The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (12 page)

Onor clenched his jaw. They were gone. Ruby was still here, still beside him. He went and stood beside her, focusing on the brilliant highlighted reds in her hair and the way her lips pursed tight with determination. She practically quivered with focus.

He wanted to put a hand around her waist, but he didn’t.

As The Jackman stood there watching them, he grew a little softer in the face and pulled on his beard. “Look, we don’t know what happens if you do succeed.” He was looking at Ruby, but Onor knew The Jackman’s words were really for him. “Think about history. Think about the video we saw, Lila Red and her people right before they died. Whatever power they crossed, whatever waits inside the ship, was enough to kill adults who understood it. Lila Red had access to more of the ship than we do, wasn’t gray, never was gray. She understood more than us by far, and chose to risk her life.” He stopped for a long breath, but before Ruby could protest he said, “Take some time. If you haven’t already got yourself in trouble past a beating, you have years. Spend them learning instead of fighting like a robot in a cage. No matter what you think, you’re still a child.”

“For a week.”

The Jackman shook his head slowly, as if he were talking to a three-year-old. “Well, I wouldn’t be brave enough to do what you’re doing. I’m not brave, I’m old. Brave people die.”

“Fine,” Ruby said. “I’ll die if I have to.”

Conroy sounded extremely patient as he said, “We’re trying to help you.”

“So help me figure out how to play that vid Onor found. I want to show it to my friends.”

Conroy look at Onor. “Is she always this stubborn?”

He didn’t want to answer, but the idea of Ruby gone from his life was so oppressing that he blurted out words he didn’t mean to say. “Maybe we don’t have to be in such a hurry. Maybe we should just take our last-years and then wait awhile to challenge Ix. We can’t be that close to Adiamo yet. We have time.”

He’d seen betrayed, furious looks on her face before, but never directed at him. He couldn’t think of anything to say until after she and Marcelle had both fled. And by then all he could do was whisper to the empty space where they had been. “Sorry.”

17: Challenges

Ruby moved fast, leaving the hab warren with The Jackman behind, heading through the manufacturing shops and toward the crèche. Not because she was thinking about anything, but just because she had to keep moving. Onor’s belief in her lived as part of her bones, part of her heart. It was a truth. Damn Onor.

Marcelle’s footsteps followed her. Not catching up, but keeping up. At least she had the common sense not to say anything. There was nothing to say, no way to stop now. The test was too close, and she’d never get the momentum to do this again. If she stopped, she’d doom herself, forever, to be someone who once wanted something.

It made her think about Nona, who should be studying with her right now. It made her teeth tight in her face and her jaw quiver, and it made her walk faster.

Onor hadn’t meant to betray her. He was just scared. He didn’t mean it, and she wasn’t going to start doubting him. She wasn’t.

She trailed through corridors that would fill up with workers at shift change but were mostly empty now.

The people she did pass looked tired.

It was still early morning. Two crèche apprentices came toward her, walking two toddlers. The children wore gray harnesses, but the leashes dangled free in the handler’s hands. They looked more vigilant than Ruby remembered her handlers being, but then there hadn’t been any accident as bad as the sky falling when she was little. She’d been one to run away, and sometimes she actually got away.

Neither of these attendants looked likely to lose a child.

Marcelle had apprenticed in the crèche at home. She used to come back in the evenings full of stories about babies. There might not be any more babies. The new rule limiting marriages and childbearing fit with Fox’s assertion that they were close. Why allow babies if they were almost home? It wasn’t like they needed more crew, and babes in arms could be a liability in a strange place. Besides, the ship was already on light rations from the sky-falling day. Except she would allow them if it was up to her. At least a few.

Ruby sped up again as she hit the walkway behind the tall square of the crèche building, with its well-lit, bright corridors. She cursed as she bumped into a trash bot, scraping her shin.

The carrying arms of the short, sturdy bot held the rather pungent output from one or more of the smaller children, making running into it even more lovely.

If it didn’t have any little kids to watch during the day, the bot would need to be reprogrammed and tested for a different job. She’d probably be the one stuck cleaning baby shit out of it for years. And she was going to have a whopper of a bruise on her shin.

Marcelle caught up to her, breathing hard. “If you don’t start paying attention, you’ll run into something worse than that. Shake it off. Onor’s just scared. He’s a boy.”

Ruby fumed. Marcelle didn’t usually stand up for Onor.

Marcelle took her arm. “You’re supposed to stay in crowds. Let’s go get breakfast. We’ve got time.”

Ruby pulled away and then stopped. “Thanks. Thanks for following me. We shouldn’t eat, though. We should be studying. We should be figuring how to play that damned video. We should not be scared.” It felt like a mantra, calming her. “Ok, we go eat. But what did they tell you?”

Marcelle shook her head. “Nothing. Just called us stupid little girls and said we probably shouldn’t be getting so many people involved. They just think they’re special.”

The community kitchen fed the old, and the hurt, and served as penance for ten to twelve year olds who got in trouble at school. Ruby’d been in similar kitchens dishwashing more than once.

She’d never seen them empty; it would be a safe place.

Was she really going to have to think this way? Were there really people after her?

If so, that’s what she should have been thinking about first, not Onor.

“Who does it hurt if we get out of gray?” Ruby mused.

“There’s our share of the cargo.” Marcelle paused and raked her fingers through her hair. “If that’s how it works.”

“There’s more to it than that. I just don’t understand.”

“Power needs someone to boss around.”

Ruby laughed.

“Besides, what do people want to protect now? We’re on our way home. They want us to be good grays and do the work to keep the ship moving. Especially since it’s damaged.”

“I’m tired of being good.”

“Shhhhh,” Marcelle said. “Me too. Maybe we should just slow down a little bit.”

“You too?”

“No. Not like Onor. I believe in what you’re doing.”

So did Onor. Ruby’s voice came out sharp as she said, “I can’t afford to be afraid. I can’t look afraid. If I look afraid, nobody will follow me, and nobody but me will pass the test.”

“We won’t if you’re dead, either.”

Did she have to fight with Marcelle, too? “If you don’t take risks, nothing good happens. You just die after being boring.” Ruby swallowed. Lila Red had died. “You can’t change important things without taking risks.”

“Lila Red died.”

“Were you reading my brain?”

Marcelle didn’t answer.

The smell of baking bread and stim wafted around the corner. Ruby softened her voice. “Let’s take it to go. Get over to common. There’ll be students there by now.”

Marcelle looked doubtful. “It’s pretty early.”

The community kitchen was warmer than the corridor and smelled sweet and stale all at once. A few old people sat at one of the ten tables. They looked up as Ruby and Marcelle came in and waved at them.

Before Owl Paulie, old people had never even talked to her.

As they got in line, Ruby felt someone watching her. She glanced over her shoulder. Two reds headed her way. They hadn’t been following her and Marcelle through the corridor, so they must have been in here already, maybe leaning against the wall.

Ruby forced a slow breath.

They weren’t waiting for her. She hadn’t known herself that she would be coming here until moments ago.

She and Marcelle both went along the same side of the buffet line, Marcelle’s eyes big, her head tilted a bit toward the approaching reds as if Ruby hadn’t seen them.

Ruby shrugged.

Then the reds stood opposite them, ladling gloppy, off-white morning cereal and then fresh, sweet fruit into bowls. They were young, maybe just five or six years older than Ruby and Marcelle, a man and a woman. The woman had brown skin, black eyes, and white hair, a sort of shock look that most reds didn’t choose. Her partner was plain and dull, all browns except for hazel eyes, walking behind her and watching Ruby and Marcelle nervously.

Marcelle’s hands shook so hard that her spoon rattled against her plate. Her face had gone white.

Ruby reminded herself that reds should make her mad and not scared. Reds got hungry, too.

The woman smiled. “Ruby? And Marcelle?

Ruby stiffened. “Yes.”

The red woman brought her hand to her chest and lifted a strand of beads from out of her uniform top.

Ruby drew in a surprised breath.

Blue and gray and red beads. Ruby didn’t recognize the beads; she hadn’t made that strand. Daria hadn’t either.

Some warning in the woman’s eyes kept Ruby from letting the grin she felt break out on her face. The red’s hand disappeared, and the beads slid back to rest under her shirt. She said, “I’m Chitt. In case you ever need me.”

The man with her looked more scared than disapproving, and Ruby was sure he wore no colored beads.

Maybe there were people after her, but she had them on her side, too. “Pleased to meet you, Chitt.”

She was rewarded with a look that no longer carried warning, although Chitt’s next words, while soft and conversational, were “Don’t go anywhere alone.”

18: The Test

T
est day. Onor felt light-stomached and dizzy.

He and Marcelle walked side by side, their footsteps loud on the floor. Everything seemed amplified—sound, the greasy smell of the corridor, the way Marcelle’s voice grated on his spine. He felt all the parts of him—fingers and toes and the backs of his knees.

Marcelle’s face looked as if someone had washed the color out of it. “How do we know we studied the right part? Not for the last-years, but—”

Onor put out a hand to interrupt her. “Slow down and relax. It won’t help you to be worried.”

“But what if we fail?”

“Let it go. Relax.”

“What if they make us fail?”

He snapped the word out this time. “Relax!”

Marcelle sneered. “Thank you.”

He got blessed silence the rest of the way.

The exam was given in the biggest classroom, which consisted of three rows of chairs, four walls made of video screens, and two doors. They had to swipe their wrists through a scanner to get in. Here and there, teachers lurked at the edges of the room, looking serious. There were three reds—one in front of the room and two behind. None of them was Ben, or even familiar.

One red with good communications gear, a stunner, and Ix for backup should be able to manage a group of students.

One of the reds in back wore the three-color beads—red, gray, and blue. Visibly, too. Onor had become used to glimpsing hidden strands poking up along a neckline, but this deepened his worry.

A rising murmur behind them gave away Ruby’s presence. She’d spent the last few days with her student following, which was why he and Marcelle had decided to walk over without her.

Ruby didn’t sit next to them, but landed between two of her new friends.

Onor felt her absence. Ruby seemed to think her new followers would stick with her no matter what, that it was her they liked and not the idea of her. She was wrong. He took a deep breath while the scrapes and sighs and hushed chatter in the room faded to silence. Finally, each student had a seat, their journals, and nothing else.

The room smelled of sweat and adrenaline and nerves.

The red with the front position stepped forward and cleared her throat. She stood no taller than Marcelle. Her gray hair had been pulled back in a long ponytail that made her face look severe. “You may begin.”

The light scratch of pens on journal screens and the shifting of feet made a small background hum to an otherwise oppressive silence. Onor focused down.

Basic math should have been harder, and he felt disappointed when he knew the answers were all correct even before the timer on the system pulled the pages away from his journal and presented the next part of the test. But then, he used math in his job, or he had. At the reclamation plant.

He hadn’t actually had a job for the last few months, except for shutting their old pod down. When they finished, he’d been told to study. Most of the students had the last few weeks off. Maybe there were too many people for the
Fire
now that there was one less place to do work in.

The communication section came a little harder for him, but he finished on time. During the stretch break between test sections he squeezed his way to Ruby. “How are you doing?”

“Okay so far.” She looked around at the other students who had oriented around her—almost half the room. Her next answer was clearly for them. “I think we’re all doing okay so far. We all studied. We’ll win.”

Which meant she was nervous, or she wouldn’t sound worried about it. Or more likely, she felt like he did. A combination of sour stomach and excitement, the knowledge that soon they’d know if the risks they’d been taking were going to pay off or hurt them. “It’ll be okay,” he assured her. She rewarded him with a grateful look and a nod.

In that moment, she seemed so strong and beautiful that he almost sicked up his breakfast. It was as if she had become too good to be true, and nothing too good to be true survived on
The Creative Fire
. Beauty was always ground down, aged, worked to death, or just disappeared.

Two more sections.

The next section covered safety measures. First aid. Gravgen failure drills. Oxy failure drills. Outbreak procedures. No problem.

Last, descriptions of every job in the pod and how they all interacted. Nothing, of course, about any other level. He licked his lips and told his racing heart to slow down and let him focus. Failures got three more months to pass, and a second failed test earned jobs as cleaners and sweepers and lockup guards, which meant a short life in barracks on the maintenance levels of gray.

He got halfway through rechecking before the pages disappeared on him. Glances full of either triumph or doubt or worry went back and forth between students. Marcelle looked confident. He felt confident. He glanced back at Ruby, but she was looking around at everyone else and didn’t meet his eyes.

Were they all adults now?

Chairs scraped. People breathed a little loudly and someone coughed. It smelled like fear and exhaustion and excitement, or maybe Onor simply smelled himself.

Marcelle doodled on her journal, a picture of
The Creative Fire
hurtling through space toward a stylized sun.

Whispered conversations started.

The passage of time crawled through Onor’s nerves.

Ix usually evaluated tests instantly.

The same severe female red that started them off stood in front of the class, waiting as students stopped stretching, or doodling, or in one case, sleeping.

The woman looked directly at Ruby, then at Marcelle, and then at Onor. Her dark eyes looked as steely and inflexible as a humanoid robot’s eyes.

Then she looked at everyone else, one at a time. Enjoying the tension in the moment. She looked like one of the reds who would beat you in a dark corridor just for being there.

She cleared her throat. “Sorry for the delay.”

Chairs scraped on the floor. The woman stood still, waiting for total quiet. “Ix had to double check the tests and the tapes from the actual exam. The results from this exam were hard for us to believe.”

She looked at Ruby again.

Ruby gazed back at her, face implacable, strands of blue beads spilling down the gray front of her shirt, another strand wrapped around her wrist. Flamboyant and beautiful and defiant, even without saying a word.

No one made any noise at all.

“Everyone passed.” Another beat of silence, the students all seeming to exhale at once and then inhale, and then the red said, “This class passed with the best test scores that Ix has
ever
seen.”