Floating Worlds (22 page)

The platform was bare and cold. The wall was papered over with torn posters. The veil closed off her side vision. Tanuojin stood talking to a big graying man. The sleeves and front of his shirt were embroidered in metallic thread. He swung around, looking over her head.

“Saba, why do I spend a fortune training pilots?” They shook hands.

“Your pilots don’t fly my ships.”

Another man brought a board and a stylus up to him. “Akellar, I need your full engine rates—” Saba took him off to the stern of his ship.

The old man looked down at Paula. “Who is she?”

“Saba’s latest moral aberration,” Tanuojin said.

She glanced up at him, and the old man laughed. He smacked Tanuojin on the back with his open hand. “Tajin, you’ve made yet another enemy. Let’s go, it’s cold.”

They took off the black pressure suits in a locker room near the platform and went down a stair to the inner surface of the bubble. The three men talked about people she had never heard of. They walked along a street crowded with Styths. She had to trot to keep up with Saba. The buildings on either side were one and two stories, plain stone houses. Strips of green separated them: the grass that helped circulate the air. It even grew on the roofs of some houses. The buildings, the people around her, everything dwarfed her. She felt shrunk to miniature, like a toy. They went down a huge step in the street. She took Saba’s hand to negotiate it. In the twilight, the street ran straight off before her to the curve of the bubble in the distance, ran up the side, and turned and came back over her head. When she looked straight up she could see the busy streets and buildings of the other side of Saturn-Keda, two or three miles over her head, upside down. A strong odor of fish reached her nose. She looked around at the sheets of nets hanging from the eaves of the houses they passed. The street glistened with fish scales. A furry brown beast, cat-sized, was eating something in the gutter.

They went through an open gate into a yard. Three children were chasing each other around at the far end. Their heads were bald as onions. Paula’s arms and legs ached with fatigue. Her face sagged. Saba took her hand and helped her up three high steps. They went into a blue hall.

“Here.” Saba planted her firmly in the middle of the room. “Stay here. Melleno, let me use your photo-relay.”

Melleno took him out of the room. Paula looked around her. The blue light rippled through the room, constantly changing color. It was like being under water. This was what Matuko would be like, dark and cold. There was no ceiling: she looked up across Saturn-Keda, into the distant web of streets. Tanuojin was at the far end of the room, ignoring her. Melleno came back.

“Well? Tell me about the Middle Planets.”

“You’re right,” Tanuojin said. “It’s a lot more complicated than we thought.”

“Tajin. Tell me something new.”

She went to the table against the wall. It was strange to walk. Even the crepe dress felt heavy. The table was Styth-sized and her chin just cleared the top. A bowl stood on it heaped up with little red beans, or perhaps fruit.

“The Martians have the guns and the money,” Tanuojin was saying, “but the anarchists do all the thinking.”

“Where did he get her?”

“On the Earth.”

“Is she an anarchist?”

“Melleno, she is a pig. You know how he is about women.”

Her back was to them. She pulled the veil aside. He had been enraged, in
Ybicsa
, because he had had to help her. She took a handful of the beans out of the bowl and put one in her mouth. It was soft and sweet with a hard pip in the center.

“What do you think of Saba’s treaty?”

“I like the economics. That’s a lot of money. What about this truce?”

“It’s just with the Council, not with the Martians.”

“Is there a difference?”

She went along the wall to a window. The sill was a foot wide. She stood eating the fruit. The Styth children were playing before her in the yard. They were bigger than she was. They looked very young, their cheeks still round, like babies’. Now the air in the room was green. She took a seed out of her mouth and flicked it out to the courtyard. Maybe it would grow: her mark on Saturn-Keda.

“Can we take them?” Melleno asked.

“Yes, we can take them. We have to think of how, that’s all, but there’s a way. You used to tell me we could take anybody. Don’t you believe it any more?”

“Well, an old man sees short. What do you want to drink?”

“Nothing. Water.”

Melleno’s voice softened with amusement, even affection. “You know, Tajin, if you allowed yourself the occasional vice, you might find life more pleasant.”

“Why is it such a crime not to get drunk?”

Paula leaned on the window sill. A woman had come out of a door nearby. Her hair was piled up on her head; her fringed sleeves hung down almost to the ground. She called angrily to the children to stop screaming.

Behind Paula Saba came into the room. She yanked the veil across her face again. He went up to the other men, and Tanuojin slung one arm around his neck.

“I feel as if I’m going to put my foot through the floor.”

“What was the Earth like?” Melleno said.

Saba raised his head. “Beautiful. Even the natural parts, outside the cities. Every place you look there’s something you’ve never seen before. They don’t just have two or three kinds of trees, they have hundreds. They have insects there that look like flowers and flowers as high as your head. And the strangest people I’ve ever met.”

Several small pale men in white coats brought a little wagon into the room. They were the first people of her own race she had seen in six weeks. Swiftly and silently they opened the lid of the cart and took out cups. Her spine prickled up. They were slaves. One was obviously part-Styth, like her baby.

“I’ve never done so many strange things in my life,” Saba said. “Maybe it was just being so far from home.”

“It was hot and bright,” Tanuojin said. “And every time I went through a door I cracked my head.”

The slaves went among them, bringing cups and a platter. The three rAkellaron ignored them, probably did not notice them, would notice them only if the slaves made mistakes. Paula turned back to the window. Across the courtyard the children were throwing sticks at each other.

A trickle of feeling ran quickly down her side. She straightened, astonished, and put her hand on the fat hump of the baby. She had never felt him move before.

“They have no standards, Earthish people,” Saba was saying. “Except themselves.”

She turned to watch them. Melleno’s sleeve glittered. He raised his cup. “The Earth is the only place outside Styth I’ve ever wanted to see.”

She watched his hands. He wore a thick bracelet around each wrist. He had been the Prima, a great Prima. His strong action against piracy had forced the Styth Fleet to raid down below Jupiter, into the Middle Planets, since they could no longer rob their own people. He was an old man, his claws whitening, and his mustaches hanging down over his embroidered shirt.

Tanuojin came in again. Paula turned away from them. In the window, looking out at the city, she tried to judge how much energy they needed to maintain all this, to make life possible here. Of course they had Saturn itself, an inexhaustible supply of energy, yielding up radiation like a little sun. People like her had come here to take that energy, and the Planet had made them into Styths.
Home is where the heart is
, she thought, and laughed.

Ybix
flew on through the dark, away from the Sun. After the journey to Saturn, the ship closed around Paula like a shell. The baby moved inside her body, energetic. His kicking woke her up sometimes. Her stretching skin itched intolerably. She scratched herself until she bled. Saba threatened to tie her hands behind her. All her overalls were too tight and he changed the settings in the computer and made her new ones.

One of the fish died in a tank in the transverse corridor. She scooped it out of the water and took it off to Saba. The number four engine was missing timing, and he paid no attention to the fish. His hands already shining with grease, he plunged head-first down a hatch into the engine room. She took the fish to the computer room and sealed it into a plastic folder for the technician to analyze.

In the high watch, while Saba was on duty, she worked in the library, writing out a master contract to allow off-worlders to trade in Matuko. The sketches clipped to the wall were parts of Saba’s new ship,
Ybicket
: the more he worked out the designs, the more he nagged her to finish the contract. While she was busy with this work, Tanuojin’s voice said, behind her, “If you want to see how that fish died, go look now.”

She wheeled; he was gone. She switched off the file projector and went down the blue tunnel to the black-white corridor. The hatch was open. Cold air streamed down on the fish. She put her head through the hatch into the dark.

In the back of the storage compartment, beyond a row of oxygen tanks, a blue light shone. She went toward it. A man was curled over the glow of a small lamp, heating a bottle of Saba’s Scotch. It was Uhama, the greaser on Kobboz’s watch.

She spun toward the way out. He had seen her. She lunged away but he caught her by the ankle.

Twisting, she broke free. The big man moved between her and the hatch. She was already shivering in the cold. She said, “Uhama, listen to me.” Her lips were stiff.

“If you tell him, he’ll lock me in the hot closet,” he said, and came toward her.

“He’ll do worse than that if you hurt me—” She backed away, banging into the tanks. His arms spread to corral her, the big man followed her into the back of the compartment, into the dark.

“Nobody knows but you.”

“Tanuojin knows—”

His hands closed around her throat. She clutched his wrists. A white light burst in her eyes.

“Paula!”

Uhama thrust her away, wheeling around, and she bumped into the wall. She gagged for breath. Locked together with someone else, Uhama banged into the tanks along the wall and caromed toward her. The other man was Ketac. She slipped past them toward the shaft of light coming through the hatch. Her throat hurt so much she could hardly breathe. In the corridor she flew down to the nearest call screen and pressed the lever up.

“Bridge.” Her voice wheezed.

“Yes—who’s this?” Bakan said.

“Ketac and Uhama are fighting in the number four storage bin.” She looked back that way. The hatch flew wide open and Uhama tumbled out. He started in her direction, saw her, and whipped around to go the other way. Ketac shot out to meet him. He caught the fleeing man by the shoulders and slammed both feet into Uhama’s back. Uhama clawed at him, grunting with effort, his eyes white-ringed. Saba raced around the bend in the corridor. Ketac sprang back. Uhama hung still in the air, half-conscious.

“What’s going on?” Saba asked.

Ketac’s chest heaved. He pointed to Paula, ten feet down the corridor. “I was coming around here, and I saw the hatch open, and he was in there strangling her.”

Saba raised one arm across his body and struck Uhama. The other man hit the wall face-first. “Take him to the brig.”

“Yes, sir.” Ketac towed Uhama away by one foot.

Paula touched her throat. She was alive by seconds. Her bruised muscles refused to swallow. Saba lunged at her, bad-tempered.

“What were you doing in there with him?”

In a croaking voice she told him about the fish, Tanuojin, the bottle of whiskey. He went into the compartment and came out again, the lamp in one hand, and shut the hatch.

“That son of a bitch,” he said. “He knew you’d go in there alone.” He herded her down the tunnel. One bell rang: the end of his watch. He pushed her into his cabin. She felt of her throat. In a rising temper, Saba circled once around the little room. He stopped at the call screen.

“Bridge.”

“Yes, Akellar.”

“Call my watch into the Tank.” He wheeled around and pushed her, hard. “I warned you. You stay with me from now on. Or in here with the hatch locked.” He flew to the hatch. His wake was heated with his rage. She gave a quick glance around the room and followed him.

They went through the warren of the ship into the yellow corridor. One of the men from Tanuojin’s watch was coming the other way, and Saba attacked him. The other man never tried to fight back. He rolled to one side, his arms up to protect his face, and Saba slashed at him. Tanuojin’s man dodged behind the blow and raced away. Saba let him go. Paula went after him through the curtain of their scents. He swerved up into the Tank.

Sril and Bakan were at the far end of the long dim room. Near the hatch, Saba’s helmsman was talking to Marus, Tanuojin’s helm. Without a word, Saba flew at Marus. All three of the men of his watch charged at the man they had just been tolerating and clawed at him. Paula flinched back to the wall. Marus burst free and fled out the hatch, leaving a smoky trail of blood behind him in the air.

Sril came up to her. The gold wire winked in his nose. “Mendoz’, this is how innocent sailors die in space.”

Saba circled in the middle of the room, below the posters of naked women. Ketac had come in; he floated over beside Paula.

“Thank you,” she said, low.

“You helped me,” he said. “I pay my debts.”

“Listen to me.” Saba looked around at his men. “My lyo thinks he can run around me in my own ship. I’m going to kick him into shape, so stay away from him, unless you want some extra stripes.” He lunged at Ketac and got him by the shirtfront. “That means you, clothead.” He pushed his son backward away from him.

Paula sidled down the wall. Bubbles of Marus’s blood bobbed in the air around the hatch. It was the low watch, when Saba and Tanuojin were both off-duty. She looked both ways into the tunnel. A few yards away on either side, its kinks took it out of sight. She went out the hatch.

There was nowhere she could go to hide from them. The ship was like a maze. She flew down toward the red corridor. A sound ahead of her made her stop sharp. Tanuojin came around the next bend.

He flew at her, and she raced back the way she had come, into the S-curves below the Tank. Just out of his sight, she flattened herself against the wall. He sailed past her. She went back the other way. He struck at her and missed her by inches, his claws like knives. She was faster than he was. At the mouth of the red corridor she paused and looked back and saw him stopped ten feet up the tube, watching her. She went down to her cabin and locked herself in.