Floating Worlds

by Cecelia Anastasia Holland

  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 fron
t door.

  When she went into labor, Boltiko called the midwives. Paula lay in her bed, wrapped in a heavy blanket. The women held her hands and stroked her hair back. There were three of them, all very old: one was slave, but the other two were Styth. The pain made her whimper and bite her lips. She clung to the slavewoman’s hands, afraid.

  Saba came in. He had been away in the city. The woman moved back and he sat on the bed beside her and put his hands on her body.

  “Does it hurt?”

  She nodded; she could not talk.

  “It’s supposed to hurt. Don’t be frightened. I’ll be in the next room.” He left.

  She shut her eyes. The women moistened her lips with a sponge. They murmured to her, crooning, and sang her songs and said little charms. When she curled up they made her lie straight. A bell rang. The low watch had begun. She panted, trying to catch her breath. Her body knotted around the baby. She screamed, and Saba came in again.

  “Akellar,” a woman said. “She is too small. We have to open her.”

  He leaned over her, one hand on her belly. “No. It’s moving. Let her kick. She’ll get it out.” He stroked her face. “Don’t worry, Paula. They think every birth is the first.”

  She closed her eyes, terrified. She clutched his fingers but he disengaged himself and went out of the room. She lay in a web of pain. The baby was tearing her apart. She heard two bells ring. Her throat was raw from screeching, she was so tired she could only moan.

  “She is too small. She’ll die if we don’t cut her open and take it that way. The baby will die.”

  Saba had come in again. Dopey with pain, she had not noticed him, and she could not care. He handled her. “No. Give her time. It’s a big baby. She’s getting it out.”

  The pain was blinding. She lay in its grip for two watches more. At last David was born. The women took the howling baby away. Paula lay in a dazed feverish half-dream, blood pooling under her hips.

  “You can’t bring a strange man in here,” Boltiko said.

  Saba lifted the blankets off Paula’s body. “She trusts me. I have to do something.”

  “It’s disgusting. Hasn’t she suffered enough?”

  “Get out if you don’t like it.”

  Paula’s mouth and throat were papery dry. Her strength was gone. She could barely turn her head. She wondered where the baby was. A man she had never seen before sat down on the bed beside her.

  “There,” Saba said. “Over her womb.” He threw the blankets back. She whimpered in the cold.

  “Saba—” The stranger bit his lip. “I—”

  “Damn you, she’s bleeding to death,” Saba got the man’s hand by the wrist and slapped his palm down on Paula’s belly. She shut her eyes. She was cold. Saba pulled her legs out flat on the bed, her feet apart.

  “Mikka. Let off, let me see what happens.”

  The hand left her belly. Saba said, “She’s bleeding like a river. Here.” The cool hand fell on her body again. Saba was bending over her, between her legs. She saw him in a mist. She could not breathe deep enough to fill her lungs.

  “Massage her. Rub her, hard.” He stooped over her and rammed his fist up through the torn channel of her body into her womb and put his free hand over the other man’s.

  She cried out. The deep pain burned like salt. He squeezed her into another hard contraction.

  “Good girl. That’s a good girl. One more.”

  He massaged her, his arm buried in her halfway to the elbow. “Come on, girl, damn it, break the law and live.” She whined. Her body clenched. He drew his hand out of her. “Good. Good.” Her womb tightened again of itself, and she whimpered.

  “I’m cold.”

  “A little longer,” he said. “Just a little longer and you can rest.” He was sitting on the bed between her spread legs. In his hand was a tool with jaws, like a staple gun. “Don’t worry. I’ve clipped together men with wounds a lot worse than this. Mikka, stay there.”

  The stranger stared off in the opposite direction. His hand was spread over the soft empty hill of her belly. She shivered in spasms, in fits. Distinctly she felt the grip of the stapler in her skin. The tool clicked steadily. She was too tired to cry. Finally he put her legs together.

  “Let off, Mikka.”

  The hand left her. Saba murmured, “Good. Stay in the next room, in case she starts to bleed again.” He lifted her up and wrapped her in a clean dry blanket. Her groin throbbed, zippered up with plastic teeth. “You’re a good little lawbreaking bitch.” He kissed her forehead. She yawned, sinking into sleep.

  “Mikka is my brother,” Saba said. “He’s a blood-stauncher. His one gift, aside from getting thrown out of drinking docks.”

  “Like Tanuojin.” Paula braced her shoulders up on her elbows, watching him take the clips out of her crotch. He bent over her, his head and shoulders framed between her raised knees. One by one the clips dropped into a bucket on the floor.

  “Tanuojin is a little more than a blood-stauncher. I told you not to talk about that.” Another clip rang into the pail. “If I ever lose my call, I think I’ll take up midwifery. That’s not a bad job.”

  “How is David?”

  “Vida is fine. Boltiko has him. I shirted him the watch after he was born. He looks like me.” He sat back and put the pliers down. “Thirty-four clips. Those were three long wounds, sweet.”

  She moved painfully over to the edge of the bed. When she sat up her head felt swollen. “Have you heard anything from the Committee?”

  “Nothing. Stay in bed for a while.” He went over to the door. “I’ll tell you if anything happens.”

  “I want my baby.” Carefully she raised herself up on her feet, gratified by her strength. She went toad-legged to the clothes rack on the wall.

  “Boltiko knows all about babies. Let her take care of him.”

  “I want him.”

  “You aren’t the mothering type.”

  “How do you know what I am?” She took a pair of her Ybix overalls, to keep her warm, and a long dress.

  “I know you. He’s my son too. I won’t let you mistreat him.”

  She glanced at him, standing by the door with his hand on the latch, and pulled the overalls up over her shoulders. “What do you think I’m going to do to him, whip him?”

  “I won’t let you turn him into some freak anarchist.”

  She put the dress on. Her body was still thick, sway-backed from the baby. Saba went out; she heard the front door slam.

  The baby’s eyes were not round, like a Styth’s, and not black. They were long and slanted, brown like hers, set far apart in his round chinless face. Boltiko gave her heaps of clothes for him, showed her how to mix his food and how to feed him, and called in the slave Pedasen to carry everything over to her house for her. “He’s a fine, strong baby,” the prima wife said, “although he’s so small. Saba doesn’t breed weaklings. If you need help, send for me.” She put the baby into Paula’s arms. He was heavy. Paula shifted his weight against her shoulder. Looking down at him, she felt a sudden wild surge of love.

  Pedasen carried the basket of clothes and food after her out to the yard. She slowed down so that he could catch up with her, and he stopped behind her. She went back to his side. His face was smooth, like a child’s; he had never shaved his beardless cheeks.

  “Is that your whole name?” she said.

  “Mem,” he said, blank.

  “Don’t you have another name?”

  She had been speaking Styth. Now he turned his gaze on her, his arms wrapped around the basket, and said, “Why did you come here?” in a slurred, liquid version of the Common Speech. “Why didn’t you stay where you belong?”

  “Come on,” she said. “Standing up makes me dizzy.” She went off toward her house. He followed her, and she stopped, irritated, and said with force, “Come on,” and made him walk beside her. They went into her house.

  He spoke only enough Styth to take orders. While they put away the baby’s things, she talked
to him in the Common Speech, and he answered in the dialect. He had no other name, just Pedasen, which had been his mother’s name too. Somewhere out in the compound a bell rang, and he hurried away to answer it.

  Most of the time the baby slept. Boltiko sent another slave to bring Paula her high watch meal. When she had eaten and slept, she took the baby and went out to walk in the yard. The biggest building in the compound was the Manhus, on the wall opposite her house. Long and low, it ran the length of the yard, its door like a mouth and its front porch like a jaw. She had never been there, and she went in there now.

  The door led her into a wide dark hallway. Sril was standing in the back, reading from a message board on the wall. When he saw her, he grinned all across his wide face.

  “Mendoz’. Let me see.” He came up to look at the baby.

  “You don’t live here, do you?” she said.

  He was bent over the baby, cooing. “No—up the curve. Ah, he’s pretty. I like little babies.” He straightened up, his eyes on her. “Are you supposed to be in here?”

  “Probably not.” Three doors opened off the hall on either side, and she went to the nearest and went through it.

  It was crowded with Styths, their backs to her, so that no one noticed her. The baby slept heavily in her arms. She moved to one side to see what was happening. At the head of the room Saba walked up and down past a broad table. A lone man faced him, his hands behind him fastened together with a white plastic yoke. Paula stood back near the wall. The twenty-odd men packing the rear half of the room were watching intently, silent.

  “My family has dominated Matuko for eighteen generations,” Saba was saying. “For the blood we’ve lost for this city, the least we could get is trust.” He circled the table. The men watching him were utterly silent. “I don’t care what you call it,” he said to the man on trial. “I say you started a riot.”

  No one moved. The bound man said, “You can put me up for the rest of my life, Akellar, but you can’t make me believe you haven’t betrayed us.”