The Diamond Deep (61 page)

A froth of habitat bubbles rose in front of them. “That's the court,” one guard said.

Most of the bubbles connected one to another like soap bubbles. Here and there, tubes provided extra joinings. Clear tubes showed trains or robots or people walking in them, others were closed and painted with symbols on the outside of them. The design might have been created by a group of ten-year-old boys working hard to be sure an improbable pile of balls and square boxes and tubes didn't all tumble out into space.

Joel held her hand, watching the pilots and the guards behind them and the approaching structure and Ruby, his eyes scanning and darting from one worry to another while he barely moved. Bless him. She knew him well enough to measure his fear by the extra warmth and twitchiness of his hand, and by the way his features had gone nearly immobile. The more afraid he was, the harder it became for strangers to read any emotions at all in his face.

She leaned against his shoulder. “Comb my hair?”

He looked down at her with a flash of such extreme tenderness she had to blink back a tear. He pulled a comb out of his pocket. He started so gently she had to say, “I'm not dead yet.”

He combed harder, but only a little.

He finished just before the ship docked smoothly and they exited to a series of hushed commands from the guards.

Inside the corridors, guards flanked them in front and behind. Joel pushed her smoothly along neat, well-lit corridors lined by a confusing array of windowless doors. Bots scurried along one side in a track, apparently such a commonality here that they had their own side of the corridor while the humans used the other side.

The bustle of the court reminded her how weak she had become. She would have pitied herself three months ago, or six. She couldn't allow that now. Not from herself, not from Joel, not from anyone. Ruby sat as straight as she could. The webling made a small hard spot beneath her upper thighs, a physical reminder of one of the things she needed to protect.

As it became clear that their destination wasn't just inside the doors, Joel asked questions. “Why bring us here in person?”

The muscular guard in front of Joel answered. “Everyone accused of an order two or three crime against the Deeping Rules must answer in person. It has always been that way.”

Not always, since the Deeping Rules had never been mentioned in their database. Ix had never spoken of them or seemed to be driven by them. They had been accused of causing harm to others. Ruby had been trying to imagine what they meant, but all she could come up with was that Koren had trumped something up or that they were in trouble for her songs about the Brawl. She expected to see Headman Stevenson as her accuser, except it seemed that he would not use anything as public as the court. He himself had implied he could kill her or own her without anything like this.

Joel asked, “Who will explain what we are accused of?”

“The Judge of the High Council.”

“And who is that?”

“That depends on what you are charged with.”

The room they entered must be on the top and side of a bubble; the ceiling was a curve of sky, with the long length of the
Diamond Deep
visible in one direction at the bottom of it, yet another reminder of the size of everything here.

The chair rolled over a sharp bump and such a deep pain spiked up Ruby's spine that she moaned.

“Are you all right?” a guard asked.

“It's just the view,” she said. “It's magnificent.”

The guard did not look like he believed her, but he didn't ask again. As he led them down a ramp, they lost the view of the station, and the open ceiling gave them only stars and a few ships. They were taken near the front of the room to a long table that looked like it should hold more than the two of them. Behind them, seats rose from floor level up, as if the room were a theater. Another table held four people Ruby had never seen. In front of both tables and high up, a rectangular dais looked down on them. The front of the dais was a screen. At the moment, all it displayed was the three rules:

OWN YOURSELF

HARM NO ONE

ADD TO THE COLLECTIVE

Two of the four guards that had led them here stayed and stood on either side of the large table.

People filed into the seats behind them, making hushed noises. Eventually the room was both full and quiet except for the shifting of bodies and a periodic whisper.

The dais and tables in front of them remained cold and big, and empty.

Onor and Evie followed Satyana and Naveen through doors twice as tall as they were. A large sign above the doors proclaimed they were entering the Court of the Deeping Rules. Onor wished he had been able to stay awake and ask more questions. Instead he had joined Evie in improbable sleep and awoken from a place of dreams so distant that reality had been like a slap hitting him as Satyana shook him awake.

He walked through halls of power. It showed in the unnecessary height of the walls, the coldness of the floor, the lack of decoration in a station where most places blazed with color and movement.

The transition from hallways to a courtroom full of people and overlooked by stars felt jarring. It didn't help that when he walked down to the large table in front of the larger and higher dais, he saw Ruby's long red hair spilling over the back of SueAnne's wheelchair.

In spite of the formality all around them, he knelt by Ruby's side and looked closely at her, as if the world had reduced to just Ruby and him. Her face was whiter than he had ever seen it, her cheekbones more prominent. When he looked into her eyes he saw pain and a sadness so deep it nearly made him cry. “Are you okay?” he whispered.

She reached out with one thin arm and pulled his head down beside hers and whispered into the ear that held the earbug, her words breathy but strong. “I'm dying.”

He didn't believe it. “Why?”

“The same thing that killed the children. My body doesn't have what it takes to live here.”

“We'll take you somewhere else. We can go to Lym, to another station.”

“It's too late.”

“We can go to the Edge.”

She smiled. “So I can become a human spider?”

“No.”

She let go of him. He reached for her arm, held it, felt how thin the muscle had become. So much wasting seemed impossible in the weeks since he'd seen her. Maybe he wasn't yet truly awake; maybe it was all a nightmare.

He should have made sure a medical came to Ash right away, the first time he learned they existed. He had fought it. The calculus of credits had driven him to suggest the wrong choices.

“Focus,” Ruby said. She looked fierce and later focused. “I don't understand this court yet, but it's our best hope.”

He had slept through his chance to learn more about it.

Satyana took his arm and pulled him toward a chair. “They're starting.”

He resisted her at first, wanting to hold onto Ruby, but Ruby pushed him gently away. “Let Satyana set us up the way she wants to. It's time to be ready.”

After all these years he could read Ruby's desires as well as always, and like always they were only partly focused on him. It didn't matter. In spite of his growing love for Marcelle, for his baby, he would trade with Ruby in a moment and die to let her live. He knew how irrational that was, he knew that Ruby was no saint, that she didn't love him the way he had always loved her, but in this moment and this place he would die for her if he could.

Satyana guided him to a seat between her and Evie. She must have felt his anger because she leaned over and whispered, “Calm down. Speak only when I ask you to. We'll be okay.”

He nodded, all that he could manage.

Naveen sat on Satyana's other side. Ruby and her chair were on the other side of Naveen, with Joel on Ruby's far side. He looked entirely out of his element and as angry as Onor felt.

Onor closed his eyes and tried to turn his focus back to his role as guardian and scout. He was the only trained bodyguard here from Ash.

To their left, four people sat a long table like theirs, talking amongst themselves. Behind them, gallery seats that were partly full when he came down toward the table had filled completely and a few people stood along the wall.

The room felt tense and full of undercurrent, but also controlled. If he had to choose who was friend and who was enemy from the faces in the seats behind them, he would fail. If he had to guess, he would say many were enemies.

The trappings of power were clear in front of him. The starry sky arching above a tall dais, a single empty chair next to it, and beside it another dais, as tall, and yet with room for only one person. One table filled out each side of the front, angling toward them. Onor and Ruby and Joel would be able to see every face sitting in judgment on them.

A bell pulled his attention to a woman who appeared behind the chair, waiting for a silence that fell quickly over the full courtroom.

The table on the left filled with the Councilors. They sat in order: Futurist, Architect, Biologist, and Economist. Koren was the only one not there. An empty seat remained. Koren wasn't sitting where she clearly belonged. He knew the others by picture and reputation. All of them were old in spite of their looks, all of them had held their positions for generations. They came in orderly and sober and sat as if it were a familiar, formal dance.

The other table filled with people Onor didn't know, although Ruby gasped twice and leaned toward Satyana, holding a whispered conversation too low for Onor to hear.

Headman Stevenson came in and sat at the small dais. He looked around the room with more interest than the Councilors had, and focused down closely on the tables in front. As his gaze swept across the assembled accused, Onor swore the man's eyes narrowed as he passed over Ruby, and that a small, almost feral smile touched his face for an unguarded moment. Then it was swept back away into a secret place behind his mask of power and position.

The woman made a toneless and amplified announcement. “Presiding judge of the matter of the
Diamond Deep
accusation toward the people of Ash is Koren Nomen.”

Koren! Koren as judge?
Her name in that position hit him like a punch to the stomach, made him slightly dizzy.

The woman stepped back and Koren stood in her place. Her long white hair hung in a single braid falling down across her left shoulder and she wore a golden gown that matched her golden eyes. She didn't glance around at all, or appear to notice that the room was full. She simply sat, cloaked in power. The whole room gave her power of place and her own demeanor added to it. She knew exactly what she was doing.

He had thought they were coming here to prosecute her. Not to be judged by her. His uneasiness grew even bigger, threatening to swamp his ability to control himself. He took a deep breath and glanced nervously up and down the table.

Loudspeakers proclaimed, “The High Court of the Deeping Rules is now in session.”

Perhaps they had been well and truly trapped.

Ruby flinched as Koren came in and sat at the dais. It was hard not to reach toward the cylinder in the pouch under the chair and touch it, as if there were a way to offer reassurance to the silent beings living under her. A full moment of silence drove home how little Ruby knew about what to expect. The announcer went through the Councilors one by one. Ruby had met all of them at parties, even held polite conversation with the Futurist and the Architect. They didn't look down at the tables, or out at the crowd, or acknowledge being introduced in any other way. They simply sat with composed faces and watched Koren.

The other table interested her more. Satyana leaned over and whispered, “These people self-select and they're different for every trial. They're called the Voice of the Deep. They are as important as the Councilors.”

“Who decides if I'm guilty?” Ruby whispered back.

“The Councilors and the Voice advise. The judge decides.”

Ruby watched carefully as the individuals who made up the Voice of the Deep were introduced one by one.