Floating Worlds (23 page)

She was too jittery to play her flute. She prowled around and around the room. The cold and dark closed over her. The Styths on watch swam through the monitor screens. Her throat was still sore. She was tired. Her eyes burned in their sockets. Taking out the bedrug, she clipped the ring to the wall and wrapped herself up in the thick shag.

Saba woke her, banging on the door. She let him in. He came past her into the room. When he turned she saw four deep scratches down the side of his jaw.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

The wounds were marked in dried blood. She put one hand on his shoulder, holding her blanket around her with the other. “What happened to your face?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” He brushed her off. Unbuckling his belt, he peeled his overalls off. She backed away from him.

“Was that Tanuojin?”

“No. I can’t find him.”

They rolled the bed around them. The wings overlapped and clung to one another. She squirmed until she was comfortable. He ground the heel of his hand into his eyes.

“I’d like to wrap his damned dirty tongue around his neck.”

They lay quiet a moment. The floating bed rocked slightly back and forth. His fingers moved in her hair. Usually he was asleep before she was even settled enough to close her eyes.

“Why does he do this to me?” he said.

“How long have you known him?”

“Since we were neophytes.”

“Then you know what he’s like.”

He barked a flat laugh. “Yes. He knows what I’m like, too, which is why he’s staying out.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I don’t remember.” He squirmed around in the bedrug. “It was while I was loading. He was always around, being creepy. I couldn’t stand him. He’s nobody, and he has that nasty mouth—Anyhow, I got sick, and my friends decided I was dying and left me in an alley. He found me and took me to his trap. When I had the fits, he put his hands on me and I stopped kicking. He kept me alive all the time I was shedding my joe. As soon as I could stand up, we swore the irelyon.”

He yawned. The wounds down his face were ridged with dried blood. Grouchy, he said, “Now he thinks I’m his sole property.” She watched him fall asleep. For a long while, she lay in the air beside him, thinking of Tanuojin.

At three bells she went after him down the winding tunnel to the bridge. The rest of his watch was gathered around the hatch. Saba pushed the hatch open, and she followed him into the hollow bridge.

The other men streamed in behind them. On the perches along the wall, Tanuojin’s watchmen started up, intent. Saba dropped feet-first toward the cage. Tanuojin circled around it. His yellow eyes were fixed on his lyo. Saba ignored him. Tanuojin shot up to the hatch and plunged out. His watch followed him.

Paula settled down to the space of clear wall before the holograph.
Ybix
sailed thin as a blade through the green void. Saba was in the cage. He sat unmoving, his shoulders bowed. She watched him through the bars. He rubbed his hands; at the tips of his fingers the claws clicked together. Sril brought him a watchboard and hung there holding it out for half a minute before Saba noticed him. Paula fixed her eyes on the holograph.

The watch dragged along. Saba would not let her leave the bridge. She went around to the other stations to watch what the crew did. Bakan let her wear his headphones while he made up his log. His little finger stuck out crooked from his hand, swollen like a sausage. All she could hear in the headset were beeps and squeaks, half-animal noises.

Finally she said, “I’m hungry.”

“Wait.” Saba was writing on a watchboard. He did not look up.

“I’m starving.”

“Ay. Sril. Go with her.”

She thrust herself up through the bubble of the bridge toward the hatch, not waiting for Sril. He met her in the corridor just beyond, and they went side by side down to the black-white tunnel.

“How long will this last?” she said.

“Until it stops.”

The tunnels were empty. They flew along looking over their shoulders, furtive. In the slot of the galley, she breathed a trace of a scent, like a feather from a peacock’s tail. Peeling off the wrapper, she ate a food tablet. Sril was braced in the hatch, keeping guard.

“Does this happen often?” she asked.

“Depends on the ship. On the ship’s master. Yekaka used to start watch wars just to keep his crew in shape.”

“Did you serve under Yekaka too?”

He shook his head. “My father was his prima gunner. My grandfather was gunner under Yekaka’s father. Hurry up and eat.”

She took a protein strip and a tube of water and followed him out along the corridor. A head popped through a hatch before them and ducked back out of sight. Sril grabbed her arm.

“Move!”

He pushed her along through a bend in the tunnel. Just in front of her she smelled someone coming, and she pulled back out of his grip. Marus shot toward her. Sril lunged between them. The two men tangled together, their claws fixed in each other’s faces, their legs milling. One of them whistled. She ducked away from them. Beyond Marus, another of Tanuojin’s men appeared. He and Marus flung themselves on Sril. Their locked bodies packed the tunnel. Sril’s face was ripped. She wanted to help him but she could not think how.

Ketac raced around the bend past her. He pulled Marus off Sril’s back. Paula started forward and shrank back again. Tanuojin was coming. He cut through the tangle of men like a knife, the other men giving way to him, all but Ketac. The young man wheeled to meet him. Tanuojin hit him shoulder first and knocked him down the corridor.

Ketac bounced off the wall. Dazed, he swung around, and Tanuojin went at him again. Paula pushed away from the wall. Abruptly Saba raced in between his son and his lyo.

Tanuojin backed off. Paula was behind him; she saw his raised hands, the fingers spread, and the hooks arched. He and Saba faced each other a moment. Saba lunged forward and Tanuojin flinched back away from him. She moved, giving them room. They paused again, face to face. Saba feinted, and Tanuojin yielded to him again, his arms up to protect himself.

“This is my ship,” Saba said.

“Please,” Tanuojin said, so low she could hardly hear him.

“This is my ship.”

Tanuojin’s back was still to her. The other men were watching, their faces rapt. Slowly Tanuojin dropped his hands, leaving himself open. He closed his yellow eyes. Saba lifted his head.

“Get out of here.” He gestured to his crew, and the men turned and flew away. Paula floated quiet in the tunnel, watching. Saba put his hand out, and Tanuojin took it and they embraced. Tanuojin put his head down against Saba’s shoulder. Paula went away up the tunnel.

She had taught Ketac the rules of Go, but she could not teach him the art. They played in the Tank, on a grid floating between them, with little magnets. He always tried to control the entire board, winding up with nothing.

“Tanuojin is an Akellar, isn’t he?” she said.

The young man’s head bobbed. “He was Melleno’s pitman. You met Melleno, didn’t you? In Saturn-Keda.”

“Yes. What’s a pitman?”

“He’s the man who does an Akellar’s work for him in the House when he’s not there. The rAkellaron House, in Vribulo. The pitman goes around and talks about the laws and makes deals. Like that. Tanuojin was that for Melleno. Then when Melleno built Yekka, he made Tanuojin its Akellar.”

She shook a handful of magnets, watching him play a white one onto the grid. Sril and Bakan were throwing darts at the end of the Tank. In eighteen watches they would reach Uranus. She played, and Ketac ignored her move and put a white magnet down in another corner. He refused to defend himself. But he never actually lost: he had developed a technique for avoiding that. Now he glanced at the other men and lowered his voice to keep them from hearing what he said.

“I could whip Tanuojin. If—”

“If you could only get your face off the floor.”

“He can’t fight. He’s a coward. Everybody knows that. Didn’t he come after you?”

Sril called, “You’re talking about the only known saint in the Styth Fleet, boy. Be reverent.” He sailed a dart through the air toward the target.

Paula set another pebble on the grid and gathered up six of Ketac’s stones. His neck swelled.

“Hey!”

“I keep telling you—”

“You can’t do that.” He sucked in his breath, glaring at the board. He struck it with his fist and knocked it flying, bringing the game to its usual end. A magnet tapped her in the mouth and rebounded.

“Hey, boy,” Sril said. He and Bakan glided down the room toward Ketac. “You’re out of hand again, boy, you know what the Man said about that.”

Ketac rolled over backward and made for the hatch. Sril and Bakan plunged through the litter of pebbles after him. She gave them room. Ketac sprayed a warning scent at them.

“Stay away from me—”

The two men were maneuvering him between them. Sril’s face was wide with his grin. Ketac charged for the hatch and they chased him out. In the corridor a high yelp of pain sounded. Paula went around the Tank gathering up the magnets. Saba had told her that they would break the air filters if they got into the screens. Sril came in again, beaming.

“Don’t believe Ketac. Whatever The Creep is or isn’t, he can fight like a red snake when he has to.” Sril went to the wall, where the darts stuck up in a clump like feathers. “Come here. I’ll teach you to hit.”

The White Season

She woke up surrounded by Styth children. She lifted her head, and they burst into giggles and disappeared out the door. A small lamp burned on the table beside the bed, giving off a gentle warmth. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and slid off. The drop to the floor jarred her. She looked around at a huge room. The bed was eight feet long and so high off the floor she doubted she could climb back up without help.

The room was dim and except for the little lamp’s heat it was cold. She took the lamp and went off to explore. A sliding door covered a rack in the wall full of her clothes, all neatly hung on arms and hooks attached to the wall at arm’s length above her head. Her shoes were on a shelf completely out of reach. Her flute was on the floor next to her valise and the big suitcase. She had slept a long time, while all this was going on around her. She could remember being in
Ybix
orbiting Uranus; she could remember being in
Ybicsa
and starting down to the Planet, but nothing more.

Outside this room was a short hall. She crossed it to another room, bare of furniture. When she went in, a brown furry animal raced to the window, jumped to the sill, and dove out. She put the lamp up on the sill of the window and tried to pull herself up to see out but even when she stood on tiptoe she could see no more than the wall of a building across the way. She went back to the room where she had wakened and dragged a chair across the hall to stand on.

Kneeling on the seat of the big chair, she looked out the window to a wide, open yard, ringed around with white one-story houses. A few feet away from her stood a strange kind of post, silvery gray, with several short stumps like branches coming out of the top. At its foot the small brown animal crouched. Its long tail twitched and one ear swiveled to listen to her. The window swung open wide at her touch. She leaned out, looking up, and saw Matuko.

The city closed over her head three or more miles away, veined with crooked streets. It was dark, like an Earthish middle twilight, almost colorless, brown and dark brown and gray. Above her, nearly hidden behind the roof, she could see part of the black ribbon of a lake. Streaks of white lay here and there. In the dull brown it looked like frost on a wintery field.

Children giggled again. She looked about in time to see half a dozen round heads sticking out past the corner of the house. They shrieked and hid. The brown animal raced away. It paused halfway along the wall of the house to turn a pop-eyed monstrous face to her and ran on.

Somewhere inside the house a door slammed. “Paula?”

“I’m in here.” She turned around. Saba came in from the hall.

“What are you doing, running around like this?” He picked her up and put her on her feet on the floor. “You should stay in bed until you get used to the gravity.” He patted her belly. She had to look up at him again. He fit this vast room, the huge furniture. She turned back to the window, uneasy.

“What’s that white stuff?”

He looked out where she was pointing. “That’s grass.”

“White grass? What’s that?” She pointed to the post.

“That’s a bilyobio tree.”

“It’s not really a tree.”

“No. It’s not organic. Nobody knows what they are, they grow all over Styth, everywhere there are Styths. Except the moons. They’re good luck. They say if you live near a bilyobio tree, you’ll live to die of old age.”

“What’s little and brown and has a long tail and pop-eyes?”

“Why don’t you stop asking questions and come over and meet my wives? As long as you’re up. I—” He raised his head. Someone was walking down the hall. “Hup!”

“It’s me, Pop.”

A tall young man appeared in the doorway. Older than Ketac, he was in Saba’s image, slenderly built. Red jewels glittered in the furls of his ears. He said, “I have to talk to you. I didn’t want to do it in front of Mother. There’s been a lot of trouble about this treaty.”

They looked at her, and she turned away from them and went to the window and pretended to be watching out. She guessed this was his prima son, whose name she had forgotten. The young man said, “There’s been a lot of dirty talk, and some fighting and a bomb went off in the Lake market—”

“How did the news get around?” Saba asked.

“I don’t know. We had to close the Peak Farm, there was a threat to bomb it, too.”

Saba let out a string of swearwords. “Who’s behind it?”

“I can’t find out. Nobody, I think—it’s just streetwork, you know—spontaneous.”

“Dakkar,” his father said, “nothing like this is ever spontaneous. Somebody is back of it.”

An edge crept into Dakkar’s voice. “I think I’m looking at him. Sir.”

“Oh, you do?”

“Everybody is saying you sold us out. This treaty—”

“Sir.”

“I’m serious about—”

“Sir.”

Paula frowned at the wall. If the treaty failed, she was finished.

“Yes, sir,” Dakkar said, behind her.

“That’s right,” his father said. “And you don’t close my crystal farm.”

Raising her eyes, she looked around the barren room. The gravity dragged at her, drawing the burden of her pregnancy down, so that she had to stand with her hips thrown forward to support it. She put her hands on the small of her back.

“Yes, sir,” Dakkar was saying stiffly.

“Go find out who’s trying to knock us. You can leave.”

His son left. Saba said, “Paula, let’s go.”

She went after him up the hall. They passed through a formal room, massed with huge furniture. A swing couch hung from the ceiling by chains. She felt too small to be noticed, a mouse in a rat world.

They crossed the yard toward the next house, cat-corner on the wall on the compound. On the eave of its roof, the brown animal sat washing its face with its forepaws.

“What’s that?”

“A kusin.” He still sounded angry. “They’re harmless, except to the dog-mice and snakes.”

“It was in my house.”

“It won’t come back, now that somebody is living there. They don’t like people.” His hand dropped to her shoulder and aimed her at the door into the house ahead of them. “Go in there. I have something to do. Boltiko knows who you are. I’ll see you later.” He walked off across the yard toward the biggest building in the compound, against the wall opposite her little house. She stopped and looked back the way she had come, to see what the house looked like. A white box. She thought of going back there. But she had to face his wives sometime. She went on toward Boltiko’s house.

His prima wife was years older than he was. Her body was lost in rolls of fat. Necklace creases indented the column of her throat. Paula sat uncomfortably in a chair in Boltiko’s kitchen while children dashed in and out screeching and the wife cut bread and cooked meal.

“Were you married in the Earth?” Boltiko asked.

“We aren’t married.”

“Oh.” Boltiko turned and swatted a passing child on the backside. “Didn’t I tell you not to run in the house?” She smacked him again. The little boy scurried out the door, his spread hands protecting his rump. Paula knew he was a boy because his head was shaven; the girls all wore their hair in braids. Boltiko looked Paula over covertly while she stirred the meal.

“Will you be married here?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Another woman came in, this one very young, tall, and extravagantly beautiful, like an advertisement. The sleeves of her dress were of silver lace.

“Illy,” Boltiko said, “this is Paula.”

“Hello,” Paula said.

Illy stared at her, unfriendly. “Hello,” she said, after a moment. Her voice had the same musical quality as Tanuojin’s. She sank into a chair down the table from Paula.

“Where is he?” she asked Boltiko.

“He went somewhere with Dakkar, into the city.”

“What did he bring you?”

“A timepiece, the same as usual. Quaint.”

“He gave me skin-color. Gold, can you imagine?” Illy turned toward Paula. Her hair was gathered on the crown of her head in an aureole of perfect curls. She was the most beautiful woman Paula had ever seen, Styth or other. “Where did he meet you?”

“On Mars,” Paula said.

“Mars,” Illy said, astonished, and Boltiko said, “Mars,” as disapproving as her reaction to the news that Paula and Saba were not married. Illy said, “I thought you were Earthish.”

“I am. But we met on Mars.” She looked from one black face to the other. “At a very fancy sex park.”

Illy’s lips parted. Boltiko said, “I don’t know what manners are in the Earth, but in my house we don’t use words like that around the children.” She poured something liquid into the meal and set the covered pan on the back of the counter.

“I don’t understand,” Illy said. “What were you doing there? Were you alone?”

“Yes. I was talking to him. Politics.”

“Oh.” Boltiko wiped the already spotless table. “Was that how you got the baby? Talking?”

“That was where. How was the usual way.”

To her surprise, Boltiko laughed. The back door burst open. Saba came in, with his son Dakkar, and behind them Ketac. Paula glanced startled from Ketac to Boltiko; under all that fat, her face was shaped like his. Illy raised one hand delicately over her mouth, veiling herself before the young men. To Boltiko, Saba said, “I’ll eat in the Manhus. Hurry up, I’m starving.” He went out again, trailing his sons, without looking at the other women. Illy lowered her hand.

“I’ll show you the timepiece he gave me,” Boltiko said.

They went down a hall, past rooms full of children and children’s things, to a large dim room. The furniture was packed into it like hoardings under a ceiling painted with an abstract design. The chairs and hanging lamps were shielded in clear plastic bags. The three women made a winding course through the clutter to a corner cabinet. On the shelves were several little clocks. The sandglass Saba had bought on the Earth stood among them.

“Oh,” Illy said. “Isn’t that clever.”

“This cabinet is so pretty,” Boltiko said to Paula. “I had nothing to put here, so I asked Saba to bring me something when he goes on his trips.”

Paula reached for a watch with a clamshell case. She found the spring catch and opened it. Boltiko said, blankly, “Why—it has an inside.”

Paula showed her the open watch. In one half was a picture of a white baby, with wisps of fair hair and a stupid babyish smile, and in the other half a fancy scrolled initial T. Boltiko took it.

“Illy, look.”

The other woman glanced at the watch. “Ugh. What an ugly baby.”

Paula backed away from them. She realized Boltiko had no notion what Saba did on his trips. She went around the room looking at the heavy furniture, protected in its wrap of plastic.

On the far side of the room, Illy said, “She’s a slave! He didn’t marry her!”

Paula raised her head. The furniture hid her from the other women.

“No,” Boltiko said. “But he says we’re supposed to treat her like a wife.”

“She’s ugly. He’ll get tired of her. He’ll sell her.”

“Sssh, she’ll hear you.”

Paula was behind a chair. She leaned against it, staying out of their sight. Illy said, “She’s gone.”

“If you ask me,” Boltiko said, “he’s already tired of her—he just feels responsible for getting her that way.” Her skirts swished. She and Illy went to the door into the hall. “That’s all the more reason to be nice to her.”

“At least he didn’t marry her.”

They left, and Paula let them get down the hall before she followed. The baby rolled up in her body anchored her down. Her back hurt. Slowly she waddled back toward the kitchen.

Boltiko was putting covered dishes on a tray. Illy sat in one of the big chairs inspecting her beautiful hands. Paula lowered her eyes. For a moment she hated them both; she burned to say something to wither them. She climbed up into the chair beside Illy’s.

“Pedasen,” Boltiko called, out the back door.

A dark man came in from the yard. He wore a loose white quilted tunic. For an instant he and Paula stared at each other. He was of her race, with Tony’s coloring, and he had pale eyes like Tony’s. Boltiko tapped the tray.

“Take this to the Akellar. See I get all the dishes back this very watch.”

“Yes, mem.” His voice was satiny. He kept his eyes away from Paula and took the tray out. Paula watched him go.

“Pedasen will help you fix your house,” Boltiko said.

“He isn’t—” Paula wet her lips. “I don’t want him.”

Illy giggled. “He is an it.”

The nerves crawled in the backs of Paula’s hands. She sat rigid in the chair that did not fit her, that held her far away from the table. That was why Pedasen’s voice was so smooth: he had been gelded. The two women talked about things she did not understand, in words she did not know. She closed her eyes.

When she had been there long enough to have her walking strength back, she told Saba she wanted to go out, to look at the city. He refused. They were sitting on the swing couch in her front room, reading through the trade contract, and she let him go on two or three paragraphs before she said, “When can I go out?”

“The street is no place for a woman. If you want something, send a slave for it. On this bond, here—” he tapped the page, “I wanted you to make that forfeit if they break the law, remember?”

“That’s the next paragraph.”

He read the next paragraph. She watched his face. The baby was kicking her hard up under the ribs. The baby’s father sat back, holding out the page to her.

“You’ve spelled it out too much—I want it vague, so I can get rid of somebody I don’t like.”

Their eyes met. She said, “Do you think I’m going to stay locked up in here the whole ten years?”

“Boltiko and Illy never go out.” He put the contract on her lap. “Finish the contracts and I’ll talk to you about things like that.”

Paula grunted at him. She reached for the thirty close-printed pages of the contract. “I’m getting bored. Sril could go with me.”

“I just told you. I won’t discuss it until you finish the contract. And if you try to sneak out, I’ll use my belt on you.”

She threw the contract onto his lap, slid off the couch, and went down the hall to her bedroom. She heard him go out of the house through the front door.