She did have an idea of the enemies. “I’m among friends out there. I’ll be sure Onor or Marcelle or someone is with me.” And before he could argue further, “Oh . . . and I told Haric he could help me—be a runner. Can you fix up his security?”
Joel blinked at her, as if barely following the change, then she saw his first smile since she’d come out of the privy. It quirked up one side of his mouth a little more than the other, taking a few years off. He was still older than she was by double, but when she could get him to play, it relaxed him. She uncrossed her ankles and bent slightly at the waist to take his hand from her calf and cup it in both of her hands. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t say yes.”
“Please?”
“Yes.”
She would take that as a yes for permission to travel and for Haric.
He let her pull him up beside her and then they were kissing again, her fingers undoing the buttons on his uniform shirt as his hand slid between her thighs.
“She’s never going to leave him for you,” Marcelle muttered.
“I never thought she was.” Onor sipped his stim, savoring the bitter taste. The big shared galley was noisy with traffic as people waited for Ben’s funeral to start.
“Are you going to be alone your whole life?”
He swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“I can picture it now. You can sit and watch her sing every day. You can collect a hug every night as she goes to some other man’s bed.” Marcelle pushed away from their shared table. “I’ll be right back.” She left too quickly for him to make out the nuances of her expression. She hadn’t sounded bitter or mad. Maybe frustrated. He sighed.
This was the first time he’d seen Marcelle since they found Ben’s body three days ago, and here she was teasing him about Ruby already. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know Marcelle. Maybe there was a downside to being known too well.
He sighed and sipped more stim, feeling it crawl along his nerves and wake him up from the inside out. Joel probably knew exactly how he felt, but surely he also knew that Onor respected him. Ruby alone would not have freed the ship, could not have. She’d needed Joel’s contacts in command, and his tactical skills. His ruthlessness. He’d needed her support in gray. A relationship built around mutual power.
“Hey.” Marcelle slid back into her seat. “Quit thinking so hard. We have work to do. Whoever killed Ben might show up at his funeral.”
“You know,” Onor mused, “I thought that when we won, we won. That everything would be better. But it’s almost as bad.”
“It’s not as bad.” Marcelle gave her cup down to a passing kitchen bot. “Before we won, we knew who was on our side, and it was almost no one. It’s harder to see our enemies when they don’t show themselves by the color of their clothes. At least there are fewer of them.”
“There’s more. We used to only see the ones who came to us. Now there’s a ship full.”
“And a ship full of friends.”
“The dangers are a little harder to smell out.”
She laughed. It was true, though. Before the day the ship’s walls opened between the outer habs where the grays lived and worked and rest of the ship, they hadn’t been sure of the Fire’s size. There were four levels, each level a ring inward from the outermost skin of the Fire. He liked to think of the setup as keeping gray closest to space, to the planets and suns and other worlds that were surely just on the other side of the insulating cargo ring. He imagined that he and Ruby and Marcelle grew up as near to the stars as they could get. When they were kids, Ben had chased them out of all kinds of trouble. Onor swallowed, his throat hot with memory. “I miss Ben already.”
“Me, too.”
Onor set his own cup on another bot, and stood up. “I’m tired of people dying. Let’s go make sure no one else dies today.”
When they arrived in common, the big room was already crowded.
“I didn’t expect so many people,” Marcelle said.
“Ruby wanted everyone on the ship to watch. So orders went everywhere.”
Marcelle let out a long, slow whistle. “Wow.”
“I bet a lot of people are here just to hear her sing.”
“Well they certainly didn’t all know Ben,” Marcelle muttered.
Sure enough, there were hand-lettered signs with Ruby’s name on them, and he saw three shirts with her name worked into them as well: dyed, and in one case, embroidered in multi-colored thread.
Onor touched the pin he and Marcelle wore. The flattened-oval pin was the same shape as the Fire, and the only way to tell he and Marcelle were on patrol.
Screens around them hummed alive, still blank but ready. Ix’s most commanding voice played from all of the speakers at once. “Please take a seat. We are gathered to honor the life of Ben Lubuck, a member of the peacekeeping force of The Creative Fire.”
There weren’t enough places to sit. Children got pulled fussing into laps and some adults chose to simply lean against any available wall space.
There was no way for this ceremony to avoid echoing Owl Paulie’s funeral, where Ben had stood beside Ruby as she sang “The Owl’s Song,” which—in a way—had started all of this.
Ruby chose to play up the parallel. Everyone in the cramped room with her had dressed in a mishmash of uniform colors. She’d even gotten Joel to change his usual green dress shirt for a gray one. Onor smiled, wishing he’d had a surveillance bot on the wall for that conversation. Instead of the usual two blue attendants, Ani stood at Ruby’s side, and beside Joel, Chitt, who had been a red—a peacekeeper—like Ben. Also like Ben, Chitt had supported Ruby’s bid for equality early. It also meant there was a green, a blue, a red, and a gray on the stage, all of them wearing mixed up colors now. Onor admired Ruby’s choices.
Joel spoke first, his voice booming through the speakers. “Thank you, thank you. Thank you for the honor of your attendance. I don’t know how many of you knew Ben, but when we are done with his story, all of you will know him, and will know how much he meant to this ship.”
An interesting opening.
On-screen, Joel continued. “Ben started his career as a peacekeeper in command. He was my bodyguard when I was in school. He escorted me to and from school, to and from play sessions, and kept me safe. He stopped a plot to steal Garth’s daughter, Alinia. He was hurt in the process, but highly decorated for saving the young woman’s life. After he recovered, he was offered a job with fewer physical requirements, but he refused. He asked to go out to gray and help there.”
Wow. A whole backstory Onor hadn’t known at all. Interesting.
“And now, I’ll pass the storytelling onto Ruby Martin.” Joel gave a little flourish.
A smattering of clapping started.
She put her hands up, palms out, to request quiet. After it came, she said, “I hope that clapping was for Ben. Without him, I wouldn’t be wearing these colors. I wouldn’t have sung for Owl Paulie all those months ago. Ben watched over me and my friends when we were children. He failed to report us when we snuck into workshops and onto roofs, although he chased us back home. He gave us grief for bad choices, but he didn’t let them ruin us.”
Onor felt his eyes sting and his jaw tighten. He had the same memories, the same love for the old man whose body lay wrapped in red cloth at Ruby’s feet.
Marcelle’s arm slid around Onor’s waist and he leaned into her a little, forgetting to watch the crowd.
“Because of Ben, we learned enough fear to be careful. Most importantly, Ben taught us that reds were not all evil. Oh, he could be tough. I saw him turn in a thief once, and catch a man who drank and beat his wife and children. But he didn’t overplay his hand on the simple transgressions of childhood. He acted like a father to us. That was something none of the three of us had.
“I met other reds who used their power for evil, who raped, who killed, who tormented.”
She paused, and Onor remembered uncountable nights alone. Reds had killed his p
arents.
Ruby spoke into the silence of his remembering. “Ben was never like that. He never betrayed or hurt anyone. He disciplined, he lectured.” Her voice had grown thick but it only made the quiet in common deeper as people strained to make out her words. “He loved.”
He held Marcelle’s small hand tight while Ruby said, “Ben was a traditional man. He would have wanted me to sing the traditional song. So join with me while I do that. When we’re done, I have a special song that I wrote just for you all tonight. But first . . .”
She launched into the funeral song, her voice coming from all around them. She left out all of the frills and trills that had crept into some of her more recent work; she sang as true and traditional as he’d ever heard.
Tears ran down Marcelle’s face. He gave her hand a fresh squeeze and leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I’ll be back. Save my seat.”
“No, I’ll come,” she said, wiping at her cheeks.
They walked slowly around the room, scanning the crowd. Most people seemed affected by the funeral, quiet or even tearful. There were people he knew. Fingers to touch and shoulders to put a hand on briefly.
He watched for The Jackman, but didn’t see him.
Two boys pelted along a wall with makeshift guns and almost knocked him down, but he managed to avoid them.
The song trailed off. Ruby held the last note for a long time, her voice strong. She fed from these people, from being watched.
She spoke. “Thank you for joining me. We wish Ben good travels.”
Then the ritual started—the picking up of the body, the careful slide of corpse and board down the chute and out to become space debris among the stars. Maybe there was something good for Ben to see out there. Maybe, like the song suggested, the dead among the Fire’s crew would meet Ben in space. He snorted. A child’s hope.
The world had lost someone good.
Ruby turned back toward them, a faint trail of tears visible on her cheeks. “Ben was a symbol—he was red through and through. He held the highest ideals of a peacekeeper. He should be an example to all of you who once wore red.
“We, the crew of the Fire, must be one people, for we will be home soon and we must speak with one voice.” She took Joel’s hand. He stepped forward, the move a little scripted.
“We are facing the unknown,” Joel said, “and we must face it together.”
That was the perfect opening for “Homecoming,” but Ruby moved directly into a song Onor had never heard. He was still walking and watching, so he didn’t catch all of the words. The chorus repeated three times:
Together we are a seed
Preparing to open in the light
Of Adiamo. To flower.
“Now,” Ruby said, “Now we must all be together. We must forgive the past and we must stop killing. Now is the time to whisper your own small last goodbyes to Ben if you haven’t done so yet, to do a last honor. Tomorrow, we will have a festival. A new festival.”
She hadn’t told him about that.
He found Marcelle. “What do you think?”
“I think it was brilliant that she didn’t mention Ben was murdered. Everyone knows it, and they all know she knows it, but she’s taking us higher.”
Onor recalled the way he’d imagined the death song being sung for Ruby herself. “I hope she doesn’t get herself murdered.”
Marcelle frowned. “I bet she’s planning on attending as many of the festival spots as possible.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Onor said.
Marcelle gave him a long look, and he wasn’t quite sure what he saw in her eyes. She was as almost as tall as he was, so it was easy for her to lean over and kiss him right on the lips. “Good.”
Ruby paced the command room, threading through people dressed in finery, careful not to meet their eyes or stop to talk, She needed to think.
It was time for another celebration. Past time. Bright banners streamed digitally across all of the screens in the Fire, proclaiming tonight the Festival of Hope. She imagined people all over the ship getting ready, finding their best clothes, doing each other’s hair.
Joel was elsewhere with his commanders.
Jaliet had helped her choose a purple dress belted in gray. It swung loosely around her hips, the color shifting and changing with her movements. She felt pleased; Jaliet had driven her staff to create a color that Ruby had never seen rendered in fabric.
She paced the room slowly, full of pent up energy. Ix had told her it could still be months before they got close enough to home to make voice contact, especially now that the Fire only moved at about a tenth of the speed it used between systems.
Just yesterday she’d heard the rumor again—that Adiamo would be abandoned. To believe that would be to accept death aboard the struggling Fire. So, assuming there were people, what would they be like now? Although she didn’t understand why, Ix and Joel and others had told her more time passed in the Adiamo system than on the ship.
“Ix?” She spoke to the air. In this room, that was enough.
“Yes, Ruby?”
“Could we start schools? To learn what we knew when we left home?”
There was a slightly longer silence than usual. “What do you want to know?”
She shook her head. Customs would have changed. Joel had helped her see that one of the great weaknesses of the Fire was that knowledge didn’t change fast or go deep. She had learned to repair bots, but she would never have been able to build one.
Her hands fisted, and she took a deep breath and forced them to relax. “Can you make a list of what we used to know and don’t know anymore?”
“Knowledge slip is a matter of degree. You have all been taught the skills you need for your jobs.”
Damned AI. “Will you or won’t you?”
“I will try.”
She came up beside Haric, Ani, and Onor, who were leaning over the map table. Four pods blinked orange. The others were yellow or green. Ruby touched Ani’s shoulder. “What did you ask it?”
“Where you can go safely tonight.”
Ruby squinted at the colors, memorizing the red ones. “How did you decide?”
Haric answered. “Onor asked Ix where people are saying bad things about you.”
Ruby frowned. “Then that’s where I should go.”
Onor looked exasperated. “Some days I swear you have a death wish.”
Ani interrupted the potential argument. “We’re classifying your enemies. There’s Lya and her crowd. Not too dangerous, although Lya’s still mad enough to slap you.”
Ruby laughed. “I can take her. And there’s Ellis and Sylva. Do you know where they are?” That was a group she might just avoid.
Haric answered. “Not in the outer levels. Not on command. So that leaves them in between.” He glanced at her. “You could stay away from there.”
Hardly. “What about cargo?”
“Colin keeps that. It’s safe.”
She smiled at Haric’s defense of his old boss.
Joel came up behind her. “Are you almost ready?”
“Yes, sweetheart.” She loved the way she smiled at the sound of his voice. “Can we start in cargo?”
“I’ll order the train to take us there.”
The cargo bar hummed with activity. Most of Colin’s strength seemed to be on display: men and women with well-muscled limbs, stunners, and the periodic scar or disfigurement that went with hard work. These were the people who lived in the shadows of the ship, trading on goods, information, and services that the formal power structure needed but couldn’t perform itself.
Colin came up to greet them, clad all in black. His clothes matched his graying black hair and intense dark eyes, and the tiniest bit of black beard. “The beard’s new,” Ruby commented.
He laughed. “With you rogues in charge, I needed to look more dangerous.”
“So you’re not going to obey us either?” Joel smiled as he said it.
“And lose my reputation like you’ve lost you
rs?”
“Someone has to lead,” Joel said.
“Better you than me.” Colin took Ruby’s arm. “Can I get you a drink?”
“We want to talk to people.”
“Later. Let me get you a drink.”
“Wine,” she said.
Joel leaned down and gave her a hug. “I’ll catch up to you.”
She watched him walk away. Even from the back, even from a distance, he made her feel short of breath.
When she focused back on Colin, he was looking at her quizzically. “You really do love him, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?” she shot back. “No matter what you want to believe, he is your captain. He’s very good at his job.”
Colin laughed. “He’s a better captain than the old one.” The gentle pressure of his hand on her arm steered her toward the bar, where she hopped up on a seat and crossed her legs, being careful not to muss her dress. Colin brought her wine and poured a glass of still for himself. As he handed her the glass, he said, “How is it? Being close to the top?”
“Harder than I thought.”
He gestured expansively around the room. “It’s been ten times as hard to keep this place going as it was to compete for the top spot.”
He meant more than the bars. Colin controlled a whole population of strongmen and misfits that he glued together with a combination of power, promises, and a sense of home. “How different is it now that Garth’s out of power?”
He laughed. “We never cared much who ran things. Going home is a bigger deal. There’s far more people coming here for drinks or dances or songs. Change makes people crave ways to forget it.”
She sipped at her wine. “Your drinks here are always too sweet.”
He ignored her comment. “Is Joel going to let you come sing for us again?”
“Of course.”
He looked skeptical.
“Well,” Ruby said, “There’s still a few strays to round up. We won, but there’s people who won’t accept that. Surely you hear stories.”
The Diamond Deep Page 3
