The Diamond Deep Read online

  She’d met Allo when she was a young apprentice, maybe twelve. He had looked big and successful to her then, like something she might become someday. “I met you once. You were teaching us about welding safely.”

  His eyes rounded. “I don’t remember.”

  “I was young. You were a good teacher, Allo.”

  He looked so pleased at her words that she was glad she’d remembered his name.

  A wall had been knocked out between two workshops to make enough space for the whole robot leg to spread across long tables.

  Ruby stared at it, distaste welling in her throat.

  “Pick it up,” Frieda suggested.

  “The leg?” It was huge.

  “Yes.”

  Ruby braced and extended her arms, tensed, lifted.

  And came fully to standing as if she had been bounced. “Wow. How can it be so strong?”

  “It’s material we’ve never seen here,” Allo said.

  Ruby addressed one of the robot dancers. “What about the middle of it? Were you able to go back and get that?”

  “Over here.”

  Over here actually meant in a different, smaller room, on a normal-sized table, and with lights shining on it from all angles. It was still in its cage. Here, separated from the surrounding power of legs and great clawed arms, it was even harder to imagine that it had any structural significance. It could only be controls. “Is this made out of the same material?”

  Allo said, “Just the cage. The thing inside of it is soft. Poke it.”

  Her arm was slender enough to fit through the protective bars, and so she reached in and touched the surface. Cool. Hard. It dented slightly under her finger, but she wouldn’t have had the strength to poke a hole in the surface. It didn’t feel at all vulnerable. Just . . . different. Slightly greasy and entirely unfamiliar, even creepy.

  This time, she found a freshly cleaned suit outside the airlock. It fit her as if she’d been measured for it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  KJ smiled. “You won’t be able to tell me you can’t see through that glass.”

  “It’s not as if the air isn’t good. What’s going to happen?”

  “The sky could fall. Enemies could find a way to change the mix of oxygen. Besides, it might be harder for the robot to snip off your pretty little head if you have your helmet covering it.”

  She laughed at his list of fears. “I’ll try and resist my natural predilection for stupidity.”

  “You do that.” KJ was laughing, too.

  When you were afraid, she thought, laughter was a good thing.

  Back at the bottom of the traverse, the robot still towered over her. Ix addressed her, using a communication channel that didn’t broadcast out loud. “It has been asking me questions.”

  “And have you answered?” Ruby asked it.

  “If the question was something factual about the ship. KJ gave me permission to do that.”

  “So you answer to KJ but not to me,” Ruby teased.

  “KJ is Joel’s chief strategist.”

  She didn’t bother to ask what the damned machine thought she was.

  “KJ suggested I convince the robot that we have in fact killed the ship it came from.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. It wants to talk to you now.”

  KJ must have known. This explained the new, clean suit. She swallowed and took a deep breath, regretting the promise to leave her helmet on. “Are you recording?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go ahead and broadcast.” She stared at the robot, wishing there was a way to look into its eyes. Or that it had eyes to look at. “What should I call you? I’m Ruby.”

  This time the answer was immediate. “Aleesi.”

  She had been expecting a stream of numbers or something. “That’s pretty.”

  “That was my human name.”

  It was Ruby’s turn for a slight hesitation. “A human named you?”

  “My mother. I was a girl once.”

  Ruby drew in a sharp breath and clutched the traverse line harder.

  Aleesi continued. “That is why we live at the Edge of the worlds.”

  So the thing she had felt this morning was a brain. She felt good. The beast wasn’t merely alive. It was human. She had been right. More than right.

  KJ regathered his sense of equilibrium first. “But you do not look human now.”

  “I am not one thing.”

  Well that was clear. “Why does having been human mean you live at the edge?”

  “We are . . . not allowed in human space.”

  “Why?” she pushed.

  “I have not died. The inner worlds consider death an absolute. It can take a long time, but it must happen. Thus only full biologicals have rights, and I am an abomination.”

  “So you don’t have to die?” KJ looked curious.

  “This instance of me can die. That’s likely, now. Being part of my ship was my protection.”

  Ruby wasn’t quite ready to feel sorry for it . . . her. “You came here to kill us.” She saw Colin’s face again, heard his voice teasing her. Remembered a kiss, from a time before she met Joel. “You killed a man who I liked very much.”

  “We did what we were told by the controlling voices. We came here to survive. The way to change and grow is to gather new things, to have materials and knowledge that no one else does.”

  “Even if it belongs to someone else?” Ruby asked.

  “Who owns The Creative Fire? The people who sent it away are long dead and they have no children with the power of such a long remembrance.”

  Ruby glanced at KJ reflexively. She couldn’t see his face clearly through the helmet, but his eyes had narrowed and he looked stiff. “So how will you survive now?” he asked. “Will you adapt to us, or will you kill us if we untie you?”

  “There is no reason to kill you now.”

  “We consider the ship ours,” Ruby said.

  The spider didn’t offer an answer to that. After a few long moments of silence, Ruby asked, “Why are you in danger?”

  “You will kill me or the people inside the system will kill me.”

  Aleesi sounded matter-of-fact about it. Ruby couldn’t tell if the machine felt fear since Ix used a robotic voice to translate Aleesi’s words.

  “We will not kill you if we don’t give us a reason,” Ruby said. Her words earned a sharp look from KJ, so she added, “I mean that.”

  KJ didn’t challenge Ruby, but changed the subject. “Why? Why would people inside kill you?”

  “Because I am not allowed inside, and you are bringing me there. I am in five other machines on my home ship. If it lives, they live. I may yet live in those, but I cannot talk to any of my selves. No one answers. The first day, when I was alone here—after the deaths of the others.” A pause. “The first hours after, I could hear my other selves on the Thief of a Thousand Stars. Now I cannot. We are too far away. I’m sure I never will. I have chosen to talk to you because to be alone is to die before my time. I don’t know how to be alone.”

  The translated voice still showed no emotion, but this time there was no mistaking the feeling in the words. Ruby forced herself to let her hands unclench from the traverse line. She sucked at her water straw. The implications of Aleesi’s story whirled through her head. There was cruelty and opportunity, and more hints that they should fear going home. “Have you always been at the Edge?”

  “I started inside, but I was bought and sold and bought and sold. There is a black market in things like me.”

  “You were human and they sold you?”

  “I was born of a human, my inner seed is human. But I am more. And anything rare has value in the inner worlds. You will see. You will be rare.”

  Fear crept in through Ruby’s indignation. She would find a way to be sure no one on the Fire ever became part of a slave market. She said, “Go on. Tell the rest of it.”

  “Eventually a man on the Thief of a Thousand Stars bought m
e, and then, while I was still young enough to adapt, they stuck me in here. When you go back, and I get caught, they’ll kill me.”

  Joel’s voice startled her, tinny but serious as it poured through the speakers in her helmet. “Ask it about Diamond Deep. Or other places. See what it will tell us about where we are going.”

  She hadn’t known he was listening. She didn’t like it, but at the same time, feeling like he was there with her warmed her. She whispered back, trusting Ix to route her words correctly. “I will.” She raised her voice. “Aleesi. Tell me about the inside.”

  “The inside hates us. They are united against any human/machine hybrid that includes a human mind. The inside hates others, too. We grow—the Edge—when people flee the inside. There is one government and many.”

  “What is the most powerful place inside?”

  “The Diamond Deep. By far. We call it the station that rules the planets.”

  “And what is it like?”

  “They hate us.”

  Aleesi was answering from its own narrow point of view. She exchanged another glance with KJ, noting he looked more puzzled than startled. “What is inside?” he asked.

  “Humans. Planets. The enforcers who come out to hurt us come from inside. A friend on the Thief of a Thousand Stars told me there are a few good things on the planet Lym, and in the place called Moon’s Refuge.”

  Ruby sipped water from the tube in her suit. Aleesi wasn’t sounding as smart as any grown human she knew, and certainly not like Ix. In fact, the robot spider girl wasn’t sounding very formidable at all. “Are there machines inside?”

  “Like me? Human machines? Only if they are hidden. But otherwise, yes, of course. How would you run the world without machines?”

  “But there are humans? The Diamond Deep is full of humans?”

  “The Diamond Deep is full of many things. Humans are the most plentiful.”

  KJ spoke up again. “What do you know about us? How did you know a way into this ship?”

  “I don’t know how the controlling voices found a way to enter you. They gave codes to the ships that carried us. But I know that we found you in the library of history and that we know when you left, long before the sundering and the remaking and the blending and the Age of Explosive Creation. I know we came to you because anything so old must be a wealth of rare ideas.”

  Onor hesitated in the doorway to Jaliet’s studio. Onor credited her with changing the way Ruby dressed and walked and even how she wore her hair and what she washed it in.

  He had expected the studio to be an explosion of color and perhaps chaos, but instead it was neat and orderly. Colorful drawers lined one wall, a mirror another, and a third was all hanging closet. Jali herself sat in a single chair that rotated on a base bolted to the floor. He had seen her in public at events and occasionally beside Ruby, always perfect and maybe even otherworldly. At the moment she looked like a normal human being: she wore a soft gray shirt and simple blue pants and low shoes that looked both comfortable and homemade. Her black hair had been tamed in a neat braid that accentuated her generous mouth and dark eyes. She wore no ribbons or jewelry except a single thin rope of braided colors around her neck, the universal symbol for support of Ruby and Joel.

  “Come in,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  They’d only spoken in passing. He found himself a tiny bit tongue-tied. “Ruby talks well of you.”

  Jali smiled. “And of you. Did she tell you what we’re doing?”

  “She said something about developing a style.”

  Jali laughed. “That’s right. We want to meet our makers in something coherent, beautiful, and simple. In all of our colors.” She appeared to be genuinely having fun, which might explain why she was so good. “It will have to be something we can fight in if we need to, but also something we can attend a party in.” She paused and cocked her head. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a scheme of Ruby’s.”

  “Of course it is. All good things on the ship come from Ruby.”

  “Really?” he asked. It was hard to tell if she was teasing, although he thought he heard a touch of cynicism. “What about Joel?”

  “Ruby keeps him in power.”

  “You can’t think that.” He felt slightly offended.

  She laughed and rummaged in a drawer, pulling out a long measuring tape. “What do you think?”

  “Ruby couldn’t hold the command or logistics levels.”

  “Joel would never have won without her.” She walked around him, as if she were noticing every detail. “You can relax here,” she said. “There is nothing to guard against in my studio.”

  Except for maybe Jaliet herself. “I am relaxed,” he replied.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not. Drop your shoulders. Hold them back a little. Chin up. Relax your knees.”

  As he complied with each demand, he did, in fact, feel better.

  She measured him and wrote notes, muttering. Then she made him move, so she could see him walk and stretch and reach into invisible pockets.

  “Are you doing this for everyone?” he asked.

  “I’m making the design for everyone. Daria and a small army are going to help make and fit the uniform onto as many people as possible.”

  Daria and Jali might be natural friends. They both worried about how everyone dressed and moved; Jali just did it at a higher and more precise level. “How are you going to get enough material?”

  “We’ve collected old uniforms and found a way to dye them black. That’s being done now. Well, almost black.”

  “So we’re all going to be gray?” The thought made him smile.

  “With touches of color. It will be one uniform for everyone, with purple and orange insignia that spans all of the old levels.” She held up swatches of colored cloth. “Ruby asked me to fit all of her friends myself. The list is forty people long.” She made a face. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how much time I have?”

  “I wish. We’re actually in-system now, you know. Ix doesn’t appear to know where to go, so we just have to choose.”

  “I know. I’m not sure that damned game described this system at all.” She stepped back and stared at him again, a slight frown touching her lips. “Do you like the idea of Diamond Deep or the idea of circling Lym?”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to a planet, to have a sky. But apparently there’s almost no one there.”

  “Are we even sure we ended up in the right star system?”

  She had said it with a smile, but it knocked him off-balance. “The planets and the sun are in the right place,” he replied. “There’s just new stuff here, too. More stations. Ix says people have built whole planets they live inside of.”

  “Almost like living in the Fire,” she mused.

  “Well, they’re bigger,” he offered. “We can’t do that. Live here. The Fire needs repairs.”

  She paced. “From the classes Ix is teaching us, we haven’t changed much. I keep thinking half of this place could be robots like the one that almost got you and Marcelle.”

  A familiar voice came in over his shoulder. “Did I hear my name?”

  “Come on in. You’re a few minutes early.”

  He hadn’t seen Marcelle for days, except on the exercise floor, sweating to Conroy’s commands again. She looked surprised to see him there, and perhaps a touch hesitant. The dark ringlets of her hair framed her face in a way he found enchanting enough to wipe away the slight regret he felt. If it weren’t for the dark circles under her eyes, she would look truly beautiful.

  Jaliet addressed Marcelle. “Ruby told you what we’re doing, right?”

  “I love it.” Marcelle came up close to Onor, put a hand briefly on his arm as if it was drawn there. “Will you stay until she’s done, and then share a meal?”

  He felt the tiniest bit trapped, and guilty for feeling trapped. “Of course. I’m free for the next hour.”

  Jali measured Marcelle and moved her from
pose to pose. She managed to keep up a stream of small talk that included both Marcelle and Onor, to brush out Marcelle’s hair until it shone, and to pin it up in a way that made Marcelle’s thin face look broader and softer.

  As he walked out with Marcelle, he said, “That woman could run the ship.”

  Marcelle grinned. “She could. I love the uniform idea.”

  “I like that we’ll all be gray.”

  Marcelle slid an arm around his waist. “You’ve been busy the last few days.”

  He swallowed. “I have duties. To Joel and Ruby.”

  She fell quiet; not a typical state for Marcelle. She seemed to sense his hesitation, to match it. She pulled her arm off of his waist. “Will you come down and visit us? I’d like to show you the teams working on the new uniforms. We took everyone that can’t fight—young or old or hurt—and they’re making the new material and uniforms while they watch Ruby’s classes.”

  “Did you set that up?” he asked.

  “Me and Daria. People in every pod are working together. Kyle brings food to the sewing lines. They’re sewing off-time, so the regular shift work still gets done.”

  “All this in just a couple of days?” He and Marcelle were training with the old squads again, too.

  “People need to be busy. They’re scared.”

  Walking beside her felt confusing. He wanted to hold her and yet didn’t, as if it would betray Ruby if he did. He was wrong, but knowing that didn’t change the confusion being close to Marcelle caused him. They hadn’t made love again, but he remembered what she felt like, and how she sighed and softened under his hands. Damn. “Are you scared?” he asked her.

  “Of course I am. Surely you are, too.”

  He laughed. “I’m one of Joel’s guards. I’m not allowed to admit it.”

  “Idiot.”

  She deserved better than he was giving her. “Marcelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t . . . I shouldn’t . . .” Finding words that wouldn’t hurt her felt impossible. “I have a lot to do. Joel’s got me running messages again as well as being one of his three guards. I’m not going to be able to see you a lot.”