Floating Worlds (60 page)

Saba came in the door beside her. “What are they doing?”

“Killing each other.”

One hand on the top of the door, his weight slouched onto one leg, he watched his crew in the pool. “You’ll have to finish with Newrose by yourself. The Martian Fleet is regrouping. We have to go meet them.”

She gathered her breath, her eyes turning toward the pool, looking for David. The boy shot up out of the water, caught the edge of the bottom diving board, and swung himself onto it.

“It’s too bad he’s so small,” Saba said. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All around the leaping surface of the pool the Styths’ heads turned. He called, “Report to the ship in two hours. My watch on watch.” He went off through the dressing room, splashing through the puddles. Paula moved away, to let the naked men out of the water.

Newrose said, “Then we’re all alone here.”

“
Kundra
is still here. Ymma’s ship. The man with the scarred face.” She leaned back in her chair, her eyes on the clear ceiling above the crater. The sun was setting. In the mid-heaven the Earth shone in half-phase. “Twelve Styths, eighteen of your people, and me.” She leveled her gaze at him. “What did Tanuojin tell you?”

The Martian’s pink cheeks sucked hollow. “We talked for two hours. I should say he talked for two hours. The conversation ranged from the superiority of Styths to the superiority of the Styth Fleet to the superiority of the Styth legal system. I was unimpressed. Frankly, I think he suffers from some kind of mental disorder.”

Paula hooted with laughter. The tabletop was still covered with the marks she had made during their first meeting. She rubbed her hands over it. “If you can diagnose it, Newrose, do let me know.”

“Probably he came away with no good impression of me,” Newrose said.

She turned sideways in her chair. Up overhead, through the clear roof, she could see the blue Earth. Above it were the stars of Scorpio’s tail. Paula said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said, the other day.”

“Have you? I’m glad to hear that.”

“What if I did help you? Where would that take me?”

Newrose pulled his chair closer to the table. “Isn’t this interesting? Now you seem to have changed your heart.”

“Tanuojin is gone,” she said.

“Ah.”

“I can see why you don’t trust me.” She glanced up at the Earth again and back to Newrose.

“I want to trust you,” he said.

“Suppose I were to give you a proof? Could you get me out of Luna?”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

Newrose’s pale eyes gleamed. He said, in a taut voice, “Well, that depends.”

“Suppose you were to get me to Mars,” she said, “and suppose I were to take the Styth codebooks with me?”

The Martian’s throat worked in a swallow. His gaze never left hers. “Yes. I can see why you’d have to get out of Luna. Under those circumstances.” His hand rose toward his face. “You can do this?”

Feet crashed on the metal treads of the ladder just below them. She stood and lost her balance and nearly fell. Ymma came up through the hatch in the floor. He shot a fiery look at Newrose, still sitting.

“Get him out of here.”

She nodded at the Martian. “You’d better go.” He looked sharply from her up to the hatched face of the Styth and climbed away down the ladder. Ymma scowled, all the creases dented in his cheeks.

“I just got a message from Tanuojin. The Martians ambushed them—we lost twelve ships in thirty-two seconds.”

She thought unwillingly of David, floating in the metal bubble of the ship. “I don’t know anything about fighting,” she said, and went away down the ladder.

At six in the evening by the clock, most of the lighting in Luna dimmed out, signaling the beginning of the artificial night. Newrose and his staff were quartered on the fourteenth floor, where Paula also lived. She took a current book of codes and went down the empty corridor to Newrose’s suite. She knocked on the door, and Newrose himself opened it.

“Miss Mendoza,” he said. He sounded surprised. Backing up, he held the door wide. “Come in.”

Paula went into the room. It was too warm and too bright for her, and she felt closed in. One of Newrose’s aides sat on a candy-striped settee under the illusion window. He stood up when he saw her. Down a dark hallway opening off the room, she heard Cam Savenia’s voice.

“This is an unexpected pleasure,” Newrose said, smiling.

Paula gave him the codebook. “Here. To prove I’m honest.”

Newrose said, “I never doubted it.”

Paula laughed. She glanced at the entrance into the hallway. Cam Savenia came out of it and stopped.

“Hello, Paula.”

“What are you doing here?” Paula asked.

Newrose came up between them, still smiling, and patted Paula’s arm. “Stay and have a drink with us.”

“I’d better not.” She turned toward the way out, her eyes on Cam. “You shouldn’t let her in here, Newrose.”

Cam flushed. Newrose said, “Oh, well.” Paula went out of the room.

In the corridor, she walked down about fifteen feet from the door into the shadows and waited. After a few moments Cam came after her. Paula fell into step beside her.

“You heard what the Akellar told me,” Cam said. She stopped to light a cigarette. “I’m on your side now, remember?” The matchlight made a mask out of her face. She flicked the match off down the corridor like a firefly into the night.

“What have you found out?” Paula asked.

Cam started off again, long-legged. “Newrose came back from your meeting looking happy as a clam. You must be working on him. Not that I ever doubted you would.”

They went around a corner and into the trunk hall. The night lamps on the walls were replicas of old-fashioned street lamps, hanging on curved brackets over their heads. Paula said, “Is Newrose in touch with anybody off the Planet? Like Hanse, for example?”

Cam’s eyebrows rose. “Not that I know of. Do you think he is? What are you trying to do?”

“I have an intuition.” They had come to Paula’s door. She stopped and reached into her sleeve for her key. “There’s been a battle. General Hanse has won. Not decisively, but well.” She pressed the face of the key into the patch above the doorknob.

Cam’s expression stayed calm, almost placid. “When will the Akellar be back?”

Paula shrugged. She let her door slide open. Cam sucked on her cigarette. The red coal followed her hand through the dimness down to her hip. “I don’t feel exactly right when he isn’t here. I don’t know what I’ll do when he goes back to Uranus.”

“Maybe he’ll take you.”

“He says he has work for me in Mars.”

Paula studied her a moment, wondering what the work might be. Cam’s cigarette made its arc upward toward her mouth. She breathed out smoke and said, “You might be right about Newrose and Hanse. I think the Martians know about this battle.”

“Oh?”

“It accounts for something one of them said. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Not in a million years.”

“What’s the matter, baby?” Cam said. “Can’t stand the competition?” Paula went into her suite and shut the door.

Midway through the artificial night Newrose woke her, pounding on her door. “Hurry,” the Martian said. “We haven’t much time.” He hustled her off along the trunk corridor. She glanced behind them down the empty hallway into the darkness. Their steps sounded hollow here. Newrose took her arm and led her into a vertical car.

The car was supposed to be dead. The panel beside the door was missing and the instrument plate showed bare, its surface etched with circuits. Newrose took a key from his pocket and pressed it to the plate. The car climbed toward the surface, past the thirteenth floor where the Styths lived, up through layers of uninhabited space where the environment was supposed to be turned off. She wondered how many miles of tunnels there were under Luna’s surface. Hundreds. She looked at Newrose, smiling all over his face.

“Good news,” he said. “There’s been another battle. Hanse has won again. We’re beating the hell out of the Styths.”

“
We
. Do you like Hanse?”

“I can reason with him,” Newrose said. “Unlike the Sunlight League. Or the Styths.”

The car stopped at the sixth floor. They went out onto the vertical apron. Several corridors fanned away from them. One was lit by spots of light running off into the distance and Newrose took her off along it. Every few yards a power torch was stapled to the wall at shoulder-level. They passed a pile of rubble that smelled of char.

“The Styths never took all of Luna,” Newrose said, hurrying along. “Just the surface and the nerve center on the thirteenth floor. The life support systems. Then they turned off the oxygen everywhere else.”

“Tanuojin,” she said. “He’s an economical man. Then what are we breathing?”

“Local emergency supply.”

Ahead a box torch glowed on a crossbeam. She knew about the battle for Luna. Kasuk had died here. The broken wall bulged into the corridor and Newrose went ahead of her through the narrow gap. Paula glanced behind her. She thought she saw something moving in the dark.

The air turned cold. Under her feet the floor was buckled and she had to watch to keep from tripping on the plastic waves. They went through a door, down a hall, through another door. She had lost her way. They crossed a stretch of darkness where her ears told her the walls left off and vast space stretched away around her. Newrose took her up a short flight of stairs and into a small room.

“We can’t promise to get you off the Planet right away, but the Styths will never find you here.”

She looked around the tiny L-shaped room. Another Martian sat at a table under the ceiling lamp, playing cards scattered before him. In the foot of the L was a box with a screen like a videone: a photo-relay. On the panel above the screen a green light was burning.

“The signal is through,” said the man playing cards. “That book she gave us is authentic.”

Newrose smiled at her. Paula shook her head at him, exasperated. “You should have checked that before you brought me here.”

“I trust you,” he said.

“Then you’re naive.” She opened the door to the corridor again. From the darkness Ymma came past her into the room.

Newrose’s man gave a muffled cry and stood up. The Styth loomed over them all. In the taut silence, another Styth walked in from the corridor and went straight to the photo-relay.

His hands on his hips, Ymma said to Paula, “Are they signaling Hanse?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Mars.” She was watching Newrose’s face harden into an expression of outrage. The other Martian sat down with a thump. She said to Newrose, “Who are you calling?”

On his domed forehead a film of sweat appeared. He said, “I should have listened to the people who told me you were treacherous.”

She turned to Ymma again. “He didn’t even check the book. He isn’t very good at this. And he says there’s been another battle.”

“The word came just before I left. We lost another eight ships.”

The Styth by the photo-relay said, “Akellar, the transmission beam focuses in Mars.”

“You were right about that, too,” Ymma said to her.

She faced Newrose again. “You call me treacherous, Newrose. We let you come here in good faith. Even after Lore Smythe, we acted in good faith. When are you coming up to my level?”

Newrose took a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his tunic, opened it out, and patted his forehead dry. He folded the handkerchief again. “It’s your move, Mendoza.” With two fingers he stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket.

“Show me how to get back to the verticals.”

They went back through the ruins of Luna. Newrose clasped his hands behind his back. Until they had crossed the stretch of darkness they walked in silence. In the lighted hallway, she said, “You can’t cheat, Newrose. You have to do this the hard way.”

The lights shone on his face. She smelled char. They were going along between walls swollen and cracked from fires. She was ready to remind him of Tanuojin, who had done all this, but Newrose took out his handkerchief again, mopped his face again, and said, “I’ll try to do my job.”

“I want an unconditional surrender.”

“The Martian Army is winning the war.”

“The Styths will win.” She slowed to keep her footing on the uneven floor. “Tanuojin will want something impossible, and Saba will do it. If you and I haven’t arranged something by then, they’ll go straight for Mars, and you and I will have missed our chance.”

“What did you have in mind?”

Ahead the corridor led off, banded around with alternate yellow light and dark from the torches. At the end she saw the double doors of the verticals and quickened her steps. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. But it’s very simple. You and I are going to rule the Middle Planets.”

When she came up the ladder to the surface, Newrose was already in the ancient room. She opened her notebook and put it down on the table. “Sign that.”

“I want to know a little more about—”

She slid onto the chair facing him and folded her arms on the tabletop. “Sign it.”

“I warn you that if necessary I shall repudiate this agreement.”

“Sign it.”

He signed the surrender. She turned the notebook around and folded that leaf over. “Good. Now, we have a lot of work to do.”

“What exactly are you planning?”

She looked out through the clear window, across the barren floor of the crater to its steepled wall. The sun was still setting; the slow rocking of the Planet on its axis had kicked it up higher than the day before above the rough horizon. “I don’t know. Whatever is possible. How much work does the Council do?”

He shrugged. “All the relations between the member governments.” His hands were clasped together before him on the table. They opened enough to gesture at her and folded together again in their two-handed fist. “Actually, in practice, the Committee’s liaison with us—Miss Jefferson—went between the parties involved and settled everything outside the official meetings. Otherwise there’d be just too much detail.”

“How many members?”

“Mars, Luna, the Politburo of Crosby’s Planet, the twenty-three governments of Venus. Naturally Mars is the most important member.”