Floating Worlds (69 page)

“D-61, you’re outside the corridor. Identify or we will notify the patrol.”

She laughed, pleased to know he was not the patrol. She wondered where the corridor was. At least she was out of the traffic. Something bright yellow and long and hairy appeared in the top of the map. The image sharpened into a thick string cutting diagonally across the cube. She guessed it was a city mooring.

“D-61, D-61—”

The ship hit another wave. This time she kept hold of the levers. It was hard to judge the angle. The wave broke sharp against the ship’s hull and knocked her sliding. Now she was headed in another direction. Paula steered around a yellowish mass like a mountain floating in the magma: a lump of something frozen. She was going so fast
Ybicket
left a visible rippled wake.

“D-61, this is UP-115, identify and heave to. You are outside the corridor.” The voice sharpened. “Damn it, heave to or I’ll shoot!”

There was no sign of another ship in the map.
Ybicket
raced straight up. Paula braced herself against the edge of the seat. In the limit of the holograph another long string appeared. She wondered what city it was. They might not shoot if she kept close by the moorings. Two men shouted at her at once in the radio.

She passed the city within holograph range, a great yellow wall that went on for long miles beside her, encrusted with hairy growth. Another ship flew across her course. She headed
Ybicket
straight for it. She rammed the pedals down as far as she could reach. For a moment the ship hovered there ahead of her, but the city was just behind her; the craft could not shoot and reeled away. She hurtled past, going steadily faster.

The cab filled with a lemony sunlight. She glanced through the window into a fog like dirty wool. The light grew brighter. The ship answered differently to her touch on the levers, tender as an egg on a table. She was bobbing in the harness, nearly weightless.
Ybicket
flew up through the thinning clouds. She crossed into black space.

She put her helmet and gloves on and went back to stuff Tanuojin’s hands into his gloves. He was still sunk in sleep. She groped over the radio deck, found the light, and switched it on. In its glow she could read the tags on the buttons. The one on the left was marked ID and she turned it on. She swam back to the drive seat. Just as she reached it, a blow struck
Ybicket
with a flash of white light.

The shock threw Paula head-first into the seat. Someone was shooting at her. She squirmed around, reaching for the levers. The ship was streaking down toward the white Planet. When she pulled the levers, she moved herself and the controls stayed still. She had to learn all over again how to do it in free fall. The ship began to roll over as she fell. Paula thrust the pedals down and forced the levers down, clenching her teeth, and still tumbling the ship leveled off.

Another light exploded in the window overhead. There were no other ships around her. They were shooting from the cloud-white Planet in its silvery rings or from a moon.
Ybicket
was rolling over and over. When Paula pushed the outside lever to steady her, the spin quickened. She tried other combinations and stopped the roll but
Ybicket
dropped her nose again and dove toward Uranus. Far above her, there was another explosion.

“
Ybicket, Ybicket
, this is
Ybix
, answer.”

The voice roared through the helmet above her ears. She could not work the radio, so she said nothing.
Ybicket
was plunging down. The Planet filled the window. The levers were frozen. The ship ran into something that flung it sideways. Paula hit the wall. Her helmet banged her head. Her eyes went in circles. When she came back to herself, Ketac was shouting at her.

“
Ybicket
. I’m taking your controls. Let go.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Paula!”

She swam back to the drive seat. The lifeline had uncoiled after her like a white worm and snaked into its housing under the seat. Ketac said, “Push the auto button. The red button under the safety hood on the right of the instrument panel. Do you see it? What are you doing in the drive seat?”

Her head hurt unbearably. She lifted the metal hood on the right side of the console and punched the red button there. Ketac was shouting at her. She crawled into the harness and shut her eyes.

Her eyes opened. Around her the Mylar walls glistened. A stopwatch floated about a yard away from her face, rocking slightly back and forth. She was in
Ybix
, in Saba’s old cabin in
Ybix
, wrapped up in a shaggy bedrug. She unfolded herself from its warm laps.

The time meter read the middle of the low watch. Shivering, she went around the room gathering her clothes and dressing. While she was in the galley taking a protein strip and blue and white chalk tablets out of the food machine, a crewman swam into the hatch and told her that Tanuojin wanted to see her. He was in the library. She went up to the blue corridor, traveling slowly in the free fall.

Ketac was perched on a stool pulled out from the wall, between her and Tanuojin. He grabbed hold of her hand. “Have you ever flown
Ybicket
before? Who let you do that?”

She swung the hatch closed behind her. Inside the round room, its curved wall coated with book cells, the three were crowded together. Tanuojin said, “The vulgar belief is that Vida’s ghost flew us in.” He crooked his arms behind his head. “The fleet is here,” he said to her. “And Mehma’s Saturn Fleet.”

“They came when you called,” she said. She turned her arm, and Ketac let go of her.

Tanuojin said, “Something has to be done. The whole Empire is falling apart.”

Ketac took hold of her again. “There’s only one power in the system that can bring Styth back to order now. And that’s Tanuojin.”

“Go on,” Tanuojin said to Ketac. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Ketac went past her, spun the hatch wheel, and dove out into the corridor. In the expanded space of the room Paula let herself stretch out. Tanuojin said, “I’m calling a session of the rAkellaron in Vribulo in eleven watches. The fleet’s small craft can dominate Vribulo, no matter what the patrol does. The Chamber will elect me head of the Empire for my lifetime. Leno is my deputy in Uranus. Mehma is my deputy in Saturn. Ketac will be head of the fleet.”

She wondered how long he would live. When she was random dust, when Ketac’s grandchildren were old men, Tanuojin would rule. She said, “Congratulations.”

“You can help me.”

“I helped you. I got you here.”

“More than that.”

“What’s more than your life?”

The wall buzzed. He put one arm out, and a narrow drawer among the cells of books slid toward his fingers. “You refuse to admit that I’m right.” His voice was brittle. He took the earphones out of the side of the drawer and turned a switch. On the panel inside the drawer a red light flashed on and off. “Tanuojin,” he said, into the mouthpiece. Leno’s voice rasped in the speaker. She left.

Vribulo was full of people standing in lines, like the Earth during the coup. The city seemed much brighter than before. She walked along the street that led past the lake, Junna beside her holding his stride short to match her pace. Down a lane she saw block after block of blackened concrete and plastic rubble. The air smelled of acetone.

“We executed the last of the patrol last watch,” Junna said. He steered her around a line of people toward the next street. A long lock of his hair hung down unclubbed over his ear. “Every city in Styth has sworn obedience to my father.”

“You don’t sound pleased.”

“I don’t know, Paula, everything is changed. I don’t know what will happen now. The oaths are all different—he made them up, who knows what they really mean?”

She took the loose lock of his hair in her fingers. “What’s this?”

“That’s for Vida.”

They were coming to the Steep Street, leading down past the head of the lake to the rAkellaron House. She had followed Ymma along this street once, after Ymma had kicked Tanuojin half to death: long ago. She had thought of David constantly since he died. She had dreamt of him, his face glowing with blood, his body burst. Sometimes in the dreams he had bled fire. He was always dead in these dreams. She said to Junna, “I know what that means. What happened to his body?”

“My father can tell you.” His tone warned her: something bad.

He took her up to the Prima Suite. In the white front room, half a dozen men were sitting, Leno, Mehma, and other rAkellaron. When she came in, they all stood up. It was like them; when she had been one-third of a Prima, they would not have done that.

“Where is Ketac?” she said to Junna.

“I don’t know. I’ll get him.” The tall young man left. Her favorite chair was still in its place and she took it, and the six aristocrats sat down. She did not want to talk to them. Turning in the big chair she stared out the window at Vribulo.

After a while Marus came in. He gave something to Leno, who left, and said, “Mendoz’, the Akellar wants to talk to you.”

She followed him across the hall. At the threshold of Saba’s old room, the back of her neck began to tingle. She rubbed it with her fingers, wondering what it meant.

The two windows on the far side of the room let in oblongs of light onto the ceiling. All along the blank walls were piled boxes of film and books and paper. Marus came in behind her. She touched the back of her neck again. Tanuojin came in from the next room, and the tingle grew stronger. He handed a paper to Marus.

“Give that to Mehma. Tell the others to come back in a watch.”

Paula looked around the room. It was still painted light yellow, Boltiko’s choice of color. There was no furniture except the table below the windows and a sling chair pushed away under it. Marus left, and she swung around to face Tanuojin.

“What did you do with my son’s body?”

“He was burned.” Tanuojin sauntered away from her toward the table. His back to her, he hitched his belt up with both hands. His shirt hung loose from his shoulders; he was much thinner. “I thought better of bringing you down for the ceremony. It got very emotional. People took him for a symbol. You don’t like ceremonies anyway.”

“No,” she said, angry. “Especially not when they’re arranged for your purposes. Damn you, that was my son you used.”

“He always wanted to be a hero.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned on it, sideways, facing her. “You are getting old, Paula. Old and hidebound.”

“Well,” she said, “we all get what we deserve.” She put her hand to the back of her neck.

“You still think you can avenge the anarchy.”

“I don’t have to,” she said. “You are my revenge.”

He shook his head at her. “I think too many people have died on you.”

She looked around the bleak room again. All the decoration was in his mind. There was nothing in here she wanted, and the rustle of her nerves bothered her. She went out to the corridor to find Ketac.

The lobby of the Nineveh was dimly lit. Shadows hid the edges of the room. Paula sidled away from Ketac. The Styths were pressed tightly together. In this strange place they were all shedding a faint cold fear. At the staircase, the five or six Sun-worlders stood neatly posed like mannequins. Alvers Newrose stepped forward to greet Ketac. Behind him Cam Savenia’s face was white as pipe-clay.

“We are honored to receive you,” Newrose said. His head was cocked back toward Ketac’s, a foot and a half above him. “Our first business must be to express our grief and the grief of all the Middle Planets at the death of Saba. He was as just an overlord as he was terrible an enemy. We don’t expect to see his like again.”

Paula chewed the inside of her cheek. Around the broad, dim lobby, the unlit display cases like mirrors reflected back the people massed around her. Ketac was making a stiff little speech in answer to Newrose’s stiff little speech. She circled between two men to the door.

Tanuojin was already in the corridor beyond, looking out at the gardens through the glass wall, his hands on the rail. She went past him, reading the numbers on the room doors.

“Why did you do this? Why here?” She found 110 and put her thumb on the white patch. The door slid back into the wall. The lights in the room beyond came up overbright. After so long with the Styths, the bright light dazzled her. She found the wall switch and turned them down. There was no aquarium.

“To remind myself how rich these people are.” Tanuojin came in behind her.

“Savenia doesn’t look any different,” she said.

“Leave her alone. I’m tired of your sniping at her.”

She went into the next room. The bed was draped in a black fur cover. The lime green carpet made her hungry. She stretched her arms out. After so long in
Ybix
she welcomed these expanses of space and color.

“The older I get,” he said, “the more I hate that ship.” He walked around the room. She twisted to reach the hooks on the back of her dress.

“Undo this for me, will you?” She turned her back to him. The dress opened down to her waist. She shed it and went into the washroom.

The walls were glossy white. The hot water of the shower needled her skin. A row of push buttons ran across the tiled wall above faucets. She pushed one and the middle nozzle sprayed white suds over her. She revolved in the stream, pressed other buttons: perfume, deodorant, body finisher. The back of her neck tingled.

“Come in—try this. You could have it installed in
Ybix
.”

There was a deep Puritanical mutter behind her in the doorway. The panic in her nerves subsided. He had gone away. She rinsed herself clean of the cosmetic mud and odors and dried herself in the warm air blower by the sink.

When she went back to the big green room, Tanuojin was lying on his stomach across the bed. “Watch.”

She sat down beside him. He held his hands cupped before him. After a moment, a big red poppy appeared on his fingertips, its brilliant petals cupped around the black center. She touched its papery soft edge.

“Are you making it up?”

“No. It’s in the garden.” When he talked, the flower shivered and faded. She bent down to sniff it, but there was no smell. Maybe poppies had no odor.

“I’d be more impressed if you were making it up.”

In the next room, Ketac’s voice sounded, loud. “Bring me something to eat. A real spread. For her, too. And some liquor. And—” He strode into the room, saw Tanuojin, and stopped, coming up to respect, his head back. Paula slid off the bed and went to her bags for her robe.

“Are you eating here?” she said over her shoulder.

Tanuojin nodded at Ketac. The poppy was gone. “Yes. Call Alvers Newrose here. And Dr. Savenia.”

Ketac relaxed, his feet apart. “When?” There was a blowgun in his belt.

“Whenever they’re ready.”

She pulled the white fur robe down over her head. “See if they have any decent whiskey.”

Ketac went to the door and talked through it to his aides in the sitting room. She tied a belt around her waist and groped around the sides of her bag for her comb.

“I want to go to the Earth,” she said.

Tanuojin lay back on his elbows. “There’s nothing left of it. It’s a desert. Red sand.”

“Maybe you could make up some trees for me.”

“I have too much to do.”

“Ketac can take me.” She sat down on the foot of the bed. Her hair crackled from being washed. Ketac went past her to the bathroom, giving no sign he heard. He would do whatever Tanuojin said. Through the half-open door she saw him turning on the shower.

“Do they still have the women?” He threw his clothes out onto the bedroom floor.

“Probably. It’s the same old Nineveh.” She glanced at Tanuojin behind her on the bed. “Down to and including Cam Savenia.”

“Paula—”

“Your deputy in the Middle Planets.”

He kicked her. In the shower, Ketac let out a yell. He had found the cosmetic bar. She rolled onto her feet and went to the bathroom door and stood watching him lather himself. He was too large for the shower; he had to stoop to put his shoulders under the spray. The white soap washed down his body.

“Newrose is coming.” Tanuojin went to the other door. She turned. Ketac got out of the shower, and the roar of the air blower started. Tanuojin was standing in the doorway to the next room, his head bent to clear the lintel. Paula looked quickly through her bag for her shoes. She heard Newrose’s knock and went barefoot behind Tanuojin into the sitting room.

Junna let Newrose into the room. The Martian’s egg-shaped head was smooth and pink, his face babyishly bland. He knelt down before Tanuojin and put his right cheek against the floor beside the Styth’s boot.

Paula murmured. She went back into the bedroom.

“Well?” Ketac said. He stood at the closet, half into his leggings.

“He did it.” She bounced down onto the bed. “I’m getting old. Betrayed like a gull by Alvers Newrose.”

He was bent over to lace his boot. “Do you mind if I take one of the whores?”

“Do what you want.”

He got out a red shirt, stitched with gold in his kite-shaped emblem. In the next room, there was another knock. Cam Savenia was making her entrance. Paula stayed to watch Ketac dress. She knew Cam would perform the
kutal
. Ketac sat on the bed next to her.

“How do I call the slaves?”

There was a console built into the night table at the head of the bed. She took the receiver off the cradle. Beside it was a row of buttons. One was marked PERSONAL SERVICES. She said, “Are you having a party?” When she pressed the button it flashed red.

“Marus and Tibur and I.”

A clerk answered into her ear. She said, “Hold on, please,” and put her hand over the receiver. “Not here,” she said to Ketac.

“Upstairs.” He reached for the receiver. She got up. For a moment, unused to the gravity, she nearly fell over. Carefully, she went into the next room.

They had swung the couch over perpendicular to the fireplace, and Tanuojin sat in the corner, his head propped up on his fist. Junna stood on the hearth, and Marus, his hands behind him, leaned against the drapery-covered windows behind him. Two junior officers were bringing a white service cart in the door. Paula veered around them to the fireplace.

Newrose stood before Tanuojin, talking about Mars. Cam Savenia waited behind him. Paula glanced at her and their eyes caught. Simultaneously they looked away. The two Styth lieutenants turned up the lid of the service cart to uncover bottles and glasses.

Newrose said, “Will you be staying on Mars the whole mission, Akellar?”

Tanuojin stretched out his legs, long as rope. “The Mendoz’ wants to go to the Earth.”

Savenia glanced at her. “The Earth isn’t much of a tourist hell these days.”

Paula took the empty glass from Ketac. On her way to the couch she gave it to the aide by the serving cart. “I like to go in circles.” She sat down on the soft-cushioned couch at the far end from Tanuojin.

The aide brought her glass. Junna came along the back of the couch to give it to her. Newrose backed away two steps from Tanuojin, bowed, and went behind Savenia to Paula’s end of the couch. His hands disappeared behind his back.

“We just heard today that you’ve lost your son as well. You have my deepest condolences.”

Tanuojin said, “Don’t do that.” He was talking to Savenia. She stopped in the act of fitting a cigarette into her holder. Her gaze swung toward Paula. She put the cigarette back in the case and the black holder back into her pocket. Tanuojin looked at Newrose.

“You saw the demograph?”

“Yes, Akellar.” Newrose wet his lips. “I hope we can change your mind…convince you to change your mind.”

Tanuojin drank water. “Go on. Give me your speech.”

Newrose gave Paula a quick beseeching look and faced him again. “The people of the Middle Planets are used to a high—perhaps an unnaturally high material standard. What you propose is nothing less than a conversion of the whole society to slave labor.” Newrose tilted forward slightly from the waist, intense. His voice was low. “Akellar, we’ve avoided serious trouble here because the Prima was wise enough to preserve the continuity of our traditions and institutions. If you attempt this, there will be resistance, perhaps violence. The work of the last several years will be lost.” His gaze went to Paula again, pleading.

Tanuojin stretched his arm along the back of the couch toward her. His eyes never left Newrose. His voice was deeper than usual: pontifical. “I don’t have a choice. Junna—”

His son circled around the couch, a spherical star map in his hands, and put it on the floor at Tanuojin’s feet. Tanuojin turned it around in its bracket until Lalande was on the top.

“This is Lalande. There are twenty-six Planets here, iron, calcium, plutonium, uranium, gold, argon, salts—everything we are starved for now.”

“Also life,” Paula said. “With a prior claim to its worlds.”

“You believe that because you want to.”

Newrose’s cheeks shone. He stooped beside the dark blue globe. Tanuojin gave his empty glass to Junna. “The Martians build the best hulls. We design the best drives. Sometime in the next year—Uranian year—we’ll break the light barrier. After that we can go to Lalande.”

Newrose straightened up, his eyes on the Styth. “That’s impossible. The speed of light is the absolute speed limit.”

“There are no absolutes,” Tanuojin said. “There are no limits.”

“But—”

“We have to do this. It’s the purpose of life, to grow. The only way is for everybody in the system to work together. If there’s resistance, I can deal with that.”

Newrose said, “Yes, sir.”

“You can go.”

“Yes, sir.” Newrose backed up three steps. His egg-face was white. He left the room. As he went out, two hotel waiters in white coats rolled another serving cart in the door past him, and the two lieutenants went to take it from them.

Tanuojin said to Savenia, “Have you worked it out?”

Savenia looked significantly at Paula. He said, “She’s not involved any more.” Junna brought him a dewy glass of water.

“I have everything,” Cam said. “Names and addresses, meeting places, even their hideouts and escape routes. I can jail fifty thousand dissidents in two days.”

“Good.”

The two lieutenants were setting out the food in the serving cart. Paula stretched her neck to see. A roast chicken lay in a dish in the middle of the top tray surrounded by vegetable flowers and cranberry sauce. Her tongue ran with water. Savenia said, “What about Newrose, Akellar?”

“I’ll handle him. He may still cooperate. You can go.”

Cam bent from the waist, a marionette bow, and backed away. Paula rubbed her hand over her eyes. She felt sorry for Newrose; she hated Cam. Lowering her hand, she looked around the room. The furniture was upholstered in gold brocade. The walls and floor were shades of brown. In the hearth, behind a pile of plastic logs, a cylinder of crinkled foil turned under an orange light to simulate fire.

Tanuojin said, “Ketac, where is the Earth?”

“About thirty-five light seconds behind Mars.”

The aides brought the cart of food around beside the couch. Junna served his father. Ketac came around the knot of people by Tanuojin and sank down on his heels beside Paula.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Just don’t wake me up when you come in.”

He kissed her hand and her cheek and stood up. The fancy red shirt hissed when he moved. “Akellar—”

Tanuojin nodded, put his head back, and said, “Marus, you can go.” The big man followed Ketac out. Paula was still barefoot, and her toes were cold. She went into the bedroom and found a pair of Ketac’s socks. When she came back into the sitting room, everybody was gone but Junna and Tanuojin.

“He never makes himself that pretty for me.” She went to the cart. The chicken was neatly sliced. She put a piece of the brown skin into her mouth.

“Newrose is still your thing,” Tanuojin said to her.

She tried eating cranberry sauce with her fingers and switched to a spoon. Tanuojin came up to the cart to feed. Junna followed him. They stood around the roast chicken and the pots of gaily colored vegetables, eating.

“He’ll believe anything you tell him,” Tanuojin said.

“Don’t you ever get tired of thinking, Papa?” Junna said. “There must be something more important than thinking.”

“Why don’t you tie up your hair like a man?”

Junna flicked back the loose lock of his hair. He was Tanuojin’s height and build, supple, bonelessly graceful. His father had been that way once. Now Tanuojin was stiffening, slackening, as he used his body more and more only to carry his head around. Paula ate meat. The Emperor walked away through the room, his back to her. She imagined him in his final phase, a great soft brain resting in a chair.

“Why do you want to go to the Earth?” Junna asked her.

“It’s my home.”

“You mean you want to stay there?”

“She’s crazy.” Tanuojin sat down in a corner of the couch.

Paula wiped her hands on a white napkin. Junna frowned at his father, one hand on his hip, his body curved like a bow. He turned to her.