The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (9 page)

12: Suri

Ruby’s hand dipped and wove through the air, in and out of piles of bright beads. Her needle trailed a long, thin line of glass and metal across her thigh. Most of the beads were blue, but here and there silver caught the light and gave the strand extra life.

“So, Miss Sullen, are you ready for Suri?” Daria asked

“I didn’t ask Mom to come here.” She hadn’t expected to wake up excited about seeing her mom, since she’d kind of dreaded it, too. Oddly, being happy about seeing Suri was winning by a long shot at the moment. But she didn’t want to look happy, not in front of her aunt. She didn’t expect to stay happy, after all. Suri was . . . Suri.

She kept her face as emotionless as she could, testing the strand’s strength by pulling it through her fingers. “I hope she’s in a good mood.”

“She must have missed you a lot.”

“Maybe she misses telling me what to do.”

“Maybe she just misses you.”

“She thinks about herself and about safety.”

“Maybe she’s more than you think.”

Ruby sighed. She liked Daria better, but the women were alike. Willing to be led and bullied and happy to trade small favors for safety. With Suri it was sex. With Daria, it was jewelry and maybe more. No way to know.

Daria got her power somehow. The room they were sitting in was almost as big as Owl Paulie’s whole hab. The walls were all shelves, with container after container of beads and tools, string and wire. Spare bot parts and broken bits of bot parts and odd little metal shapes she’d never seen filled wire-topped baskets on the lower shelves. A nest of tangled twine and metal filaments scrounged from a hundred previous uses tried to escape from one of them, as if the raw material of Daria’s workshop wanted to make itself into art.

Three mismatched homemade chairs fit in the middle of all this, surrounded by end tables and footstools, leaving almost no actual floor space. She and Daria each balanced large soft-bottomed lap tables on their knees. The tables had cloth tops that beads and oddments could be spilled out onto without rolling into the corners, and soft, slight bumpers to keep escapees from rolling off.

Daria held up the complex beaded wedding shawl she was making and squinted at it. “I missed a red one three rows back.”

“You told me to make at least one thing wrong in every piece.”

“That’s to know it’s handmade.” Daria frowned, “I’m up to four. That’s not handmade, that’s sloppy.”

“It’s a big piece.”

“And it’s due soon.”

Ruby got up and pawed through the shelves for more silver beads. “They’re still not letting anyone get married.”

“This’ll be needed the day the reds change their minds. There will be a shipful of weddings then.”

“You’re exaggerating.” Ruby sighed as she sat back down. “I told you, we’re almost home. Maybe they won’t allow new families until we are.”

Daria set the delicate lace of beads carefully across her lap and leaned back in her chair. “You might not have understood Fox.”

Ruby picked through the silver beads for a medium-sized one. “I never told you his name.”

Her aunt’s voice was shaded with a slight bitterness, or maybe sadness. “You think I don’t know all the stories they tell about you?”

“What do they say?”

“You’re going to break the gates open and go inward. You’re starting a revolution. You’re in love with a man named Fox and he’s coming for you.” Daria’s voice rose higher with each phrase, although her beads stayed in her lap, her hands still on top of them. “You figured out how to make the great test available again, even though no one ever heard about the great test before you got here. You’re going to help us all become blues.”

Ruby shook her head.

Daria leaned in toward her. “You’re going to set us free. That’s what they say.”

“Are you accusing me, or wishing it was true?” Ruby found the bead she wanted and quickly popped three blue ones onto the needle behind it. She wasn’t allowed to wear blue clothes, but at least she could wear blue jewelry.

“You need to be careful.” Daria pursed her lips. “People are making you out like something you’re not. If you disappoint them, they’ll be mad at you.”

“How am I supposed to create a revolution when you almost never let me go out?”

Her aunt laughed. “I let you go out last night. Are you unhappy?”

“I like making jewelry.” And she did. Way back when she was eleven and they started her on the bot repair lines for training a few hours a day, she’d learned to sit and clean parts with both of her hands but only some of her brain. That left the rest free to be curious. It had become a blessing, which the pleasant monotony of beading also gave her. Even better, her hands suffered less than they had from degreasing parts. Of course, spending evenings in this close, cluttered place with Daria and the sparkly mounds of color was at best a pleasant jail. She wanted to be out with Marcelle and Onor.

She dragged her thoughts away from herself. Suri thought about herself all the time, and she wasn’t going to be like Suri. “Daria? What do you know about what happened to us in the past. To the grays? Not to your parents, not to their parents, but further back?”

Daria picked up her beadwork and plunged her needle into a pile of pale yellow beads. “People get in trouble when they talk about history.”

“How come all the old people are afraid?”

“Maybe you need fear to live a long life on this ship.”

“What do you mean?”

Daria’s voice had fallen to a whisper. “The accidents down here . . . you think they’re all really accidents?”

Ruby flinched, dropping a bead. She saw Nona’s dying look again. “No.” She searched for another bead, accidentally poking the long, thin needle into the index finger of her other hand and biting her lip.

Daria’s voice went soft, almost to a whisper. “Anything they don’t like, you keep quiet.”

“Who do you mean when you say
they
?”

“Ix and the reds.”

“Ix is a machine.”

“Ix is the one who sees everything, hears everything.”

Ruby looked around the walls for emphasis. “Not in our habs. It’s not allowed.”

“Taping inside our habs isn’t allowed as evidence against us, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”

Suri had always told her they could say anything they wanted in the hab. But come to think of it, The Jackman was always careful.

Daria hadn’t answered her question about history. And she couldn’t search the library without leaving a record.

The Jackman. She and Onor had talked about that, but he’d said that if the reds were watching anyone, it was The Jackman. She swallowed the knot of fear the idea drove into her sternum and picked up another bead, waiting for Suri.

She finished the necklace and started another.

The door let her little brother Ean in first. It slammed open, and she smelled him before she saw him; he always smelled of the medical creams he worked with, almost like robot grease but sweeter. Freckles flashed across his face, and his nose turned up like her father’s must have. Macky looked like Suri, Ean was supposed to look like their dad, and she was in the middle. He grinned at her. “Hi, Sis. Mom’ll be along in a minute. She sent me ahead to make sure you didn’t escape to another pod before she gets here. She blames you, you know.”

But his voice made it a joke, and Ruby let the string of blue and silver pool on the table beside her so she could fold Ean in her arms. “I missed you.” She hadn’t actually thought of him much, but now that she was happy to see him she knew she
had
missed him. “I really did. What have you been doing?”

“Taking care of Mom, you dope. Someone had to.”

Her cheeks flared hot, but she didn’t say anything about the cut in his comment. “Where is she?”

“Dragging luggage.”

Ruby eyed the puddle of beads, but Daria was up hugging Ean next, exaggerating about him being knee high last she saw him. He rolled his eyes and mouthed the word “help” over Daria’s shoulder.

“Daria, watch the beads.” She grabbed Ean’s hand and dragged him out the door.

Ean narrowed his eyes and grinned widely. “What? Are the beads going to run away?”

She stifled a giggle and whispered, “It will take her a minute to think that through.”

He gave her a knowing look and picked up his pace until they rounded the corner and almost ran into two reds on patrol.

The reds glared at them. One of them put up his hand in a slow-down gesture.

She nodded at the red, slowing, and whispered, “Why didn’t Macky come?”

“He’s important now. Got an inspection job he doesn’t want to lose.” They turned a corner. “And a girl.”

Ruby grunted, trying to hide her relief.

When they came face to face with Suri, she was pulling a wheeled cart laden with packed boxes and bags, everything taped and neatly labeled. A light sheen of sweat brightened her brow as she stopped, frowned, and then dropped everything and raced forward. “Ruby, you’re okay.”

Even though she’d just been dragging the cart, Suri’s primary scent remained the soft perfume of juice-flowers, and for a moment Ruby felt small in her mother’s arms, drawing comfort.

Suri pushed her away, still holding her, looking into her eyes.

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“I’ve heard so much. I’m worried.”

From Daria? Ruby shook her head. “I’m just me. In school. Same stuff.”

Suri handed Ean the long tongue of the wheeled cart and waved him down the corridor. After the cart passed them, Suri grabbed Ruby’s hand and directed their pace to match Ean’s, staying behind him and out of his earshot. “Daria told me about Fix, or Fox, or whatever his name is, and Greg brought home a rumor that you’re in trouble with the reds here, and I want you to tell me
everything
.”

Ruby decided she hadn’t missed Suri after all. If she really couldn’t test inward, then maybe some other pod needed an apprentice robot-repair girl.

13: The Owl’s Talk

A week later, Ruby looked up from her seat in common to see Hugh wheeling Owl Paulie to a nearby table. The old man looked determined, as if some secret store of energy drove him. Hugh had attended study sessions, but he’d never brought his grandfather. Ruby eyed them from time to time as she finished walking Salli and Jinn through a math problem. Owl Paulie watched her, contemplative. He seemed to draw strength the longer he sat there, as if he were drinking in the young people’s energy.

A few students came up to greet him, and others waved.

They’d been meeting here for over a week. It had been Marcelle’s idea to start a study group so they could get to know the other students and maybe get more people excited about testing into other levels. They’d done it by example and rumor and invitation. First, it had been Salli and Jinn, who never left each other’s sides. Two days later, another group—three boys and a girl. And then they brought friends. There were two new students today. One was a pale girl, Nia, who had looked scared when Ruby stopped and introduced herself.

Right now, common held almost half of the last-years in the pod.

Ruby leaned over and whispered to Marcelle. “I half expect the reds to come bouncing in to break us up. An illegal gathering.”

Onor glanced over at her, grinning. “Studying together is encouraged. We’re not protesting. We’re studying.”

Marcelle moved from table to table, supporting, asking questions, and greeting today’s crop of new people.

Onor went back to his journal. Ruby peeked. He was lost in a diagram of interactions between the water reclamation systems, the fruit and vegetable gardens, and the oxygen/CO
2
balance.

Ruby fingered the blue beads around her neck, small and hard against her skin.

“Cookies!”

The moment Kyle said it, Ruby smelled them. Kyle balanced two platters of his cookies, one on either arm, a great big smile on his face.

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 hold, 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?