The Diamond Deep (15 page)

“He's smart enough to keep us all safe, and he's willing to care.” She turned, breaking his grip so his hands fell by his sides. Her eyes were damp. They'd lost the guilt, and instead she looked resolute. “You can't understand.”

“Try me.”

“I can't be everything, Onor. I must maintain my position or I will lose my ability to keep the fairness we
have
won. Choices have to be made.” She paused, took a deep breath, and when she started again her voice was firmer but softer. “If we—if I—If I fight every fight, I will lose one day. And if I lose, then we—all of us from gray—will lose our voice.”

Her look melted the anger out from under him, so he felt a bit loose in his moorings, a bit empty. “We can also lose if you—or we—give up our principles.”

“Don't you think I know that? After all we've been through, I'm clear on what matters. But we have gained so much that we cannot afford to lose, and power contains compromise.” She paused. “You're the one who is always talking about power, thinking about power. We used to be the ones who didn't have it. Now we do.”

She did.

As if she were reading his reaction, she said, “You, too. Joel trusts you. The Jackman and Conroy trust you. Come on out with me and help me work on Allen. Once you have power, you don't keep it by fighting.”

He touched her cheek.

She gazed at him for a long time, a universe of feelings in her eyes. Then she turned away.

Ruby hated pressure suits. They stank. The best one she'd been able to find had slightly short legs so she always felt like she should bend her knees, and the right elbow joint was harder to move than the left, so she expected to overcompensate in low-g and jerk herself to the left of where she wanted to go. Everything must have been perfect when the
Fire
left Adiamo, but she was willing to bet half of the damned ship would fail by the time it got home.

She didn't like the airlock a whole lot more than the stiff and stinky suit, especially since it felt crowded with two of them. KJ sat closest to the bay door. She had wanted Onor or Marcelle, but the only way Joel had allowed her to visit the robot spider was with KJ right next to her.

She held her breath while pressure equalized, relaxing only when KJ could open the inner door to the cargo bay. They sat side by side on the lip of the lock, looking down. The small amount of gravity that Ix let them impose on the bay—about twenty-five percent—allowed their legs to hang down in a fashion.

Lights illuminated most of the vast space, although there were corners where shadow still ruled.

The traverse lines had all been replaced and strengthened. A crew of KJ's carefully trained fighters, now nicknamed spider dancers, waited on the far side of the bay by the other airlock. They crouched as still as the metal ribs of the vast bay. They would only move if KJ asked them to, or if they perceived that KJ or Ruby were in life-threatening danger.

Blocky, multicolored cargo containers were strapped and bolted to the walls. The containers the robots had cut loose had been retied with bright yellow straps, so that they stood out from the others.

Two spiders sat unmoving, still trapped in ropes. They looked as dead as she had been assured they were; chains and ropes held their metal limbs in lifelike poses. A third had been reduced by half. Four legs had been taken out of the hold piece by piece to be examined by a bot repair crew.

The last living one sat where it had been captured, still trussed in rope and chain. It flexed its metal appendages against its bonds. “It sees us,” Ruby whispered.

KJ's answer reminded her of a conversation they'd had getting ready for this. “They have a good sense of their surroundings, and act as if they can see in every direction at once.”

“I want to get closer.”

“Of course you do.” If they were in a world without helmets and radios, she was certain he'd be laughing at her.

She grabbed a traverse line and hooked onto it.

“Be careful,” KJ whispered. “I'll be right behind you.”

The vertical traverse passed near a horizontal line, and she switched, heading toward the bot she'd saved. When she stood on the outer edge close to the bot, she stared in awe. Its mass reminded her she was small and soft.

Its front appendages ended in the claws that had cut cargo straps as if they were paper, severed traverse lines, and destroyed humans. The claws were as tall as Ruby, and each of the three long metal bones between the joints were also as tall as Ruby, and wide enough that she would fit inside them if they were hollow. Each leg could bend in three places. KJ glided down the traverse and stood beside her, both of them silent in front of the bound enemy.

Ruby took a deep breath through her mouth, doing her best to avoid the suit-smell and the almost unmanageable temptation to rip her helmet off. There was air, but the safety protocols in the cargo bays were strict.

She chewed her lower lip. “It's not completely different than our bots,” she said. “I can see how the claws move.”

KJ responded in his typical dry tone. “It is bigger than most of ours.”

“There's transport bots that are a quarter this size.” She tried for humor. “I suppose it's possible to consider the trains a bot.”

“Whatever works for you. Just don't leave this anchor line and don't get too close. Let's get started.”

As if in answer, the bot flexed all of its appendages at once, straining its bindings.

She wondered if this one had torn Colin in half.

“Ix.” Ruby called the AI up, surely unnecessarily. Protocol, like the helmets. “Ix, tell it we're here and tell it we want to know why they invaded us.”

“I will translate.”

The conversation should have been fast. Machines talked to each other much more quickly than humans. But it wasn't. She waited, and waited some more. She listened to her breath, and KJ's breath through the radio link between them.

There was time to wonder if Ix had—in fact—decoded enough of the speech between the bots to build a communication bridge between itself and the invader. She shifted, trying to get comfortable with the floating feeling of low-g again.

Ix chose a voice she had never heard, tinny and feminine. “What happened to the
Thief of a Thousand Stars
?”

Ix changed to its most common voice. “That must be the invader's ship.”

Aptly named. Ruby regarded the huge bot, which did not react directly to her presence in any way. “We damaged it. It has been left far behind. We had no choice.”

This time the answer was fast. “But it is not completely dysfunctional? Does it have life support and engines?”

Ruby managed to bite back a comment about how she hoped not. “We don't know.”

Silence.

After a while, Ruby asked Ix, “Is it talking to you?”

“No. Nor is it moving.”

“But it's not dead?”

“I'm not sure that question applies. It remains capable of responding as far as I can tell. There is nothing like this in my history of Adiamo.”

Ruby had prepared questions in her head. “Ask it if Adiamo is full of people or robots or both.”

More time. KJ shifted and moved, stretching. She followed his lead. It helped calm her. The spider dancers remained in the corner, but they too stretched and moved, as if following their leader.

At one point in Ix's long silence, the bot thrashed and flexed, although the bonds held.

“It is not answering.”

“Very well.”

More standing. She had asked Ix to record this, hoping it would be a good backdrop for a performance. She looked at KJ. “While we wait, can we climb around some? Maybe go look more closely at one of the dead ones?”

KJ didn't respond immediately.

“Please?”

In answer, he stepped back and pointed up the traverse line she still held in her right glove. He wanted her to go first. Very well.

The leap up worked pretty well, and she clung to the line with both legs. Her body remembered a trick she'd been taught, and she pushed out from the line, so her hands and feet were both on it, but not her belly. She walked her hands up, then her feet, then her hands, then her feet, hands, feet, her appendages hard to keep stuck to the line with no gravity. A matter of gripping with her gloves and toes.

KJ hadn't started up after her. She was a good way past him now, and the robot looked smaller.

She let go and
pulled
, which felt less awkward, but was slower.

She stopped again, and this time KJ started up after her. He moved with no extra movement, no real pull on the line, nothing. He made small movements to maintain trajectory and add speed, as if null-g made him dance.

She grimaced.

“Ix? Did it say anything yet?”

“No.”

“Are you still trying?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Play it our history. One of the lessons from school. The one that starts when we leave Adiamo.”

KJ spoke up. “You want to give an enemy our history?”

“I don't see what it can hurt.”

“How do you think it will help?”

“Maybe if it understands us, it will be sympathetic.”

KJ laughed. “Follow me.” They had reached open space near the middle of the bay, all of the closest objects other traverse lines, the robots small again. KJ contorted his body, drawing completely in on himself, and then pushed, sailing for a nearby horizontal traverse line.

She tried to mimic him exactly, but wavered when it came time to let go, stealing her own momentum from herself in a brief flash of fear. She fell away from KJ and the lines.

A hand grabbed her long before she expected to be caught. “Thank you.”

He helped her get both hands onto the new line. Her fall had cost them some distance.

“Thank you again. We should have sent you in with these damned things first. You'd have survived and we'd still have Colin.”

“Yes.”

She wished she could see his face. “So why didn't that happen?”

“I was guarding Joel.” He paused, and then pointed. “Up. We're going to look at the one that's been partly taken apart.”

Joel probably made the decision about who went where. “Ix? Make it tell us why it killed people if you can.”

“It is not responding.”

“Can you tell if it's listening to you?”

“Only if it responds.”

Ruby was slower than KJ, but she didn't make any more serious mistakes on the way to the half a bot. It was scratched and dented where the spider dancers had separated its parts, but it was still big enough to be daunting. She gritted her teeth and looked away the first time she touched it.

All of the legs on one side had been removed by KJ's spider dancers. The remaining legs were still tied down. The torso was small, maybe the size of a human torso.

There were no animals or insects on the
Fire
, just plants and people and robots. But Ruby had seen pictures. In Adiamo, the game about their home system, there were four-legged mammals, myriad insects, and birds of all sizes.

She studied it. Even though it was far larger, it was simpler than the robots she'd grown up cleaning. It was a better description to say they all joined below it. The design of the robot encased the small torso in a cage that the ends of the legs could rotate around. Or at least that was the best way she could think of to describe it. This part of the design was nothing like what she knew. She crouched, holding onto one of the legs and staring. “Elegant,” she whispered. “And what were you really?”

Whatever was in the cage, nothing could touch it during normal operation of the robot, at least not as far as she could tell. There was an inner structure that supported it, but no strength, no torque.

She pointed. “Why didn't you take this part?”

“We couldn't cut it free. There's a team coming back for it this afternoon.”

“Okay. I want to see it. Tell me when?”

“We're keeping it pretty much out of sight for now.”

She froze in place, wishing yet again that they weren't in suits. The bulk limited her ability to display body language. “KJ?”

“Yes.” Flat, noncommittal.

“Last I checked, you and I were on the same side. The one that wants freedom and information and fairness and a voice for all, right?”

Silence.

“Answer me.”

“I don't work for you.”

“Of course you don't,” she snapped. She took a deep breath. “But you and I
should
be working together. Before I came up from gray, I worked on robots. I know a few things. And there's some more things I suspect about these.”

“I know.”

“So don't keep secrets from me.”

He said nothing. The man was harder to read than anyone she knew. Ani could have him . . . Sex with KJ would be a perfect dance, but you'd probably never know if you'd given him pleasure.

“Follow me,” he said, inching up toward the claw. “Look here . . . we think it was designed to be a weapon.”