The Diamond Deep (28 page)

“We need respect,” Marcelle mused. “That's what we fought for. Now we've got nothing.” She put a hand on Ruby's hand. “And sure, we need schools. That helps. But we need more than that. We need a voice.”

“See? I knew I needed to talk to you.”

“This place scares me.”

“You've never been scared a day in your life,” Ruby told her.

“I wasn't pregnant before.”

“I want you away from the creche. In case whatever is making the children sick can make you sick. I need someone to manage setting up schools. Besides, I want you with me.”

“You have Ani.”

“Which I'm grateful for. I have Jali as well. But neither of them know what the world was like for us before. They've never had to face the kinds of things I'm beginning to think this place might do to us. We're all the equivalent of grays here. Or worse.” When she looked over, she noticed a single tear hanging in the edge of Marcelle's eye, ready to fall. Ruby lowered her voice. “What's the matter?”

“I thought I'd lost you.”

“Never.”

After she left Marcelle, Ruby stopped by the makeshift bar. Allen stood behind the counter with a rag, cleaning things that looked clean. None of the people who had been his hangers-on and his minions from the ship seemed to be around. “Hi, Allen. Seen Onor?”

Allen shook his head. “I'm not going to see anybody. There's about eight drinks left, and then we're going to be completely out. I don't think the regulars are going to stop by for orbfruit juice.” He paused for just a breath, then shrugged his shoulders. “Oh yeah, we don't have that either.”

She laughed. “Why don't you find Kyle and see if he can come up with something useful out of this junk-for-food, and then you can serve that.”

“Great. I can see the menu now. Square orange food. Oblong green sticks.”

Ruby laughed.

“Want a drink?”

“One of the last real ones?”

“Yeah.”

“No. I want two. Enough for me and Joel to share a drink tonight.”

“You're hurting me.” He turned. “But trade me. You can sing to us if we're not drinking, right?”

“If I have time.”

“Make the time. There's more grumbling than ever. You've still got enemies, and this is a great opportunity for them.”

“Have you heard anything specific?”

“A bartender never tells.”

She smiled and leaned in closer to him. “Not even me?”

“Nope.” He handed her a full flask. “That's sweeter than you like, but you'll have to take what you can get.”

“I'll try and come tomorrow night. I'll send Chitt to tell you if I can't.”

He frowned at her. “I can't advertise maybe.”

She cocked her head at him. “And if you could advertise? Where would you put people? There's no place big enough for a concert here.” Or a talk. Or a gathering. Or anything. She hadn't thought of it that way before. “Look, I'll come if I can.”

“Will you?”

“Yes, really. But I'm not the only person on the ship who can entertain. You could have Planazate contests—the game takes hours and people will be stuck here even if you do only have water and stupid little squares of food to give them. There's other singers in the world, too. And storytellers. Get creative.”

“I want my bar back.”

“I want the
Fire
back. But that's all gone. We'll just have to make something better.”

He gave her a long, lost look.

She took her flask and headed toward the small set of rooms she and Joel shared. She was going to spend the rest of the day figuring out what to do next instead of moving every minute. She hadn't really stopped since they got off the
Fire
, except to fall dead into awkward sleep at the end of each day. She needed a song for the people of the
Fire
that celebrated who they were, and she needed one that mourned their losses, and she needed to learn enough about the
Diamond Deep
to sing about that.

Maybe Onor had learned something.

Damn it, where was Onor anyway?

Joel wouldn't be home for hours. In an effort to get their physical conditioning up again, Joel was meeting with The Jackman, Conroy, KJ, and a few of the others to set up a training program. She'd caught KJ's dancers scaling walls for fun one morning, but there hadn't been any exercises demanded of lesser mortals since they arrived.

She climbed stairs toward the hab they shared in a corner of the top floor. On the second landing, Ruby knelt to admire a bunched group of purple flowers in a pot. Flowers made a promise: they represented at least one new aspect of life which was good here. A few plants had flowered on the
Fire
, but only to create fruit. Not just to be pretty. Something alive that existed just to be pretty was an excessive use of resource. A symbol for a song?

A hand on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts. “Stay down,” Chitt said.

“Why?” Ruby hissed.

“Lya.”

Ruby stood.

Chitt glared at her with a look so furious Ruby almost flinched away from her.

Lya stood above them, at the top of the stairs, close to Ruby's door. She looked slightly cleaner than when Ruby had last seen her, but no less emaciated. Her eyes had sunk into her head. Only a year older than Ruby, but she looked ten, or more. Other women stood with her, maybe a dozen, maybe one or two more, bunched close together. They all wore white in some fashion: beads, a scarf, a shirt, a strip of material tied around a wrist.

Samara stood five steps up, mid-way between Lya and Ruby and Chitt.

“More behind you,” Chitt whispered.

Ruby glanced down. Women pooled at the bottom of the stairs. Chitt drew her stunner, but Ruby put a hand on her arm, signaling for her to lower it.

“Hello Lya,” she called up. “What can I do for you?”

“Listen.”

The women behind Lya and below Ruby and Chitt murmured the word, whispers and just above whispers. “Listen.”

Lya's face was calm, totally and completely calm. As if she had finally found her niche in life after losing Hugh.

“Listen.”

“Listen.”

“Listen listen listen.”

Ruby let the eerie harmony die down. “Yes?”

“We demand a voice. We need to be in your councils.”

Ruby held up her hands to get them to quiet for a moment. “Tell me what you need, and I will be sure you get it if I can.”

“A voice.”

“Voice,” echoed through the crowd, creepy and irritating as much because it echoed her conversation with Marcelle as because of the strange susurration of so many whispers.

“Lya. I will do what I can for you. For all of you. What do you want?”

“You've led us to a place where we have been imprisoned.”

She couldn't argue with that, so she didn't. She stood there, waiting.

“Our children are ill.”

Ruby chewed on her lip to keep herself from saying anything. Yet.

“You walk around with guards and enough food. You make decisions for us without asking. You are exactly who you told us to fight.”

That wasn't a new accusation. Even though there was only a grain of truth in it, it stung every time she heard it.

Lya continued. “But we are non-violent. We will not fight you. This is a time for change wrought by attention, not killing and fighting.”

Good. Although Chitt remained as tense as Ruby.

“But we will follow you. We will be where you are. We will be outside your doors, outside your meetings, inside your world. We will hear what you say and what decisions you make. We will witness.”

“Witness.”

“Witness.”

“Witness witness witness.”

Lya looked down on Ruby, standing completely still. The dark circles under her eyes were a black contrast to the white shirt she wore, bookended with a stretchy white hat she'd pulled down over her forehead.

Ruby took a deep breath. “The
Diamond Deep
is not what any of us expected that coming home would feel like. I also agree that this is not a time for fighting. We would simply die. A people that can create spaces and destroy starships with machines so small we cannot see them surely has a thousand thousand ways to kill us. None of us want to find out what those are.”

Lya didn't react. The women below said nothing. There were enough of them, and close enough, that their breathing was audible in the spaces between the soft creaks of the station and the footsteps of others going other places. A few people who weren't part of the conversation had fetched up against the outer edges of Lya's women, watching. One of them was SueAnne, leaning over and looking down, frowning.

Ruby spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. “If you want to help us, there are children to care for. There are stories to tell to Koren's people so that they can finish wringing us dry and let us get on with our lives. There are old people who need company.”

Lya smiled. “We will witness. We will tell the people of the
Fire
of all that you do. See that you do good.”

Before Ruby could respond to Lya, SueAnne said, “It is for all of us to hold all of us accountable. And if you choose to follow Ruby everywhere, she will not be able to lead, and
I will hold you accountable
. You may be setting yourselves up to choose between helping the children and the old, or sitting in jail.”

Ruby winced. This is not what she would have said, or what she would have had SueAnne say. But then, SueAnne took a fierce pride in being tough, probably from being the only woman with power for so long.

Ruby looked into Lya's eyes once more. They remained full of unruffled serenity. “We must look to the future and not the past,” she said. “It is my preference that you help me to do that, that we do that together.”

She started up the stairs. For a moment she didn't think that Lya would move, but then she slowly stepped aside and allowed Ruby to approach her own door. Chitt and Samara stood beside her as she opened the door, and Lya and her women hissed and whispered, “Witness. Witness. Witness.”

Ruby closed the door.

Onor opened his eyes. They were crusty and dried. His nose and mouth were parched. His head ached. He fisted his hand and rubbed at his eyelids—slowly—until he could see blue above him. Sky? There had been birds. He remembered birds. But there couldn't be sky. He hadn't thought there could be birds, but he was certain there could not be sky.

Besides it was too close. It must be paint. Although a faint light seemed to emanate from the whole ceiling.

Moving sent pain shooting from his limbs into his head.

Naveen.

A memory of walking with Naveen, or more accurately, of being helped by Naveen.

He managed to wrestle his body to a sitting position. He wore only his underwear and a silky sheet that had tangled around his legs. A couch. That probably explained why he hadn't fallen off. Beside him, a pitcher of water, a glass and his slate. There was a note on his slate.
Drink the water and you'll feel better. Take a shower. I've laid out clothes. I'll be back. Please don't leave.

A light blue powder filled the bottom of the glass. Onor stared at it, trying to think, which seemed particularly hard at that moment.

He'd chosen to trust Naveen.

He poured water into the glass and stirred it with his finger. The water was barely tinted blue, and smelled like water always smelled except a touch sweeter. He put his lips to the glass and found himself gulping, almost inhaling, pouring a glass of plain water and finishing that, too.

His body reacted almost immediately, membranes softening, vision clearing, the headache disappearing.

He'd have to ask about the powder. More of that would be good.

Now that he felt human, he looked around. The room had a simple taste and elegance at odds with Naveen's way of dressing. Rounded corners softened everything. Bright swatches of textiles accented the grays and off-whites that formed the basic color-palette. Here and there, plants hung in glass orbs. Naveen had been right that it looked far better than Ash. But then, if this one set of rooms belonged wholly to Naveen, the primary difference might be the amount of space.

Shower.

Except now his stomach screamed.

Onor's gait wobbled, but he managed to hit the privy and the shower and pull on the clothes: a pair of thin light-blue pants that sparkled around the waistband and the ankles and a light brown shirt that—thankfully—didn't sparkle. The outfit was so soft and light he still felt naked, and so strange and smooth he felt out of sorts and odd.

If this was Naveen's home, it was more opulent than anything on the
Fire
. Maybe not more than what he'd seen last night.

They would have expected him home.

The slates had communication capability. One of the wonders of
Diamond Deep
that hadn't been—quite—true on the
Fire
. He picked his slate up and stared at it. There were messages from Ruby, Joel, and Marcelle.