Floating Worlds (20 page)

There was another place Ketac had not shown her: the brig, off in a corridor of its own above the number six engine, in the tip of one wing. Saba threw his son into this jail for fighting with Uhama. Two bells rang: the beginning of the middle watch. She wrapped herself in a blanket and Saba rolled them both in the thick rug of his bed, and they slept, attached to the wall by a ring near their feet. The shag fur made her nose feel dusty. The big Styth slept with his arms around her. She wondered what Matuko would be like and shut off her curiosity. If she went with expectations she would only confuse herself. She put her face against the sleeping man’s bare shoulder.

At three bells he went to the bridge. The Tank was crowded and she did not go in. She went to the library, but Tanuojin was there. She wandered around the halls, bored. At the end of the black and white corridor, under a storage hatch, she found three little fish swimming behind a round window in the hall.

She searched around the ship and found five more fish bowls. The little fish were dull gray, with spines on their backs. She went into the blue corridor and down the short wing tunnel to the brig.

The pounding of the engine below vibrated the air. The heat was terrific. At the blind end of the tunnel, Ketac hung upside down, his eyes closed. His skin was oily with sweat. She went back out to the arrow tunnel and down to the galley.

Two men crowded it. One was Marus, Tanuojin’s helmsman. She watched outside for them to leave.

“One thing about Sril,” Marus said. “He does all his fighting in the ship, where it doesn’t matter he isn’t big enough to see over his old woman’s ass.” He came out past her, ignoring her, as all Tanuojin’s men did. She got a tube of water from the galley wall and went back to the brig.

Ketac was staring at the wall. The side of his face was deeply scratched. There were rings set into the wall, but he did not seem to be tied.

“Here,” she said.

He jumped, his hands flying up. “Paula.” His voice croaked. He tore open the tube and sucked out the water. Soaked dark with sweat, his overalls were open down to his crotch. The racket jangled her; she felt gritty.

“Thanks, Paula.” He squeezed the last of the water into his mouth.

“I’ll bring you another.”

He followed her around the bend to the hatch. “Stay here—don’t leave me alone here.”

“The hatch isn’t locked. You can leave.”

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I promised my father I’d stay here.” His voice was raw. “He’d tie me if I left.”

“I’ll bring you something to eat.” She went out to the cool, quiet tunnel beyond.

When she came back, he was floating in the blind end again. He beamed at her, relieved to see her, and grabbed the tube of water.

“Thanks. Nobody else has even come in here.”

The vibration set her teeth on edge. The boy hung sidewise in the air. The tip of his forefinger was bloody and scabbed over, the claw broken off deep in the quick.

“What are those fish for?”

His teeth mashed through a mouthful of food tablets. “They’re scouts. If the hatches leak they die.” He drank the rest of the water. Bits of plastic wrapping floated around him.

“How long will you be here?”

“Until he lets me out.” He kicked, knocking himself back into the wall. “Nobody cares about me—I’m going crazy—” He banged around the end of the tunnel. She moved away from him, wary.

“Paula, don’t go—”

“I can’t even hear you.” The heat made her face itch. “I’ll come back later.”

“Paula! Stay here—please—”

“Ketac—” A bell sounded, muffled. “I’ll come later.” She left him alone.

She went to the bridge, to meet Saba coming off watch. He had already gone. Kobboz was sitting down in the cage. She looked in the Tank and in the library, and turned on the monitors in her room and hunted through them. He was nowhere. Neither was Tanuojin; they were together. She stopped looking.

She went to bed. The rug folded around her like a great loose skin. Drowsily she wondered why they fastened up the foot instead of the head. It was pleasant to float free in the air. She yawned.

The hatch opening woke her. Saba swung himself in through the oval doorway. She started to call to him but she heard Tanuojin’s voice.

“Come down to the library. I’ll show you.”

“I’m tired.” Saba was stripping off his overalls. “Next watch.”

“Jesus.” The deep voice rasped. “All your off-time now you spend with her.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

The hatch slammed. Tanuojin went away. She heard Saba give a low laugh.

Halfway through the middle watch, she thought of Ketac again and took him a dozen food tablets and two tubes of water. When he saw her his face split in a broad smile. “Paula.”

She wiped her face on her sleeve. He ripped open a water tube.

“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.”