Floating Worlds

by Cecelia Anastasia Holland

  “I can’t handle Machou.”

  “I’ll take Machou.” He glanced behind him at Ketac, who was going out of the room. The door shut, and Saba turned to Tanuojin again. Saba’s voice fell to a murmur. “Just don’t show off. If you get hurt, stay hurt.”

  “I can’t make myself bleed.”

  “They know you’re a blood-stauncher. That doesn’t matter. Just don’t let them find out about the rest of it.” He slapped Tanuojin’s ribs. “Go get some sleep.”

  “I’ll call you at two bells.” Tanuojin went to the door. Saba had the whiskey bottle with him, which he raised to his mouth. Paula reached for her cup. Machou was old, and Saba was young, strong and young. She thought over the display at the Akopra. Machou had known that Saba would not defy him over a courtesy. Another ritual.

  “Can he beat Ymma?” she said.

  “Oh, sure,” Saba said. “He’s just panicked. He ran into a hammer the last time he fought in the pit. Bokojin tore him up.” He dribbled liquor into her cup. “I wouldn’t like to be Ymma. Tajin has a lot to prove. Drink that, don’t waste it.”

  One bell rang, in the next room, and in the city other bells rang, tuneful and cracked and clanking, all over Vribulo. She said, “You’ll be late to meet Tye.”

  “Oh. I forgot.” He put the bottle down empty and strode out. Paula dragged a chair over to the window and climbed onto it to reach the window shade. A siren started up in Machou’s smoky crowded city. She leaned against the frame, her hand above her head, looking out there. Saba was third in the rAkellaron order. With work and some luck, he would be Prima. Work, luck, and money. She pulled the shade down over the window, undressed in the dark, and went to bed.

  At two bells Saba and Tanuojin went into the rAkellaron House for the session of the central council of the Empire. Paula wanted to go out to the city, but Sril refused to let her leave the office.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  “I’ve got orders,” he said. He was sitting behind the desk in the front office, one leg crooked over the arm of the chair. “One thing I never do is disobey orders.”

  Bakan came in, bear-sized. “Any word yet?”

  “No,” Sril said. “They have to wait until Machou finishes his own business—it won’t be until the mid-third of the watch. She’s hungry.”

  “Take her to Colorado’s,” Bakan said.

  Paula started back through the filing room; she would go out the window of the bedroom. Sril reached ahead of her and shut the door before she could leave the main office. He said, “The Man told me not to let her out.”

  “Did he tell you to let me starve? You can come with me, I won’t run away.”

  Sril’s hand stayed on the latch of the door. To Bakan, he said, “Bokojin offered him fifty thousand dollars for her. You can see what he’s afraid of.”

  The hulking man crossed the room to the other side of the desk. “Here, Mendoz’. If you’re hungry, try this.”

  “Who is Bokojin?” she said. She took a flat orange strip from his hand. It did not look like food. She bit into the end. The stuff was of the texture of strip protein and as hard to chew. The bitter taste screwed her face up. She spat it out.

  “Ugh!”

  The two men were laughing; Bakan slapped his thigh with amusement. He chewed a mouthful of the stuff like a cud. “Mendoz’, you aren’t as tough as you think you are.” He turned his head and fired a gob of spit into the wastebin in the corner.

  She worked her lips to get rid of the horrid taste. Her tongue was numb. Sril’s face danced with amusement, but he left the chair and went into the next room and came back with a cup of water for her. Gratefully she drank it.

  Sril sat down again, his hands behind his head. “Bokojin is Saba’s cadet. Vice captain of the Uranian Patrol. Machou’s favorite. He’s a comet, he’s been in the rAkellaron about the same time as Tanuojin, but he whipped up the rank—”

  Bakan spat again. “Until he came to Saba.”

  “What is that stuff?” she asked.

  “Laksi.”

  “Did he fight Saba?”

  Sril said, “The Man let him know what he was going to do to him for Tanuojin’s sake.” His gaze went to Bakan, sitting on the corner of the desk. “Do you think The Creep can take Ymma?”

  “That lady,” Bakan said. “My opinion, since you asked. The Creep is under-ranked. He’d be eighth or ninth if he’d fight more.”

  Paula wandered around the room. The two men talked about fighting. She could not sit still; she was trying to imagine what was happening up in the House—what a pit fight was like. She wondered if she were right about Machou. Being Prima was its own defense. If Tanuojin would fight more, he would be hurt more, and they would all see that he was not just a blood-stauncher. What was he? His touch had healed her wounds in seconds.

  “I’m still hungry.”

  “Go get her something to eat,” Sril said to Bakan.

  “Why should I go?”

  “Because I’m on duty. Go on, just go to Colorado’s.”

  A shout sounded in the arcade. Paula wheeled around. The door burst open, and Ketac rushed into the room, his face shining.

  “Tanuojin just beat Ymma down in seventy-three seconds.”

  Sril whooped, throwing his hands up over his head. Bakan spat. “I knew it. It’s just surprising it took him so long.”

  “What about Saba?” Paula said.

  Ketac turned on his heel in the center of the room. “It was The Creep’s fight from the beginning. Machou never even stood up.” He looked at Bakan. “The Creep worked on him a little. Once he saw that Machou wasn’t stepping in, he tore Ymma’s face off.” Ketac clapped his hands together. “I’ve never seen anybody fight like that. Smart like that.”

  Paula went to the door. The arcade was filling up with men. Their voices rose, jubilant. She reached for the door, but it sprang out of her hands. Tanuojin shouldered in past her. His shirt was splattered with blood and his hair hung down over his shoulders. His face was scored with half-healed scratches. He was hot and he stank and his rare smile showed. Paula moved away from him. Marus and Kany and others of his men flooded in the door behind him. He shouted, “I wish I could afford it, I’d buy for the whole city of Vribulo.” His hands were covered with blood. The other men slapped him on the back. Saba came in behind him and draped one arm around him. Paula lowered her eyes.

  MATUKO

  Before she had her coat off, Boltiko and Illy burst in the door. “What did you think of Vribulo? Where did you go?” They closed around her. Illy took her coat and Boltiko hustled her into the kitchen of her house.

  “Did you go to the Akopra? Where did you stay?”

  “In the Barn.” She sat on the curved bench at her kitchen table. There were cushions on it, to lift her up to a Styth level. “We went to the Akopra and saw The Dragon.” Boltiko put a steaming cup before her on the table. Illy sat beside her.

  “Dragon. Was it good? But you wouldn’t know.”

  “Tanuojin said it was terrible.”

  “Tanuojin,” Boltiko said. “Was he there?”

  “Where is David?”

  “Where did you go to eat?” Illy said. “Did he buy you anything?”

  Boltiko said, “The baby is asleep. He was so sick before, I walked him up and down all last watch, but he’s better now.”

  Paula sipped the sweet tea. Boltiko worried over every cranky cry. “We ate at Colorado’s. What was wrong with him—his stomach again?”

  “Colorado’s,” Illy said, blank. “What’s that?”

  “A dock,” Boltiko said. “You should have made him take you somewhere nice, Paula.”

  The tea was gone. Paula sat back, her hands on her warm belly. “I liked it. All the women were painted up; I felt like a mouse. I guess they’re whores, aren’t they? Saba had some trouble with the Prima—Tanuojin was in a fight in the pit.”

  “I hope Saba didn’t get involved?”

  “What was wrong with David?”

 
; Boltiko sat down in a chair across the table from Paula. “His tum-tum. Poor baby.”

  “Little glutton.”

  “Who fought Tanuojin?” Illy said. “Did he win?”

  “Oh, yes. It was Ymma, the Lopka Akellar.” Paula watched Boltiko sip from a cup, dainty as a nun. “You don’t like Tanuojin?”

  “That man will ruin Saba,” the prima wife said.

  “I don’t know him,” Illy said. “My brother hates him.” Her brother was the Merkhiz Akellar, the Prima Cadet, whose cadet was Saba.

  “Do you like him?” Boltiko asked Paula.

  “No.”

  “I knew him—before Saba’s father died, sleep deep, when we lived in Vribulo, Tanuojin practically lived with us. After Melleno fired him.” Boltiko took her cup across the kitchen to fill from the jug on the counter. “He’s low-born, he’s ambitious, and he is evil. I can feel it.”

  “How do you know he’s low-born? If nobody knows who his parents were.”

  “With those nigger-eyes,” Illy said, “he’s slave-bred. Tiko, me too.”

  Boltiko brought the hot jug and filled each of their cups. “He is no slave. He’s deviant. He should have been destroyed at birth. That’s the law.” She sank into her chair. “Instead, some soft-hearted woman protected him. She suffered. Everybody who ever helped him has suffered. Melleno gave him work and a respectable position and he seduced his daughter. Yekaka took him in and he betrayed him to Melleno.”

  “Seduced his daughter,” Paula said. “Whose daughter?”

  Illy gulped her tea. “Melleno’s. When he was the Prima, and Tanuojin worked for him. Here. I’ll show you how to tell your future.” She turned her empty cup over on the table.

  Paula leaned toward the prima wife. “Tiko, you’ve known him longer than I have, but I can’t see Tanuojin seducing anybody.”

  “He drugged her.” Illy lifted the cup. A wet ring showed on the tabletop. “See? It’s unbroken, that means my love is true. If it’s broken, that means lovers.”

  “He drugged her,” Paula said to Boltiko. The story fascinated her. And Tanuojin would have been much younger, just clubbed, a creepy adolescent.

  Boltiko’s round shoulders rolled in a shrug, her eyes watched Illy’s cup, her mouth was pursed. “She was very young, Diamo. Why would a girl like that, sweetly bred, defy her father for a man like Tanuojin?”

  “Diamo.” It was a pretty name. I-love-you, it meant. Which seemed a possible answer.

  “Drink your tea,” Illy said. “We’ll tell your future.”

  In the lake shore market place, the people of Matuko were pressing thick around the open stall selling illusion helmets. Paula went through the mob, David slung on her hip. A roar of laughter went up. Like a flag a pair of white lace underpants waved above the crowd at the end of a long black arm. Paula glanced around her. Sril was waiting in a line to buy Martian cloth. In another direction, she saw three more people she knew coming out of a shop, packages in their arms. She would have to risk being spied on. Going down a lane between two shops, she went through a back door and into a room filled to the rafters with crates.

  “Hello, junior.”

  A window in the far wall half-lit the narrow open space between the rows of boxes. She went sideways, into the dark. “You’re taking a chance. You’re lucky you gave that message to the right slave.”

  He shut the door behind her and switched on a light. “Not exactly. I understand he’s your property.” He crossed the room to pull a shade across the window. Paula sat down on a crate, putting David on the floor at her feet. Bunker looked thin. Neatly he settled himself across from her on a heap of quilted padding.

  “Just the same,” she said, “don’t come here. I can get in touch with you if there’s anything I need.”

  “How are you getting along?” He folded his arms over his chest. His gaze went to the little boy on the floor. David passed a bit of rope from his right to his left hand. His head was covered with a thin fuzz of hair; in a few days he would be shaved again. He raised his head, looking for Paula, and beamed at her.

  “I just can’t connect that with you, junior,” Bunker said.

  She laughed. “Look at his eyes.” The crate under her was hard, and she shifted to a pile of packing foam. “What do you want?”

  “There’s a difficulty with the Council over the treaty.”

  “Why? Saba is keeping the truce.”

  “We have trouble convincing people that what isn’t happening is good for them.”

  She looked around the crowded storeroom. The sides of the boxes were stenciled with the word BARSOOM and a long number. She flicked at a bit of packing foam on the skirt over her knee. “In one hundred fifty watches they are taking Ybix down past Jupiter. I’m sure if they know he’s coming they can protect themselves.”

  “He confides that much in you? Poor chump.”

  “He doesn’t confide anything. Is that all you want to know?”

  Bunker scratched his chin. His black eyes glinted. “There’s the incident at Luna.”

  “Pah. That was your fault.”

  “Let me finish. That little exercise ushered General Gordon into the permanent rose garden. Luna is now suffering under General Marak, whose itch is money, not god. The Council says if the treaty works, we should be able to bring Matuko to answer for two ships and eight crewmen and a government.”

  “Two ships,” she said.

  “Ybix destroyed two patrol ships at Luna, didn’t she?”

  David had taken hold of her skirt and was dragging himself up onto his feet. She watched him, remembering what had happened at Luna. “What did you have in mind?”

  “The Council says if the Styths are dedicated to peace and law, they’ll be willing to put the case before the Universal Court.”

  She put her hand down, and David took it, wobbling on his widespread legs. “Well, maybe they will.”

  Bunker’s folded arms unlocked. He put his hands in the pockets of his heavy jacket. “Are you serious? Can you get them there?”

  “Can Crosby’s Planet handle a visitation? Send them a subpoena.” She watched her son lower himself down to the floor again. “Not to Saba. He wasn’t even inboard during the shooting. Send it to Tanuojin.” She smiled at David, delighted by a new thought. “Send it by way of Machou.” David let go of her hand and landed with a thump on the floor.

  “Will it work?”

  “Maybe.” She stood up, stooped, and lifted the little boy up into her arms. “If it doesn’t I’ll try something else. How is Jefferson?”

  “Fat Roland is getting old.” He shook his head. “We’ll be in trouble when she leaves the Committee.”

  “You’re always in trouble. Send the subpoena.” She went out to the lane between the shops.

  She sat on the hard shore of the lake playing her flute. Behind her were the tenements where the fishermen lived. Their ten-foot oars were propped up against the walls and their nets hung off the eaves in loops of mesh. The lake spread out before her like a sheet of carbon. The edge rippled against the flinty shore. She wondered what stirred the water: maybe the motion of the Planet.

  Saba was coming along the shore toward her. She stopped playing to warm her hands in the sleeves of her tunic. Although she saw him often enough in the street, he had never seemed to notice her before. He came up beside her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just sitting here.” She picked up her flute again. “I like it here.”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Talk.” She blew six quick rising notes on the long black flute.

  He sat down on the ground beside her and stared across the lake. She played the dream sequence from Alfide’s Spanish Anarchist. In the lake shallows, fish schooled, no longer than her fingers. They fed on waterbugs, invisibly small. Where the water was deeper, a flat shape stirred off the bottom—a Ybix, which fed on the fish.

  “Look,” he said. “I want you to do something for me.”

  “What
?” She lowered the flute.

  “If you do I’ll take you to Vribulo.”

  “I can go to Vribulo by myself whenever I want.”

  “I’m in love with this girl who lives in there.” His head jerked back toward the tenements behind them.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve never felt like this about a girl in my whole life.” His hands rose off his knees. “But I can’t even talk to her. Her husband keeps her locked up. I’ve only seen her face three times. I’m going crazy.”

  “Oh.” She turned to look back at the tenements, draped in nets. “Is he a fisherman—her husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is she like?”

  “She’s beautiful. And she’s so young, and soft, and—” He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Ive never felt like this before. Take a message to her for me. You can talk to her without anybody noticing.”

  “What message?”

  He sat back straight, smiling. “I knew you’d do it. I’ll buy you anything you want.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  In the middle watch she went to Illy’s house, where Boltiko was fitting a dress to the young wife. Paula sat in the fur chair drinking kakine while Illy turned slowly around, her arms out, and the prima wife tacked up the hem. The dress had three sets of sleeves, one snug to the wrist, one slit to the elbow, one open to the shoulder, in three different kinds of cloth. The rest of the dress was black.

  “How does it look?” Illy asked Paula, high-spirited.

  “It’s beautiful. Tiko, it’s stunning.”

  Boltiko said, “Neither of you thinks I can do anything.” Kneeling, she sat back on her calves to look, her moon-face placid with a smile.

  “Wait until he sees it,” Illy said.

  The prima wife held out one hand, and Paula got out of her chair and helped her stand, her fat hanging in layers off her bones. “He won’t be seeing too much at home, unless I miss the signs.”

  Illy’s hands paused, unfastening the clips down the front of the dress. “What?”