his eyelashes looked in the pale light he’d set for them.

  His smell permeated her skin even though he had left her. She glanced at her chrono. It had been longer than she’d thought. She’d slept forever, as if taking Fox had drained all of the fear and anxiety from her and filled her entirely.

  She stretched, momentarily languid. Everything was different now. It would always be different. Possibilities beat through her blood, driving her out of bed.

  There would be someone waiting for her. Fox had told her that Ani or Dayn or both would be with her all the time, even here.

  She dressed and cleaned up, washing little enough that she still smelled of him, and of sex. She would see him at the studio in just a few hours, and maybe she would be able to hold him again.

  Ruby found Ani sitting and sipping stim on the living room couch with the lights still down.

  A pot of stim sat warming in the kitchen—her kitchen—and she screwed the lid free and poured some into her cup. She sat on the opposite end of the couch, crossing her legs, both more vulnerable and older than she had ever felt before. She wanted to blurt out about Fox, to tell Ani that she’d slept with him, that she was a woman and that a man loved her. Because that seemed like something a girl would do, she didn’t do it. “Good morning, Ani.”

  Ani looked worried. “I was about to wake you. We have to be at the studio in an hour, and you’ll want to eat.”

  “Did anything else happen? With Ellis or Sylva?”

  “No.” Ani sipped at her stim, the cup now half empty. “No, not at all. I think Fox has them cowed for now. You’re the talk everywhere. A curiosity. The rough and dirty girl from the far reaches come to make good. Most of them are rooting for you.”

  “Them?”

  “The people who live here. Peacers, entertainers, project managers, technology people, doctors. Like you have, only mostly knowing a little more.”

  “We don’t have tech people,” Ruby mused.

  Ani shrugged. “Maybe you do but you don’t recognize them. You fixed robots, right?”

  “That’s mechanics. Putting broken parts back on, cleaning them, making them do tests to prove they can obey.”

  “What do you do when they don’t obey?”

  “We dock ’em in storage bays until somebody fixes them.”

  “Anyway, the techs and everybody else are talking about you. I can’t decide whether to take you out all dressed up to show you off, or to grub you down so you stay interesting.”

  “Don’t I get to choose?” Ruby asked.

  “What would you choose?”

  Ruby closed her eyes and pictured herself walking out with her hair a mess and looking like a robot girl.

  She didn’t like it.

  “Let’s dress me up.”

  “I brought some things that will help. Follow me.” Ani grabbed a bag Ruby hadn’t noticed from the floor and led Ruby into the small second bedroom. Ani pulled out earrings and a necklace. Blue and gray strands of something flexible and shiny that occasionally met and twined through large red beads. She laid them across Ruby’s palm.

  The jewelry had better materials than she had ever worked with, each bead uniform in size, the colors bright. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Put them on.”

  She did, running to the privy to see how they looked. “I love th
em. How can I thank you?”

  “You being here thanks me. Now, come on back.”

  Next, Ani produced three blue shirts with cleverly cut and stitched necklines. The first was simple, the second had little cuffs at the sleeves, and the third had beadwork that must have taken hours. Not the blue and gray and red pattern of the jewelry, but white and yellow that showed prettily against the deep blue shirt. Ruby stared at the three shirts, then clutched up the simplest one. “This’ll go the best with the necklace.”

  “Take them all. You’ll have use for them all.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re for you. They wouldn’t fit me.”

  Ruby could count the number of times she’d had a new shirt—brand-new and never worn by anybody—on one hand. Now she had three of them. “Thank you.”

  Ani took out a small box. “There’s one more thing.”

  “This is too much.”

  Ani grinned widely, looking impish. “It was easy to talk people into helping.”

  Ruby took the box but looked at Ani before she opened it. “Are you afraid? Of going home? To Adiamo?”

  “Terrified.”

  Her eyes weren’t terrified at all. “And excited?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what you know?” Ruby pressed.

  “Open the box.”

  She did. Inside, she found a pair of wooden hair clips with silver suns and moons in them. Wood for this kind of project was unimaginable. Biomass was recycled. Daria had tried to make her hair clips once, only of metal and beads. They had fallen out of her hair no matter how she secured them. These lay light on her palm and the clasps looked sturdy. “I’ve never had a pair so nice.”

  Ani looked pleased. “Neither have I. Lanie gave them to me for you. Now let’s change and clean you up.”

  “I had a shower.”

  “Okay—but you still need some help.” When Ruby frowned, Ani said, “Trust me.”

  “Okay. You have to tell me what you know about Adiamo.”

  Ani laughed, leading Ruby into the privy and picking up the brush. “I played the game. We all did. You have it too, right?”

  “It’s not a game. It’s home. It’s where we’re going right now.”

  “Shhh . . . I know.” Ani was so tall she didn’t have to stand on tiptoe to reach the top of Ruby’s head for a tangle. “Hold still! Look, what did they tell you? What do you know?”

  “We had the game. That’s all.”

  Ani frowned. “Wow. That seems . . . I don’t know. Maybe people thought you didn’t want to know.”

  How could Ani be so naïve? “Look, they—you—don’t teach us anything you don’t think we need to know.”

  Ani swallowed and looked angry, but her voice toward Ruby was softer. “We have histories. Classes about where we came from. Of course, it’s been a long time here, but longer there. Who knows what Adiamo is like now?”

  “Wait, what?”

  Ani carefully placed one of the clips in Ruby’s hair and stood back, her head cocked. “I don’t understand the math. Time is different for the people standing still—living on Adiamo—than it is for us. More time has passed for them than for us. So we’ve had over four hundred years in flight, but they’ve been going on for a lot longer.” She took the clasp back out, brushed at Ruby’s hair again, and replaced the clip. “Fox thinks they’ll be dead by the time we get home, and Dayn thinks they’ll have really fast ships. Now, turn around.”

  Ruby turned, slower than her spinning thoughts. “What do you think?”

  “We need them to be alive. The Fire’s falling apart. So that’s what I think. That it’ll be okay.”

  “Why does Fox think they’ll be dead?”

  “Maybe he’s just teasing. No, don’t look yet. Let me get this one right.”

  “Okay.” Ruby kept her head down. Ani was wearing better shoes than Ruby had on, lace-up shoes that looked like they fit her, and they even had a tiny heel. They made Ruby’s boots look old and clumsy. She shouldn’t be worrying about boots. Not when they might all die, or their home people might all be dead. Or whatever. Shoes were easier to think about. She sighed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, think about how pretty you are. Here, look.”

  Now she did look older, and pretty. Her clothes looked sophisticated, all except her boots. “Thank you.” She also looked clean. The smooth fabric still felt strange against her skin, and the woman in the mirror had her features and her red hair, but couldn’t really be her. “I feel . . . different.” She stared a moment longer, recognizing the source of her unease. She looked like her mother. She didn’t want to become Suri, using sex to gain favors and safety.

  But that wasn’t why she slept with Fox. That was a thank-you, not a please.

  Ani’s words made it sound almost like she’d heard Ruby’s thoughts. “Being knock-out beautiful will help you get what you need. That’s just how people work.” Ani picked up the empty boxes and recycled them.

  “What about you?”

  Ani glanced down at her shirt, which was clean and plain. “I look fine. We’ll be late.”

  “Can you do my hair with one clip? In the back?”

  “It might not look as good.”

  “Can we try it?”

  It did look fine, and so Ruby brushed back Ani’s hair and fastened the other clip into it.

  Ani looked pleased. “Now can we go?”

  “Of course.”

  Ruby grabbed up her journal even though it hadn’t proven to work for anything except her own notes here. As she followed Ani through the corridors, she again noticed the woman’s grace. She moved even more sinuously that Suri did, and she seemed to do it without thinking about it.

  Ruby paid careful attention to the turns they took as they went from corridors of habs through corridors of small rooms where people worked and came back to Fox’s studio. Her feet lightened as they neared the door, and she felt a smile on her face even though she hadn’t asked it to grow there.

  Maybe this was what Carolyne felt for Jay or Lya for Hugh. Just coming into physical proximity excited her nerves and made her feel like dancing or singing. Good thing, since she was likely to be singing soon. Hopefully the headsets wouldn’t mess up her hair.

  Ani opened the door for her and said, “Good luck. I’ve got to go to work myself, but I’ll be back for you at the end of the day.”

  Ruby pursed her lips. She’d been hoping Fox would come home with her. Well, she’d have all day to make sure he wanted to, and she would use what she had. She touched her fingers to the smooth hard surface of the hair clip. “Thank you.”

  Ani leaned in and gave her a quick hug.

  As she walked into the studio, Ruby forgot Ani and the hug. She had expected to see Fox and maybe Dayn and the long empty room.

  Instead, every chair was full of blue-clad people wearing headphones, a few speaking softly to one another. It took her a while to spot Fox standing near the far end, leaning over a woman with glistening, dark braids that hung below her waist.

  Fox stood really close to the woman, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Whoever she was, she made Ruby feel drab even in her new clothes.

  Fox noticed Ruby when she was only a few meters from him, his smile wide and welcoming. “You look beautiful. I’ve been talking about you.” He turned to the braided woman. “This is Jaliet. Jali, meet Ruby.”

  Jaliet’s cheekbones were high and wide, her mouth generous, her eyes dark, with long, light lashes. Blue ribbons had been twisted carefully into her braids and then used to tie them off at the bottom.

  Jaliet’s eyes traveled up and down Ruby’s body twice before stopping on her face and gazing at her, pleased. “You are stunning. I can work with that.”

  Ruby didn’t know quite what to say, or if she should like any woman Fox had been standing so close to.

  Fox placed a warm arm around Ruby’s waist, pulling her close enough to him that she fel
t his body heat. “Jali will work with you on how to stand and move, how to dress, and how to speak.”

  She knew how to do those things, but she kept her mouth shut, willing to wait him out.

  Fox glanced up the row of busy people. “I have work to do for a few hours. Jali will keep you in her studio and Dayn will stay with you in case you need anything. Then, when this place clears out for lunch, we’ll start our first real recording session.” He leaned down and kissed her on her cheek—cool and fast—and then he was talking to someone else and she might as well have become invisible.

  As if summoned from a secret door in the air, Dayn appeared at Jali’s side, a sly grin on his face. He nodded at Jali. “We’ll meet you there.”

  The braided woman nodded. “It will only be a few moments.”

  Dayn gave Ruby a little bow and held out a hand. “Shall we?”

  Ruby still couldn’t decide if she liked Dayn; he always seemed to be making just a bit of fun of her. She didn’t take his hand, but she followed him out of the recording room and down the hallway, feeling like a child being herded back to the crèche by keepers. But she paid attention, determined to learn this new level.

  She might as well have been walking through a weird dream, full of strangers, while her old friends stood beyond a curtain, unreachable.

  It was easy to understand how the people here forgot the grays existed.

  She would remember. She would always be a gray deep inside.

  28: How Ani Got her Stride

  Ruby threw her pajamas into the hamper, wishing for a metal tool to clang into a metal bin. She stared at the barely-mussed bed and shook her head, anger threatening to flip to sadness. She pulled the covers up and frowned, then swore under her breath, cursing Fox and herself at the same time. Why did she expect Fox to slide into her bed every night, and why did it feel so damned cold and empty when he wasn’t here?

  She hated it. Having Fox was worse than not having him, except she could no longer imagine not having him. Five weeks ago she’d never had a man at all. Damn.

  She slid into underwear and a long shirt and stalked into the kitchen to pour a cup of stim. She didn’t bother to look into the living room. She already knew Dayn’s long, thin form would be there, bundled under her spare couch blanket, head on her spare pillow, arms up over his face to shield his eyes. He always slept like that when he was here, and he was always here when she slept alone.