The Diamond Deep Read online

  “About.”

  Daria came through the misting arch hand in hand with The Jackman. She let go of him long enough to stop and hug Ruby.

  Ruby held her close, her face tickled by flyaway bits of Daria’s hair. “I sent a bot to help you with your beads. Did it get there?”

  Daria nodded against her shoulder. “Thank you.”

  Just behind Daria, Ruby’s mother, Siri, and her younger brother, Ean. Siri gave her daughter a cool hug, Ean gave her a warm one. After they left, Ruby frowned. She should find a job for Ean. She didn’t mind that Siri didn’t talk to her often, but she did miss Ean.

  A little later, Kyle came through. He carried two plates that must have held cookies. Ruby lifted herself on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I bet you made a few children happier.”

  “I hope so.”

  Nearer the end, Marcelle walked amid a number of women with children in tow. She carried a girl that mustn’t be much more than two or three. Marcelle had talked about being a parent since they were little girls together; she would be a good one. Ruby felt happy for her, if bittersweet. At some deep core place, she didn’t expect to live long enough to raise children. She never had. She waved back when Marcelle waved, then Marcelle bent to a child walking beside her, whispering something. She and the child were soon lost in the long thin string of people.

  They needed to plan for the children.

  Ix had been the primary teacher. Some humans had been in the classrooms; they would have to teach. Maybe Marcelle could take charge of the schools. Hopefully they would have room for schools. All they knew was they had been promised a home big enough for all of them.

  It felt as if the Fire was disgorging twice as many people as she had sheltered. At one point she saw Fox, who gave her a single, withering glance.

  About two-thirds of the way through, a set of ex-Peacers escorted the prisoners who had been in the Fire’s jails. A worse problem than the schools. They should have negotiated about prisoners. Once more, she felt anger nagging at her. They had needed time! She took another deep breath and ignored it, reviewing the to-do list in her head until the anger went away.

  Near the end, one of the robots going by carried a nearly-unbalanced metal box full of robot parts. Ruby bit at her lower lip and looked away as it was catalogued. When it passed by after the misting, she let out a long relieved breath.

  Aleesi was safe in their possession.

  Her feet were weary from standing and her cheeks sore from smiling by the time Onor and Ani came through, sweeping up the last stragglers. A few families had tried to stay aboard the Fire. Only the promise of failing life support systems had flushed them out of hiding. One of them had brought back a tale of two old men who had decided to stay and die anyway, but Ruby suspected that was rumor.

  These last few people were the saddest looking. A few were so old that friends or family helped them walk. Others looked partly unhinged by the change that had swept across them.

  Ruby leaned over to Joel and took his hand. “Let’s go.”

  He looked back at the doorway to the hold that enclosed The Creative Fire.

  “We’ll see it again,” she whispered.

  “I doubt it. I believe we have been completely and totally defeated.”

  All she felt besides tired was a livid, burning anger. “We’ll see. At least we are all together. Maybe there’s some good here yet.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Can I think anything else?”

  “No.” They walked at the end of the line, following the oldest and weakest of the Fire’s many people to an unknown destination.

  Onor sat alone in the small bar they’d pulled together in a corner of their new living area. A rumor of a name had started. Ash. Onor loved the irony, although he expected Ruby to change it to something more positive. Still, it had stuck for the last week.

  Bar was an overstatement: ten cramped tables and a makeshift metal pouring bar with no chairs, one robotic server and one bartender. Allen. The worst part wasn’t the cramped quarters, but that it was almost dry. Some of the equipment they’d used for making alcohol had come with them from the Fire, but Joel had refused to let them turn food to still or stim here.

  Two other tables held small groups muttering amongst themselves about one or another detail of setting up a whole new life for thousands of people. They’d been here six days, enough to reduce total chaos to near-chaos.

  Onor took a small sip of the half-glass of still he’d managed to talk Allen out of and stared at the device in his hand. None of their journals worked here. Instead, they’d all been given thin, flexible screens called slates they could fold up and carry around in their uniform pockets. The slates were very different than the old journals, and Onor had no idea if he was using it right. He had messaged Naveen, but he hadn’t seen a reply.

  At the moment, he was staring at one of Naveen’s recordings of the old cargo bar, of Ruby singing the very last night they’d all been there. He’d been trying to pry secrets out of Naveen instead of paying attention to what he was about to lose, and now he could never go back.

  So much for coming home in triumph.

  “Onor!”

  He looked up to see Naveen came through the door. Onor hadn’t seen him since the day they were kicked off of The Creative Fire. Naveen’s skin and hair and eyes were all the same inhuman shades of brown they had been on the Fire, but his clothes were now a myriad of blues, some of them shimmery. Onor grinned. “Glad you came.”

  “Glad you figured out how to get a message to me. Maybe you’re not quite as dull and clueless as Koren is saying.”

  Onor frowned. “She could be right. I feel like an idiot here. That’s why I offered you the golden chance to enlighten me.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it. Did they really build you such a phenomenal ugliness to live in?”

  “This is where they sent us.”

  “Well, I suppose you didn’t know any better.” Naveen picked up Onor’s glass and sniffed at it. “Got any more?”

  Allen was already on his way over with a glass. “This is almost the last I have.”

  “Too bad.” Naveen took a small sip and let out a satisfied smile. “Your brews are—rawer—than anything we have. Maybe you all should earn your living by setting up a real bar.”

  “Earn our living?”

  “Sure. Think air’s free up here? You’ll have to work.”

  Oh. Onor shrugged. “We all worked on the Fire.”

  “That’s good,” Naveen said. He raised his glass. “To success and fame for the people from our past.”

  “And you.” Onor sipped his drink. “What happened to you after Koren found you?”

  “She locked me up and then shipped me off the Fire. Shouldn’t have been able to do that. But she did it.”

  “Well,” Onor swept his hand around. “We got in a bit of trouble.”

  “You were in that trouble from the day you chose to come here.”

  “And you didn’t warn us?”

  “Didn’t know I’d like you. Speaking of liking you, how’s Ruby of the golden voice?”

  Taken. Off limits to you, just like to me. Beautiful and brave. “She’s working her butt off, her and Joel. Setting up schools and negotiating for food and stuff. Koren has a small army in here interviewing people. Never see her anymore, though.”

  “Koren’s heart has been replaced with ugliness and ego. I had to defend myself with the Station MPs for having this,” he raised his glass, “with you on the Fire.”

  “But you won’t get in trouble here?”

  “Nah.”

  “So will you show me around the station? We’re not allowed out without escorts right now. Something about not knowing the rules yet.”

  Naveen laughed. “That’s probably for your own good. Diamond Deep’s not all safety and light.”

  “I still want to see it.”

  Naveen drained his glass. “Let’s go.”

  “Right now?” Onor hadn’t expecte
d that. “Okay.” He emptied his glass, grabbed Naveen’s glass, and headed for the bar. “We’re going out,” he told Allen with a low voice. “Pass it to Ruby and Joel.”

  “Lucky you. But be careful with the drunk.”

  “He’s okay.”

  Onor frowned as he returned to Naveen. “I’ll follow you.”

  Naveen immediately started to thread through the primary living quarters for the refugees. Ash was about a third the size of all of the living space on the Fire put together; each person’s hab was half the size they were used to, or smaller. Some families were downright cramped. There were more common areas, although they were smaller than aboard the Fire. Nothing was broken, and water appeared to be unlimited. On balance, it seemed okay to Onor in spite of what Naveen had said, except for the crowding. People had already decorated their habs and walls with the colors from home, and Headman Stevenson had sent them a welcome gift of multiple potted plants full of bright blooms, some as tall as Onor. Even though it looked reckless to him, Onor liked the surprising bits of greenery by doors and on tables and walls. It reminded him that they weren’t on a spaceship any more. “Where do you get all your water?” he asked Naveen. “I worked water reclamation, and it was hard and critical. But you have no problems.”

  “We make it.”

  “You make water?”

  “We make air, too.”

  “But you just told me air isn’t free.”

  “Transformation costs energy.”

  It was enough to make his head hurt. “I’d like to see where you live,” Onor suggested. “You didn’t seem very impressed with the little world the people of Diamond Deep decided to bestow on us.”

  “Cheap algorithms,” Naveen snorted. “Boring stuff.” He grinned. “Maybe we’ll make it to my house. But there’s so much to show you.”

  “Lead.”

  Two guards at the doorway out stepped back to allow Onor and Naveen through. “That was easy,” Onor commented. “I’ve tried to get out twice.”

  “They know me.”

  “Does the whole station know you?”

  “Not yet.”

  Onor had been in the corridor on the other side of the door on the way in, but he’d been busy herding tired people. He had spent the last part of the journey carrying two children Marcelle had handed him, one on each hip.

  At the first branching hallway, Naveen led him the way Onor had never seen.

  Even with gravity that was slightly lighter than Onor was used to as the daily norm, the walk felt long. “Does it take forever to get anywhere on this station?”

  “Only when you let the stationmasters assign you housing on the outer edge of nowhere.”

  “I thought we were in the middle of this part of the station.”

  “But not near any decent transportation. But then, you didn’t expect them to give you great real estate, did you?”

  “So who decides who lives where?”

  “Credit.”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t have any. You’re beggars now, and you could be close to slaves if you don’t figure out how to earn credits. It’s not hard. I’ll show you.”

  Onor felt like he only partly understood anything Naveen said.

  Naveen eventually led him to a train station, and they climbed aboard a train eerily like the ones on the Fire, only cleaner and with bigger cars. The train sped quietly along a winding track. For most of the ride there was nothing to see, although from time to time the window offered a rush of colors. Two other humans and three robots rode in the car, one of the robots so humanoid-looking that Onor had to look twice to be sure it was a machine. The other two hadn’t been fashioned at all like humans. To his relief they also didn’t look like robot spiders, but had arms and legs. He was so busy studying the humanoid robot he almost missed it when Naveen got up to leave. The doors nearly closed on him, which gave Naveen a laugh.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Onor complained.

  “Any time. Do you know your station?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where we got on.”

  “No.”

  “Star necklace.”

  “Impressive.” He could remember that by thinking of the bead necklaces.

  “Old. It’s the name of a nebula.”

  They went through a mechanism that Onor recognized as an oversized airlock about the time the second door started to open.

  Naveen watched Onor carefully as he stood waiting. “Stop one on our tour,” he whispered, sounding more serious than he had so far today.

  The door slid further open.

  Movement and color slammed Onor’s senses, followed by the smell of growing things. Bright lights forced him to close his eyes. The voices of both humans and machines made a low buzz. Water ran.

  He opened his eyes again, seeing what he had been hearing and smelling, blinking at the intensity of the light, which seemed to come directly from the walls.

  They were in an open space with high ceilings. Tables surrounded by people were the primary source of all of the voices, although people walked up and down wide corridors between groupings of tables.

  Naveen led him to one of the open tables. “Now you’ll see why I like your still.” Before Onor could protest, Naveen had ordered a drink for both of them and a plate of food, or at least that was Onor’s suspicion. He shared a lot of words with the man, but there were words Naveen used that Onor had never encountered anywhere, words so strange they rendered perfectly good sentences useless.

  Well, he could trust Naveen or he couldn’t. His gut told him he could.

  A robot deposited two drinks at their table. The orange-yellow drink tasted sweeter than Kyle’s best cookies, and smooth. Like drinking a flower. He made a face at it, which Naveen captured with his ever-present camera. “Told you.”

  “What are you taking pictures for?”

  “I’m a storyteller and a creator. It’s what I do. Your people already have thousands of followers. If you want to stay hot, you need to add new footage all the time. That’s one of the things I will do for you in trade for your stories. Keep you hot.”

  “We’re already giving our stories to Koren and her people in trade for a place to live.”

  “That’s your past. Koren can own that part—I don’t care. I want the stories of how you and the Diamond Deep come to know each other. I want to watch you meet the people from the station.”

  The drink was giving his voice soft edges. “So, who are the thousands? Why are people interested in us?”

  Naveen grinned again, his teeth a bright white and his smile warming his whole face. “I have made them interested in you.” He shrugged. “And you are new. You will be interesting for a while. After all, even though there are over fifteen million people here, it is kind of a boring place. A hard place. At least, for most. But trust me, something else new will come here. By then you will need to have claimed your place.”

  A woman wearing only underwear, a tiny top, and comfortable shoes brought them a plate of breads and fruits. Her eyes were as flashy as Koren’s, and her hair was purple, blue, green, and gold, shifting color as she moved her head.

  Wow. She did, in fact, look more exotic than Naveen or Koren. After Onor watched her walk over to a bar, he turned to Naveen to find the camera on him again. The camera stopped him from opening his mouth to ask a question. He sipped his drink and tried to look as cool as possible while he observed the myriad strange-looking people and robots either sitting nearby or wandering about together.

  Naveen waved a hand at him. “That’s Lysa. She’s been running this bar for a long time. She came over to get a look at you.”

  “She’s tall.”

  “She’s pretty, too, huh?” Naveen coaxed.

  “Sure. But I like our women.”

  “Do you have a mate? A woman from the Fire?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t want to talk about his confusions regarding Marcelle. Or Ruby. “Tell me what this food is, and if I can share pictures with my ow
n people?”

  “Do you have your slate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take a picture.”

  “How?”

  Naveen showed him.

  Oh. He could be recording as much as Naveen. The idea fascinated him. He took pictures of Naveen, and pictures of Lysa when she came back to check on them, and Naveen took pictures of him taking pictures.

  Onor tried some of the bread, which tasted like nuts and had seeds that stuck in his teeth so he had to pick them out. The fruit tasted like orbfruit, but blander.

  Hopefully the new food wouldn’t make him sick.

  The next stop did include a drink, a bottle full of something blue that seemed slightly less alcoholic, although somewhere in the back of his brain Onor remembered that they’d pulled the tastes-lighter-than-it-is trick on Naveen back on the Fire. Maybe Naveen was trying to get him to talk.

  At least they didn’t sit for long, but instead walked into a compartment full of plants, with air so damp it stuck his hair to his cheek. He took pictures of red flowers as big as his head with a thick, cloying scent that warred with the equally sweet smell of his drink. “What part of that do you eat?” he asked.

  Naveen laughed. “It’s for looks.”

  “Nothing on the Fire was for looks.”

  “Not even Ruby the Red?”

  Onor laughed, bumping into Naveen on accident but managing not to spill his drink. “Don’t be obsessed about something you’ll never have.”

  “Sounds like you know about that.”

  Onor took another sip of the drink. “Doesn’t matter. We’d have come in as slaves without her, or I’d be dead. Or she’d be dead, or both of us.” He fastened his attention on a single tree that stood twice as tall as the biggest orbfruit trees they’d had in the orchard, but was not even half as wide. The leaves were thin needles in at least five shades of green. “Can you eat that one?”

  “It helps make medicine.”

  Onor tried to capture the actual size of the tree in his next picture. “I thought you made everything you need.”

  “Simple things. Materials. Clothes. Some substances are better grown than made. Human bodies prefer grown food, for example. The bodies of spaceships are stronger when they’re made with nanotechnology. The Fire wasn’t, and that’s part of why your return is a miracle. A medium-sized space rock could have destroyed your ship.”