The Diamond Deep (47 page)

Min smiled but said nothing.

Ruby dug out a white paper sack to spill tea leaves into, and then dunked it in the hot water, almost burning her fingers. “What did you think of the party?”

“I didn't know what to make of it.” She looked slightly sullen. “It's . . . all . . . it's all so much. So different. I don't even know how to talk to these people.”

“I think that's what woke me up. All of this . . . richness.”

Min looked surprised.

“We need to learn how to live here.”

“I hate this place. It's not home. It's not friendly. It's not safe.”

Ruby didn't want to agree with her and make it worse for Min. “Is that why you started spending so much time with Lya?”

“No. It was the loss of the
Fire
. I can't believe you lost the
Fire
.”

“Really?” Ruby smelled the tea, afraid to sip it yet, since steam still wafted from the cup. “I can't believe it was taken from us.” The anger that had woken her edged her voice, and Ruby took a deep breath to calm herself. Min didn't deserve it. “What do you think we did? Decided how to hurt ourselves the most and then did that to ourselves?”

Min looked up from her slate and stared at Ruby. “Can you think of anything worse?”

“If we had known what the
Deep
was like, we wouldn't have come here. That doesn't mean there was anyplace better to go.” She stared into her cup. “That's not something we can ever know.” She glanced back at Min, who had gone back to staring at her slate. “But we have opportunities here. We need to take them when they come up.”

Min's face resolved into a soft sneer. “I saw you leave the room with that stupid merchant last night. It woke me up, thinking about it. I'd almost decided Lya was wrong, that you really are trying to work for us, but then you disappeared with him for an hour.”

Ruby bristled. She also wasn't going to let Min drive her back to her room. “He wanted to show me his gardens.”

“Your hair was messed up when you got back.”

She didn't remember that. “We must have walked under some trees. Garden is the wrong word—it's more like a forested paradise. We could have walked three hours and not seen it all.”

“Really? I don't know why you say such things.”

Min didn't believe her? “You were at the party. Don't you think a man who can waste credit on a fountain of colored drinks as tall as four people could make a paradise garden?”

Min laughed. “Just what you'd want. Someone with real power. Look, you're a rotten woman. We all know that now. You used to tease Hugh. You still tease Onor. You seduced the strongest man on the Fire just as it was certain he'd take power. You've slept your way to power all your life. When Joel finds out, you're going to lose your golden man.”

“There's nothing for him to find out.” Ruby blew on her tea, her breath making ripples that sloshed small against the far side of the cup. “You can't talk about things you don't know about. People will believe you. You'll hurt Joel.”

“So stop doing it.”

Ruby shook her head. “I didn't. I don't. Ask KJ. He was with me the entire time.”

“Lya says he covers for you.”

Ruby took a deep breath, and finally a sip of tea. “Can't you think for yourself?”

“I do.”

At least now she had something other than the excesses of Gunnar Ellensson to be pissed off about. “No. Really. KJ is Joel's friend. He would hardly stand by while I slept with another man.”

“Even if it meant making more credit? Is all of what you make even going back to us? Look at how many people are coming to your concerts, listening to them. One concert has to make enough to feed us all for at least a year.”

“Don't be naïve. Naveen takes most of it.”

“But not all of it. I know you use some. Look at how you dress.”

Ruby felt just too dragged out to face Min right now, unable to draw up the right words to defend herself. “I'm going to try and get some sleep. You should do the same.”

Min stared down at her cup. “I don't sleep much anymore. I might not sleep well until we get on another ship and go somewhere else.”

“Where would you go?”

Min shook her head, and replied with a deep despair in her voice. “There is no place to go.”

Ruby hated despair as much as she hated an unwillingness to think. “I'm sorry I brought you out here,” she told Min. “Good night.”

She took her cup. As she left the galley, a shadow detached itself from the wall in the corridor. Dayn. He leaned down and whispered in Ruby's ear. “Be careful. Nothing that you do is right, now. Not anymore.”

She stood still, unable to respond. She was angry with the
Deep
. Angry at the facts of existence here, angry at Min, and angry at herself for not using the opportunity to make some real headway with Min. Heck, if you wanted to count it up, she was angry with Koren as well, and with the robot spiders from the Edge that killed Colin. She hated the anger. Maybe she was even angry at Dayn for telling her the truth. After a while, she put a hand on his arm and spoke softly. “I know. But I have to do something. I have to make some choices.”

Dayn whispered again. “Choose carefully.”

Onor sat with Joel and SueAnne in the morning meeting room. After their conversations the night before, Joel had invited both SueAnne and Onor to share his breakfast time. Stim and half-finished plates of food filled the table.

Joel looked like he'd actually slept. SueAnne was another story; rivers of darkness like spent blood filled the wrinkles around her eyes. She had started carrying a blanket with her wherever she went, a blue one that Jali had made from extra material. Her hands clutched the sides of her wheeled chair and her slate was balanced on shaky legs.

Joel picked up a piece of bread and spread a vitamin-laced sweet paste on it and then topped it with fresh berries. The berries came from Allen, who snuck in special treats for the leaders from time to time and claimed it was bar food he couldn't use. “Any word on our stray spy?”

Since Aleesi was the only one who could answer that, Onor sat back in his chair and created his own breakfast sandwich, including a few of the sweet purplish berries.

“He's doing well so far,” she said. “He left two hours ago. He's passed through Exchange Five and found the right train for Exchange Four. SueAnne? Can you work in here today? I'll keep track of Haric then, and I can update you all. I can probably help you figure out what people think of our workers as well.”

SueAnne looked both trapped and intrigued. “Really? How?”

“People rate workers and make comments and that goes into how they get hired for other jobs.”

Onor groaned. That would have been wonderful to know before. “I'll come in for another lesson later,” he said. “Maybe you can show me how to read those boards.”

“I showed Ix yesterday. It would be useful for you to know. The more time you can give me in here, the more I can teach you.”

He sensed Aleesi's human roots when she expressed loneliness like this. If only they could use the AIs to teach groups of people. But they were still hiding the fact that they had recovered them. Aleesi was sure Koren knew and sure she would come after her some day. If they were lucky, Koren didn't know Ix was there, too.

“Ix?” Joel asked.

The voice coming from the speaker on the table changed. “Yes, Joel?”

“Tell me about Ruby. How is she doing?”

“Her audiences have grown to almost ten percent of the population.”

Aleesi added, “The reviews and comments on her performances are primarily good.”

“Primarily? What do the bad ones say?”

“Some are reacting badly to her youth. Others suggest she didn't really come from the
Fire
, or that the
Fire
itself didn't actually come from the station's past.”

“Really?” Onor reacted. “People think all of us are a lie?”

“Why?” SueAnne asked.

Aleesi answered. “It appears to be an attempt to discredit Ruby. Could be a rival . . . Or Koren.”

Joel steepled his hands under his chin and looked lost in thought. “We'd better meet in here every morning. Can you send the comments to my slate before each meeting?”

“I can send a summary. All of the comments would exceed the memory in your slate.”

Joel narrowed his eyes. “Summarize last night's comments for me.”

“There were eighteen thousand original comments and fifty thousand replies, including duplicates. Over fifteen thousand were positive comments of one kind or another, more initiated by men than by women. Almost all comments and replies were made by humans. Most machines only pay a little attention to human art forms.”

“So almost three thousand comments were negative.”

“Almost two thousand. There were roughly a thousand that were questions or otherwise neutral.”

Onor noticed he hadn't taken a bite of his bread since Ix started the recitation. “Can you show me some of them? This afternoon when I come back for my lesson? I want to see the twenty most positive and the twenty worst. Send them to all of us, please. We'll talk about them tomorrow morning.”

Joel looked pleased with Onor. “Some part of you is always a guard, isn't it?”

Onor laughed. “Maybe I should get paid for that.”

The look on SueAnne's face led him to mumble, “Well, maybe not. But someday that will be the only way to get people to work here.”

SueAnne pushed her plate aside and picked up her slate. “Last night, Ruby added ten days to our lives outside the Brawl. Other workers added a sum total of half a day. That's less than the point six five of a day that they added yesterday, but the good news is that two of our young men were hired by one of the more prominent ship builders.”

“To do what?”

“Sweep up a factory floor.”

Ruby took her first bows on the end of the seventh large stage she'd been on in three weeks. This one was no renovated ship; the whole bubble had been designed and built for performances. More precisely, a huge habitat bubble had been bisected, and the half that faced the sun grew food. The half that faced away housed a great amphitheater that could be configured for concerts, lectures, plays, or sports. In the current configuration there were ten thousand seats, and yet people still lined the walls standing. Stars shone overhead, and one of the gas giants was in a place in its orbit where it hung like a red and gold dinner plate in the sky, shedding some of the reflected light of Adiamo down on the venue.

The design created excellent acoustics. Her voice had sounded huge. Applause rolled and crescendoed and fell, waves of it, the sound bathing her in success. This time they were near the true middle of the
Diamond Deep
. Headman Stevenson was in the audience, as were many of the Council. Gunnar Ellensson had come by earlier and put a hand on her shoulder, wishing her luck. He had stood so close she could smell the subtle musk of his sweat, and she knew he wanted her. This pleased and disturbed her. She had no intention of sleeping with him, but his desire might give her a bargaining hold of some kind.

He had whispered, “I will be listening.”

The applause began to die down. She cleared her throat. “This last song is dedicated to the poor. It is for those who cannot make it on their own and who have been abandoned.”

The audience quieted.

She continued. “Sometimes art exists to entertain. Sometimes it exists to teach. Sometimes it exists to incite change. And sometimes it exists to twist our insides and let us see ourselves. It is up to the listener to choose what each song means for them. I give you this song for your contemplation. I suspect you may not like it, but not all art is meant to be liked. It's called ‘Turning Away.'”

 

Turning away

Does not make

Danger disappear.

Turning away