Floating Worlds

by Cecelia Anastasia Holland

  “That’s my motto,” Paula said. “If I can’t do it right, I don’t do it at all.” She folded her arms over her chest.

  “You think you’re funny, don’t you? You think you’re tough.” Lore kicked him again.

  “I admit I’m not that brave, to kick him when he’s tied up and unconscious.” A thin trickle of fluid seeped out from under him, running across the floor. She tore her eyes away from it. “You think you’re brave enough to kick me, Lore?”

  Lore turned toward her, the gun aimed at her face. “I don’t have any orders about you at all. You’re supposed to be dead. I can do anything I want with you.” She strode up to Paula, waggling the gun, and took another thumblock out of her silvery clothes. “Turn around.”

  Paula turned her back. “You won’t make it out of this room, Lore. You might as well give up.”

  The girl’s sweating hands fastened on Paula’s wrists. She wrenched her arms behind her. Paula said, “By now they know everything that’s happening here.”

  Lore was hooking Paula’s thumbs together. By the quality of her grunt Paula knew she had the gun in her teeth. She said, “The place is wired, Lore.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Lore said. She stepped back. “These barbarians aren’t that sophisticated.”

  “This is Luna, remember?” Paula faced her, her arms fastened painfully behind her back. “Everything is wired.”

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” Lore told her. “You made a lot of trouble for us.”

  “The Sunlight League.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know Dr. Savenia is here.” It took effort to keep from looking beyond the redheaded girl at Saba. Frantically she kept talking. “Only I doubt you’d know her now.”

  “She goes with me too,” Lore said. She tipped the gun up at Paula’s face. “Maybe I’ll take you, if you cooperate.”

  “I’d sooner eat dirt.”

  The cold barrel of the gun pressed under Paula’s chin. “Oh, you think you’re so tough.” The gun pushed her head up.

  “You won’t know Cam.” Paula’s tense muscles throbbed. Her arms began to hurt from her thumbs to her shoulders. “She’s had a Styth education. She isn’t—”

  Behind Lore Saba heaved himself up onto his knees. The redhead saw him. She wheeled, the gun swinging toward him, and Paula lunged into her. With a flat crack the gun fired into the floor. Saba blundered up onto his feet. Lore thrust Paula off and raised the gun again and Paula dove into her. She heard the nasty snap of the gun firing again. Lore struck her in the neck and she fell, but before Lore could turn Saba crashed into her.

  The gun sailed off and Paula on her knees scrambled after it. Saba was still only half-conscious. He tripped, and Lore got away from him. She raced for the gun. Paula dropped stomach-first across it. Lore was panting. She wrenched at Paula, grabbing for the gun pressing into her stomach. Saba stumbled toward them. Lore dodged. She came up against the bed and tried to duck past him, and the Styth knocked her down and fell on her.

  Paula rocked onto her side. She brought her knees up to her chest and dragged her cramped arms around under her feet. Lore Smythe lay still on her back. Beside her, Saba was trying to sit, his head wobbling. Paula went over to him and helped him get up.

  “What’s going on?” he said, muzzy.

  “You are a champion.” The dart was gone. On the front of his shirt was a damp stain. “I forgive you every rotten thing you’ve ever done. How do you feel?” Sliding her joined hands under his shirt, she found the wound in the heavy muscle of his chest. Part of the barbed needle was still stuck in his body.

  “I feel…” He shook his head. His eyes were not focusing well. “She shot me.”

  “She was about to shoot me, and with me it would have been permanent. Do you have any scissors?”

  He blinked at her. She held up her hands and he blinked at the thumblock. He wagged his head down the room. She went past the bed to the washroom. On the glass shelf below the mirror was a pair of clippers. When she came out, the bedroom door was shaking under a heavy pounding knock.

  “Prima!” It was Ketac.

  “It’s all right,” she called. “Wait a minute.” She knelt behind Saba. The clipper blades were shorter than the thumb-bridge. She hacked at the tough plastic.

  “She shot me,” he said.

  “She shot you with a drug. She’s from the Sunlight League.”

  “Paula,” Ketac roared. “Let me in.”

  Saba’s head swung toward the door. “Stay the hell out!”

  Paula bore down hard with both hands on the clippers, her teeth clenched, and the tool bit through half the thumblock. “Unh. She was taking you to Mars. I guess to ransom the Middle Planets. Cowboy stuff. All Fascists are romantics.” She struggled with the clippers.

  Lore Smythe groaned. He flexed his arms, and the half-severed lock broke. On his hands and knees he went over to the Martian girl.

  “Don’t—save her to question,” Paula said.

  He put his hand on Lore’s throat and choked her. When she was dead, he came back to Paula and unfastened the lock on her thumbs.

  “Damn Newrose.” He pulled her hands apart. “I told you he was fake.”

  “He didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  He touched his chest, and she caught his hand and held it away from the wound. “Be careful. There’s a piece of the needle broken off in there.”

  He ground the heel of his hand into his eye and shook his head. “It’s still no good. Newrose.”

  “Think about it, Saba. We have a hook in him now—we can pressure him now.”

  “I don’t see the use.”

  “You will when you wake up.”

  Lore Smythe lay on the table, covered with a red blanket. Paula sat down in one of the three chairs before it, her back to the body. The only lights in the room were the two ceiling lamps near the door, and this end of the room was plunged in shadow. The Styths moved past her like shadows. Tanuojin went behind her to the table and pulled back the blanket.

  “I wish you hadn’t killed her.”

  “Don’t blame me. He did it.”

  Ketac and David came single-file through the door. Ketac said, formal, “The Prima.” Saba walked into the room, and David ran up to arrange a chair for him.

  “I’m telling you, this Martian is hoaxing us.” He sat down. “This won’t do any good.” Ketac and David hurried around bringing him a cup, putting a little round table beside him, turning out one lamp that shone in his eyes and turning on another. Junna came in to serve Tanuojin.

  The tall man walked around the room, his hands on his hips. “If he really didn’t know about this Leaguer woman, maybe we can use it to get something out of him.”

  Even if Newrose had known, Lore Smythe could be a tool. Paula hoped he had not known. She began to devise ways of talking the Styths into treating with him even if he had engineered the whole plot. Tanuojin was prowling along the wall. Saba said, “Sit down, will you. You make me nervous.”

  Tanuojin had found the wall switch, and he clicked it on. The whole wall lit up, one great illusion picture: a moonlit cliff, at its foot the night-blue ocean rolling in to boil its white surf among the rocks.

  “There should be sound,” Paula said.

  He touched another switch, and the sound came on, soft, the growl of the surf. Saba said, “What is that?”

  “These people live in a fantasy,” Tanuojin said. He walked up the room toward his chair.

  “Where is Newrose?” Paula asked Ketac.

  “In the next room.”

  “Let him wait,” Saba said.

  Tanuojin slouched in his chair. “Everything here is an imitation. In Mars, too. They left the Earth, but they took it with them in their heads. They couldn’t make anything new or real where they went. But they forgot the Earth, too—when they came back, they had forgotten how to live there. They destroyed your city out of sheer ignorance of how it worked.”

  Paula was chewi
ng on her fingernails. The Styths had destroyed the city. Everything depended on Newrose. “Your way is just as much an illusion as theirs.”

  Saba made a loud, contemptuous noise. Tanuojin said, “My way works.”

  “It’s all in your mind,” Paula said.

  Saba raised his hand to Ketac. “Go get Newrose.”

  “You need a shovel,” Tanuojin said to her. “There’s only one law.”

  “There is no law.” She stood and went behind her chair, her eyes on the door where Newrose would appear. “You glorify your superstitions into laws, just like the Martians.” Newrose came into the room, Ketac behind him. She raised her voice and spoke to him in the Common Speech.

  “The Prima has called you here on a very serious matter, Newrose.”

  He approached them, squinting in the dim light, his face bland. “Then I wonder why I was kept waiting for nearly thirty minutes.”

  “I warn you,” she said. “Anything you say may strike back at you. David, turn on that light.” She pointed at the lamp over the table. “Come here, Newrose.”

  He circled Saba’s chair to the table, his smooth egg-face sucked thin with uncertainty. The light came on. He put one hand up, dazzled. She pulled him by the arm another step closer to Tanucjin and threw back the red blanket.

  His jaw dropped. He leaned toward Lore Smythe, her white throat mottled with bruises. “But—what—” Paula flung the blanket over the dead woman.

  “She tried to murder the Prima.”

  “Oh my God,” Newrose said. “Oh my God.”

  Tanuojin left his chair and walked to the other end of the room. Paula nodded to David, who shut the light off. In the dark Newrose obeyed her touch like a child, moved into the center of the room, and stood. He said, “I assume you have proof of these charges.” His voice was higher than before.

  “We have the gun she brought, the dart she shot at him—several darts, in fact—and the wound.” The wound was gone. They would not need it. Saba was watching him, his chin on his fist. Tanuojin came back toward them.

  “He didn’t know,” he said, in Styth.

  “I can see that.” Saba tapped her arm. “Tell him about the Sunlight League.”

  The League’s name was almost the same in the two languages; Newrose recognized it and said, “Was she from the League?”

  Paula nodded. He made a little gesture with one hand, palm up. “I didn’t know. Her credentials were quite in order. She had the highest recommendation—”

  “Fortunately as usual the League misjudged the Prima.”

  Newrose turned toward the big Styth in his chair behind her. Low, he said, “You have my wholehearted congratulations on your escape. I trust the wound isn’t serious?” His voice sounded stronger. To Paula, he said, “If you’ll allow me, I’d like to go collect my—”

  “Oh, no,” Paula said. “Not yet. You’ll talk to your party, and who knows how many of them are Leaguers?”

  “I can assure you—”

  “You can’t assure us of anything, Newrose. You didn’t know about her, you say. Even if that’s true, which we doubt, you’re nothing better than a Trojan Horse for the League.”

  Tanuojin said, “Shall we introduce him to Dr. Savenia?” He crooked his finger at Junna. “Send Marus for my poppet.”

  Newrose frowned at Paula. “Now, Miss Mendoza—”

  She cut him off with an abrupt shake of her head and turned to Saba. “Do you want to talk to him yourself?”

  “Yes. You translate it.”

  “I—”

  “Just do as I say.” He rose, looming over Newrose, and gave the Martian his finest autocratic look. “We aren’t afraid of the Sunlight League. Even if she had killed me, I’m unimportant, only Styth is important, and Styth is immortal.”

  Newrose was collecting himself; he squared his shoulders. The hiss of the surf ran under Saba’s voice and Paula’s voice translating. The Prima said, “We have our honor to consider. If we deal with you for the sake of expediency and lose our honor, we fail even if we succeed.”

  Newrose inclined his head. “I’m sure we can make some agreement that serves everybody’s interests.”

  Paula glanced at David, who stood beside the wall, watching his father. His smile showed in the faint light from the illusion wall. She straightened her gaze. “I don’t think they have much respect for your honor.”

  Marus appeared in the doorway. “Akellar, I have Dr. Savenia.”

  Tanuojin thumbed his mustaches back. “Send her in. Paula, tell this nigger who I am.”

  “Newrose,” she said, “this is the Yekka Akellar, Tanuojin, the Prima’s lyo, the cadet general of the fleet.” She nodded toward the door. “You know Dr. Savenia.”

  “Of course,” Newrose said.

  Cam walked down the room toward them. She wore a gray tunic over a long black skirt: probably Tanuojin’s choice; he took a gruesome interest in every detail of her life. Her face was perfectly drawn. Before Saba she dropped to one knee, bowing her head.

  “Prima.”

  Saba said nothing. He despised her. She rose and crossed to Tanuojin and bowed from the waist. Newrose watched her, his damp lips parted.

  “Hello, Cam,” Paula said.

  “Paula,” Cam said, coolly. “You look very well.” She turned to Newrose, whose gaze had been fastened on her since she had come in. “Hello, Alvers. I understand you’re here to negotiate a surrender.”

  Newrose coughed. “I’m not…I don’t think we’ve settled what we’re negotiating.”

  “Of course it’s a surrender,” Cam said, in an irritated tone. “What else can you do? The Styths are our genetic superiors—our natural masters. It’s the will of history. What else can we do?”

  Paula leaned on the back of her chair. Newrose scratched his nose. “You seem to have changed your opinions, doctor.”

  “I recognize my mistakes.”

  Tanuojin said, in the Common Speech, “Dr. Savenia, you can take Mr. Newrose around while he’s in Luna.”

  “Thank you, Akellar. I’d like that.”

  Saba said, “Paula, tell him we’ll send for him again later. And get her out of here.” He leaned past her toward Tanuojin. “Can you reach him? What is he thinking?”

  “No—just at the beginning, when he saw the dead one, he shed it like a scent.”

  Ketac and Marus were ushering out the two Martians. Paula went around her chair and sat down. She put her elbows on the chair’s arms.

  She went up to the surface of the Planet. In an ancient room there, outside the artificial gravity, she sat looking up at the Earth. Blue and brown, it shed its soft reflected light toward her. A blinking red beacon passed by in the high distance. She guessed it was a slavepen. The room was built in a crater. Around it the toothed walls rose, jagged and airless. She sat watching the Earth, until Newrose came to meet her.

  Cam Savenia was with him. While Newrose was settling himself across the table from her, Paula said, “You can go, Cam.”

  “The Akellar—”

  “This isn’t the Akellar’s meeting.”

  “As you wish,” Cam said, sulky. Her feet rang down the treads of the ladder into the dark below. Paula sat down.

  “She tells him everything. Even what she forgets.”

  “You seem fond of riddles.” Newrose opened his papercase and laid out a pad of notepaper, styli, his pencase on the table before him. She picked up the pencase and snapped it open.

  Inside the case a clear button with a tiny coil of wire in its heart was fastened to the lining beside one hinge. She broke it out of the case with her fingernails and slid the case back over the table to him. Newrose looked troubled. His small hands pattered on the tabletop.

  “What’s happened to Dr. Savenia?” he said.

  “Nothing she didn’t do to herself.” She laid her forearms on the table. “You know, Newrose, you need a settlement of the war now. If the war continues, the League will destroy everybody,”

  “The League,” he said. “W
hat about the Styths? They seem to do an ace job of destruction.”

  “That’s up to you, isn’t it?” She reached for his styli. “Actually, you’ve caught them at a good moment. They might be willing to end the war now, before they take so many prisoners they glut the slave trade.”

  “Slaves,” he said, rigid.

  She made dots on the table with a stylus and connected them with straight and curved lines. “Surely you aren’t going to protest on principle, Newrose? After all, there were work camps on the Earth all through the war.” The stylus scratched on the tabletop.

  “I can’t believe you support the Styths,” he said. “After what they did to your Planet.”

  “Therefore I must support you?”

  “I’m your own kind, Mendoza,” he said, earnestly.

  “My kind.” She watched her hand making scribbles.

  “Whose side are you on?”

  She raised her head. “Did you know Richard Bunker?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And Sybil Jefferson?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I’m on their side.”

  “They’re dead.”

  “That’s why I am on their side.”

  “Another riddle.”

  “I’m their witness,” she said. “I’m the last witness to what happened down there, what you want to forget, and the Styths want to forget.” Her hands were shaking. She spread them out flat on the table, over her scribbles. A bump pressed against the palm of her hand. She sat back, her anger broken, and picked Newrose’s spy device up in her fingers.

  “But you’re working for them,” Newrose said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I have learned to forgive my enemies.” She dropped the plastic button onto the table again. Where there was one cheat there would be two. “I am a practical woman, Newrose.”

  “Will they let you go back?”

  That struck her; she gave him a single swift glance and reached for the stylus again. He leaned across the table toward her.

  “No,” he said. “Of course not. But we would. If the Earth were under our control.”

  “Are you trying to bribe me, Newrose?”

  He tilted back in his chair, and his white hands folded themselves into his lap. “These people are savages, you know. When you’re of no further use to them, they’ll turn on you. You’re just as inferior as we are to them.”