The Diamond Deep (17 page)

“I have protection in there.”

They walked a while longer in silence, so far that Onor grew thirsty. Once again, it was Joel who broke the silence, and once more it was with a question instead of an order. “Should we feel as afraid of Adiamo as you felt about the spider?”

Onor bit back his first instinct, which was to say of course they should. “Maybe we shouldn't trust
Diamond Deep
yet. But surely the entire system cannot be hostile.”

Joel stopped and turned to look at Onor. “Why not?”

“Because we came from here.”

Joel didn't respond until they had made another complete walk and turn. “You and Ruby are two bridges I trust between us and the working people.”

Onor felt surprised to be included. “Thank you.”

“Are they afraid?”

“Of course they are.”

“I want you to go and find Conroy and The Jackman, and tell them to start the drills again, and the practice sessions. These aren't to be secret any more. Right alongside the classes Ruby and Ix plan to offer about Adiamo, we will re-form an army of workers, just like the army that you all built before. Only this time it will be formal, and it will be trained, and it will even be armed. Even if we never need it, the act of making an army will soothe the ship. Training keeps people occupied.”

Onor liked the idea. “Is there anything else you want me to tell them?”

“Yes. Tell them we need them.”

“Thank you,” Onor said. “They'll be glad to hear that.”

To Ruby's surprise, the robot repair shop smelled good to her. She had hated it as a child, wanted to be free of it, fought for just that. And now the clean and old oils, degreasers, and newly washed rags all smelled like home. She'd worn the worst clothes she owned—an old pair of blue pants and a gray shirt she'd asked Jali to dig up for her when she was recording a song about being in the working class.

The irony of her dress wasn't lost on her.

Four technicians surrounded the table. Two of them were from KJ's team of spider dancers, and the other two were robot mechanics. One man, one woman, both of them scarred on the hands and arms from wrestling with sharp metal tools and parts every day, both dirty. They greeted her as if they were in awe, voices hushed. The woman was Frieda and the man Allo.

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 me, 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.”