The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  His diction was perfect and even, a cleaner voice than Onor had ever heard. He seemed to be able to look them all in the eye at once.

  “There is a lot that can’t be told yet, but I wanted to finally speak in person and see your faces and show you mine. For the next short while we must all work hard together. We must keep our work secret. We will blend the colors of the ship so that some day we can walk wearing red pants and a blue shirt and gray shoes.”

  He stepped forward into the center of the light and it was clear he wore green. All green. “And a green hat. This is the color of command, and at the moment it is the color I must wear, as you must wear gray. We will all need to work in our places, but we are fighting together to honor each other.

  “I believe you are the most important people on the ship. Without you there is no food, no water, no life. Gray is the color of life here, and The Creative Fire was designed to honor the work of life rather than to lock it up. I have no interest in apologizing for the choices made by people in the past; my choices are for the future. We can walk together into a good future, a strong future, a fair future.”

  Joel fell silent. For a moment all that could be heard were the slight sounds of people shifting position and the hums and clicks of the Fire herself.

  Joel spoke into the quiet he had created. “We will have an exercise soon. It will be real in some ways, and you must be ready, and you must obey Conroy and Aric and your other leaders. I am proud of them, and of you, and happy to see your faces and show you mine. I don’t have a date yet, but . . .” a pause, “events are hurrying us up.”

  Onor wondered if the man meant Ruby and then decided that was silly. All of this had been going on while he and Ruby were still children. Penny had been training most of her life. He settled back to listen.

  “We are a mighty army. We are more than you see here. More than one hab and even more than one level. You matter, you give weight to what we do to free you, whether or not we call on you individually. Be vigilant. Be hopeful. Be strong.”

  A pause. Silence. Breathing.

  He continued. “This is a time to be brave. Can you be brave?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” chorused voices, and Onor heard his own join in.

  “You may hear rumors that people were taken. Those are true. But it is only three people out of hundreds of you—of us—who went to lock up. Stay true. Can you stay true?”

  The chorus of yeses came again.

  “Can you stay true even if some of you die, if half of you are locked up?”

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Thank you.” The man sounded so sincere; Onor believed he meant the thanks.

  Then he was gone.

  Joel. Onor would remember that name. Joel.

  30: The Unveiling

  There were nearly thirty people in Ruby’s hab. Elbows bumped; feet got stepped on; a glass of juice spiked with still spilled on the floor, leaving a sweet, heady scent even after Dayn cleaned it up.

  The constant low chatter made Ruby feel like a string had been pulled tight through her temples. The crowd seemed to have weight, to press on her, and she smiled and nodded and shook hands and made small talk, every gesture an attempt to impress. Fox moved beside her, graceful and smooth of speech.

  The event had unleashed color throughout the room. The base dress was still always the uniform, but whites and golds and bright yellow lined collars and cuffs, hung around necks, glittered in ears and hair, and decorated belts. Accent colors had shown up at home; she’d made them in the beaded necklaces. But they had never been so bold, and now the whole level felt new again, and strange.

  Jali’s basic blue uniform had been toned to a soft blue. Bright pink buttons and pink piping along the carefully cut shirt showed off her lithe body. Her black hair hung loose, a dark cloud floating around her face and shoulders, making her look even thinner and more mysterious than usual.

  For Ruby, Jali had chosen a dress uniform in the darkest navy permissible, with a white collar, a white belt, and white triangles sewn in the outside of the pant legs. Ruby loved the way the soft material clung to her arms and thighs so that every step felt like walking through a massage. She had chosen only one part of her outfit: the gray, blue, and red beaded necklace she had saved from the trash the day she arrived here.

  There was no music. Fox had made that choice, and almost all the choices about food and people.

  Her voice teachers, Mala and Henri, were both dressed up in shockingly bright blue matching shirts lined with gold. Mala looked uncomfortable, and Henri so clearly reveled in the attention of various females that Ruby went up to him and whispered in his ear. “You never flirted that much with me.”

  “Oh, no, how could I?” He glanced slyly at Fox. “But if you want me to?”

  “Only if you don’t mean it. It’s my nerves showing.”

  She slipped into the kitchen to get a moment’s peace. What was she doing? Everything here was so different from home; it made her dizzy. She wanted Marcelle and Onor. She loved it here and she didn’t, and nothing was what she’d expected.

  She was becoming her mother. Suri would approve of her in this setting. But she’d come here because of Nona, and she needed to remember that.

  She downed a glass of water and dodged a serving bot Fox had arranged for. There were only a few minutes left. She could plunge back into the crowd and do this. She could.

  She’d started talking stiffly to Jaliet about KJ’s class when a soft tone started to rise throughout the room. She stopped. The music stilled her, the moment before her song.

  Sweaty shakes descended on her.

  She had expected to be excited.

  She hated fear.

  As Ruby looked around the room, the conversation died away and people started looking back at her. She swallowed.

  Jali took her arm and hissed, “Stand up straight. Be brave.”

  Ruby straightened her back and smiled.

  Her own voice spilled into the room, honed by her teachers Mala and Henri, recorded by Fox, who had magicked it into something deeper and more resonant than she would have ever thought possible.

  In early memory my mother sings. She tells me

  how her mother bent over a broken robot

  touching its hard metal joints with her warm hands

  twisting a worn bolt so we can fly safe and true.

  She must have fixed it. We are here today and

  I am singing the women down

  to sleep inside the belly of the Fire

  In the summer orchard, growth light shines

  On the twisted limbs of an orbfruit tree so old

  it might have been a seed from home. My father

  picked yellow fruit the color of the light

  to feed us through all the harvests and

  I am singing the strong men down down

  to sleep inside the belly of the Fire

  At the end of the day, the apprentices

  in the crèche dress the children to go home

  with tired mothers and fathers and uncles

  who have worked all day to keep the Fire

  a safe cradle through the dark unknown and

  I am singing the parents down

  to sleep inside the belly of the Fire

  She had crafted two stanzas to describe things the peacers and the logistics crew had never done with their own hands, and the other to end with something they must. The words were hers. Most of the things about the song that had to do with the lilt and timing of them, but Henri had done the score. He had created a long, haunting end that sounded like wind and stars, like the things she imagined lived outside the ship even though she had never seen the universe except in pictures. She had argued with him at first, wanting something angrier, but as she watched people’s faces she saw that Henri had been right. The song had become more than she had imagined.

  The last note faded.

  People came up to her one at a time and congratulated her and asked questions and kissed her
on the cheek. They hugged her briefly and commented on her voice. They asked her questions about fixing robots and making the beaded necklaces. One woman engaged her in a long conversation about Owl Paulie and spoke as if she’d known him, which grated right up Ruby’s spine and made it hard for her to keep smiling. She did, though.

  By the time her hab finally began to empty, her feet had become leaden with pain from standing.

  As she watched Dayn usher the last of the guests who weren’t part of the song out, she flopped onto the couch and tucked her feet under her. Fox joined her. After the crowded party, the room felt empty even though she and Fox and Dayn and Ani all sat near each other. Henri lounged against a wall; Mala sat on the floor; and Jali perched on the arm of the couch near Fox.

  “Play it again?” Henri asked.

  Fox complied, and they listened all the way through. Ruby expected the kind of bickering and fault-finding that had accompanied the retakes and the laying down of various sounds across the music. Instead, there was silence, and in the end Henri spoke first, addressing Fox, but looking at Ruby. “You were right. Getting her was a risk worth taking.”

  Jali reached across Fox’s back, leaning into him, placing a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “You did well. Really well.”

  “No one asked me to sing,” Ruby said. She had forgotten about that.

  “Yes, they did.” Fox said.

  “Well? Why didn’t I?”

  Jali, back in her original position, said, “You did well at the party. You did all that you possibly could.”

  “I could have sung!” The words blurted out of her. “I can sing for anybody.”

  Fox kissed her on the temple. “Be patient.”

  They said that a lot. All of them. Be patient. We’ll let you out into the real world of this level soon. We’ll let you out of our sight soon. We’ll tell you how things work soon. Surely she was just tired, and she shouldn’t feel this way. Fox loved her, and he was helping make her dreams come true. Some of them anyway.

  She set her face into a smile and chose to stay quiet and listen to the rest of the conversation, hoping for any bit of information she could add to the store she was slowly accumulating.

  31: Lessons

  Onor and Penny and the few others from the barracks who participated in the late-night training sessions dragged home so late that he expected to find everyone still asleep the next morning. He hobbled into the shared galley for a glass of water and found Nia, the other exiled student, sitting quietly in a corner. Either she hadn’t slept or she had risen very early. Since she usually ignored him he didn’t bother to say hello.

  To his surprise, she came over and offered him a cup of water. Her voice sounded soft and hesitant as she asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Sure. Tired.”

  “They make you work this hard to clean?”

  He hesitated. “I . . . went for a run.”

  She took the empty cup from him, refilled it, and handed it to him afresh. She averted her eyes, and her small hands slid slowly from the cup.

  “Thank you.”

  “You look very tired,” she said.

  “I am.” He looked more closely at her. Circles darkened her cheeks under her pretty black eyes. “Are you okay here, Nia? How’s work?” He was stumbling, sounding awkward. “Can I do anything for you?”

  When she looked back at him he saw a little shred of hope in her eyes, like the tiny pride he’d taken in being able to lap Conroy.

  He had been wallowing in himself. Perhaps the reason she had not met his eyes wasn’t about him at all. Even though he still felt depressed, he was getting better. He didn’t wake up at night and stare at the ceiling for hours anymore. Good enough, at least, to see that someone else might be in pain, too. He chided himself for being a self-centered bastard and asked her again, “Can I help you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Want to just talk? About anything?”

  She swallowed and nodded, like the word yes was too much to say.

  The barracks included a large common room, but it was surely half full of people. “Would you like to take a walk?” he asked her.

  She nodded again. “Can we go to the park? I heard that one of my friends goes there sometimes in the mornings and I’d like to see if she’s there.”

  He felt way too tired and achy to get there easily. “Of course.” He set his cup down and grabbed his journal.

  Onor led Nia through the corridor outside the barracks. “I haven’t seen the park here yet,” he mused. “Have you?”

  “No, but aren’t they all alike?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only seen two.”

  “Oh.”

  Nia spoke almost hesitantly. “I almost feel like I shouldn’t be going to the park. Like we’re not good enough for that now. We’re exiles.”

  “No,” he said. “I mean yes, I don’t think they’ll stop us from going to the park. I haven’t seen reds on guard between us and where we used to live. Just between pods.”

  In the bright light of the corridor Nia looked pale and smeared out. She kept up with him pretty well, trying to stay where she could look at his face. It made him feel like he was taking and constantly retaking a truth test with her, like she was trying like hell to trust him but wasn’t quite sure she did, or could.

  Eventually he asked her, “What did you leave behind? What were you going to be?”

  She laughed bitterly. “Married. In a week. I was going to work in the gardens and harvest and prepare food to store and to eat. I should be chopping tomatoes and washing fruit.”

  “What’s your boyfriend like?”

  “Fiancé.” She spoke the word like a sigh. “Leff? He’s tall and thin. He’s handsome in his own way. At least I think so. Some of the girls don’t, but that’s their loss. He’s sweet, too. Kisses me goodnight on the cheek. He asked me to marry him the day before everything broke. He’s two years older, so he’s already working, back in B. He works in clothes.”

  “Clothes?”

  “Sure. Where do you think your clothes come from? Someone has to make them.”

  “I just . . . thought it would be robots.”

  “If robots made them, clothes wouldn’t be so scarce.” She reached out and touched his uniform shirt, the fingers hesitant and quickly withdrawn. “Besides, they make the red and blue uniforms too. And green ones.”

  He thought of Joel.

  “Anyway, Leff told me to stay away from you and Ruby and everybody. He said you’d cause me trouble.”

  Onor had a vague memory of Nia studying with them for the last few sessions. “You didn’t, did you?”

  She shook her head. “I liked how Ruby talked pretty. The way she said it could all be better and we didn’t have to let the reds push us around.”

  He bristled at Nia’s tone. “We don’t have to.”

  She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “Look, I know you love Ruby. It’s been written on your face from the first time I saw you. But maybe there’s never anything more for us than this.”

  Even though they were close to the park, he stopped her right there in the metal corridor, putting a hand on her slender shoulder. “Meaning you’re content never to see Leff again?”

  Her eyes widened. “Of course not.”

  “Or for some red to decide you’re cute and he wants to sleep with you?”

  She took a step back from him. “They’ve never done anything like that.”

  He lowered his voice. “You’re lucky. Some of the reds back home beat us, and one of Ruby’s friends was raped over and over and she died in Ruby’s arms. That’s why she’s so passionate about all of this. She knows how much it hurts.”

  Nia stared up at him, keeping her distance. She shook a little.

  He was almost whispering now. “Look, I know it feels dangerous.” He licked his lips and wished he’d thought to bring water. He couldn’t talk about the insurrection army he had just finished running with. “It is dangerous. That’s why we’r
e here. But we can’t just give up.”

  “Can we go to the park now?” she asked, her voice small.

  “Of course.” He should be doing more, convincing her that she had to fight. But before they even made it to the park he had a different thought. Maybe they couldn’t all be warriors. Maybe Nia wasn’t ready to be anything else. But he wasn’t just getting in shape and learning to fight for himself. He was doing it for Nia, too, even if she didn’t know how much it mattered. Maybe they were all fighting for Nia, and for the old, and for the babies in the crèche.

  Nia was a little ahead of him as they rounded the last corridor into the park. It did look a lot like the one on C, where the sky had literally fallen, except there were a few more trees and they were younger. Stylized symbols of suns and stars and space had been carved into one bench and a simple tree into another.

  Nia wanted to walk, so he walked. The exertion warmed his legs up and loosened some of the sore spots. “Tell me about your family?” he asked.

  “My mom and dad are both good. Dad works in the common kitchen and Mom’s a teacher and they’ve always done that.”

  “What do they do when they’re not working?”

  “Mom likes to dance. She and her sister dance. Dad works out a lot and runs in the park. That’s part of why I like coming here.” She was craning her head, looking around. Probably looking for her friend. “What about yours?” she asked.

  “They’re dead. They had an accident, but people say they were killed by the reds.”

  She looked at him hard, and what he imagined he saw in her eyes was something like, no wonder you’re a revolutionary. She didn’t say that, but she did start walking a little further away from him, as if his wanting them all to be free was a sickness that might rub off on her more than it already had.

  He tried to restart the conversation. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  “What do you like to do?”

  “Do you mean what did I like to do?”

  He swallowed. “Sure.”

  “I liked to grow things. I kept my own garden in the hab. I had basil and oregano and lavender.”