Floating Worlds (39 page)

The mid-city gate was massed with people. Paula got off the bus in a tide of other passengers from Matuko and fought through the people trying to board to go on to Yekka, the next stop. Most of these were Yekkit farmers, with empty baskets on their shoulders, going home from the markets of Vribulo. She ducked a swinging elbow and slid between two fat veiled women toward the street.

“Paula.” Ketac came across the chipped tile floor. Two slaves carried a handtruck past her, and she went by it to meet him.

“I brought a chair,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

“Where is he?”

Ketac took a firm grip on her arm and maneuvered her toward a side door. “I found him coming in, as you said, but he got away.”

“He—”

“Easy. I caught him again, I have him in my room. He’s a slippery little nigger.”

The clear doors to the street had white X’s drawn on them, to keep people from walking through them. Outside, in the crowded street, a chair sat on its stump feet, the slaves who carried it squatting at the poles. Ketac hurried her inside. She sat facing forward, and he sat opposite her. The chair bucked up into the air, back end first, and sped away.

“How long has he been here?” she asked.

“Only three or four watches. You were right, he came in from Yekka.”

The drapery of the chair enclosed them like a cloth room. She opened the front of her coat. “Good. You did a good job.”

“If Machou gets a smell of him, I’ll have to give him up. You know that.”

She nodded. The chair hurried along, rolling from side to side. Ketac sat deep into the bench across from her, his head back against the fabric wall. She said, “Have you heard anything from
Ybix?
”

“No, nothing.”

Saba had been gone over three hundred watches. She rubbed her fingers together, wishing she knew where they were. The chair tipped steeply forward and she pulled the curtain open enough to see out. They were going down the hill around the foot of the lake. Pale blue grass grew along the street, the leaves shaped like swords.

“We’d better walk from here,” she said.

“Why?”

“If you don’t want Machou to know I’m in Vribulo.” She leaned out of the chair. “Stop here.” The slaves stopped, panting. She put her hood up and fastened the cloth across her face. Ketac helped her down to the street.

They went into the Barn. Dick Bunker sat on the bed in the back room of Saba’s office, his hands and feet yoked together. A Styth stood guard over him. Paula sent that man out and shut the door.

“Hello, junior,” he said. “Do I owe you for this?”

She sat on the foot of the bed where she could reach the yoke on his ankles. “I told you not to come back here.” She jammed her thumb against the spring tab in the side of the white plastic yoke. It would not budge. “I can’t open this.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in force. This is the second time you’ve gotten me arrested.” He moved his feet out of her range. His eyes glinted; he was angry. She sat back and looked him over. He looked much the same as ever, graying, but still slight and dry.

She said, “My sense of territory is highly developed.”

“I was coming to Matuko when I finished here.”

“How long have you been in Styth?”

“Awhile.” His thin shoulders rose and fell, casual. “I lose track of time here.”

Then the Committee had known
Ybix
was leaving before she broke orbit. Their spies were probably all over Styth, in every White Market. She looked around the room. The washbasin stuck halfway out of the wall, a dirty towel draped over the edge, and Ketac’s used clothes covered the chair. The wall over the battered chest of drawers was scribbled on. She went to look. Most of the scribbles were women’s names with checkmarks after them. A scoreboard.

“What’s going on in the Middle Planets?” she asked.

“The more it changes. Venus 14 is enjoying its third government in two years, or was, when I left, who knows but they’re on their fourth by now, and Mars is threatening to send the Army in. Mars had their mid-term elections last summer, and the Newrose coalition lost. Cam Savenia was elected First Secretary of the Council.”

Paula turned around, startled. He nodded. “Check. She’s all for sending the fleet to Venus 14, she wants the Earth to admit all the Interplanetary Police apparatus and hold elections to the Council, she wants to null the Styth truce and cut off the trade between Mars and the Styth cities. She has a monomania about Saba. Never heard the name Tanuojin. Thinks Saba is plotting to take over the Universe. Fortunately, if Newrose has no majority, neither does the Sunlight League, and Dr. Savenia, I’m pleased to say, is no master of nuts and bolts politics.”

“No—she’s an actor on the stage of life.”

Bunker smiled at her. “Her opinion of you is baroque. Jefferson can handle her. So far. Somebody took a shot at General Marak.”

“Who?” She opened the top drawer in the desk, exposing a clutter of weapons, tapes, and small junk.

“I think the Sunlight League, but I hate them, so my opinion doesn’t count.”

“What do they think of you?” The other drawers held clothes. She went to the rack in the wall and looked in among Ketac’s shirts.

“What are you doing?” Bunker said.

“His mother will want to know how he’s living. What’s of interest to the Committee in Vribulo?”

“Your friends seem to be—”

“Don’t call them that.”

“I’m using the word in the Styth sense. They seem to be rising to new heights.”

She knelt by the bed and slid her hand under the mattress pad. Bunker was watching her sleepily. She said, “Saba is the Prima Cadet now, yes. I wouldn’t call that particularly high.” Deep under the mattress, her fingers grazed something long and flat. She tickled out a packet of papers.

“That depends on your ambitions, doesn’t it?” he said. “What you call high. Which is something I’d be interested to know.”

She slit the seam on the packet with her thumbnail and unfolded it. Inside was a coded message and a white card punched with holes and lines. She pressed the seam closed again and rammed the packet back under the bedpad.

“That certainly looked like the key for a photo-relay,” he said.

She stood up, frowning. Ketac was lying; he had heard from his father. That meant
Ybix
was coming home. She sat down next to Bunker’s feet, her mind busy with arithmetic. Certainly in that amount of time they could have gone no farther than the Asteroids.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” she asked.

“Something I want you to tell me. Who are you working for?”

Her gaze snapped up toward his face. “Anybody who will pay me. What kind of a question is that?”

Bunker leaned toward her, his body rolled into a ball. “Junior, I don’t know what you’ve talked yourself into. What I know is you are cheek to cheek with two men who shoot holes in the Universe as a matter of routine.”

She wiped her hand over her mouth, staring at him. Finally she called, “Ketac!”

The door creaked on its hinges. Ketac stepped in across the threshold. He had been listening to them. She waved at Bunker.

“Take him to Yekka. There’s a boat leaving in ten hours for Mars. Put him on it.”

“Why should I—”

“Damn it, Ketac,” she said, “don’t run me over. Get rid of him before Machou finds him.” She brushed past the young man into the next room.

When she left the bus in Matuko three strange men closed in around her. They hustled her off across the city to Dakkar’s compound, in the Tulan, the rich district. Dakkar was sitting in a chair under the biggest bilyobio tree in his yard. When she went up before him, he stood, swelling his chest with breath. She knew him little. He had his own family, and he and Saba disliked each other, so he seldom visited his father’s compound. He gave her a cold imperious stare.

“I can’t place you,” he said. “You don’t fit in. You aren’t a wife, you aren’t a slave, you live with him but you aren’t kindred. I don’t like things that don’t fit in, it makes me nervous. Why did you go to Vribulo?”

“It’s a nice ride,” she said.

“My father told me specifically to know where you are, all the time.”

She set her teeth together. “Well, that’s where I was. Vribulo.”

“You show me respect, woman.”

She raised her head. In the two-story house behind him, a window screen moved: someone watched them. Dakkar sat down in his chair. All around the curl of his ear little red stones glittered.

“Ask your brother,” she said. “I was with him the whole time.”

“My brother,” he said, contemptuous. “The next time you leave Matuko I’ll have you arrested.”

“May I go now?” she said. “Akellar.”

“Go.”

She went back through the Varyhus toward Saba’s compound. One of the men who had taken her to Dakkar followed her, making no attempt to stay hidden. In the little market between the Varyhus and the Lake District she stopped to buy a drink of water. The slave vendor recognized her.

“Out spying, nigger?” he said. “Sneaking around for the blacks?” She dropped the money and the cup into the street and walked away.

Several watches went by. Illy and David took up her energy. Illy’s constant demands had rubbed Paula’s feelings to callous. For the fifteenth time she made up her mind to break off the affair. As usual she decided to wait until Saba came back, which would muffle the explosion. David fought in the street, in the yard, with his brothers, with strangers. He was always battered. She wondered if he knew about her and Illy. With no warning, Dakkar had her dragged off across the city again.

He was sitting in the same chair where she had last seen him, as if he had not moved in twenty watches. Now there were three other men standing around him. When she was before him, he said, “Two watches ago a pack of slaves murdered an old man, down in the Varyhus. What do you know about it?”

“Nothing,” she said, impatiently.

“Do you recognize this dirt?” He flicked out his hand, and the man on his right gave her a holograph: a pale slab-jawed face.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”

“It won’t do you any good to lie.”

She held the holograph out to his aide. Saba’s son scowled at her. Her temper was burning short. “I’m not lying,” she said.

“These street-dirt kicked and beat an old man to death.” His right hand on the arm of the chair flexed, unsheathing his claws. “You were seen talking to that slave in the Varyhus market.”

“Oh,” she said. “The water vendor. I don’t know anything about him.”

“There are half a million slaves in Matuko, and you talked to that one just by coincidence?”

“If you ask the slaves, Dakkar,” she said angrily, “you’ll find they don’t like me any more than you. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“I can make you talk,” he said. He made a gesture, and his soldiers took her off behind the bilyobio tree. She stood uneasily watching Saba’s son while he signed a document and read a tape. He would not dare hurt her, or even threaten to hurt her. After a while two more of his men brought Pedasen into the yard.

Her stomach knotted. She sank her teeth into her lower lip. Dakkar straightened.

“Take them inside.”

She reached her house again in the low watch, lay down across her bed, and cried. When she ran out of tears and sobs, she rolled onto her back. David was standing at the foot of the bed. She sat up.

“Did I wake you up?” She wiped her eyes on her hand. Her throat was sore.

“Where were you?” He climbed over the foot of the bed toward her. The old white bedshirt he wore had been Saba’s: it was filthy. “What happened? Where you hurt? Why were you crying?”

She shook her head. “I’m all right.” His hands were scraped and swollen from fighting. She took his wrist, cold to her touch.

“Why were you crying?”

She shook her head again. Taking his hand in both hers she kissed his palm. “They killed Pedasen.” She began to weep again. He tugged on his hand and she freed him.

“Who killed him? Who?”

“Dakkar.” She rubbed her eyes dry.

“Why are you crying? He was just a slave.”

Her eyes felt bathed with salt. She wiped her face on her sleeve. In the end, Dakkar had believed her, but by then the eunuch was dying.

“He was a slave,” David said. “He didn’t mean anything.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she said. “Go back to bed.”

He sat on the foot of the bed, watching her soberly with his strange long eyes. His hair was sprouting like bristles over his head. She said, “Don’t you care? He lived here. He loved you since you were a baby.”

His gaze flinched away from her. Suddenly busy, he picked at the cover with his fingers. He had no claws yet; he still used the flats of his fingers. He muttered, “My father wouldn’t care,” watching his hands.

“Go back to bed, David.”

Whenever she slept with Illy, she dreamt that Saba walked in on them. One watch she woke with a start and smelled a hot metal reek and saw him standing at the foot of the bed.

“Get up and put your clothes on,” he said.

Illy was still asleep, her arm around Paula’s waist. Paula shook her hard, to wake her. Saba grabbed the bedcover in both hands and yanked it flying away.

“I said get up!”

Paula scurried off the bed and gathered her clothes. Illy raised her head. “Saba!” She sat upright, thrusting out her hand toward him. “Saba, wait.”

He unbuckled his belt. Paula was pulling on her dress. Her clumsy fingers jammed the slide closing. Illy cried, “No—Saba, listen to me. It isn’t what you think.”

“Go over to your house and wait,” he said to Paula. He doubled the belt up in his hand.

She went out through the sitting room to the door. Behind her the belt cracked and Illy screamed in pain. She burst into a run out the door and across the yard. A man waved to her from the Manhus steps: Sril. She went into her house through the kitchen. The kusin was drinking from the hose. At her sudden entrance it darted under the table.

David was asleep. She stood on the threshold of his room watching him. She could not bear to lose him. The boy slept on his stomach, the cover bunched in his right fist. The back door slammed.

She went down to the kitchen again. Saba was half-sitting on the table, his arms crossed over his chest. The kusin had gone.

“That’s a low point, even for you. How could you do that to me? I thought you cared about me.”

She shut the door into the hall, so that David would not waken. Saba had his temper back. He watched her cross the kitchen and draw a cup of water to loosen her throat. The kusin had left the window over the hose slightly open. She shut it hard.

“What did you do to Illy?”

He came up behind her. “She did it to pay me back, didn’t she? For chasing around.”

She put the cup down on the counter. Pedasen’s frightened face appeared in her memory. Illy’s frightened voice. He slouched against the counter beside her, his elbow bracing him up.

“Why are you so white, Paula? You think I’m going to whip you too, don’t you?”

“No,” she said, evenly.

“How long have you been debauching my wife?”

She turned on him, ready to blast him, and the hall door sighed. She and Saba in unison turned toward David, coming into the kitchen. The long shirt hung rumpled to his knees.

“Papa!” He leaped up into Saba’s arms. “When did you get back? Will you take me to
Ybix?
Will you take me for a ride in
Ybicsa?
Pedasen died. I whipped Itak and made him eat mud.” Saba boosted him up in the crook of his arm.

“Say good-bye to your mother.”

She gripped the edge of the counter in both hands. Her heart began to thud. David twisted around in Saba’s arms. “Good-bye. Where is she going?”

“To Yekka. She’ll be back before you miss her.”

She looked away, relieved. David said, “Can I go too?”

“I thought you wanted to ride in
Ybicsa?
”

“Yes!”

With David riding on his arm, the big Styth went to the door. Paula said, “What if I refuse?”

“Don’t make it harder for me, Paula.” He shouted out to the yard for Sril. She stared at his back. She could refuse. But she did not want to be around him. David squirmed out of his arms and came down the room to Paula.

“Will you call me on the screen? Just to me and nobody else?”

She nodded. Sril stood in the doorway. Saba gestured at her. “Take her to Yekka.”

The trip was stormy. She was sick all the way from Matuko to Vribulo, the midway stop. Drenched with sweat, she sat in the compartment drinking tea. Sril gave her a towel and she mopped her face. The bus swayed and lurched along in its course.

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel awful.”

“You’ll never make a Styth, Mendoz’.”

She emptied her cup of the sweet tea. The bench was slippery. She had to hold the grip in the wall to keep from landing on the floor. But she felt better, her stomach steadier than before. Sril stretched his feet across the aisle to the opposite bench, his arms spread out across the back of their seat.

“How did your mission go?” she said. She put the cup into the clamp on the wall.

“Perfect. We took about four hundred slaves. Everybody on the Asteroid who didn’t die.”

“Terrific,” she said, glum. The only Asteroid he could mean was Vesta; Ceres, the only other of the minor Planets so densely populated, was on the far side of the Sun.

“The Man took
Ybicsa
down over the base and pulled off every attack-craft they had, and
Ybix
went in and blew up the satellites. I hit three out of three shots. Of course The Creep put me in the green window, I couldn’t miss.”

She leaned against the wall of the compartment. Illy’s scream sounded in her memory. But it was Pedasen she longed for. The bus lurched and she jumped. Sril put his arm around her, holding her fast, and she moved over against his side.

“Did you and the Old Man fight?” he said. His hand grazed her side. She shut her eyes. Gently he stroked her side and her shoulder. “It looks odd, he comes back and an hour later you’re going.” His palm curved over her breast.

“Sril,” she said. “Switch off.”

His hand left her. The bus lurched along toward Yekka.