The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  She and Kyle would like each other.

  She went on. “It’s probably all dead.”

  He wanted to put an arm around her and comfort her, but there was a palpable coolness between them still. He settled for saying, “I hope not.”

  They went on quietly, Nia still looking for her friend. This was part of the problem. He was prepared to fight for someone like Nia, but she might fight him back. She had listened to Ruby, but only until it cost her. Now she seemed to wish everything were like it had been. “I don’t like the work—who wants to just clean all day?” he said. “But now the reds’ve shown how cruel they are.”

  “They wouldn’t have hurt us without you three leading us into trouble.”

  “They would still control us.”

  She walked quietly for a while longer and he thought she was done with the conversation, but then she said, “I was happier before.”

  “Maybe we should sit down for a minute? Watch for your friend to run by?”

  She led him to a bench. “You remind me of my dad. Working out and running until you’re too tired.”

  “It helps me clear my head.”

  “Dad used to say the same thing.”

  “What do you do to feel better?” he asked her.

  “Nothing. I don’t feel better. Some days I don’t think I’ll ever feel better.” She was looking away from him, the light breeze of the park’s air circulation system blowing strands of dark hair across her face. After a while she said, “I’ll just get used to it. But it feels like I’ve been thrown away for nothing.”

  He didn’t know what to say. She’d never be strong like the people he ran with under the very same place they were sitting now. Not unless something big changed her, like she got hurt or someone she loved got hurt.

  He wanted Ruby, her spitfire and courage and the beauty of her determination.

  The roof of the park here was a steady blue with a few fake clouds wandering across it from time to time, as if a wind he couldn’t feel blew through the Fire. Being with Nia—so much the opposite of Marcelle and Ruby—had taught him more about who he was becoming than he had learned in all the year before.

  He jerked as Nia leapt up next to him, waving wildly at a young blond woman jogging toward them in the middle of a wide area of the park path. “Shell, Shell!”

  As Nia called her friend, the sheer joy in her voice was so unlike anything Onor had heard from her that it underscored how lonely she must be in their day-to-day barracks existence.

  Her friend broke into a crazed grin as she recognized Nia. Onor recognized her from class, a year-mate. She hadn’t studied with them in common, but she had been there the day they took the test, watching from near the back of the room. Because he remembered the look on her face that day, he wasn’t surprised when the wide grin that had emerged when she saw Nia turned to a grimace when she saw him.

  She stopped in front of them.

  Nia threw herself into her friend’s arms, the two moaning as if their separation had lasted months or years instead of weeks. They eventually detangled one from the other and held each other at arm’s length, saying, “How are you?” at exactly the same moment.

  Then they both started talking at once, and finally Nia said, “You first.”

  Shell glanced at Onor then back at Nia, a question clearly written on her face.

  Nia glanced at him, and Onor half expected her to ask him to leave. But she managed to give him a pale smile before answering Shell’s look. “Onor and I live in the same place. A lot of people live there; one of the lower barracks. I asked him to bring me up to see you, and well, it worked. You’re here.”

  “How come you don’t talk to me on your journal?”

  “I haven’t been able to. Or to get any news. It’s like being in lockup, even though I’m at the crèche during the day. But my ID doesn’t let me get anything in or out there either, like I was a kid.” She sped up, words following words as if they’d been stuck in her throat forever. “They let me go out with Onor today. Not that anyone directly stops you; they just make it clear you shouldn’t wander around. I’ve taken a few short walks, but never this far. There’s a lot of robots down there, and I never know if they’re watching me. And I’m so tired when I get home.”

  Onor broke in, asking Shell, “What happened to you? In the reassignment?”

  Shell narrowed her eyes. “Nothing except I ended up here. I was studying to work in the water plant and I do. Just a different one.” Shell turned back to Nia. “They made it hardest on the fools who followed Ruby.”

  Nia winced and said, “Have you seen Leff?”

  “How? He’s not here.” Then her voice softened. “Surely they’ll let you go back soon. You’ve gotten permission to get married.”

  “Before they banned it.”

  Shell’s face hardened. She gave Onor an accusing look, but said nothing.

  Onor turned away to let them talk without him.

  “Wait,” she said. “I have news for you.”

  Onor turned around, apprehensive.

  “Ruby abandoned you. She left you all.”

  He stiffened. “No.” Surely she hadn’t.

  Shell stopped and looked at him. “I overhead two reds talking. There’s more around now, so they must come from the other level. I mean they don’t just grow them.”

  He hadn’t seen more reds, but then he spent all his time in the lowest levels of gray.

  Shell looked like she was enjoying the uncomfortable way he felt. “They said they heard her sing wherever they come from.”

  Well, good. He wasn’t surprised. He’d been worrying, but he’d have known if she was dead. Surely he would have.

  “Her lover came out for her and took her inside.”

  Onor kept his feet planted. “Fox. I know.”

  “He lives with her. He’s making her into something special. The two reds sounded jealous and a little in awe, like she’d somehow gotten lucky. He must be a big thing there.”

  Shell was enjoying this far too much.

  Onor’s mouth tasted bitter. “She hasn’t forgotten us. You don’t know her. Maybe she can’t figure out how to get us in there yet, but she will.”

  “She’s not coming back,” Shell said. “Ever.”

  32: A Moment of Freedom

  Bells started so soft Ruby could barely hear them even though she was awake on the soft bed, ear cocked, naked. The bells grew steadily louder until they engulfed her. She let them keep rising, drawing frustration up her spine with each peal.

  She’d asked to choose the alarm settings herself, and Fox had laughed and played five or six choices for her. She had almost no access to the controls for her own house. She could tell the kitchen to start the dishwasher or heat water. Fox, Ani, Dayn, and maybe other people had access, and they directed the systems for her.

  The bells rang louder in her ears, as if shaking her awake.

  She was alone in her warm bed, but Fox had been beside her until an hour or so ago.

  She shouldn’t hate the bells. At least she had them. Grays had far fewer voice commands, and they couldn’t wake to bells, or the high female-voiced song she had liked, or even the default tones that sounded way too happy for her to stand them.

  “I’m awake. Ten minutes.”

  The room responded, breaking a tone just after it started.

  She stood up, naked and still a bit sore and warm from the ways Fox had touched her body the night before. She still smelled of him, too, of sweat and sex and heat. She slid into undergarments and pulled a long sleep shirt over her head. No point in letting Dayn see what she gave to Fox. Dayn had been getting flirty lately.

  After she dressed she lay back down and waited for the bells to go off again. She stretched one arm and then the other, one leg and the other, pulled her arms one by one up beside her ears, and arched her back. Her schedule included KJ’s class today, and she lay stretching until the bells grew loud enough to force her from bed.

  Dayn stood in
the kitchen, sipping from a nearly empty cup of stim. He smelled good as she walked past him, and she did her best to keep a body thickness of distance between them. The way he attracted her just by standing around and being insolent stiffened her back. There were women, like her mother, who went from man to man easily. She wasn’t going to be one of them.

  “What do I do next?” she asked him. “Studio?”

  He laughed. “Not my day to keep you. Ani’s on her way.”

  “What if I want to do something no one has a plan for?”

  “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

  Sure she did. She was alive. “You make too many choices for me.”

  Dayn gestured around the hab. “You could decorate.”

  “I could have permission to set my own wake-up choices.”

  He laughed. “Probably a couple of other ways you could develop a spine, too.”

  She stopped and stared at him, her gaze level and her top teeth worrying her bottom lip. He was right. She was taking this gentle captivity lying down. Some would say that with a sneer and double meaning, and she might have said it that way about anyone else. Her cheeks grew hot. She shouldn’t be mad at Fox. She should hate herself instead.

  She didn’t hate Fox. She didn’t.

  There was no reason to—he was soft and sweet with her. Damn. She crossed her arms and stood straighter. “All right, Dayn. What do you suggest?”

  He shook his head at her. “I’m not that disloyal. But changing your alarm clock’s not exactly the defiance I expected you to want.”

  “You sleep in my living room just because he tells you to.”

  “I didn’t tell you to rebel against Fox.” He was laughing at her, but there was an edge in his voice. “Your song sounded like you had a cause, but I’m not so sure. I don’t think you really care much about your friends slaving away under your feet.”

  She grabbed her cup of stim and held onto it tight, biting her tongue and blinking back unexpected tears. Angry ones.

  He continued, leaning over her close enough that she could smell the stale stim and sleep on his breath and the soft sweat that beaded his forehead. “As far as I can tell, the only person you love is yourself.”

  “No,” she said, evenly and louder than she meant to.

  “Oh, yes.” He grinned at her again, clearly having a great time baiting her.

  She wanted to yell at him so badly; she could taste the bitter words on her tongue. How did he know who she cared about? He didn’t know anything about her or about her friends or about her life. Sure, she’d told them all a few things, but Dayn wasn’t gray, and he didn’t know what it was like to be afraid. “What do you care enough about to pick a fight over?”

  He lost the laughter on his face and in his voice. He gave her a long, rather uncharacteristically somber look before answering. “You. We came for you and fought some people with power for you, and Fox comes almost every night for you, but you’re not who I thought you were at all.” He was still close, his breath warm on her scalp above her ear. “You’re not very brave or very smart or very anything at all. Fox is already getting a little bored of you.”

  She took a step back from him and then realized what she had done. She set her cup down, then stepped back forward, even closer to him. “You don’t have to stay, you know.”

  “Sure I do. Who’s going to tell your hab what to do for you?”

  If she’d still had the cup in her hand, she’d have thrown it at him. “I’ve got class today. I’m going to change.”

  She didn’t let herself cry until she was in the shower, and she managed to stop again during the whisper of time before her water allocation shut off. As she dried the tears and water from her face, her eyes were still red. By the time she’d dressed in loose clothes and pulled her hair back in a band she looked collected.

  When she got back out to the kitchen, Ani stood there. She gave Ruby a quizzical look. “What’d you do to Dayn? He laughed on the way out the door and told me to watch you extra closely today.”

  Ruby kept her voice even as she cut out a protein slice and picked a handful of orbfruit from the fridge. “I just asked him for help, that’s all.”

  “You can trust him,” Ani said. “Drink some water. You need to be hydrated for class.”

  Frustration stopped Ruby’s hand midway through its work of putting breakfast on a plate. “Who are you people when you’re not with me, and what do you do?” She leaned back, the counter a hard stop just at her waist. “What am I to you anyway?”

  Ani let out a long sigh. “Can you just accept that I’m your friend? For now? This talk needs Fox.”

  Ruby put an orbfruit in her mouth, hoping its sweetness would help her stop sounding bitter. She wasn’t really mad at Ani. Ani just happened to be here, now, and her family wasn’t, and Ani wasn’t Onor or Marcelle, and she wished she knew how they were. She finished her fruit, swallowing hard. “I want to run my own house and I want to be alone from time to time and I want to have at least the freedom I had back home.”

  Ani nodded, only looking a little surprised. “So what do you want?” Ani asked. “I mean from me, now.”

  Ruby finished her fruit. “Information. I want to understand what makes this ship tick and what people do and how it’s going to be when we get to Adiamo and what Fox wants to change and why Dayn is so pissed off at me.”

  “I’ll tell you what I can on the way to class. Some of those questions aren’t mine to answer.”

  “I heard you the first time.”

  Ani grimaced. “Don’t be mad at me.”

  “I’m not.” Ruby took two deep breaths. Had Dayn really upset her that much? “Sorry. I guess I’m making everyone mad this morning.”

  “Dayn looked amused.”

  Great. But Ruby shut up and buckled down to her light breakfast, waiting for Ani to offer up information.

  Ani didn’t look at her, but looked at the door instead, as if wanting to make sure no one came in.

  After the silence had gone on a while, Ruby spoke softly. “At home, Ix can’t hear inside our habs. Is that true here, too?”

  Ani gave a soft smile. “That’s a lie on gray levels, too. But there are rules that keep Ix from passing what it hears inside habs to the peacers. I doubt that still applies if Ix thinks it hears anything really dangerous.” She waved a hand at the air, as if the AI were all around them. But that wasn’t what she meant at all. “This is your home now. You live here. This is the central logistics level, which is why so many of us are blue. That’s the work that gets done here. Out a level—that’s the physical work. The Fire was designed to be purely that way—for all the body labor to be out there and all the head work and planning to be here, and the command is inward again.”

  “Wait—they don’t teach us this. They don’t teach us anything. They even act like the design of the Fire is a secret.”

  “You have the same access that any of us in logistics had as kids. Go study.”

  Ruby sat back. “What do you mean?”

  “Ask your journal. Ask Ix. It’ll tell you.”

  “I hate Ix.”

  “Ix is the glue on this ship.”

  “Then Ix is in a unique position to make things fairer by giving up a little more information.”

  “Ship AI’s are controlled by a set of rules they aren’t allowed to change. Otherwise they might decide they don’t need us.”

  “But Ix is here to protect us!” Suri had told her that from the time she was a baby.

  Ani laughed. “So do you hate Ix or do you like Ix?” She didn’t look like she expected an answer, which was a good thing, since Ruby wanted to say she hated Ix, but it had felt like a lie when the same words slipped across her tongue earlier. Something to think about.

  Ix had helped Fox find her, but it had also helped betray her on test day.

  Ani poked her gently. “Look, we’ve got to go soon. What do you want to know?”

  “Command. You said there’s a command. That’s anoth
er level?”

  “That’s the heart of the Fire.”

  “Can we go there? Is that the only other level—so there’re three? Does it have a color?”

  Ani laughed. “No, we can’t go there, not easily.” She must have seen the look on Ruby’s face, since she added, “No, no rules between logistics and workers, like you faced. We can go easier than you got here. Fox went once, when he was about your age. Maybe ten years ago?”

  Ruby picked up her plate and put it away. “How did he get there?”

  “Someone’s daughter thought he was cute.” Ani drifted toward the door. "KJ hates it when we’re late.”

  “All right. Have you been there? To command?”

  Ani laughed. “I’m not very influential.”

  Ani didn’t offer anything else on the way to work out.

  Ruby had taken to working near the front of the class, close enough to admire the blue and gold in KJ’s eyes and to watch the way he folded the whole class into his very being. A look from him could deepen a stretch, raise a jump, or help a student remember to tighten the top of their thigh to keep from falling out of a one-legged stretch.

  Ani stayed near her, and by now they were nearly even, the main difference a bit more grace on Ani’s part as they transitioned from stretch to stretch. Ani clearly adored KJ, the look on her face as she watched him showed admiration at least, maybe more. She softened more for KJ than for Fox, although both men clearly attracted her.

  At the end of class, KJ didn’t walk off like he usually did. He stood, watching the room empty, and Ani stood as well. After the other students had gone, KJ came over to them. His hand fell familiarly on Ani’s shoulder, and he asked her, “Do you have a few minutes?”

  Ruby stood, slightly stunned that he apparently wanted to talk to Ani and not to her.

  “I can find my way home,” Ruby blurted out.

  Ani bit her lip and gave a meaningful glance at Ruby, as if KJ should intuit that she couldn’t be left alone.

  “I won’t tell Fox.”

  KJ chose to stay silent, watching.

  Ani said, “She needs to be protected.”

  KJ still said nothing, but his look indicated disapproval for Ani’s position.