The Diamond Deep

by Brenda Cooper

“The spider bots cannot open the lock if it’s dogged shut.”

  Onor protested. “They opened the outside door of the Fire. The outside.”

  “I can keep them out of the rest of the ship.”

  “Could you have kept them out of ship at all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Damned machine.” He wanted to say worse things, but knew it for the heat of adrenaline. He took three deep breaths, his lungs seared by the pain in his arm, which seemed to go to the bone. As soon as his hands stopped shaking too hard to undo the clasps, he stripped his helmet off. Marcelle did the same, and then he had her in his arms, both of them bulky in their suits, not really touching. There was no way to reach her face to kiss her. He ripped his glove free and stroked her hair awkwardly. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  Her face had gone white as bone except for pink spots on her cheeks from the exertion of pulling along the line. Her breath came in fast little gasps like his. Tears hung in her eyes.

  He closed his eyes, searching for something to focus her on, to get her back into control. The pain in his arm throbbed, demanding attention. It would do. “I need help. A medikit.”

  “Back. Right outside the airlock.” She was already turning. “Are you hurt?”

  “A cut. It’s bleeding.” He could still feel it, warm and sticky inside his suit.

  “I’ll get the kit.”

  He slithered out of the bulky suit, standing mostly-naked in the corridor until Marcelle returned with a fistful of medical supplies held in a bare hand and one suit-glove clutched in her gloved hand. She stared at his arm, which dripped red blood. “You should have left your suit on until we got all the way back to a working hab.”

  “You sound like The Jackman.”

  “Someone needs to protect you,” she shot back at him. “What if they space the air in here?”

  He grimaced. “If the damned suit had worked, I could have saved Colin.”

  Her face screwed up into an expression that looked like rage and sorrow blended. As she wrapped the bandage around his arm, the look softened, replaced with calm and concern everywhere except her dark eyes. They were steeled and angry. “Hold that,” she whispered, “use pressure.” She helped him onto the cart and found a way for him to hook his elbow around a rail to hold on with the bleeding arm so he could keep pressure on the cut with his good arm.

  Ix gave them directions.

  Marcelle turned out to be quite deft at flying the cart.

  If his arm didn’t hurt so much he would have felt silly being out between levels in his underwear. As it was, it just meant he had to hang on tighter since his sweat-slicked bare skin wanted to slide off the smooth surface as Marcelle cornered faster than he would have. Not that he blamed her. Every turn left the robots further behind.

  They rushed through the open space between cargo and the living pods, an eerie thin corridor full of supports and pipes and catwalks and storage.

  The images in his head were all bad. The worst was Colin. He could see Colin whole and then not-whole. Over and over, like the picture wouldn’t leave his mind. He barely felt the jerk as the cart stopped. Marcelle had a hand on his arm, and was helping him off before he understood they’d returned to the suit locker. His clothes were there, but of course hers weren’t. She put on Colin’s clothes, and did a second quick wrap of his arm before she let him put on his shirt.

  As he followed Marcelle up the ladder into B-pod, he had to stop and hold on with both hands to keep from falling. She leaned down into the hatch Ix told them to go up, a worried look on her face. “Are you okay?”

  “Dizzy.”

  “Come on, then. We’ll find a place to rest.” She braced herself on the rim and held her hand down to him. It took him three tries to grasp it with his good hand.

  She had taken his hand a lot today.

  She pulled, and he came up the ladder, slowly, step by step. He crawled out of the hole and fell onto his side, breathing hard.

  Marcelle picked up his arm. “It’s bled through.” She supported him into a nearby hab. They had no trouble getting in—probably once more a gift from Ix. The hab was empty, and smelled stale.

  She closed the door hard and double-checked with Ix to make sure it was locked.

  He had to lean on her to get into the bed.

  His shirt was caked to the bandage. He barely managed not to scream when she pulled it free. “That’s deep,” she murmured. “Good thing I brought something to close that with.” She wrinkled her nose. “Let’s get clean first. You’ve got blood everywhere.”

  She stripped him the rest of the way without blushing or teasing. Her calm strength let him relax as he stood under the water and she sponged blood and sweat from him. Then they were both naked and in the shower. They didn’t talk, which he was grateful for. It wasn’t very much like Marcelle to be quiet, and it was what he needed. To just stand and feel the water.

  The shower stayed on longer than usual, recognizing the two users or perhaps helped by Ix. The water seemed to pick the fear up from his skin and wash it away one thin layer at a time. He left the shower before she did and dried himself off as best he could. His cut still bled, and he stained the towel.

  By the time Marcelle emerged, wrapped in a towel herself, he had stretched out on the bed with his arm flung up by his ear and the other hand trying to put on enough pressure to stop the blood.

  She pulled on her underwear and Colin’s T-shirt and came to him. She wiped the cut clean with an astringent pad and filled it with a sharp-smelling paste. “This will keep it from getting infected.”

  “You were good back there,” he murmured. “Fast. Might have saved our lives.”

  She bound the edges of his cut with thick, clear tape, then wiped the excess medicine and blood off his arm. Her fingers felt warm, gentle. “That was the most awful thing I ever saw. Colin. I can’t . . . I can’t believe it.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you know it’s not your fault?”

  He didn’t have an answer. If he’d gone back to trade suits, if he had been stronger, if he had been more graceful . . .

  She gave him one of her looks, the one that said no nonsense and listen up, the one that made him feel like a recalcitrant child. Then she said, “You did your best. We all did. You saved us both by sending me over the traverse line. Otherwise, I’d be dead, too. And you. Colin . . . Colin hesitated when you didn’t. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  She was so damned earnest. “I’ll try not to.” It felt like a faint promise, but not quite a lie. Colin’s death seemed so big, and so awful.

  She checked the work she’d done on his arm, left her fingers on his shoulder. “I get it that they wanted to steal the cargo. I guess we learned a lesson there. But why hurt people?” Her voice sounded thin and high, like she might break. “Why kill Colin? What did they get out of that?”

  Her fingers had tightened on his shoulder, and the human contact felt good. “I have no idea.”

  “We almost died,” she said.

  “We might die yet. Who knows what other surprises that ship has for us?”

  “I want to live.” She bent over him and kissed him on the lips. He didn’t have the strength to turn away, and before he knew it he was returning her kiss as enthusiastically as she was delivering it. She smelled like stale sweat and fear and concern, but it was also the scent of life. He could feel it in her pulse, in her lips, in the way she put weight on him carefully, avoiding his arm.

  He was already naked under the towel.

  The heat of her erased the pain in his arm and the robot spiders and everything else he should be thinking about. It almost erased the pain of the last sight he had of Colin.

  The mood in the map room felt thick and dark.

  Ruby sat on one of the benches along the wall, still fuming even though the command staff had been gone for at least twenty minutes. Haric had fallen asleep near her. His head and arms were pillowed on the bench and she could just hear his soft
snores.

  She stared at her journal as she struggled with words for speeches. All of her phrases came out awkward, but it was better than staring at the map table and waiting for news. Even though she was shut out of the real discussions, Ix did occasionally provide updates. The last had been unhelpful; a reminder that while they were trying to blow up the invader, it might be trying to blow them up, too.

  Any moment could be her last. Their last.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Haric moaned in his sleep.

  There were a lot of people on the ship who knew less than she did. They would know enough to be frightened; rumors were social blood through every level of the ship.

  She shouldn’t be writing about speeches, she should be giving one.

  “Ix?” She whispered so she wouldn’t wake up Haric.

  “Yes, Ruby?”

  “Can you broadcast throughout the ship from here?”

  “Yes Ruby. But I will not. Only command staff are allowed to broadcast from here.”

  Of course. The anger fisted even tighter in her, like a screw being turned slowly. “Where can I broadcast to everyone?”

  “From any common.”

  “Will you also run a feed for me? So I can see what happens in the cargo bay with the robots?”

  “I can run it to your journal.”

  It could do more, but she could live with this much. “Run the feed to Haric’s journal, too. And Ani’s. And make an announcement that I’ll be talking. Tell everyone.”

  “Yes, Ruby.”

  The AI couldn’t feel, but she was almost certain it understood sarcasm, at least on some level.

  Ruby stood up quietly so she wouldn’t wake Haric. She went home and took a shower and put on the best clothes she had: a pair of neat red pants and a deep green shirt with a blue vest the exact pale shade of her eyes. She circled her neck with multi-colored beads and pinned her hair up. Remembering the unexpected hike through the below corridors the evening of the festival, she slipped on comfortable boots that she could run in. She stopped back by the map room and shook Haric’s shoulder softly. “Wake up. We’re leaving.”

  Ani lay stretched out on a bench, her tall form folded and one foot hanging off. Ruby shook her shoulder. “Come with me?”

  Ani opened her eyes and blinked at Ruby. “What’s happened? Did the bombs work?”

  “They’re not there yet. We may have hours. I’m going to my people.”

  “All the way to gray again?”

  “Ix says it will turn on a train to get us most of the way.”

  Ani ran her fingers through her hair. “The AI is spinning up a train for you?”

  “The AI is doing a lot of things it doesn’t usually do.” Like killing. But she couldn’t make herself tell Ani about that.

  After they disembarked from the train, they jogged through a nearly-empty corridor.

  A woman stepped out right in front of them, forcing Ani and Ruby and Haric to a stop. Women surrounded them, at least ten or maybe twelve. Directly in from of Ruby, Lya stood with her feet braced wide and her hands on her hips. “You should go back.”

  She had been beautiful once. She was only a year or two older than Ruby, maybe three. Her blonde hair hung in uneven strings and her shirt had two big holes in it that showed bones lifting skin across a thin frame. Ruby smiled as softly as she could in the face of Lya’s continued deterioration. “I can’t. I have to go tell the people something.”

  “Only what you want them to know.”

  Ruby signaled to Haric and Ani to stay quiet, and let out a breath as slowly as she could. “Isn’t that always what any of us tell people? What we want them to know? In this case, I’m telling them that we are being attacked, and that we are counter-attacking. Don’t you think they would like to know that?”

  “You never told us you were going to abandon us.”

  Even though she knew there was no point in arguing with a broken mind, perhaps some of Lya’s silent followers could be swayed. “If I were going to abandon you, I would not be standing here. There are dangers I need to tell people about.”

  “There’s always danger near you,” Lya said. “But that’s not the biggest problem. You’ve changed.” She made a gesture that encompassed Ruby’s neatly clipped hair, her dress uniform, and her multicolored beads all at once. “Too fancy now. You’ve lost touch. Go away.”

  “And if I go away, who’ll tell you what’s happening?” She waited a moment. “Move. I need to pass, Lya. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Lya’s cheeks were stained with dark circles and she stank of sour still. But she was still stubborn. If only Ruby could get her to be stubborn about things that either Lya or Ruby could change. At the moment, she looked like she wanted to spit on Ruby. “Hugh wouldn’t have wanted to see you like this. All high and mighty. It would have hurt him.”

  “And he wouldn’t have wanted to see you addicted to still.”

  That moved Lya far enough for Ruby to press harder and pass. “I’m sorry,” Lya said as Ruby pulled Haric and Ani through the crack of corridor that Lya and her followers didn’t fill. “I’m sorry.”

  Ruby wasn’t sure what Lya was sorry for, but she couldn’t think about that now. They were so close to common she heard the buzz of conversations.

  The big room was full, but people immediately made a path for her. Fear and anxiety echoed in tones of voice and on faces, and in the way parents clutched children’s hands. Each familiar face made all of the things that could go wrong seem both worse and more likely.

  They could all die.

  She pushed toward the podium. The crowd included people she knew. Her aunt Daria. Kyle, the man who’d taken her and Onor and Marcelle in long ago, balancing plates of cookies. He must have been cooking long before the announcement. Maybe he did more for people with his food than she did with her songs. The idea made her laugh a little, released some of the anger she still felt toward Joel and toward the ugly ship.

  She liked the idea that Onor and Joel would be furious that she was here with no guards except Ani and Haric. It gave her extra energy to feel like she was breaking rules. But that didn’t mean she should be stupid. She leaned down and spoke softly to Haric. “Wander through the crowd and guard. Let me know if you hear or see anything. Make a circle, and check in with Ani on each circle. Try not to let people know you’re watching them.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s a man with cookies—Kyle. Bring me one. And have one yourself—they’re fabulous. Tell Kyle I said thank you for being here.”

  Haric looked very solemn. “Kyle. Cookies.”

  “Thank you.”

  He’d be discounted since so many people only saw or knew the child in him, and he’d feel big for being asked. Ruby set Ani to watching her journal, and kept her close so she could signal Ruby if there was any news.

  Ruby stood at the end of the stage and waited until they quieted. “You deserve to know what’s happening.”

  She told them about the ship and had Ix broadcast a picture on the screens in the room. She thought about leaving out the explosives or the worry that the other ship could attack them. She took a deep breath and kept talking. They deserved to know they were in danger. She talked for so long that Haric passed through twice, giving her the high sign in both cases.

  By the time she finished, the crowd was very, very quiet. People sat close together in family or friend groups.

  She wanted to stop and talk to Ix, to find out about the robots, and to know Joel was okay. But she could see from the faces looking at her that they needed something more. “I’ll sing now. Just one song.” She sang “Song of the Seed,” the one she’d sung after Ben’s funeral. It was the most hopeful song she’d ever written. When she finished, she let a beat go by, then another before she addressed her audience everywhere on the ship. “Wait with me. If you’re just listening, and you want to be here, come if you aren’t on shift. If you are on shift, thank you for your service.

  “We’re going to w
ait for success or failure. Now, I’m going to take a break and see if there is anything new to learn.”

  Ruby stood at the edge of the stage for a few minutes and looked quietly out over the room. About a quarter of the people left amid whispered conversations and brief kisses.

  She sat down by Ani, speaking softly. “What’s happening?”

  When Onor woke, it felt as if he were coming up from someplace as deep as his past and as far away as the world when he and Ruby and Marcelle were children dodging reds like Ben through the corridors between workshops and habs.

  Marcelle’s even breathing drew him back to the present. He felt . . . not regret. There was no way to regret becoming lost in Marcelle, being one with her if only for a moment. The comfort of it. The way it had felt right and inevitable in spite of how it felt wrong . . .

  Marcelle snored. He remembered that from lying on the bottom bunk under her at Kyle’s. Her snoring had amused him then. It sounded better beside him than it had above him, even though it wasn’t muffled by a mattress. He opened his eyes and watched her take little snorting breaths, shaking a tiny bit from time to time as if she were dreaming. She was beautiful—her hair messy from lovemaking, the hollows in her cheeks filled in by sleep, as if they were caused by worry when she was awake. She was so thin the ridge of her spine and the low mountains of muscle beside it were clear and distinct.

  He had participated in an act that would change their relationship forever.

  If they lived.

  “Ix,” he whispered. “What’s happening?”

  In answer, a small screen on the wall at the base of the bed snapped on, glowing brightly.

  Marcelle groaned at the light and covered her eyes, not quite waking. She had rejected all of the pillows, so Onor stacked three up and watched as Ix showed him a view of one of the common rooms. Ruby stood on a stage, holding a microphone close to her lips as if she wanted to swallow it. The volume was down, so he couldn’t hear her words, but her feet were planted slightly apart, her back straight, her head up. She moved fluidly, crossing the stage and recrossing it, her eyes meeting the camera from time to time as they scanned the room. She couldn’t know he was watching, but she knew she was being broadcast.