The Diamond Deep by Brenda Cooper Page A

hours. I’m going to my people.”
    â€œAll the way to gray again?”
    â€œIx says it will turn on a train to get us most of the way.”
    Ani ran her fingers through her hair. “The AI is spinning up a train for you?”
    â€œThe AI is doing a lot of things it doesn’t usually do.” Like killing. But she couldn’t make herself tell Ani about that.
    After they disembarked from the train, they jogged through a nearly-empty corridor.
    A woman stepped out right in front of them, forcing Ani and Ruby and Haric to a stop. Women surrounded them, at least ten or maybe twelve. Directly in from of Ruby, Lya stood with her feet braced wide and her hands on her hips. “You should go back.”
    She had been beautiful once. She was only a year or two older than Ruby, maybe three. Her blonde hair hung in uneven strings and her shirt had two big holes in it that showed bones lifting skin across a thin frame. Ruby smiled as softly as she could in the face of Lya’s continued deterioration. “I can’t. I have to go tell the people something.”
    â€œOnly what you want them to know.”
    Ruby signaled to Haric and Ani to stay quiet, and let out a breath as slowly as she could. “Isn’t that always what any of us tell people? What we want them to know? In this case, I’m telling them that we are being attacked, and that we are counter-attacking. Don’t you think they would like to know that?”
    â€œYou never told us you were going to abandon us.”
    Even though she knew there was no point in arguing with a broken mind, perhaps some of Lya’s silent followers could be swayed. “If I were going to abandon you, I would not be standing here. There are dangers I need to tell people about.”
    â€œThere’s always danger near you,” Lya said. “But that’s not the biggest problem. You’ve changed.” She made a gesture that encompassed Ruby’s neatly clipped hair, her dress uniform, and her multicolored beads all at once. “Too fancy now. You’ve lost touch. Go away.”
    â€œAnd if I go away, who’ll tell you what’s happening?” She waited a moment. “Move. I need to pass, Lya. I don’t want to hurt you.”
    Lya’s cheeks were stained with dark circles and she stank of sour still. But she was still stubborn. If only Ruby could get her to be stubborn about things that either Lya or Ruby could change. At the moment, she looked like she wanted to spit on Ruby. “Hugh wouldn’t have wanted to see you like this. All high and mighty. It would have hurt him.”
    â€œAnd he wouldn’t have wanted to see you addicted to still.”
    That moved Lya far enough for Ruby to press harder and pass. “I’m sorry,” Lya said as Ruby pulled Haric and Ani through the crack of corridor that Lya and her followers didn’t fill. “I’m sorry.”
    Ruby wasn’t sure what Lya was sorry for, but she couldn’t think about that now. They were so close to common she heard the buzz of conversations.
    The big room was full, but people immediately made a path for her. Fear and anxiety echoed in tones of voice and on faces, and in the way parents clutched children’s hands. Each familiar face made all of the things that could go wrong seem both worse and more likely.
    They could all die.
    She pushed toward the podium. The crowd included people she knew. Her aunt Daria. Kyle, the man who’d taken her and Onor and Marcelle in long ago, balancing plates of cookies. He must have been cooking long before the announcement. Maybe he did more for people with his food than she did with her songs. The idea made her laugh a little, released some of the anger she still felt toward Joel and toward the ugly ship.
    She liked the idea that Onor and Joel would be furious that she was here with no guards except Ani and Haric. It gave her extra energy to feel like she was breaking