The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (15 page)

Fox waved his wrist in front of it and it opened.

He went in and she followed him.

On the other side, light illuminated a long corridor that sloped up, lined with a metal handhold along one side and no-grav handles on the ceiling. It was cleaner than the place they had just left, unpainted and uncolored, a bit stark.

A fitting place to pass between lives.

The door closed behind them, a sharp metal on metal click that sounded like change and felt like it severed her from herself, made her lighter, and stole the ground from her feet.

Fox turned to her and took her in his arms. “Thank you for trusting me.”

“I dreamed you would come.”

“I did.”

As they walked up the sloped wall, side by side, Fox near the handrail, what she heard wasn’t their footsteps, but the metallic sound the door made closing behind them.

PART TWO: LEARNING

22: Becoming Blue

After the door closed on the gray world she’d grown up in, Ruby stayed close behind Fox, holding a hand out to touch him from time to time, to assure herself that this was no fevered dream. His closeness made her breath shallow and fast. She felt almost overwhelmed, as if an impossible thing had happened, as if Fox being here made the cruel events of the day before impossible, too. He felt like safety and the unknown all at once, warm and scary.

They hurried, breath and steps echoing in the corridor. Just when Ruby wondered if they’d walked all the way through the next level to the heart of the ship, Fox whispered, “Sorry. This is an old passage we found, and we thought it would be a better way to sneak you in.”

“Sneak? Ix must know I’m coming.”

“It’s people that worry me. I want to get you into a better uniform.”

She snapped out, “Clothes won’t turn me blue,” before she thought about it. Then she added, a beat late, “Maybe that’ll help.”

“Trust me.”

She’d already made
that
decision.

A bot stood beside an airlock door, opening and closing the thick slab of metal so silently she didn’t even hear the whisper of contact as the bot’s metal hand grasped the metal door. The door squeaked as it moved. Ten steps up a rigid tunnel, holding the handrails this time, staring at the dented, graffitied walls that were inches in front of her nose. The tunnel swayed slightly. It looked thicker than the distance she’d seen between levels above the park, so they must be near the intersection of pods. If only she had a better picture of the details of the ship in her head.

She followed Fox through yet another lock monitored by another polite and complacent robot. She expected the second door to open into the blue level. Instead, it was another corridor with no interesting features except handholds and seams here and there, bland and clean. A few—far too few—deep nicks in the metal itself. No part of the
Fire
could possibly be newer than any other, but her senses told her she had come to a newer place.

A hundred more uphill-into-gravity steps later, Fox said, “Here. Be quiet.”

A door she would never have seen opened, sucking light and the murmurs of conversation from the other side. She couldn’t make out words, but the voices seemed hushed and curious.

Ruby pulled on Fox’s shirtsleeve. When he turned back to face her she took a deep breath, looked at him as hard as she could, and searched for any sign that he might betray her. Seeing none, she reached up and touched his face, then nodded. They passed through the door, Fox in front, Ruby sliding around him to see a crowd of unfamiliar eyes filled with curiosity and welcome.

She didn’t recognize a single face. Oh, one. Dayn, who’d driven the scooter and seen her kiss Fox under the broken sky. They were all near Fox’s age or a bit older or younger, with neat hair and unscarred features. Clean. Here and there, a red.

Sweat stuck strands of hair to her forehead. She had not set out to leave home forever; her clothes were thin and stained.

The people were silent, curious. Their faces suggested they’d expected someone different. More downtrodden, or less?

A friendly voice, a little over-loud. “Hello, Ruby.”

A woman she couldn’t quite see. “Welcome.”

“We knew Fox’d get you.”

“Thank you for coming.”

“Hello.”

“Welcome.”

And to Fox: “Was there any trouble?”

The warmth of the conversation fascinated her, making her stand a bit straighter, smile, hold out her hand. This was her first impression, her first chance, and she had to ace it, no matter that she stank and her hair was two-days-unwashed greasy. She smiled as hard as she could, stood straight, spoke charming words through tired lips. Fox stood beside her. He kept one hand on her back, steadying her.

She struggled to gather in the new names and remember them. Harold: a tall blond man with a wide smile. Lanie: a wisp of a blond-haired and fair-skinned woman who stuck close to Fox. Bo: a pale man with pale blue eyes and a slight limp. Harold was serious; Lanie had a warm smile that spread across her cheeks like a light turning on; Bo’s hand felt clammy with sweat, and his handshake was a bit soft.

A tall woman with dark skin and dark hair and very light green eyes passed a thin stack of clothes above the small crowd. Fox stood on tiptoe and reached. “Thanks, Ani.” He grabbed the clothes from above the head of a brunette woman and passed them to Ruby. “Take these.”

A blue uniform, new and smelling of something sweet, soft against the exposed skin of her arm.

He pressed her forward and then pointed her into a privy. “I’ll guard,” he told her. “Hurry.”

The dark woman, Ani, walked in right behind Ruby, carrying a bag over her shoulder. “Glad you’re here, girl,” she said, crowding in, filling more than half the small space. The bathroom looked like the ones at home except a tad brighter. Desperately thirsty, Ruby ran water into her cupped hands and sipped.

“Your singing is so pretty it makes me want to cry.”

“Thank you.” Ruby tried to hide her surprise as she grabbed a thin towel from a neat stack near the sink and scrubbed at her face. “What have you heard?”

“Just ‘The Owl’s Song,’ so far. But that’s why we wanted Fox to get you. We want more. We were all rooting for you. We couldn’t bear the idea of you being a cargo-bay girl, not when you can sing like that.”

Ruby wiped the sink and threw the dirty towel into the recycler, wondering if Ani knew the real risks of the cargo-bay job. “Why would you guys even notice someone like me?”

“Fox has been showing you to us. Making us listen.” Ani looked down for a second. Her skin was so dark it was hard to tell if she blushed, but Ruby thought so. “We wanted you to pass the test.”

Ruby looked away, sure her face would give away her confusion.

Ani laughed and pushed Ruby toward a privy stall. “Change into those and give me your old ones. Hurry.”

The blue uniform slid easily onto her body, perfect except for the legs, which were a tiny bit short. She saved the necklace Daria had made her, the tri-color beads worked into clever lace that Ruby would never have had the patience to re-create. She also saved the blue beads she’d worn around her wrist. She found a pocket to fold them into. It felt good to keep a tiny secret.

Ani took her old clothes, muttering at Ruby. “We’ll disappear these permanently.”

Okay by her. Not that Ani seemed to need a reaction from Ruby. She dropped Ruby’s old, gray clothes into the bag, tied the top tight, and tossed the clothes—bag and all—through a small, square hatch in the wall. A dull thud declared that they’d fallen into something below. A hairbrush appeared in Ani’s hand, and she helped herself to Ruby’s hair, pulling snarls out and muttering about showers.

When the brush disappeared again, Ruby wiped her face with her hand and stood up to stare at herself in the mirror, off-balance from the change. In blue, clean, with her hair brushed back, she looked older and smarter. More capable. She even felt different from her old self. “Thanks.”

“Fox has extra uniforms for you. Let’s go.”

For an irrational moment, she expected to walk out and find Fox gone and Ellis waiting for her, but Fox stood very close to the door and came immediately to her side. “You look great.”

“Now what?”

“We pretend we know what we’re doing. I don’t think you’ve been noticed yet. Follow me.”

Ruby kept close to Fox, just behind, and he put his hand in hers, pulling her along. The danger they must be in made her feel tingly and hyperaware.

Fox stayed in the lead.

He pulled her into a big room full of tables and chairs and couches. People filled half of the seating, some in uniform, some not. Music played in the background, a song she didn’t recognize but wanted to tap her foot to.

The sharp scent of fresh stim rose from a gleaming metal dispenser on a table. Bread and bunches of yellow orbfruit scattered across half-picked-over plates. Fox leaned down to Lanie, grinning at her, and pecked her cheek. “Find us a table? I’ll bring you some stim.”

He helped himself to two cups, handing one to Ruby. “I had breakfast, but if you want something, take it.”

This place looked neater than the common kitchen back home.

Fox’s entourage settled around Lanie at a table near the wall, Fox and Ruby next to each other and facing the door. The table held twelve. Ruby would be willing to swear she’d met more than that, and for sure Ani was missing.

Tasting the fruit reminded her she’d skipped breakfast. “What happens next?”

He swallowed. “We make our case.”

“To who?”

“Ellis, I suppose. And the peacers.”

He didn’t sound particularly worried. Rather, he sounded like he was looking forward to something. “I want us in a public place when we get found.”

Like her confronting Ix in the class yesterday. “That strategy only kind of worked for me.”

He grinned. “It worked great. You’re here.”

“It didn’t work so great for anybody else. The goal is to get all of the grays free.”

“Impossible.”

Ruby looked away from him, stung.

She glanced around the table. She knew the names of about half of them now. Three were reds. At home, she would never have sat down to eat by reds.

Two humans worked in the kitchen, supervising a set of five or six shiny silver bots that cleaned up tables, carried out trays of fresh food, and refilled the stim. At home there would have been a bot or two most of the time, but just for the jobs that people weren’t strong enough or flexible enough to do. She had never seen some of these designs, and the mechanicals she worked on were all in worse repair. These didn’t squeak in the wrong places or have parts of the wrong color welded on where something had broken a decade or a lifetime ago.

Their shiny surfaces reflected her in blue as they passed.

Other tables filled and emptied around them.

Dayn finally spoke Ruby’s thoughts. “Maybe they’re not willing to see her here.”

Fox grunted. “Of course they aren’t. That’s the game. See who runs out of patience first.”

“They can afford to wait us out,” Dayn whispered.

Fox laughed. “I’m running a spot on the public channels promising Ruby will come to us and sing like the magic between the stars.”

Dayn gave Ruby an assessing look, and Ruby stared back at him. She didn’t understand what Fox had said other than that she would sing, but she could do that. She could sing. Whatever Fox was planning for her, she’d live up to it.

Dayn turned his attention back to Fox. “Sure you haven’t gone too far this time?”

“They’re all so busy fighting no one’s going to know what to do with me. The
Fire
’s
in loose hands right now.” Fox got up and refilled his stim, leaving the conversation unfinished. When he sat back down he held the full cup without drinking from it, as if it gave him an excuse to hold the entire table of people there. Eventually, he leaned down to Ruby and spoke softly. “Ellis is not so strong as he likes to pretend, and he knows it. He’s not well liked. He’s only around because the ship’s current leaders don’t have spine enough to remove him.”

There was a lot to ask Fox about in that sentence, and Ruby liked the taste of knowledge. She repeated the sentence in her head, setting it so that she’d remember it, choosing to wait until she was alone with him. In this brightly lit place with the crowded table, she didn’t feel the same intimate pull that had threatened to overtake her in the corridors, but she was still aware of every move he made, every person he watched, of the cadence of his breath.

They waited a long time.

The door opened. The red woman from the class and two red-uniformed men she’d never seen before came through the door together and headed right for their table. Ellis trailed behind.

Ruby took a breath.

Fox whispered, “Let me talk.”

She bit her lip and nodded, her hands shaking.

Fox smiled at the woman. “Hello, Sylva.”

Sylva didn’t even acknowledge him. Focused on Ruby, she snapped out, “You do not have permission to be here.”

Ruby bit harder on her lip, drowning her need to answer for herself in pain.

Sylva’s jaw was set as tight as the commitment in her eyes, as if sheer determination could make the world obey her.

In contrast, Fox sat relaxed, his voice and body language all implying there was no real problem at all. “I am allowed to bring talent from anywhere in the ship. I’ve chosen Ruby for her voice.”

The taller of the two men blinked. “She has no . . .” he paused. “No training or experience.”

“She has talent.”

Ruby swallowed and kept biting her tongue. People seated at nearby tables watched them curiously. The confrontation touched the attention of everyone in the room except the bots, who ignored it entirely.

Fox addressed Sylva. “You can’t stop me.” He gestured around the table. “There is no rule. We looked. I verified with Ix. I saw you change the Laws of Passage. That governs her ability to ask to come here of her own accord. But no law controls my ability to ask Ruby to come. I have asked, and she has accepted.”

“This is a bad idea,” Ellis scraped out through clenched teeth. He didn’t look as powerful here as he had down on the gray levels, although Ruby couldn’t really put a finger on why. “You know the histories,” Ellis said. “You know what a critical juncture the
Fire
is at now.”

Dayn stood up and Ellis looked even smaller. “Look,” Dayn said, “you can’t change the rules now, not since she’s here. Not without executive authority, and they’re all worrying about who’s on top when we get home. Are you going to tell them what a threat she is?” He pointed at Ruby. “She’s not very big.” He cocked his head. “Or very old.”

Sylva gave Ruby a hard look, one that suggested she had made an enemy for life simply because she existed. “Why is she in dress blues?”

Fox looked up at Sylva and smiled. “Because she’s working for me.” He paused. “Go ahead and take her back if you want. But she’ll have new things to say to the others down there, and you’ve already got a nest of discontent in your hands. Don’t make her into a legend like Lila the Red.”