Connie Willis - Fire Watch

“Like a sidon’s,” Pearl said, looking at me.

Carnie looked down at the blood-red rug she was standing on. “Jist like,” she said, and dragged me upstairs to show me my room and the clothes I was to wear and to show me off to the other girls. They were already dressed for the shift in trailing satinpaper dresses that matched their names. Garnet wore rose-red chemilooms in her upswept hair, Emerald an elaborately lit collar.

Carnie got dressed in front of me, stepping out of her robe and into an orange-red dress as if I weren’t watching. She asked me to fasten her armropes of winking orange, lifting up her red curls so I could tie the strings of the chemilooms behind her shoulders. I could not decide then if she were trying to seduce me or to get me to copy her or simply to convince me that she was the naive child she pretended to be.

I thought then that whatever she was trying she had failed. She had succeeded only in convincing me of what my uncle had already told me. In spite of her youth, her silliness, I could well believe she had been on Solfatara, had known all of it, the pervs, the sots, the worst the happy houses had to offer. I think now she didn’t mean anything by it except that she wanted to be cruel, that she was simply poking at me as if I were an animal in a cage.

At supper, watching Sapphire set Pearl’s plate for her between taped marks, I wondered whether Carnie was ever cruel to Pearl as she had been to me, shifting the plate slightly as she set it down or moving her chair so she could not find it.

Sapphire set the rest of the plates on the table, her eyes dark blue from some old bitterness, and I thought, Jewell shouldn’t have brought any of them with her from Solfatara except Pearl. Pearl is the only one who hasn’t been ruined by it. Her blindness has kept her safe, I thought. She has been protected from all the horrors because she couldn’t see them. Perhaps her blindness protects her from Carnie, too, I thought. Perhaps that is the secret, that she is safe inside her blindness and no one can hurt her, and Jewell knows that. I did not think then about the man who had blinded her, and how she had not been safe from him at all.

Jewell called the meal to order. “I want you to make our new pianoboard player wilcome,” she said. She reached across the table and patted Carnie’s hand. “Thank you for doing the introductions, and for bandaging my foot,” she said, and I thought, Pearl is safe after all. Jewell has tamed Carnie and all the rest of them. I did not think about the sidon she had tamed, and how it now lay on the floor in front of the card-room door.

That first shift Jewell decked me out in formals and a black-red dog collar and had me stand at the door with her as she greeted the tappers. They were in formals, too, under their soot-black work jackets. They hung the many-pocketed jackets, heavy with tools, on the rack in the anteroom along with their lanterns and sat down to take off their high shoes with hands almost as red as mine. They had washed their hands and faces, but their fingernails were black with soot, and there was soot in every line of their palms. Their faces looked hot and raw, and they all had a broad pale band across their foreheads from the lantern strap. One of them Jewell called Scorch had singed off his eyebrows and a long strip of hair on top of his head.

“You’ll meet almost all the tappers this shift. The gaming house will close hiffway through and the rist of them will come over. Taber and I stagger the shifts so simmthings always open.”

She didn’t introduce me, though some of the tappers looked at my eight-fingered hands curiously; and one of the men looked surprised and then angry. He looked as if he was going to say something to me, and then changed his mind, his face getting redder and darker until the lantern line stood out like a scar.

When they were all inside the music room, Jewell led me to the pianoboard and had me sit down and spread my hands out over the keyboard, ready to play. Then she said, “This is my new pianoboard player, boys. Say hillo to him.”

“What’s his name, Jewell?” one of the men said. “You ginna give him a fancy name like the girls?”

“I nivver thought about it,” she said. “What do you think?”

The tapper who had turned so red said loudly, “I think you shid call him sidon and kick him out to burn on Paylay. He’s a Mirror.”

“I alriddy got a Carnelian and a Garnet. And I had a sidon once. I giss I’ll call him Ruby.” She looked calmly over at the man who had spoken. “That okay with you, Jick?”

His face was as dark a red as mine. “I didn’t say it to be mean, Jewell,” he said. “You’re doing what you did with the sidon, taking in simmthing thit’ll turn on you. They won’t even lit Mirrors on Solfatara.”

“I think that’s probably a good ricommendation considering what they do lit on Solfatara,” Jewell said quietly “Sot-gamblers, tap-stealers, pervers—”

“You saw that Mirror kill the tapper. Stid there right in front iv ivverybody and nobody kidd stop him. Nobody. The tapper bigging for mercy, his hands tied in front of him, and thit Mirror coming at him with a sot-razor, smiling while he did it.”

“Yes,” Jewell said. “I saw it. I saw a lot of things on Solfatara. But this is Paylay. And this is my pianoboard player Ruby I din’t think a man should be outlawed till he does simmthing, di you, Jick?” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you know 'Back Home'?” she said. Or course I knew it. I knew all the tapper songs. Kovich had played in every happy house on Solfatara before somebody broke his hands. He had called “Back Home” his rope-cutter.

“Play it, thin,” she said. “Show thim what you can do, Ruby.”

I played it with lots of trills and octave stretches, all the fancy things Kovich could do with five fingers instead of eight. Then I stopped and waited. The nitrogen blowers kicked off, and even the fans made no noise. During the song Jewell had gone and stood next to Jack, putting her hand on his shoulder, trying to tame him. I wondered if she had succeeded. Jack looked at me, and then at Jewell and back at me again. His hand went into his formals shirt, and my heart almost stopped before he brought it out again.

“Jewell’s right,” he said. “You shiddn’t judge a man till you see what he does. That was gid playing,” he said, handing me a plastic-wrapped cigar. “Wilcome to Paylay.”

Jewell nodded at me, and I extended my hand and took the cigar. I fumbled to get the slippery plastic off and then had to look at the cigar a minute to make sure I was getting the right end in my mouth. I stuck it in my mouth and reached inside my shirt for my sparker. I didn’t know what would happen when I lit the cigar. For all I understood what was going on, the cigar might be full of gunpower. Jewell did not look worried, but then she had misjudged the sidon, too.

My hand closed on the sparker inside my shirt, the nitrogen blowers kicked suddenly on, and Jack said lazily, “Now whit you ginna light that with, Ruby? There in’t a match on Paylay!”

Jewell laughed and the men guffawed. I pulled my empty hand sheepishly out of my jacket and took the cigar out of my mouth to look at it. “I forgot you can’t smoke on Paylay,” I said.

“You and ivvery tapper that kimms in on the down,” Jewell said. “I’ve seen Jick play that joke on how many newcomers?”

“Ivvery one,” Jack said, looking pleased with himself. “It even worked on you, Jewell, and you weren’t a newcomer.”

“It did not, you tripletapping liar,” she said. “Lit’s hear simmthing else, Ruby,” she said. “Whit do you want Ruby to play boys?”

Scorch shouted out a song, and I played it, and then another, but I do not know what they were. It had been a joke, offer the newcomer a cigar and then watch him try to light it on a star where no open flames are allowed. A good joke, and Jack had done it in spite of what he had seen on Solfatara to show Jewell he didn’t think I was a sidon, that he would wait to see what I would do before he judged me.