Floating Worlds

by Cecelia Anastasia Holland

  “Talk to me. Stay here and talk to me.”

  “Ketac, it’s hot in here.”

  “Nobody else has even come to see me—all my so-called friends—” He ran himself into the wall. “Nobody but a nigger squaw. Oh, Jesus, I have to get out of here.”

  “Do you know who Jesus was?”

  He stroked his hair back. His sprouting mustaches were pointed, like feathers. “I don’t know. It’s just a curse. It sounds like a curse. It feels good to say it.” His eyes glinted. “Like fuck.”

  The corridor was littered with bits of white wrapping. She gathered them up. Around the bend, the hatch banged open. She spun. Saba came feet-first toward them. “Paula. What are you doing in here?” He took her by the arm. “Hot, isn’t it?” he said to Ketac.

  “Pop, let me out—please—”

  “You sound pretty lively yet to me.” He pulled her off along the tunnel. “One more watch, Ketac.”

  “I’ll die!”

  “I’ll miss your company.”

  In the corridor, the cool air bathed her face; her shirt was stuck to her arms and she pulled her sleeves free. Saba pushed her along ahead of him.

  “Stay away from him.”

  “He was hungry.”

  “He’s supposed to suffer. He isn’t your crumb.”

  The computer in the supply room made her several sets of overalls, like the uniforms of the men, with the black three-pointed star on the back but no rating stripes. She wore two sets at a time to keep warm. In the dim light she learned to use her other senses more than before. Quickly she lost track of time. The high watch, the low watch, the middle watch ran after each other like clock gears. The time didn’t seem to change at all, any more than the ship seemed to move, suspended in the dark, the stars unchanging before the window. In the Asteroids near Pallas three Martian ships ambushed them, but Ybix outran them in fifteen minutes. Paula was starved for real food. The chewy protein strips sometimes satisfied her need to eat but she dreamt of gingerbread and whipped cream and sugar candy. As if she were gorging herself, her stomach began to bulge.

  Sril played a ulugong, a sheet of metallic plastic that he held on his lap and struck with his knuckles, like a drum with bell tones. She brought her flute to the Tank and they played together. The other men threw darts and made models and argued the various merits of the posters on the wall. Occasionally they got into a fight over the paper women spreading their legs on the curved wall. She read, and she worked on the first draft of the trade contract, but the music kept her mood light. The low mellow voice of the ulugong went well with the flute. They made up songs, she and Sril, by the hour.

  They clubbed Ketac. All the crew but two men left to mind the bridge packed into the Tank. Ketac knelt down in the air before Saba, who took his hands and stretched his arms out before him. Behind him Tanuojin pulled the young man’s hair back.

  “Who is the man?” Saba asked.

  “Styth,” Ketac answered. His voice trembled, passionate.

  “Which is the way?”

  “To the Sun.”

  “Keep faith.” Saba slapped him hard across the cheek.

  The other men cheered. His face glowing, his hair fastened neatly down, Ketac whooped in their midst. Behind them all, Paula tucked her hands into her sleeve. It was such a simple ritual. She wondered uneasily why they could not do without it altogether. Saba brought out a bottle of Scotch. Ketac tried to drink out of it, while the other men laughed and pounded him on the back. She picked up her flute and withdrew into the music.

  Saba steered her down the arrow corridor, past the mouth of the blue tunnel. After 121 watches she moved as easily as he did, faster sometimes, but he still maneuvered her around whenever he could. They went into the Beak, the room in the nose of the ship. The window was shut. While she felt around the rim for the switch, Saba came in beside her and closed the hatch. She pressed the switch, and the window cracked and light spilled through the widening gap into the little room. In half-phase, banded in cream and gold, wrapped in the curved blades of its rings, Saturn filled the window.

  Paula lay back in the air. The brilliant golden light dazzled her. The rings were tilted down away from her, like thin dust veils.

  “The first time I ever came here,” he said, “it was my third voyage into space. Tanuojin’s first. My father brought the ship down on the trade lane and we stopped everything that came by. Melleno was the Prima then. After we’d held up about a dozen freight ships going to Saturn, he sent his Saturn Fleet out and chased us off. My father howled so hard, you could hear him all over the ship.”

  “Why?”

  “The Prima wasn’t supposed to have any rights in deep space. My father didn’t approve of other people breaking the law. Just him. Jesus, that was an awful voyage. My father took such a hate to Tanuojin—Tajin had worked for Melleno. Then when we got back to Uranus, Tajin went to Melleno and they mended their quarrel and he wrote a law for Melleno putting a 100 per cent tax on goods stolen from Styth hulls and sold in Styth markets. They took all the profit out of piracy. It almost ruined the fleet.”

  She looked out the window at the ringed Planet. The shadow of one of its moons lay on the golden surface of the clouds. “What was your father’s name?”

  “Yekaka. It fitted him, too.” The name meant loudmouth. “Do you want to go down to Saturn-Keda?”

  “Oh. Yes. Can I? Will you take me?”

  “If you promise to keep quiet.”

  She looked out at the Planet. The surface was patterned in whorls and streamers of clouds, changing shape while she watched, changing hue. “I promise.”

  “Good. It’ll give you an idea what Matuko is like.”

  The yellow light shone over the side of his face. She put her hand on his legs, lying beside her. “I want to name the baby David.”

  “David. What kind of a name is that? It sounds like a girl’s name. Call him Vida. It’s the same thing. Vida—David.”

  “Then you call him Vida, and I’ll call him David.”

  He played with her fingers. His claws tapped her palm. “What else?”

  “Does there have to be more?”

  “Most shirt-names are a little more elaborate. Nobody ever uses it.” He manipulated her fingers.

  “What’s a shirt-name? Ouch.”

  He pulled her hand up and kissed her palm and rubbed his cheek over the flat of her hand. Her palm stung where the claw had pricked her.

  “When the baby is born I wrap him up in my shirt and take him outdoors, so that people can see I accept him as mine, and I give him his name.”

  “What’s your shirt-name?”

  “Takoret-aSaba. ‘He knows the right way.’ My father liked righteous names. He was always telling me to live up to my name.” He laughed, his hand up to his chin, his face painted in Saturn’s yellow light. “I knew all the wrong ways.”

  “Does the name have to mean something?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then David Mendoza.” She put her hand on her rounding body. “What’s Tanuojin’s shirt-name?”

  “He hasn’t got one. He’s an orphan. The people who brought him up found him in the street when he was barely old enough to walk. They already had eight boys, so they named him ‘the ninth boy.’” His voice broadened with pride. “He started from point. He had nothing.”

  “He still has very little.”

  Someone banged on the hatch below her. She moved out of the way. He opened the hatch, and Tanuojin’s head and shoulders rose through the round entry. He gave Saturn a glance and ignored Paula.

  “Here.” He thrust a watchboard and a stylus at Saba. “Did you call Melleno?”

  “I will now.” Saba wrote on the board. He took a slide calculator out of his sleeve. “She is going with us.”

  Paula moved back against the wall, out of their way. Tanuojin took the board again. “Why?”

  “Make sure you clear that orbit with Titan. You’re in my way.”

  Tanuojin backed out of the
hatch. Saba went out. Paula started after him and the other man blocked the hatch.

  “No, Saba, let me talk to her.”

  Paula withdrew into the darkness, her back to the giant Planet. Through the hatch came a short laugh. “Talk all you want.”

  Tanuojin came into the cramped space after her. She stayed as far away from him as she could. Her fingers went to her breast. “What do you want?”

  “I’ll ask the questions. Look over there.” He gestured to one side and put out his other hand. She recoiled.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  The Planet glared over his long face, his catfish jaw. The hatch was below him. She could not escape. He said, “Do as I say. Look over there. I’m just going to touch you.”

  “No.”

  He lowered his hand. “What are you afraid of?” His voice was unsettlingly deep. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Yes.”

  He spun over the hatch wheel and pushed the cover away into the corridor. “Get out. You stink like pig.”

  She went out the hatch and down the corridor; she did not stop until she was in the red tunnel, two hatches from her room.

  She spent ten minutes in the wetroom, scrubbing herself on the walls. Washing her face was fun, although the soap stung her eyes. Thinking about Tanuojin made her uncomfortable. When he had healed her she had been so groggy she could hardly remember what had happened. She rubbed soap into her hair and rinsed it in the water streaming along the wall.

  “Are you in there?” A fist banged on the watch below her feet.

  “Yes.”

  “Come out and get dressed, if you want to go to Saturn-Keda.”

  She crawled into the gusty warmth of the dryer and went out to the room. The cold roughened her skin. She took out a fresh pair of overalls.

  “Put on something fancy. You can’t go like that.”

  She got her suitcase out of the long compartment in the wall. “Why are you taking me, anyway?”

  “I told you. I’m civilizing you.” He was stripping off his uniform.

  It would be cold in Saturn-Keda. She put on overalls and the long black dress An Chu had made for her, which had a coat that went with it. The layers of skirts floated around her, glinting with silver threads.

  “How do I look?” She turned around, and the many layers of the dress swirled around her. She put the coat on.

  “You look fine. One more thing.” He floated in front of her, standing up the collar of the coat. “Decent women don’t go out in public in Styth with their faces uncovered.”

  She slid back away from him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you go veiled.”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to go or not?”

  She watched him, angry, while he opened a bin and got out a length of black cloth. He wrapped it around her head and draped it over her face, tucking the excess down under the collar of the coat.

  “Good,” he said. “That will do fine.”

  She turned away, humiliated.

  They went through the tunnels to the docking chamber. He let her take the veil off while they flew to Saturn-Keda. Tanuojin was already in the chamber, pulling on a black pressure suit. Saba led her to the rack in the wall. He helped her put on a space suit. It was Sril’s, who overstood her by fourteen inches. She pulled the thick leggings up until her feet reached the bottom, and he tied the slack around her knees.

  “I did some tuning on this suit, and we’ll launch soft. You ought to be comfortable most of the time.” He showed her the helmet, a smoky plastic cylinder. “You wear this until I say you can take it off.”

  She took the helmet in her arms. He gave her a pair of gloves. “Tanuojin! Plug her in.”

  Ybicso’s hatch was wide open. Paula poked her head through into the narrow cockpit of the ship. Three tandem seats took up most of the space. Tanuojin came around the last, took the helmet away from her, and pushed her into the middle seat. He reached past her and pulled a shoulder harness around her. Floating sideways, he uncoiled a white tube from under the seat and fixed it to a socket in the suit leg behind her knee.

  “Put the gloves on.”

  She put her hands into the enormous gloves. Saba came into the ship, massive in his suit. He dropped into the front seat. Its high back hid him from her. Tanuojin tugged the gloves down over her wrists and strapped them tight. She looked him in the face. His yellow eyes were notched with brown. He put the helmet over her head. The smoked plastic darkened her sight.

  Saba said, “I’ll take her down the A-39 chute at a 28-degree attitude, level off at minus 100M, and underfly Saturn-Keda. All right?”

  “Fine,” Tanuojin said.

  She floated in the huge padded seat. When she turned her face up, the helmet struck the back. There was an ax strapped to the wall beside her, and below it a long tube that looked like a gun. The cab lights went off. She sat in the dark, in the mid-air, the harness holding her six inches above the seat.

  “Bridge,” Saba said.

  “Yes, Akellar.” The voices came through the helmet above her ears.

  “Start a count from twenty-five.”

  Her seat had no arms. She put her hands under the harness and pulled herself down to make contact with the seat. In the top of the helmet an uninflected voice was counting backward. She put one hand on the wall. Even through the glove she could feel it tremble. A green light shone in front of the cab; Saba had turned on the holograph beside his knee. Leaning forward, she could see it and the side of his head.

  “Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen—”

  The two men talked in a litany of orders and replies. Paula slid her hand under the harness, down to the round bulge of the baby. This might hurt him. He’s a Styth, he can do anything.

  “Five, four, three, two, one, point.”

  There was a roar that hurt her ears. She was slammed back into the seat. Her eyes streamed. The pressure suit had failed. Her chest felt caved in. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She lost consciousness.

  “Paula.”

  “Uuh.” She opened her eyes. She was floating. Something bounced off the top of her helmet, and it lifted away. The green light of the holograph shone brilliantly in her face. Saba stooped beside her, wedged between the seat and the wall.

  “How do you feel?”

  She put her hand up to her head. “That’s a jolt.”

  He laughed. He looked beyond her, at Tanuojin, who did not laugh. Her left hand, still thrust under the harness, smarted rhythmically. She pulled her gloves off. The harness straps had imprinted the backs of her hands in deep purple welts. He took her fingers.

  “Don’t do that.” He pointed up over her head and went back to his seat.

  She raised her eyes. The ceiling was clear, a wide window. The stars shone in a broad swath above her. Near the edge of the window two crescent moons shone, one the size of an orange, the other the size of a pea. Her helmet was fastened to a clamp in the ceiling, obscuring the middle of the sky.

  “That was a damned dead perfect launch,” Saba said, ahead of her. “We’re plus or minus one for the chute.”

  She could hear the cluck of a radio in the back with Tanuojin. She leaned around her seat to look. Twisted in his seat, he was bent over a deck of instruments, earphones over his head. A red light on the panel flashed on his cheek.

  “Get me some temperature readings,” Saba said. She turned straight. Enormous, splendid, Saturn was rising into the window, spilling its light into the cab. In the holograph’s green cube Ybicsa like a pin dropped into a thickening yellow radiance.

  “About this new ship,” Saba said. “Maybe if I tuck her in a little at the waist, she won’t tail up so much at launch.”

  Tanuojin said, “You have that ship half-built already, and you don’t even have the money to buy the model plastic.”

  Saba reached awkwardly around the back of his seat and patted Paula on the knee. “I’ve got it right here. I just haven’t converted it yet.”

  The cab
was filled with the Planet’s light. At the edge of the holograph the green thickened to a yellow like cheese. Ybicsa shot toward it. They were passing over the rings, now resolved into a flood of particles, sparkling in the sunlight. She could see only the innermost stream. The curve of the Planet showed through it.

  “Temperature readings. Rim: 300. Thermolayer 1137. Ten M, 350. Twenty M, 152.”

  The Planet glared in the window. Red and yellow plumes of gas ran past them. They thickened to a light-filled cloud. The ship plunged through a yellow fog. The holograph showed Ybicsa nosing into a pale stream that backed and curled like a river through the Planet’s substance. Ahead, a darker loop bulged into the stream, pressing it out on either side.

  “Braking,” Saba said. “Paula, put your helmet on.”

  She stretched her hands up over her head toward the ceiling. The helmet was beyond her reach. She wrestled with the harness. She was heavy; she weighed enough to hold herself down in the seat, and the clamps on the harness were too stiff to open. She pulled at the straps holding her down.

  Tanuojin leaned across the back of her seat, took the helmet off the ceiling, and rammed it down over her head. “Put your gloves on!” he shouted.

  She found her gloves and fitted her hands into them. Her mouth was dry. The ship rocked violently and she slid forward into the harness.

  “Reef,” Tanuojin said. “Coming fast.”

  “I see it.”

  A thick dark stream wound along the holograph. The ship bucked down, lurched to the left as if she were sliding down a wave, and heaved herself straight again. The suit was rigid. Paula could move her fingers inside the fat gloves but the gloves were immovable. The light was fading. They passed into a deep dusk, into a midnight darkness. The pressure suit had hardened like a shell around her. She looked up overhead. The darkness was complete. Suddenly a fragment of coherent light appeared, a long streak that melted away while she watched.

  “What’s that?”

  “False image,” Saba said. “Döppelganger.”

  There was a scream of noise like an alarm going off. A mechanical voice said loudly, “A-39, A-39. This is Saturn-Keda, identify.”