The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  Kyle turned toward them as Ruby pointed. He nearly dropped his tray of cookies as he leaned over and caught Daria in a great big hug. “Have you met Ruby?” he asked her.

  “She’s my niece.”

  He stepped back and eyed them as they stood side by side, then lifted an eyebrow. “Could be.”

  Daria told Ruby, “I cleaned out some space for you until your mom gets here. There’s an abandoned hab on my row, and you can help me stake it out for Suri. She’s afraid you’re living with that boyfriend of yours.”

  “Onor’s a friend.”

  In front of her, Onor tensed visibly.

  No help for that. Ruby put a hand on his shoulder and turned him toward Daria. “Onor, this is my Aunt Daria. Daria, my friend, Onor.” She grinned at Marcelle. “And my other friend, Marcelle.”

  Daria didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. “I told your mom I’d get you today, and recorded the move with the reds on my way in. It’s approved. I’ve got custody until Suri gets here.”

  Ruby didn’t respond, afraid that anything she said would show her anger.

  Daria noticed anyway. “Look, I have to go meet some people. I’ll see you at the end of the evening, at the front gate, if I don’t see you before.”

  “How about tomorrow morning? My friends can help me bring my stuff.”

  Daria glanced at Onor again. “Tonight.” She kept her gaze on Ruby until Ruby nodded, and then she softened her voice and said, “It will be good to see you.”

  Ruby forced a smile. “Sure.”

  Daria nodded and took Kyle away to chat with him. Ruby let out a long trembling breath. She’d liked feeling like an adult.

  Music spilled out of speakers and mingled with the background chatter. Ruby turned to Onor and Marcelle. “Let’s go find Owl Paulie.”

  Hugh had found a place to pull Owl Paulie’s wheelchair up to a little table so that well-wishers could stop to visit. Surrounded by healthy people, the old man looked even more insubstantial than usual, his face whiter, his eyes bluer, his shoulder more hunched inward and shrunken. Ruby stayed with him while the others wandered back for more of Kyle’s cookies.

  Owl Paulie took her hand in his thin one and leaned in near her. “I hear you’re making no progress with Ix.” He took a sip of water, then another, drinking like a bird and swallowing in little bits. “The ways between here and the other parts of the ship weren’t always closed.” A pause while two children came up to hug him and ran away, their faces sticky with something pink. “My grandmother told me it wasn’t always that way, but she never explained.”

  Ruby’d felt that for a long time, like the world was too unfair to be right. “So do I give up on the test and look elsewhere?”

  His headshake was the barest of movements. “You need to know those things anyway. Find the information.”

  She pursed her lips, still stinging from being found by Aunt Daria. “It shouldn’t be so hard. It’s not fair. This is our history, right?”

  “We do remember. A little. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  She sighed. “So many people aren’t even curious.”

  “Keep digging. You’ll find it.”

  As if she could stop. She was going to figure this out and make things better, or die trying.

  Owl Paulie’s hand went limp in hers, and when she looked, she saw that he had leaned back in his chair and fallen fast asleep, as if an off-switch had been pressed. She set his hand down carefully and pulled the thin blanket across his chest. He was a sweet old man. Maybe she should have started spending some time with old people a long time ago. Maybe they were more important than she’d thought.

  A few hours later, it was time to feast and drink the glasses of still. She and Marcelle and Onor had made their way back to Kyle. He was out of cookies, but he held a glass in each hand. She was going to miss seeing him every day, not to mention the best food of her life. “I’ve got to get ready to go to Daria’s.”

  He raised an eyebrow and said, “That’s good news, I presume. She’s most excellent.”

  “Maybe.”

  Kyle took one sip out of each glass. “You must not know her. Daria’s a good person. Creative.”

  Ruby smiled. “You’ve been great.”

  “You’ll come back and see us for breakfast sometimes?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  He filled her glass extra full of the spicy still, winking. “In celebration.”

  She took a long, slow slip. She’d been allowed still since she turned fourteen, but like everyone, just at festivals. There were cheats, of course, but the penalty was lockup, so they were very, very careful cheats. She never drank much of it; it tasted funny.

  She had been half expecting Ix or the reds to make ship-wide announcements. Instead, the music grew louder. Musicians showed up on the vid screens, laughing and playing and singing, their faces bigger than Ruby was tall.

  She tapped her feet to the rhythm. This was what she wanted for herself. To be there, singing for everybody to hear.

  She and Marcelle and Onor danced a bit sloppily to the band Fire Dream, an E-pod band that got play across all of gray for festivals, and the singer Heaven Andrews, one of the musicians she was sure really lived inside. Even though Ruby’s voice felt rusty from lack of practice, she sang along with Heaven on the choruses.

  Almost everyone else did, too. A whole pod and more singing, the sound not exactly harmony, but with its own magic.

  When she stopped for breath after belting out the lyrics to three songs as loud as Heaven’s voice in the speakers, maybe louder, Kyle handed her a glass.

  Expecting water, she drank deeply, and then coughed and sputtered.

  Strong still. Clear like water, but with a bite.

  She grinned up at him and he grinned back.

  Good Kyle. He not only made better cookies, he made better still.

  She took a long and much slower sip.

  She sang the next song even louder, feeling the still in her blood. The singer in the speakers, Kiya Kiya Too, had a tinny voice that Ruby wanted to drown out.

  Three little girls who had been singing and holding hands stopped and watched her, their eyes big and their mouths open but silent. Their mothers stopped, then two women next to them, then the tenor behind her, whose voice she had been using as a harmony. Seeing so many people watch her shocked her into missing a beat, but Kyle put a hand on her shoulder, steadying. She smiled thanks, then plucked his hand off and sang louder.

  Before she finished the song, everyone else in common had stopped singing or even talking. They were looking at her, making her cheeks flush red. She gave a little bow.

  Kyle handed her a glass of actual water and a damp cloth to wipe her sweating forehead. The room spun a bit before settling down, most of the faces still watching her.

  When the next song started, she didn’t sing. Kyle leaned down and whispered in her ear. “You sound like good food tastes, like herbs and flowers and gardens. Thank you.”

  She grinned at him. “And you make things that taste good.” He looked almost handsome in the shifting festival lights, and she forced herself to look away. He was not as handsome as Fox, and he was way too old for her.

  Onor and Marcelle materialized as if from thin air and sat beside her, Onor babbling something about how everyone was watching her, and Marcelle looking worried.

  By the time the festival was over, she decided that Ix, or the reds, or whoever, had been right to leave the day just a celebration, a marking of time. Nothing would really change because of it, nothing ever did. Except maybe, this time, a little bit would change for her.

  A lot of people had stopped to listen to her sing. She would remember the bright, happy looks on their faces.

  10: Reclamation

  As the train approached C, Onor slid his helmet closed and drew in a deep breath that smelled of sweaty body and the clammy metallic scent of a suit that needed cleaning bad. They were supposed to get the day off tomorrow, and
if they did, he was going to spend time scrubbing it down. Cleaning everything. Frankly, his nose was so irritated that he’d almost prefer going suitless, even in the reportedly unstable life support of the damaged pod.

  Lya sat next to him, looking lost in thought, her long blond hair tangled and twisted down her back. In truth, it wasn’t just their suits that needed cleaning. They hadn’t had a day off since the festival two weeks ago. She nudged him gently. “Do you believe Ruby?”

  “About what?”

  “That we can test into a new life? That someday we won’t get beat up just for existing?”

  “I saw the other levels. They exist.” When Ruby talked about them, they sounded fabulous.

  “What if we die trying?” Lya bit her lip. “Hugh could’ve died when they beat him up. We might not have made it to the train. He was so heavy I was sure we’d have to stop. If I’d been hurt, too, or even twisted an ankle, he would have died. Maybe we would both be dead.”

  Onor put his arm across her shoulders. “This kind of talk makes me think of my parents. They died fighting for what Ruby believes. If I stopped, I’d feel like I was letting them down.”

  “I guess I want to live more than I want to win.”

  “I want to do both,” he said, trying to sound as sure of himself as he could. “Look, we’re almost there. Try and have a little fun today. Find something good.” He swung his helmet up and strapped it on.

  She dropped her faceplate down, his last sight of her mouth a grimace at her own smell. Or at knowing they were in for another long, hard day. Lya almost never looked happy, except when she was with Hugh.

  When Onor climbed off the train, he split from Lya, going to his own detail of five people. There were a hundred total, but they’d been grouped in fives and sent all around the pod with different jobs. Lya spent her days cleaning out habs and bagging stuff to be sent to families.

  Onor had been assigned back to the reclamation plant on B, under Conroy, who trained in from F-pod. Just like the old days, except not at all. During the first few chaotic days after the pod-wreck, as people now referred to the failure of the joining bolts and joists that kept the interior of the ship together, they had been surveying damage: cataloging angles that were wrong, blowing pipes for leaks, checking valves, and testing the cleanliness of the liquids at every inflow point. They hadn’t found anything totally gobbed up, just stressed metal and a few joins between pipe and tank pulled apart by force.

  Everything appeared fixable or replaceable.

  In spite of that, the blues had ordered the system closed up and the water partly redistributed. The first few days, there hadn’t been enough containers. More had been made and sent in. Water was heavy. Water sustained, grew food, and served as ballast and shield.

  While his team and the plant’s bots moved water, other people moved cargo around, some of it nonsensical on the surface except that it followed Ix’s particular math of balance and weight. It felt all wrong to Onor. Too fast. Since he first started school, it had been burned into his head to do things slow and right, not to rush and take risks.

  He’d asked Conroy about it. The big man had said, “Ix seems to know what it’s doing,” but Onor had a sinking feeling from Conroy’s slitted eyes and slight hesitation in answering that Conroy didn’t really think so. He just wasn’t going to tell Onor anything.

  This morning, Conroy looked like he wanted to kick something. Onor couldn’t see Conroy’s face well through the helmet, so Onor read the older man’s mood in the stiffness in his limbs. And his voice, of course. “We’re dismantling today. Begin with the offices, remove anything that could be useful.”

  Conroy called Onor’s name.

  “Yes?” he answered.

  “Start with my old office. The bots will have already wheeled in some boxes for you. Rex can take the crew room beside you. The rest of us will head into the tanks and get the extra parts.”

  Great. He’d rather be working in among the big tanks. Instead, Conroy treated him like a green baby and stuck him with Rex the Lazy. Onor knew not to argue. His old boss sounded as foul and edgy as Onor himself felt. Maybe Conroy didn’t want to be stuck in this new life either. In fact, maybe it was worse for Conroy—he’d been important as shift boss. Now what would he be?

  Rex the Lazy was already ahead of him down the hallway, so Onor caught up and then passed him. There were two crew rooms: the office that Conroy had shared with the other shift bosses and a communal room for anybody assigned office work. The rest of the space included a small galley, showers, and a restroom.

  Boxes sat in the middle of each room, placed just inconveniently enough to need stepping around. Dumb robots.

  Onor checked that Rex had started working and then stood in the doorway to Conroy’s office. He’d been in the room before, but never alone. It looked bigger and emptier without Conroy’s bulk filling the center of it.

  Piled boxes surrounded sparse furniture. Just a desk and three chairs, and walls full of monitors that used to show activity throughout the plant. All dark now, the power off. He sighed—a half a day’s work, at least. Maybe more. He unscrewed lamps from the walls and took apart chairs, packing away the pieces in boxes that were the wrong size. After two hours he stank even more, and sweat dribbled down his back.

  When he needed a break, he found Rex slumped in one of the chairs in the crew room, only one box filled in the time it’d taken Onor to finish two. Onor started toward him to make sure he was okay. Rex looked up and waved him away.

  Well, whatever. Rex was senior, and bigger. Onor went back and started to carefully remove monitor screens from the walls.

  He dropped a heavy screen on his right foot and pain shot up his leg. When he cursed, his helmet fogged over and he tripped and almost fell.

  He ripped his helmet open and breathed in the greasy air of the plant, a smell far better than his own stink. He set the helmet close enough to reach.

  His foot hurt. At least the monitor hadn’t broken; his boot had taken the brunt of the drop. The suit hadn’t been breached, either. The foot had a hard surface, top and bottom.

  He ran his hand across the edges of the monitor, making sure there weren’t any cracks.

  His finger encountered a sharp ridge.

  He picked up the monitor and angled it so he could see the ridge. It was dark, like the frame, but a slightly different dark. He tried to pluck it out with his bulky gloves but it was well and truly wedged.

  He glanced at the door, listened. Then he compounded his safety sins by pulling his right glove off. He slid his index finger under the slender dark object.

  A data stick?

  He closed on it with his thumb and pulled.

  It barely moved.

  He tried again. On the third try, it slid loose into his palm. It looked like a data stick. If so, it had been well hidden. But what better place to hide something than in a monitoring room where the watchers sat, not being watched?

  Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. More than one set.

  Conroy poked his head inside the room, frowning behind the clear bubble of his helmet’s face shield. His voice snarled across the comm. “Onor!”

  Onor slid his glove on, hiding the slender stick in the middle finger between the first and second knuckles.

  “I’ll report you.”

  No, he wouldn’t. Onor buckled his helmet and spoke to Conroy through the microphone. “I dropped this on my foot and had to check out my suit to be sure it’s not torn. I needed my finger free to tell.”

  “Someday you’re going to push me too far.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Conroy didn’t bother to answer. Onor’s job was nearly done and Rex was only halfway through his task. But as if he needed to make a point, Conroy insisted on helping Onor finish while the other two helped Rex. “How’d you get done so fast?” Onor asked.

  “Didn’t. We filled the boxes. The bots didn’t come when I called for replacements, so I figured we’d come help you and maybe th
en they’d be done.”

  The stick slid around in Onor’s glove, almost stabbing him.

  Whatever was on it had better be good.

  11: Lila Red the Releaser

  Ruby tried to sound nonchalant as she told Daria, “I plan to go to Kyle’s for dinner.” Ruby had just brought Daria tea, and now she stood beside her, watching Daria’s hands as she polished a silver scrap-art pendant.

  Daria looked up and gazed at Ruby, silent.

  Ruby stood still, looking back as placidly as she could even though it seemed like Daria was trying to see inside of her.

  Daria’s lips thinned into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Have fun.”

  Maybe Daria was sick of babysitting, or maybe she just wanted to compose herself for Suri’s imminent arrival. Her reasons didn’t matter to Ruby. She knelt down and gave her aunt a brief hug. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Daria nodded, her attention already returned to her jewelry.

  Ruby had the odd sense that Daria knew she was planning an assault on the status quo and that her aunt was maybe even a bit proud of it. But Daria never talked about what Ruby did away from her, even though she insisted Ruby be in early every night.

  As she wandered down the hall, Ruby cataloged successes and failures to go over after dinner, when she and her friends would get down to real planning. She and Marcelle had talked some of the other students into believing in the test, or at least into working with them to study the other levels. Not as many as they’d hoped for, but maybe a quarter of the people in their class in this pod. Ix appeared to be offering occasional help in the form of stories or poems that would show up on her journal all by themselves. They gave her vague clues, but nothing concrete.

  She didn’t feel ready at all, and the end of the school year wasn’t that far off.

  When Onor greeted her, he seemed full of a great secret. Inside the room, Marcelle and Hugh and Lya and The Jackman had all gathered into the tight quarters of Kyle’s living room, oriented toward the vid screen.

  She had only expected Marcelle and Onor. “What’s this?” she asked, perching on the edge of Marcelle’s chair.