The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (6 page)

7: The Old Man’s Tale

Onor woke from a dream where a rip in the roof led to the black of space. Lym, the home planet from the game Adiamo, swirled in the opening, a round, brown place riddled with seas and rivers, with mountains and birds and spaceships that flew for days or years instead of lifetimes. He hadn’t even recalled its name until just now.
Lym
. Lym, with enough water for everyone, all the time. That’s what he remembered the most about learning the game, the way his avatar could have all the water it wanted and never be thirsty.

That’s it. He was thirsty.

And he smelled food.

The girls chattered to some man, all three of them laughing quietly.
Kyle
. He blinked and oriented himself to the direction of the voices. They must have gotten up and gone past him into the kitchen. Since he could hear all of them, it was safe to bolt for the privy.

Kyle fed them a better breakfast than Onor ever remembered tasting. It was the same base stuff as always, protein and vegetables, breakfruit and enhanced water, but Kyle had added a salty sharpness that lingered on Onor’s tongue.

Ruby asked, “How’d you make that so good?”

“Magic,” Kyle said and grinned.

“Nope.” Marcelle teased him. “Magic’s only in stories. What’cha got?”

Kyle pointed at dried flowers and plants hung upside down above the sink. “I have a friend who works in the gardens. He planted these for me.”

Hidden resources. “That was the best breakfast I ever had,” Onor told him.

Ruby asked, “Has there been any news? Will they tell us where our families went?”

Kyle grunted as he reached up to set two clean drinking bulbs into their holders. “Reds don’t tell us much yet. I’m on day shift. I’ll take you to see Owl Paulie on the way, if you like. I imagine C-pod was laid out the same, so you can find your way back.”

They dodged more people in the corridors here than at home, probably from the relocation. Onor recognized a few, waving but not stopping. Hopefully the reclamation center and the gardens would hold up to so many new mouths.

They passed B-pod’s common. It, too, was like theirs. Except it had pale blue walls painted with orange and red and yellow fish rather than pale orange walls decorated with gray and brown and black birds. Refugees wandered or sat on benches, looking lost and worried. He spotted old Ben standing against a wall, observing.

Ix’s voice startled him, tumbling from all of the speakers at once. “All home personnel report for normal duty. Repeat. All home personnel, all pods, report for duty as usual. Anyone wounded in yesterday’s accident is to report to medical by the end of this shift. All off-duty crew members are to report to common at 15:30.”

Ruby looked sour. “They could at least tell us if the ship’s still falling apart.”

“I guess we get the day off,” Onor said. “That’s some information.”

Ruby grinned at him, and Marcelle thumped him on the back, hard. Damn her. She could stop pushing him around any time.

Owl Paulie lived in the retirement warrens near medical: rows of small places with good access to doctors, extra handholds on the wall, and extra grime on the corridor floors and walls.

Owl Paulie’s set of two rooms smelled like age—mostly dry but with a slight sour tang. Kitchen and living room had been crammed into the same space, with three locked drawers and one set of shelves that held pots and games strapped down. Ruby, Onor, and Marcelle pulled chairs out of the wall and sat close enough together to touch. The only padded chair was red, with handmade cushions. Although it wasn’t big, it dwarfed its occupant.

Owl Paulie’s limbs were knobby and thin as robot arms. His skull threatened to burst free of his skin, and big, laughing eyes hid behind folds of wrinkles. As soon as Kyle left them, the old man held his hand out to Ruby and said, “I’ve heard much about you.”

Her cheeks reddened and she smiled faintly. She asked, “What do you know of us? From where?”

“Of you, Ruby.” Owl Paulie shook a bit as he sat. His voice was so soft. Onor held his breath, leaning in close to the old man’s dry, cracked lips. “Hugh’s told me how you sing, and how you fight everything. He admires you very much. For both skills.”

Ruby looked as surprised as Onor felt.

Owl Paulie took a tiny sip of water and kept going. “Hugh told me what he heard last night. That the sky gave way in your park and showed you the belly of
The
Creative Fire
.”

He went quiet again. Maybe he could only manage one sentence at a time before he had to rest.

Marcelle answered. “When C-pod started to stretch—that’s what they said, it stretched—the roof tore. We knew there was another level, but we didn’t know they were so attached,” Marcelle looked up at the ceiling, “or for sure that it was above us and not beside us.”

Marcelle hadn’t even seen it. It wasn’t her story to tell. But Onor kept his mouth shut.

Owl Paulie had gotten the strength to talk again. “My brother went there.” Pause. “To other levels.”

Wow.

Ruby leaned in, eyes wide. “How?”

Owl Paulie’s breath sounded shallow and fast. “There’s a test. They keep it from us, like everything.” A break. “Can’t have gray crap infect the ship. But you might get there that way.”

Ruby’s brows wrinkled deep. “A test? That easy?”

Owl Paulie said, “If we don’t know what’s possible, we don’t reach for it.”

Marcelle crossed her arms and leaned back. “How come
you
didn’t take it?”

“I didn’t believe him.” A pause. “Ask Ix about Laws of Passage.”

It sounded too easy. “Did you ever see your brother again?” Onor asked.

Owl Paulie nodded. “Once. He came back and told me he was okay. He was dressed in blue.”

A stop while the old man’s labored breathing ate any possibility of more words. When he could go on, he said, “He gave me a scrap of blue material and told me to tell someone one day.”

“Did you?”

The old man winced. “Hugh didn’t believe me.” He looked at Ruby. “Do you?”

She was leaning forward, close to Owl Paulie’s ear. She whispered, “I don’t know what to believe anymore. After yesterday.”

“Tell me your story . . .” Owl Paulie took a sip of water and coughed, almost choking. When he could breathe again he said, “What you saw. Tell me.”

This time Marcelle was quiet and let Ruby talk. Onor listened closely when Ruby told the part about Fox. She wasn’t telling him everything, or any of them everything. Even though her voice sounded higher and thinner as she blew past the parts she didn’t want to talk about, she didn’t miss a beat. She was good. If he hadn’t known her story was true by being there, he still would have believed it. The way she told it, the danger felt imminent, and the hole in the floor sounded bigger than the one he’d seen.

When Ruby finished, Owl Paulie sat back in his chair and said, “Now I know why Hugh likes you. You have a gift for storytelling.” Another pause. “Will you write a song about the sky falling?”

A smile played across Ruby’s lips. Onor felt a sexual twist at the way she returned Owl Paulie’s look, an adult look, almost but not quite predatory.

The inside speakers came on and repeated the earlier message, the recorded voice loud enough to buzz Onor’s ears. After silence returned, Onor looked back at Owl Paulie, ready to ask him if he knew if his brother was still alive. The old man’s head had tilted to one side. His eyes were closed. His breath was shallow and regular. In sleep, he looked even frailer than when he was awake.

Ruby glanced at Marcelle. “We’re going to take that test. Right after we finish the last-years.”

Marcelle grunted. “You think it’s real?”

Ruby nodded.

Marcelle furrowed her brow. “Should we ask Ix?”

Onor couldn’t help himself. “Maybe we should learn a little more. Ix is probably busy right now anyway.”

Marcelle’s reply came quick. “Ix is a computer. It can do anything it wants all at once.”

“So? Maybe I want to learn more before we jump into this test. Maybe it’s a myth.”

Ruby glared at him, then softened and let out a long sigh, brushing fire-red strands of hair from her eyes. “Adiamo?”

“What about your aunt?” he asked.

“Tomorrow.”

Good enough. He could already taste another day of Kyle’s cooking.

Onor stood in the doorway and frowned. So many people filled the game bar; it looked like a festival night. Even the physical immersives along the walls were over half full. The multipurpose tables spread across the floor were full of students and players alike, some focused on group games, others chatting quietly or lost in solo trips. Surely the games were the same from pod to pod, but still the subtle differences in layout left him off center.

Marcelle and Ruby apparently didn’t suffer the same imbalance, since they plunged into the room. Onor took a deep breath and followed.

The Adiamo players were young. Five kids around one console. Two standing nearly mute in front of the other one, using input boards.

The five played the advanced version of the game, glassed and wrapped, their every move creating change. Their only communication would be through the game interface, unavailable to watchers.

The two were younger, maybe five years old, and still fat fingered. They wouldn’t be allowed to immerse yet. If they did, they’d probably pee their pants and scream at the scary parts.

His hands itched to try it again. He’d beat Adiamo as early as most people and hadn’t played since he was eight years old. Now, he’d have a new eye for the game.

The new information made him fidget.

Onor yearned to see a planet. Always had, ever since The Jackman first told him that the park was designed to look like someplace where people didn’t have to live inside a metal shell and do whatever the reds told them.

Ruby wandered the room, peering at various games. Onor and Marcelle stood behind the two boys with Adiamo input pads and watched them play. Since they were too young for immersion, it was easy to see what crops and animals and weapons and transportation they chose. Players did better against each other if they cooperated. But that was a late lesson, one of the ones you really understood just before you won the game. They only had to wait a half hour for the boys to starve each other out. When they were done, they walked off, chattering about what game to play next.

He and Ruby and Marcelle claimed the game chairs. They strapped in, goggled, gloved, and switched on communication.

The opening sequence played.

Adiamo spun up in front of them, tiny so that the whole system showed. A single brilliant sun, two gas giants. Cradled between, two inhabited planets. Game play took place on Lym, the planet with the most ground and the least water. Enough water for fish and birds and large mammals and humans, and air that didn’t have to be scrubbed and rescrubbed inside a closed system.

On Lym, the breath of humans was no inconvenience at all.

The planet spun brown and busy in front of him, scattered with colonists and farms. Factories waited for players to gain control and grow them into cities and industrial bases, into centers of art and math, and—if you were winning—into active spaceports.

Onor paid so much attention to his own lakes and cities that he forgot strategy until he realized that he had less land than Marcelle and that three of his farms had lost crops because he forgot to check his water allocation for shrinkage.

Ruby was ahead of them both, but she had an instinct for the politics of games. She seldom played, but when she did, he no longer expected to beat her. He hadn’t beaten her since they were eleven.

The game moved faster than he remembered. Ruby won twice before it was time to go to common. Even though they arrived fifteen minutes early, common was already almost full.

Hugh and Lya showed up right after them with Owl Paulie in a wheelchair, surrounded by a small crowd. Most everyone greeted the old man, who smiled at them and offered a bony hand to most. There had not been any one person that popular at home.

The promised time came and went.

An old woman on a seat near Onor began to cry. Three children raced through the few empty spaces, giggling. Their parents called them down with sharp tones and they obeyed for a few minutes before they went back to racing.

Marcelle tapped her toes. Ruby started walking the room, introducing herself.

Onor paced. He wasn’t as outgoing as Ruby, didn’t really understand why she wanted to meet everyone right away. They were stuck here. There was time. Besides, if he started shaking hands with people, they’d know his hands were sweating.

He felt nervous anytime he knew he was about to be told what to do. He hated it—hated people making him do things he didn’t want to. But his parents had died fighting the reds. Ruby. Ruby was always a rebel, and he was a planet to her sun. He couldn’t help himself, even though she scared him.

At least when the voice came it was human and not Ix, a man’s voice that he hadn’t ever heard. “Please take your seats.”

There weren’t enough seats for everyone.

More time passed, people slowly stilling until the group noise had been reduced to whispers and the quiet shuffling of bodies.

“Remain calm. C-pod may be uninhabitable for some time. The walls are too weak to provide safe life support and the gravgens remain unreliable. Students are to begin attending school immediately in the pod they now reside in.”

A thin, willowy woman next to them chewed on her lip as she stood stiffly; her entire body looked like it was listening.

“Some people will be shifted in order to place elders and children back with their caregivers. This will take place after the Festival of Changes.” The thin woman let out a long sigh and whispered, “So long?” as if she might break.

The voice repeated itself. “Approved moves will take place in two weeks at the Festival of Changes.” There was a pause before it continued. “In the meantime, everyone is on ten percent reduced rations.”