Floating Worlds (6 page)

“Oh, god, don’t rain numbers on me.” She swiveled her chair back and forth. The dogwood was losing its leaves. She studied the man from Charmichael, who smiled back at her.

“Andressen,” she said. “Richard Bunker is bringing an action against you for double-billing. How would you like a copy of his file on you?”

The man’s smile broadened by six teeth. “Very much.”

“Enough to retain my clients?”

“Yes.”

“At full pay.”

“At half pay. You’re talking about fifty-two people, Mendoza.”

She nodded. “I accept.” She opened her desk drawer and took out three thick file folders and a paper for him to sign.

The dogwood tree was completely bare. She pruned off the dead branches and raked up the leaves. She saw nothing of Tony, not even a call. There had been no more incidents with the Styths since the raid on Vesta. Jefferson went to Crosby’s Planet, where the Council met. Thomas Overwood called from Los Angeles. He had information for Paula, and he had found a Styth living on the Earth.

The Styth was somewhere in Alm’ata, in Central Asia. Overwood soured when she pushed him for an address. “I found his dome for you, isn’t that enough?” Reluctantly she called Dick Bunker, who went to Alm’ata, while she took the tube across the continent to Los Angeles.

Overwood gave her a thin paper pamphlet. The title on the cover was
The Mutant Menace
. She held it under the light and turned the pages. “This is propaganda. This is no good.” On the last page was printed THE SUNLIGHT LEAGUE.

The shopman looked disappointed. He would not say how he had gotten it. She gave him two hundred dollars, took the pamphlet, and went by rocket to Alm’ata.

In flight over the ocean, she read through the booklet. It was a collection of fact and lie and mixtures of the two, all written like slanders. The print was perfect, an expensive production, on high-quality paper. Near the end was a piece of thinner paper, folded in half and stuck into the binding. She worked it loose.

It read:

Merkhiz and Matuko were cities of the Empire; saba meant “he knows.”
Ebelos
was a grade of crystal. She turned the paper over. There was nothing else. SIF looked like an acronym. Styth Imperial. Styth Imperial Fleet. She bounced up and down in her seat. The old man across the aisle gave her a look of disapproval. She spread the paper flat on her knee. Then
Ebelos, Ybix
, and
Kundra
could be the names of ships.

The rocket was descending. She folded the paper and put it in her pocket. Below, through the little window like a gun-slot in the wall, she saw the crumpled surface of the Great Asian Lake. Alm’ata was the Earth’s primary surface harbor; the long narrow dome, open at both ends, enclosed half the water. Her seat faced the back. She twisted around to watch the approach. The floor thumped under her feet. The secondary engines had come on. The jet skimmed over the surface of the lake. Scum rolled in patches on the water. Greenish threads of pollution trailed by the window. The flared round tunnel of the dome swept up around them. Abruptly the air was clear, the water sparkled and broke in white curls of foam. The rocket circled once and set down on the spiral runway.

Bunker was not at the terminal to meet her. She seethed all the way down the ramp. Outside, she put down her bag and put on her jacket. The air was icy cold. She walked across the city park, asking directions here and there. Little children in brilliant orange coats raced in a game under the bare trees. She came to the Lenin Hotel, an old-fashioned above-ground building in an orchard of fruit trees leafless in the winter cold.

When she let herself into the hotel room, Bunker was lying naked on his back on the couch under the vitamin lamp, a tape plug in his ear, wet balls of cotton on his eyes, and a pink napkin tented over his crotch. Paula shut the door. He did not move.

“This place looks like the University of Barsoom,” she said. The room was white, the boxy chairs and tables painted in black lacquer. The carpet was dark red. She put her bag down and went through to the kitchen. The carpet skidded slightly under her feet, treacherous.

“I hope you’re doing the cooking,” she said. “I can’t boil water.” She took a beer out of the cold drawer.

“Mendoza, what can you do?”

She swallowed the nasty remark in her throat. The kitchen smelled of must. She opened the window and let in the cold wind. Something mewled overhead, and a gull sailed by. Its wings were black-tipped. She went out to the white and black room again. The vitamin lamp glared on the wall.

“Did you call Jefferson?”

“Don’t unpack.” Bunker switched off the lamp. “The Council is balking, they may null the case.” He threw the tape jack across the room.

“Oh, shit.”

He put his shirt on. “Did Overwood have anything?”

She took the paper out of her shirt pocket and gave it to him. He went into the bedroom. A drawer slammed open. She sat on the couch, still warm from the lamp, and pulled off the paper tab on the can of beer.

He came back into the room, pulling his pants on, the paper in his hand. “What is this?”

Paula tucked her feet up under her on the couch and sipped the beer. One-handed, he fumbled the tongue of his belt through the buckle. He said, “What does
Ybix
mean?”

“I don’t know the word.”

He sat down beside her, taking a pencil off the end table. “So, SIF 4
Ebelos
. That’s the ship, and Merkhiz is her base.
Ybix
and
Kundra
attacked Vesta.” He wrote on the paper.

Paula grunted. “You got more than I did.”

“Where did you find this? Overwood? How much did you pay him?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Mendoza. You’re improving. Let’s go talk to my Styth.”

They went up three flights of stairs to the roof of the hotel, to catch the air bus. Bunker said, “He’s a local celebrity, Kary is. It took me fifteen minutes to find him, every bum knows him.”

Paula walked to the edge of the roof. In the gray trees below her a child in a red coat dashed about, singing in a breathless voice. The cold made her face tingle. The air bus was coming. She went over to the square of paint on the roof and stood with Bunker waiting. The bus driver let down the ladder for them.

They flew back across the city toward the beach. Paula looked out the window. They passed over the Central Market. Piles of fruit covered the stalls, Hessian sacks of almonds and cashews. Tightly packed together in a pen, the white backs of goats looked like fish in a net.

“What’s this mean?” Beside her on the bench he was looking at the note again. “Say-ba.”

“Saba. Long a’s. It means ‘he knows.’”

“He. Who?”

“You’re the genius.”

The air bus was settling down to park before the terminal. They went down the back ramp to a stone pier. The lake stretched before her. She could hear the crash of the surf on the beach. The wind sliced across the open harbor.

Bunker led her along the pier to a line of shops. They went into a drugstore and he bought two quarts of red wine for fifty cents each.

Single-file they descended the steps of the pier to the beach. Her feet sank into the wet sand. Bunker walked into the shade under the pier. A man was lying in the dark between two stone uprights. He was black as soot, and stretched out across the sand he looked ten feet long.

“Kary,” Bunker said. “Remember me?”

The Styth sat up. “You again,” he said, in a deep alcoholic rasp. Bunker gave him a bottle of wine, and he tore off the paper cap and drank deeply.

Paula sank down on her heels beside an upright. Kary’s shaggy hair was frizzy with malnutrition. His mustaches hung thin as string down over his chest. Around his eyes and mouth, his skin was graying. He was old, past mere grandfather old, ninety, perhaps over one hundred. She said, “Where are you from, Kary?”

He glanced at her around the bottle. “What’s this?” He looked her over, leisurely. “Skinny little cow, isn’t she?” he said to Bunker.

“Where are you from?” This time she said it in Styth.

Kary had the bottle midway to his mouth. He put it down again. “You speak Styth?”

She looked at his hands. “Yes.” His right thumb was missing at the first joint. The rest of his fingers ended in blunted nubs. “What happened to your claws?”

He held up the stub of his thumb. “This one was bitten off in a fight in Vribulo when I was a—” She missed the word. Sadly he folded his fingers into his palms. “The others just don’t grow any more.”

“You’re from Vribulo? How did you get here?”

He blinked at her. His eyes were round as carbuncles. To Bunker he said, “Your cow speaks Styth.”

Bunker shook his head. “I don’t know the language.”

Kary emptied the bottle of wine. His head wobbled. Paula said, “How did you get here?”

“I got in a fight. Real bad fight. I killed somebody who had a lot of. relatives. One the Prima’s lyo.” He tried the collapsed bottle again and dropped it to the sand. “Just enough to get me thirsty.”

Bunker took the other bottle out of his jacket. Kary’s two hands reached for it. “Ah, you’re a kindly little people,” he said, in the Common Speech.

Paula laughed. She could not judge his height. Probably he was a couple of inches over seven feet, tall even for a Styth. He smelled of stale clothes. Carefully he set the bottle in the sand and wiped his mouth. “You speak Styth,” he said to her. His gaze moved over her, and he turned toward Bunker. “Don’t you feed her?”

Bunker said, “I like them skinny. It keeps them eager.”

Paula looked around her. The stone pillars that held up the pier stood solid in the dark. Kary lay down on the sand, one hand protectively on his bottle.

“I’m going to sleep now.”

The two anarchists laughed. “Good-night.”

They walked back to the hotel, and she unpacked her bag. Bunker was right. If the Council aborted the case, they’d have to go home again, but she wanted to stay awhile to talk to Kary. She hung up the long white dress, which wrinkled easily. There were two beds, covered in the same dark red as the slippery carpet. On the wall above them was a woven hanging, Turkoman, or Uzbek. A sweet spicy odor made her sniff. She went across the sitting room to the kitchen.

Bunker stood by the counter cutting peaches into a big stew pot. She went in behind him and took a beer out of the cold drawer. Neither of them spoke. She swallowed a cold mouthful of the beer. The sun was going down, and the kitchen lights were coming on in the ceiling. She turned the dial on the wall to brighten the light. Bunker put the lid on the stew pot. He ran the spoon and knives through the washer spray and wiped off the counter.

“You’re certainly tidy,” she said.

“I don’t like to leave tracks,” he said.

The pot buzzed. He turned it off and ladled the flavorsome stew into bowls and handed one to her.

They went into the living room. Sitting on the floor, she blew across the top of the stew to cool it. Bunker crossed to the couch.

“I take it the Styths live in families.”

She ate a sweet stewed peach. “Big families. They’re polygynous.” She thought with sympathy of Kary, family man, alone in an anarchist world. “This is pretty good chicken.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“Maybe you missed your real art. When you went into burglary.”

He went to the massive antique videone behind the door and dialed through the range of the local radio. At last he settled on progressive music. She spooned up the last juices in her bowl. He flopped down on the couch, cradled his bowl in his lap, and began to eat.

“Actually burglary is only a hobby. How well do you know Cam Savenia?”

“I traveled with her for eight weeks. That was a long time ago.”

“She’s ambitious.”

Paula lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “She’s a Martian. And a woman.”

“I’ve never noticed women are more ambitious than men.” His spoon clicked on his bowl.

“I meant being a woman on Mars she has a lot to make up for,” Paula said.

The videone buzzed. Paula leaped to her feet, dropping the empty bowl. She reached the cabinet one step ahead of Bunker, got between him and the controls, and flipped the switch from radio to intercom. The camera swung on a flexible arm. She yanked it down to her level. The face on the screen belonged to the desk clerk.

“I have a message coming through for you from Crosby’s Planet.”

“Jefferson,” Bunker said.

A flicker rolled across the screen. Paula rapped her fingers on the cabinet. The message was in block letters; it appeared slowly on the yellow ground, at first too dim to read, and she reached for the adjustment knob and Bunker caught her hand. Slowly the print darkened.

 Jefferson to Bunker. Council voted 270–265 to continue the case.

Zed.

Paula screeched. She backed away from the videone and spun in a circle. Bunker said, “Five votes. Nobody handles the Fascists like Roland.”

“Do you think she had to negotiate the vote?”

“Any time it’s that close, she doesn’t leave it to their goodwill.”

He switched the videone back to the music. Paula sat down on the floor again. “What did you call her? Roland.”

“Madame Roland,” he said. “Always meddling.” Rolling to his feet, he went into the kitchen. She heard the hiss of the washer.

Paula took a shower. While she was drying herself off, Bunker came into the bathroom doorway. “What’s this?” He had the propaganda leaflet in his hand.

“Overwood gave it to me. It’s supposed to be by the Sunlight League.” She shook the damp towel and hung it up on the back of the door. “Some of it’s true.” She glanced at herself in the mirror. Little drops of water glistened in her puffed coppery hair. She went out to the bedroom.