The Diamond Deep Read online

  Onor settled for taking three pictures of the tall tree. “What is this place? If you’re not eating what you grow, what is it for?”

  “There are very rich people on the station. Owners of starships, nano-programming companies, miners. This was given to us, with enough resources to maintain it. It’s a place where some of almost all the wild things from Lym live.”

  Joel’s words came back to him. “Rich means having a lot of credit?”

  “Yes.”

  “And having a lot of credit means having a lot of power.”

  “Yes.”

  “So we need to get credit.”

  “Isn’t that what I told you on the way in? Or you need influence. Ruby can get you influence. She’s already popular.”

  “How popular?”

  Naveen grinned. “Very. I’d say she’s the current wonder of the Deep.”

  Onor found his drink glass was empty. “Is there plain water somewhere?”

  “Sure. There’s a fountain in the next room.”

  Onor was pretty sure he was drunker than Naveen. At least Naveen didn’t seem to be slurring his words. “Why are you helping me?”

  “Because telling your story gives me influence.”

  And so you can get near Ruby. But she can take care of herself. “And influence gives you?”

  “Power.”

  Damn. Things were never as easy as he needed them to be. He shouldn’t have had so much to drink. “Water?”

  Naveen led Onor through a door that reminded him of an airlock, with an inner and an outer door, each made of thin metal screens. Inside the set of doors, plants grew in a profusion of colors. A silver cylinder offered water as Onor walked up to it, and he savored the fresh, cool taste and splashed some on his face. He stood up, dripping. “Even after all our work in the water purification systems, your water tastes better than ours.”

  “That’s because we make it.”

  “Oh, right. Water is simple.” Onor looked for a towel, Nothing. He dried his face with his sleeve, feeling slightly stupid.

  Naveen pushed a button and warm air puffed out of the wall.

  Onor laughed. “You know how you can impress Ruby?”

  “I’d like to.”

  “Give her classes. Knowledge. We don’t understand your science.” And that might be part of the path to power. Learning what the people in the Diamond Deep already knew.

  “I can do that after Koren is finished mining you for history. Can’t do it before. That would pollute you.”

  “And taking me drinking doesn’t pollute me?” Onor realized he was having fun, that it was easy to talk to Naveen, that he liked the funny fountain and he loved the trees. He couldn’t remember feeling so good. Surely he shouldn’t be feeling so good. “Showing me flowers and trees doesn’t pollute me?”

  Naveen shrugged, grinning, looking as happy as Onor felt. “I don’t really care if I pollute you, or if I make Koren mad.”

  “You want to, don’t you? You want to make Koren mad. That’s why I’m here.”

  “That’s only a little bit of it. I like you.”

  “And you’re recording this?”

  “Some of it.”

  Onor couldn’t quite think about whether he should worry or not. Naveen clearly had plans for them. Koren had plans for them. Ruby and Joel were too busy managing day to day stuff and dealing with Koren to make their own plans. He looked deeply into Naveen’s eyes, noticing again the difference in color, the deep brown that was not natural to anyone from the Fire. “Can I trust you?”

  “Trust me for what? I’m straightforward. I don’t hide things. I’ll answer any question you have. But if there’s one piece of advice I have for you about the Diamond Deep, it’s be careful who you trust.” With that, Naveen opened the door and ushered Onor through.

  Movement attracted him. He looked up to see a flash of bright orange darting overhead, soon lost in dark green leaves with yellow stripes on them. It had to be a bird. He’d seen pictures of birds. “I never thought I’d see one.”

  “A bird?”

  “Yeah. Next thing you know, I’ll get to see a sun.”

  Naveen smiled a secretive smile, and then he pointed. “Look over there.”

  A blue bird with a tail as long as his arm sat on a thick branch at Onor’s eye level, its feathers shading to black near the end of the tail and at its wingtips. A maroon circle of feathers marked the breast, with more maroon on the head. Three long feathers stuck out from behind its head and almost touched its back.

  He had imagined what a real animal might look like. This was more . . . It was as alien to him as Aleesi the robot-spider-girl, but somehow it also felt familiar, and friendly. He found he couldn’t say a thing or take a step until the bird flew away.

  When it did, he discovered tears on his cheeks, and looked up to find Naveen recording them.

  To Ruby, Marcelle still looked more like a fighter than a creche worker. The muscle definition in her legs and back showed through her clothes, a black pants outfit that clung to her thin frame. When she turned to respond to Ruby’s greeting, she revealed a baby held close to her breast and above her barely-swelling tummy. Even the child only stripped a bit of the warrior look from her.

  “How are you?” Ruby asked.

  “Tired.”

  “That’s because you’re pregnant.”

  “No. It’s because there’s so much work. You look the same.”

  “I suppose I do. But you should be resting. There’s the baby.”

  Marcelle stroked the infant’s head. “Kids are getting sick. A lot of them.”

  “Adults, too.” Ruby said. “The infirmary reported that ten people checked in this morning. I’m setting aside the lower level for sick, moving well people up.”

  “We might all get it.”

  “The numbers of new cases are falling.” Ruby gestured one of her guards close. “Can you take the baby back to the creche?” She spoke to Marcelle. “Let’s walk.”

  Marcelle still looked torn, but she kissed the child’s cheek and handed it to the guard, which left Chitt and another woman, Samara, to guard them. Well enough.

  They walked through crowded corridors. “I don’t want you to work at the creche until this sickness passes.”

  Marcelle reacted with a tightening of her jaw, and by thinning her lips almost to nothing. Her cheekbones stuck out like shelves.

  “I think it’s the food here that’s making us sick,” Marcelle commented. “The damned squares of tasty color. Or maybe the air. Or the fact that the we’re all ten pounds lighter with the gravity change. Or the way everything is different.” Her voice rose into a light whine that the twelve-year-old Marcelle might have indulged in. “The walls are slick, my clothes feel slick, my hair sticks out.”

  Ruby laughed. “My hair does the same thing. Jali has me keep it in a braid now. The tea is from the Fire. I’ve been saving some for special occasions.”

  “Anything from home would be wonderful.” Marcelle leaned close to Ruby and whispered, “I hate it here.”

  Ruby wanted to just agree so badly the words almost escaped her lips. “We have a lot to learn still.”

  “We have no freedom.”

  “I’m working on that. We’re working on that. Joel and I are going out with Koren tomorrow.”

  “What about Onor? He went with that Naveen. Shouldn’t he be back?”

  Ruby bit her lip. “Yes. Maybe. It’s too early to worry.”

  “But you are worried.”

  Marcelle always knew what she was thinking. “There’s nothing for it but tea.”

  “Is that what we’re reduced to? Tea? We used to fight things we didn’t like.”

  “Don’t you want the tea?”

  “Of course I do. But I’m also going to worry about Onor.”

  Ruby laughed. “You used to tell me how much you hated him.”

  Ten minutes and one short stop in a common galley and Ruby had managed to lead Marcelle, frizzy hair and all, into a s
mall alcove that left them nestled by slick walls on two sides. Chitt and Samara stood a respectful distance off, watching outward. “I don’t think I’ve sat down like this for three days,” she told Marcelle.

  “Tell me what you’ve learned about the station?”

  Ruby shook her head. “Not much. I’m more worried about how many people are sick. I’m also worried about what we’re going to do next. Everyone here is used to working half of every day. We’ve had to work to get settled and organized and set up schools for children. We need schools for us. We need Ix or something like Ix back. We need something to make or fix or grow. Already there have been three fights. We have five more people in what passes for lock-up now than we brought out of the Fire.”

  Marcelle raised an eyebrow. “Is that all?”

  “More room. We need more room.”

  Marcelle took a long slow sip of tea and said nothing for a few long minutes. It wasn’t like her to be so quiet, so Ruby waited her out, finishing her own tea and wishing she’d brought food even though she hated the food squares.

  “We need respect,” Marcelle mused. “That’s what we fought for. Now we’ve got nothing.” She put a hand on Ruby’s hand. “And sure, we need schools. That helps. But we need more than that. We need a voice.”

  “See? I knew I needed to talk to you.”

  “This place scares me.”

  “You’ve never been scared a day in your life,” Ruby told her.

  “I wasn’t pregnant before.”

  “I want you away from the creche. In case whatever is making the children sick can make you sick. I need someone to manage setting up schools. Besides, I want you with me.”

  “You have Ani.”

  “Which I’m grateful for. I have Jali as well. But neither of them know what the world was like for us before. They’ve never had to face the kinds of things I’m beginning to think this place might do to us. We’re all the equivalent of grays here. Or worse.” When she looked over, she noticed a single tear hanging in the edge of Marcelle’s eye, ready to fall. Ruby lowered her voice. “What’s the matter?”

  “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Never.”

  After she left Marcelle, Ruby stopped by the makeshift bar. Allen stood behind the counter with a rag, cleaning things that looked clean. None of the people who had been his hangers-on and his minions from the ship seemed to be around. “Hi, Allen. Seen Onor?”

  Allen shook his head. “I’m not going to see anybody. There’s about eight drinks left, and then we’re going to be completely out. I don’t think the regulars are going to stop by for orbfruit juice.” He paused for just a breath, then shrugged his shoulders. “Oh yeah, we don’t have that either.”

  She laughed. “Why don’t you find Kyle and see if he can come up with something useful out of this junk-for-food, and then you can serve that.”

  “Great. I can see the menu now. Square orange food. Oblong green sticks.”

  Ruby laughed.

  “Want a drink?”

  “One of the last real ones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I want two. Enough for me and Joel to share a drink tonight.”

  “You’re hurting me.” He turned. “But trade me. You can sing to us if we’re not drinking, right?”

  “If I have time.”

  “Make the time. There’s more grumbling than ever. You’ve still got enemies, and this is a great opportunity for them.”

  “Have you heard anything specific?”

  “A bartender never tells.”

  She smiled and leaned in closer to him. “Not even me?”

  “Nope.” He handed her a full flask. “That’s sweeter than you like, but you’ll have to take what you can get.”

  “I’ll try and come tomorrow night. I’ll send Chitt to tell you if I can’t.”

  He frowned at her. “I can’t advertise maybe.”

  She cocked her head at him. “And if you could advertise? Where would you put people? There’s no place big enough for a concert here.” Or a talk. Or a gathering. Or anything. She hadn’t thought of it that way before. “Look, I’ll come if I can.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes, really. But I’m not the only person on the ship who can entertain. You could have Planazate contests—the game takes hours and people will be stuck here even if you do only have water and stupid little squares of food to give them. There’s other singers in the world, too. And storytellers. Get creative.”

  “I want my bar back.”

  “I want the Fire back. But that’s all gone. We’ll just have to make something better.”

  He gave her a long, lost look.

  She took her flask and headed toward the small set of rooms she and Joel shared. She was going to spend the rest of the day figuring out what to do next instead of moving every minute. She hadn’t really stopped since they got off the Fire, except to fall dead into awkward sleep at the end of each day. She needed a song for the people of the Fire that celebrated who they were, and she needed one that mourned their losses, and she needed to learn enough about the Diamond Deep to sing about that.

  Maybe Onor had learned something.

  Damn it, where was Onor anyway?

  Joel wouldn’t be home for hours. In an effort to get their physical conditioning up again, Joel was meeting with The Jackman, Conroy, KJ, and a few of the others to set up a training program. She’d caught KJ’s dancers scaling walls for fun one morning, but there hadn’t been any exercises demanded of lesser mortals since they arrived.

  She climbed stairs toward the hab they shared in a corner of the top floor. On the second landing, Ruby knelt to admire a bunched group of purple flowers in a pot. Flowers made a promise: they represented at least one new aspect of life which was good here. A few plants had flowered on the Fire, but only to create fruit. Not just to be pretty. Something alive that existed just to be pretty was an excessive use of resource. A symbol for a song?

  A hand on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts. “Stay down,” Chitt said.

  “Why?” Ruby hissed.

  “Lya.”

  Ruby stood.

  Chitt glared at her with a look so furious Ruby almost flinched away from her.

  Lya stood above them, at the top of the stairs, close to Ruby’s door. She looked slightly cleaner than when Ruby had last seen her, but no less emaciated. Her eyes had sunk into her head. Only a year older than Ruby, but she looked ten, or more. Other women stood with her, maybe a dozen, maybe one or two more, bunched close together. They all wore white in some fashion: beads, a scarf, a shirt, a strip of material tied around a wrist.

  Samara stood five steps up, mid-way between Lya and Ruby and Chitt.

  “More behind you,” Chitt whispered.

  Ruby glanced down. Women pooled at the bottom of the stairs. Chitt drew her stunner, but Ruby put a hand on her arm, signaling for her to lower it.

  “Hello Lya,” she called up. “What can I do for you?”

  “Listen.”

  The women behind Lya and below Ruby and Chitt murmured the word, whispers and just above whispers. “Listen.”

  Lya’s face was calm, totally and completely calm. As if she had finally found her niche in life after losing Hugh.

  “Listen.”

  “Listen.”

  “Listen listen listen.”

  Ruby let the eerie harmony die down. “Yes?”

  “We demand a voice. We need to be in your councils.”

  Ruby held up her hands to get them to quiet for a moment. “Tell me what you need, and I will be sure you get it if I can.”

  “A voice.”

  “Voice,” echoed through the crowd, creepy and irritating as much because it echoed her conversation with Marcelle as because of the strange susurration of so many whispers.

  “Lya. I will do what I can for you. For all of you. What do you want?”

  “You’ve led us to a place where we have been imprisoned.”

  She couldn�
��t argue with that, so she didn’t. She stood there, waiting.

  “Our children are ill.”

  Ruby chewed on her lip to keep herself from saying anything. Yet.

  “You walk around with guards and enough food. You make decisions for us without asking. You are exactly who you told us to fight.”

  That wasn’t a new accusation. Even though there was only a grain of truth in it, it stung every time she heard it.

  Lya continued. “But we are non-violent. We will not fight you. This is a time for change wrought by attention, not killing and fighting.”

  Good. Although Chitt remained as tense as Ruby.

  “But we will follow you. We will be where you are. We will be outside your doors, outside your meetings, inside your world. We will hear what you say and what decisions you make. We will witness.”

  “Witness.”

  “Witness.”

  “Witness witness witness.”

  Lya looked down on Ruby, standing completely still. The dark circles under her eyes were a black contrast to the white shirt she wore, bookended with a stretchy white hat she’d pulled down over her forehead.

  Ruby took a deep breath. “The Diamond Deep is not what any of us expected that coming home would feel like. I also agree that this is not a time for fighting. We would simply die. A people that can create spaces and destroy starships with machines so small we cannot see them surely has a thousand thousand ways to kill us. None of us want to find out what those are.”

  Lya didn’t react. The women below said nothing. There were enough of them, and close enough, that their breathing was audible in the spaces between the soft creaks of the station and the footsteps of others going other places. A few people who weren’t part of the conversation had fetched up against the outer edges of Lya’s women, watching. One of them was SueAnne, leaning over and looking down, frowning.

  Ruby spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. “If you want to help us, there are children to care for. There are stories to tell to Koren’s people so that they can finish wringing us dry and let us get on with our lives. There are old people who need company.”