The Diamond Deep Page 14
“You’ve always been brave.”
There was silence, then Marcelle said, “I promised Ruby I’d keep up what she’s been doing. Learning from the damned thing. She says she’s going to be too busy when we land.”
He glanced across the bay at three spider dancers, who hung on the far wall, watching them. Guards, in this case, but they spent time with Aleesi and gathered information. He’d read their summary reports. They’d learned more about the Edge than about inside, but they were also getting some language and culture. He glanced back at Marcelle. “Why you and not just the spider dancers?”
“She trusts me even more than them.”
“I do, too.” He told her. “I trust them with my life, but you with my secrets.”
She laughed, the first time her voice hadn’t sounded tense since they cycled through the lock. “They used to be secrets.”
The sequence of lights that indicated the lock was about to open blinked white and red light across Marcelle’s faceplate, and then Ruby joined them on the beam. “Let’s go.”
They followed Ruby down a traverse line. She had become so fast and natural in here that he and Marcelle struggled to keep up with her. They stopped at the bottom beside the trussed robot. He had been this close when they were being chased, maybe closer, but he couldn’t recall details. Only fear. Rushing blood made his fingertips feel like hearts beat in them.
There were so many chains holding the robot down that he shouldn’t feel this way.
“Hello, Aleesi,” Ruby said. “These are my friends Marcelle and Onor. They may come back and visit you when I cannot. We’ll be at Diamond Deep soon and I’ll have other duties.”
The robot spoke in Ix’s voice. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Talk to us about the Diamond Deep,” Ruby said.
“I have told you everything I know.”
“For my friends’ sake. So they can ask questions. Just summarize the things that you’ve told me.”
Ix’s Aleesi voice went off in Onor’s helmet again. “Diamond Deep is the oldest station here, and the biggest. It was built as a project of a long-ago government, started just before your ship left the system. Old spaceships that could no longer move, but which could be lived in, became part of it. The station survived the sundering by staying neutral and letting ships from all sides of the fighting meet here. Diamond Deep came out ahead in that, winning so much material and metal from fleet salvage that it was three times as big after the war. Then the nano-tech revolution changed it yet again, remade it piece by piece, built the habitat bubbles and gave it manufacturing facilities. Ships are made here for the whole system, and have been since before the Edge was created.”
It sounded like a prepared speech or a memory of a lesson. “But you have never been to the Deep?” he asked.
“No. When I was a human child, I was on Lym.”
Onor asked, “Did you miss being on a planet?”
“Yes.”
It felt absurd to be having an almost normal conversation with something that had tried to kill him. “I heard you don’t like it that we came here.”
“My kind is not allowed to live here.”
Marcelle asked, “Will they know you’re here?”
“They will know everything about this ship.”
Ix broke in, using its deeper voice so they knew it wasn’t the robot talking. “She is very convinced that there is no way to keep secrets from anyone inside.”
“Is she right?”
“Perhaps.”
“How long ago were you a human child?” Marcelle asked the robot.
“At the beginning of the Age of Explosive Creation, which was many generations ago, even though it began after you left. It is when robots created their intelligence, and when humans learned to live longer and younger and where beings like me were created and rejected and fled to the Edge if we wanted to survive.”
“So why are you talking to us?” Onor asked. “Why help us?”
“Because there is no one else for me to talk to. You will be like me. Cast-off and strange. I understand the math of star travel, and that you were gone from here for generations of humans. You are a small society, too small and too poor in resources to have changed much from when you left. The speed of change increases with the size of the network.”
“What?” Marcelle asked.
“The more people interact with each other, the faster cultural change happens. Change is driven by volume of information.”
Ruby broke in this time. “I’m still not sure I understand. If we had a ship with three times as many people on it, we would change faster?”
There was a machine’s breath pause before the answer came back. “A little. But since the bigger the network grows, the faster the change happens, you would not see much of a difference. The Fire has thousands of people, at most, right?”
“Yes.”
“Adiamo has trillions of people.”
He understood the size of the number from a lesson in math class years ago, before they became adults. Numbers like that had been used to represent distances, or the number of stars in the universe. But numbers of people?
“You have been gone for years of your time, for generations. The Fire has travelled far and most of its journey has been at more than halfway to the speed of light. And in that time, humanity has gone beyond what you appear to understand.”
“So there will not be anyone like us?” Marcelle asked.
“I have never seen anyone like you, nor talked to anyone who understands as little.”
As soon as they were through the door, they all started jabbering at Ix.
“Did you know how many people were there?”
“Did you know about numbers of people and change?”
“Is it lying? Are there really that many people?” The rumor Onor had been most afraid was true had been that they were all dead, and the Fire was flying back to someplace empty and cold.
Ix replied. “I am learning about this system as we speak, and have been since we got close enough to get information about it. It truly is different from when we left.”
Ruby’s helmet was off now, her long red hair sweaty and mussed and her face white. “So our classes haven’t helped anyone. They’ve been lies.”
Ix said, “They’ve been history lessons.”
He could see Ruby bite her tongue. No use fighting with the machine. It always had a better way to fight back.
Now all their helmets were off, and they stood in the corridor in their suits. “It was talking down to us,” Marcelle said.
Ruby shook her head. “No. Aleesi is actually very simple. In many ways, she isn’t as smart or as subtle as we are. But there are things she knows—like that bit about network effects—that we don’t even know the questions for. That’s why I keep coming back.”
Marcelle asked, “Did you know how many people are there?”
“We hadn’t put that number to it, but we knew it was a lot. Think about it. Remember that picture of Diamond Deep? It’s hundreds of times bigger than the Fire, maybe thousands. And the Fire has a lot more cargo space than people-space.”
Antony, another one of Joel’s guards, came around the corner.
Ruby seemed to be expecting him. “Just a moment. Let me change into my uniform.” She started stripping off the rest of her suit. “Whoever designed this place should have put a shower right here,” she muttered.
Marcelle’s laughter broke the worries that he’d left the cargo bay with, and he laughed, too. Not as good as running, but anything to release the thought of trillions of people.
After they’d all changed, Ruby left Onor and Marcelle hanging their suits up in the locker closest to the cargo bay. He watched Ruby’s back as she walked away beside Antony.
Marcelle’s hair was mussed from the suit and she looked worn out. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“Walk with me to the cargo bars?” Marcelle asked him. “I was too nervous to eat before we went in there.”
She rummaged in the pack she’d left stuck in a cubby on the locker, coming up with a hairbrush and starting in on her sweat-damped hair. “I wanted to be brave. I expected to hate her, to want to kill her when I stood in front of her. Or to be scared. She would have killed us if she could, at least on that first day. So I can’t—really—feel sorry for her.”
“But it is a little pathetic.”
“I wouldn’t have chosen that word.” She put her brush away and shouldered her pack. “Let’s go.”
“What would you call it?”
“Dangerous.”
“Yes, but I like pathetic better. It’s easier to think of it that way. Her that way.” They started down the corridor.
“I didn’t understand everything she said,” Marcelle said.
“We learned how different we are from everything here.”
“I knew that the minute we saw six robots bigger than habs scuttle into the cargo bay.”
He walked next to her, debating whether or not to take her arm. “Have you got your assignment for docking day yet?”
“I’m on peacekeeping in common. C-pod.”
“Really? Did you ask for that?” She was a good warrior; she should stand on the front lines. Hopefully, defense would be for show, but still, it was the respectful place to put someone who had been by Ruby’s side so long, and who had become a squad leader in practices.
“I want to be with the people. And with the families.”
“You could be with us.”
“I know. I’m just feeling tender about our people. Everything is going to change, and faster than we want. What happens if we never see each other again after we dock?”
“Ruby and Joel will keep us together.” He straightened. “And we’ll keep us together.”
She put an arm around his waist, pulled him close to her. She was his size—well, his height. It felt good to be walking beside her. He put an arm around her as well, resting his hand on her waist where he could feel the glide of her muscles as she walked. It wasn’t a commitment, but the damned robot always seemed to drive him closer to Marcelle.
Marcelle fell silent as they walked through the corridors. She seemed as awkward as he felt, her gait a little stiff. She didn’t look at him. “I have a reason not to be up front.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Ruby had done her best to turn docking day into a party while Joel’s instinct was to use it as a military exercise. The result looked like an ideological fight had splashed itself across the map room. Everyone—even Ruby—wore the new uniforms. Serving robots squeaked through the few spaces between people with trays of fresh fruit from the gardens and crackers and cookies from the kitchens.
Ix played images of their approach to Diamond Deep on the map table. To Ruby’s irritation, Ix had become unresponsive when questioned. They were close enough now that the station itself couldn’t be seen in whole. It appeared as a large black structure against the black of space, edged in blinding white lights. The best thing that could be said about the image was that the station loomed. The worst was that it looked ready to consume the Fire.
Other people seemed to feel the same way. Some gathered in groups and watched the image in short little glimpses. SueAnne stared as if mesmerized. KJ and his dancers seemed to be everywhere.
Jaliet had managed to turn her own version of the uniform into a fashion statement by tucking it here and there and threading the multiple joined colors of the Fire through several tight braids in her black hair. Most of the men looked serious. Drinks abounded, all of them water or stim. Joel had ordered nothing but light food and drink, a choice Ruby had supported. She wanted the feel of a party; not the reality of one.
The moment felt full of crushing import. Ruby circulated, taking hands, murmuring encouragement, and doing her best to look brave.
The Fire felt wrong. Its engines had shut down two days ago, but it still creaked and popped, the noises more pronounced than before.
Ruby stopped next to SueAnne and watched beside her. The opening they were about to enter had been built for them in the week between their agreement to dock here and now. She had seen metal changed—filed or welded or heated and shaped. This had sprung from nothing, as if metal could be created out of air. “They grew that,” she muttered. “They grew a cage for us.”
SueAnne gave her a slightly surprised look, her dark blue eyes lost in wrinkles. “Perhaps they grew a home for us.”
Ruby put an arm around SueAnne’s slightly stooped shoulders. “I hope so. They have power and knowledge. I suspect they will not share those easily.”
SueAnne chewed on her lower lip. Her gaze returned once again to the looming station. “I used to hate you,” she told Ruby.
Ruby stiffened, but waited.
“I hated you for being young and strong, and for starting the fighting. I hated you for wanting things you weren’t supposed to have.” She fell silent for a moment. “I still don’t approve of fighting,” she fingered her new gray uniform, “but I’m glad to have Joel in charge and you beside him. We may need your courage.”
“Thank you.” Ruby whispered. “Thank you for saying that. It’s been hard to feel accepted.”
“Don’t assume you are. Most of Joel’s advisors believe you are evil on three accounts. You are gray, you are young, and you are a woman.”
“They allow you into their councils.”
“But you note I am the only woman, and that is because I helped Joel gain his following. My power rests on his acceptance of me.”
Ruby chewed on her bottom lip. “They accept you because of him.”
“And they are insanely jealous of him because of you.”
Onor stuck close to Joel after the Fire ceased moving. Joel looked tired, but then they all must look that way. They had gathered hours ago, eaten lightly, and waited far longer than they expected. Ix remained silent, which made it seem like they were missing a key part of themselves, and needed to be extra vigilant.
Onor scanned faces, checking the location of everyone and looking for anything out of place. He had done this twenty times already, but he forced himself to see it as freshly as he could. Whatever was about to happen, the visitors from the Diamond Deep would form their first impression of the people of the Fire based on this meeting.
Jaliet, Ani, and Ruby had transformed the room. They’d covered the worn seating in green cloth. Hand-sewn rainbows made from old uniforms lined the bottom of bench. In a few places the decorations had begun to sag. He gestured to Haric, who was following Ruby as if he were a five-year-old after his mother. The boy started toward him, elbowing through people.
Marcelle was not here, of course. She had chosen to work in the creche. He had to think about her pregnancy, but his mind kept refusing to wrap itself around the idea. He would think about it a lot later. He had to.
Haric slid through two large men to stand in front of Onor, white-faced and pale. He stood straight and looked like he wanted to be brave. Maybe they all looked like that. Onor leaned down and asked Haric, “Can you fix up the decorations?”
Ix whispered. “It’s time.”
Onor had never heard Ix whisper, or heard a whisper be so amplified.
He turned. They all turned. Haric stayed beside him.
The door opened.
Allen, Conroy, and two of Allen’s men that Onor recognized came in first. They were followed by a silvery being that moved like a dancer, as smooth as the finest material Onor had ever touched. He had thought the robot spiders beyond them, the materials and engineering out of reach. This was unimaginable.
Two people followed. They wore form-fitting uniforms that shimmered when light hit them. A woman in fine blues and a man in brilliant oranges.
The woman was as beautiful as Ruby, and as young. She had even darker skin than Ani, with long, white hair that hung down her back. He had never seen that color combination,
and when she turned to look at him, her eyes were a deep gold. The effect chilled and attracted him.
The man was thin and no taller than the woman, brown-skinned, with black eyes and hair. But he too looked wrong, the colors of everything about him—skin and hair and eyes, while black and brown, still different than the colors Onor was used to seeing on a human.
Both people moved as smoothly as KJ’s dancers, as if they didn’t really have to touch the floor but chose to do so.
The robot stopped part-way into the room and flowed into a standing cylinder.
The man and woman stopped beside the robot. “Welcome to the Diamond Deep,” the woman said. “I am Koren Nomen.”
A gesture from Joel pulled Onor into a ring of six guards who walked behind Ruby and Joel as they approached the delegation. KJ and his dancers stood nearby, in casual stances that belied how lethal they could be.
Joel spoke stiffly. “Welcome aboard The Creative Fire. I am Captain Joel North and this is Ruby Martin, who represents our crew.”
Ruby made an expansive gesture with her hands. “And these are some of the people of The Creative Fire. Thousands more are working or resting on other levels of the ship. We send you greetings from all of them. We have had a long journey, and we are pleased to be in our home system.”
The woman—Koren—gave a soft nod. “You must be weary.” She gestured to the brown man who stood beside her. “This is Naveen Tourning.” Her hand swept to point at the robot. “And this is one of three assistants who will help me perform an inventory and check on your ship. We will stay with you during your quarantine. I am the Deep’s Chief Historian. I look forward to learning about your journey.”
Joel’s face had stilled, and his voice quieted in a way that Onor knew meant he was evaluating something he was very unhappy about. “We are pleased that you will stay with us. We will provide you adequate quarters on this level and we will escort you to see parts of the Fire that might interest you. But we cannot allow your robots to wander at will.”
Koren’s smile looked as insincere as Joel’s. “You cannot believe that you own this ship.”
Ruby stood still and quiet, her back straight. One of her fists had clenched.