The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  Ruby leapt up and stopped him in his tracks with a hug. She planted a kiss on his cheek, drawing a flush of red to his face, then took one platter from him. She pointed, sending Kyle to one end of common to start handing out cookies. She began at the other end. As she went, she asked questions that were likely to be on the tests.

  “How many people can each pod feed?”

  “How are metals separated for reuse?”

  “What is the minimum amount of exercise required each day?”

  She saved Onor and Owl Paulie and Hugh for last, and as Hugh took his cookie, he whispered in her ear, his breath ticklish, “Can you get everyone to be quiet? He wants to talk.”

  She smiled at the old man and took his thin, shaky hand. “What do you want to say?”

  He looked . . . intense. Alive. “I need to give them fire.”

  “They have fire. But I trust you.”

  Owl Paulie squeezed her hand, his grip strong. She bent over and straightened his shirt. “Did you and Kyle plan the cookie break and talk together?”

  Owl Paulie ignored her question.

  She sat on top of a table and started humming, warming up her voice, thinking about Lila Red controlling a group with sheer determination. Salli and Jinn and the students at the next table over—four boys—stopped talking to listen, and for a moment she thought she might not have to work to get the room to quiet. But then conversations started back, so she began a song, letting her voice rise until it filled common. She sang just the first few stanzas, enough for most of the room to start singing with her. Then she trailed off, waited. She was still on the table, and all of the faces were looking at her.

  “I’m glad you’re here. Glad you’re like me and you don’t want to be gray forever.” She touched her looped strand of blue and silver beads. “Glad you want to have the choice to wear uniforms that are this color, too. Glad you want to help me convince the reds and blues that we can all wear each other’s colors, that naked, we’re all the same.”

  She hadn’t thought about saying that, it had just come out, the way a homemade song did. It sounded a little stupid, simple. Soft. But it was out. Best keep going. She pointed to Owl Paulie, waited for the room to quiet down. “You all know Owl Paulie. He has something he wants to say.”

  They came in closer with no protest, and she used the time to count them. Thirty-one, plus Kyle and Owl Paulie. They scooted together on benches, some of the girls squirming on boys’ laps to make room for more.

  Kyle stood outside the circle.

  Owl Paulie watched the students settle, his large blue-on-pale-brown eyes suggestive of his name, his hands shaking a bit in his lap. Ruby stood beside him, Onor and Marcelle by her, Hugh on his other side. For a moment Ruby wondered if he was really going to say anything at all, then his chest rose and his nostrils flared. “I came to you because I’m old enough to remember things others don’t want you to know.”

  As he stopped for breath, the students glanced at each other, a mix of excitement and confusion.

  “We were not born inside this ship. Each of us, yes, but not humans.”

  Salli and Jinn scooted closer to each other. “We are going to where we were born. And when we left, we were not limited to the gray levels or the gray life.”

  Nia looked nervous, so Ruby offered her an encouraging smile in the time it took for Owl Paulie to get more breath.

  “You have important things to do. If you don’t do them, you and your children and their children will enter our old home the way we are now—grays. People with no rights and no claim on the value in our holds.”

  Ruby blinked. She hadn’t thought through the implication of bringing things home. That was why they’d gone, of course. That, and to learn about other suns. She’d been in the holds outside of C, knew there were rocks and liquids and locked boxes and testaments of explorers, that there were sculptures that looked twisted beyond anything on the ship and dead animals that had been frozen. More. And even with all that, there remained a lot of empty cargo space.

  Owl Paulie continued, raising his voice a little. “We were not always slaves.”

  Silence, except for the old man’s in breath.

  “I know because my family kept a written history. I used to read it over and over, because it had death and courage and freedom in it, and courage and freedom were both rare by the time I was old enough to read the history.”

  He paused, and the room stayed quiet, waiting.

  “It’s gone now, taken by a red.” He paused. “There was a time when anyone could go anywhere on the ship.”

  A beat of silence. No one seemed to need to fill it.

  “You’re scared of the reds and the blues. They know how to do that to you. They know how to make you think they’re stronger than they are.”

  More pause. He must be here today for this, to give this speech. He must have practiced it. Worried over it. She expected the reds to come before he finished, and she imagined standing in front of him, protecting him from them.

  “But these reds and blues are afraid of you.”

  The students closest to her looked amazed, like the idea had turned something in their heads, like it had in hers the first time she’d heard it. Like suddenly she knew a secret that she should have always known.

  “There are more of you than of them. You must be brave and strong and smart, and fight for the rights that are yours. You must tell other people.”

  Ruby, Marcelle, and Onor all glanced at each other, a small flash of fear showing in Marcelle’s gaze before it was replaced by her usual cool control. Ruby took her friend’s hand, squeezed. She could feel the fast beat of Marcelle’s blood, and how it matched hers.

  Owl Paulie continued. “You must fight like my brother before me. Like Lila Red before him. A name most of you know.”

  Hugh must have told him about the recording. That was why Owl Paulie chose this place. The same reason she’d used the park to ask Ix about Laws of Passage. He wanted this moment recorded. He wanted it in Ix’s public records so it could be seen by other grays. That is how he can say this and be safe.

  “Because we are close to Adiamo, to home, we need to be sure that our voices will be heard again.”

  A shorter pause. Ruby glanced around. Everyone watched her and Hugh and Owl Paulie. Kyle, too, standing still in the back.

  “They were heard before.”

  A tall, dark-haired boy with thick arms cast a cocky glance at Ruby, Onor, and Marcelle, and then looked back at Owl Paulie and cleared his throat. “How do we do that, old man? My father’s father was here like us. But his father was spaced for insubordination. I want walls around me and air inside the walls.”

  Ruby wanted to tell the dark-haired boy that he couldn’t afford to be afraid, but he’d asked Owl Paulie, not her.

  There was a pause while Owl Paulie drew in more air, wheezed, and breathed again. “Use your intelligence. Maybe this is not the time to fight.” Pause. “Fighting made us what we are today, controlled. We lost. You need to know.”

  Then he pushed himself up so that he was standing, leaning on the table. A whisper would be enough to topple him. But the room stayed silent. “We are separate from the others because we became angry with them and they called it a mutiny even though it wasn’t that. We have earned a better place in this ship with generations of hard work. And we must claim it.”

  The room felt full of such strong emotion that it seemed to weigh down the air. Fear and excitement, disbelief and anticipation.

  “They need us to keep The Creative Fire alive.” This time he didn’t pause, and his voice rose as if he were in the middle of his life instead of near the end. “You must be strong. You must create change. Only you can do it. Most of the rest of us are too old. Follow Ruby.” He started to fade. “Learn.” Another pause, the room still, waiting. “Be free.”

  He sat back down, landing hard, and bowed his head.

  Conversation started, low and whispered, and then grew bolder. Ruby let the moment ho
ld, watching and listening. It felt . . . dangerous. Was this what Lila Red had felt before she went and helped start the fight that made A-pod a closed coffin forever?

  She swallowed, realizing her breath had become shaky. She should send the students home so they wouldn’t get caught out by reds. Surely there would be a reaction.

  She put a hand on Owl Paulie’s shoulder to thank him.

  The light pressure of her touch bent him forward oddly, his body simply folding away from her. “Hugh!” she called. “Help!”

  As Hugh pushed the old man up gently, Owl Paulie’s head lolled back. His eyes had clearly gone—in that briefest of moments—to a place they couldn’t see.

  “Do CPR!” Marcelle screeched at Onor, then reached toward Owl Paulie herself.

  But Hugh gathered his grandfather up in his arms, lifting him easily, and sat down on a bench with the old man’s body draped across him, outside of Marcelle’s reach. He looked at Marcelle and shook his head. “He asked me to let him die. Over and over.”

  “When?” Marcelle demanded.

  “For years. But he stopped when Ruby came.” Hugh gave Ruby a probing look. “Until yesterday. He knew.” Tears brightened Hugh’s eyes. “He asked again yesterday. He knew.”

  Ruby pushed to Hugh’s side. She sat near the old man’s head, feeling empty and confused. Bereft. She closed Owl Paulie’s eyes. She managed to do it without flinching or stopping, even though her stomach knotted.

  A crowd gathered around, the students standing and staring down at them with their mouths open, a press that stole the air from her lungs.

  Hugh let out a strangled little cry and bowed his head.

  Marcelle cleared her throat and started repeating, “Step away, step away.”

  As if jerked from a daydream, Onor began to do the same thing, following Marcelle, so the two of them walked side by side and repeated the same words. “Move along. Go home. Get your things.”

  Kyle helped.

  Common cleared quickly, the quiet falling as heavy as the silence of Owl Paulie’s stilled heart.

  Ruby hooked her arm through Hugh’s and helped him take the weight of his grandfather’s body while they waited for the reclamation crew to collect him. She felt shocked and stilled and inspired all at once by what he said and because he had died after he said it, like an exclamation point at the end. The whole idea, the speech and timing, awed her.

  Death usually happened in medical, or in accidents. It was almost never witnessed by a crowd.

  Had he planned this?

  14: The Owl’s Song

  “I don’t want you to go,” Suri said for the fourth time, pacing around the small room, which had been transformed from Ruby’s private place into Suri’s domain. Daria was there, too, so it felt quite small and crowded.

  “I don’t care.” Ruby counted out five strands of blue beads from the neat rows of finished jewelry in front of her. “Owl Paulie was my friend, and his family—my friends—asked me to do this.”

  “You didn’t even know the old man before the sky fell,” Daria noted.

  “You did,” Ruby replied. “Why aren’t you going to common at least?”

  “I am going to common.”

  “Good.”

  “And Suri’s going with me,” Daria added.

  “I am?”

  “Yes.” Daria’s face hardened around her tightly pursed mouth.

  “I didn’t know him,” Suri said, staring in a mirror and plucking out gray hairs.

  Ruby let out a long breath as she looped multiple strands of blue beads around her neck. She glanced at her mom, and at Ean, who stood silently near Suri like a shadow. “I’m singing, and you can hear me if you go to common. You haven’t listened to me in a long time.” Without Macky around there was no one big enough to tackle her, so she opened the door and went through it.

  She met Hugh and Lya outside of the living habs. They looked solemn in their best gray uniforms. They all embraced. “Thank you,” Hugh said.

  “I loved him,” Ruby replied simply, her throat thick. They walked side by side by side and silent, around medical and down a long industrial corridor with plain, dirty walls. Near the end there was a single door. On the other side, a blue would be waiting beside Owl Paulie’s body.

  The door opened as they approached. Hugh flinched. Instead of a blue, a red uniform. Ruby tensed and then felt relief. Ben. She squeezed Hugh’s arm, offering reassurance. “Hi, Ben, what brings you here?” She glanced down at Owl Paulie’s body. “Did you know him?”

  Ben shook his head. “Not well. But Ix assigned a red, so I picked it up.”

  He didn’t actually say he did it for her. If this weren’t being broadcast she might have kissed his cheek, although she still wanted to know why there was a red here at all. There was always a blue to keep the form of the ceremony and say the last words. It was the ritual, the way of the ship, and expected.

  There was, in fact, a blue. He stood beside the hatch on the far wall, so still he might have been a statue, except for his breathing. He was small and square-jawed, with dark skin and light hair, his uniform clean and pressed perfect, with shiny shoes and creases in his pants. Ruby stared hard at the blue to see if he would look at her, but Ben tugged her arm and refocused her.

  She’d never been part of a funeral before. From the few times she’d sat in common and watched, she expected the room to be cleaner. The walls had been banged up over the years by maintenance bots gone feral or clumsy, a few of the gouges deep enough to collect grease and dust.

  The five of them—Hugh, Lya, Ruby, Ben, and the unnamed silent blue—stood in a square room that was about ten meters on each side, big enough to make them feel small.

  Owl Paulie’s remains lay bundled at their feet, the old man’s face left exposed so he’d be able to see the stars. His cheeks, which had been thin in life, had disappeared entirely into the bones of his face as if his skeleton wanted to free itself from his drained and desiccated body.

  He seemed too small and weak to have been the force that set her in motion. Only in this moment did it sink in that she truly wouldn’t see him again. Ever.

  At home, arguing with Daria and her mom, singing for him had seemed like a natural thing, maybe an inevitable thing, but now that she stood here, Ruby felt scared and out of place. She had been thinking of this song as for her, but that wasn’t right. She had to make it about him completely.

  She bowed her head and stripped the strands of beads from her neck. She put one strand back on and separated the others out across her palm, dangling down and glimmering in the light. She walked along, handing one each to Hugh and Lya. She had to help Hugh put his on, and when she was done, he nodded and licked his lips, glanced down, and whispered, “Thanks.”

  Lya took hers with grave silence.

  Ruby eyed the body below her. She’d planned to send him off with a strand of beads as a farewell gift, but the way he was wrapped, there was no way to fasten the beads on him well enough to be sure they’d stay.

  She glanced at Ben.

  He gazed back at her, his face emotionally flat. Looking red.

  She stood on tiptoe and draped a strand over his shoulders.

  He reached up and clutched them, his knuckles white.

  She held her breath, waiting for him to rip them over his head or pull hard enough to break them.

  His fist clenched tighter, the veins on the back of his aged hands turning to ridges. He didn’t have to look at Ruby for her to feel the struggle going on inside him.

  The blue remained still, but his eyes tracked the small, tense moment. He was younger than Ben by half, even if he was much older than Ruby, and he seemed to feel bound to stay quiet and play his role as observer and time-keeper.

  Ben dropped his hand, and Ruby turned to Hugh and nodded.

  The blue smiled coolly and asked Hugh, “Ready?”

  Hugh nodded and gazed at the far wall, where the stationary cameras had to be hidden. Lya leaned in to him and spoke loudly enou
gh for Ruby to hear. “They’re watching.”

  As if her words had evoked change, a section of the wall bloomed into a vid screen, displaying the expectant faces of the crowd in common. There were so many faces; it looked nearly like a festival, except that they were looking toward the cameras, which were above their heads. Ruby spotted Onor and Marcelle next to Salli and Jinn, her mom and Daria in the back, and Ean beside one of his friends.

  Hugh cleared his throat. “This man who lies at my feet gave me hope all my life. He told me that we should learn and strive. He told me I’d need to be everything I could be. He told me to be strong and smart . . .” He paused. “He told me to love and be loved.” Hugh hugged Lya and Ruby close to him. “He told me to find people to admire.”

  The faces below stayed rapt.

  “Owl Paulie told me to be ready whenever The Creative Fire needed me. He told me that all my life, and last night, he told me that time is now.”

  He stopped for a moment. Ben and the blue stepped forward.

  Hugh waved them back.

  Lya whispered to them both, “Be strong.”

  Hugh continued. “Yesterday afternoon, he also told many of you that the time is now. While I was wheeling him over, he told me that he is proud of this generation of young men and women.”

  Ruby was pretty sure she saw the people in her year group, and even the one below it, straightening up a bit. A girl clutched at her neck, her hand holding a blue cord. There were blue headscarves, too, and blue earrings. They were adorned in all the ways grays were allowed to wear color. Most of it was blue and a little red. The rest was the traditional black of mourning. The colors made Ruby proud and a bit awed.

  Then Hugh added, “He told me we will all have to be strong.”

  A tear started down Hugh’s face, then another.

  The blue’s body had tightened, his still face as stiff as the metal walls behind him.

  Lya stepped in front of Hugh and said, “Ruby will sing now. Please listen.”

  Ruby’s stomach twisted. She whispered in Hugh’s ear, “That was good, you sounded like him.”