Floating Worlds

by Cecelia Anastasia Holland

  “Don’t you know who the rAkellaron are?”

  Jefferson shrugged. “A few names. Did you keep notes from your prison meetings?”

  “The warden took all my notebooks. Maybe there are some Styths still in the joint.”

  Jefferson fed herself another candy. Her cheeks sucked in around it. “I checked when we found out about your episode. The Martians very efficiently executed them all. What was the name of this paragon?”

  “The Saturn Akellar? Melleno. I don’t know if he’s still in the rAkellaron.”

  “Can we reach him?” Bunker said.

  “I’ll try,” Paula said.

  Her new office was a bare white box with a desk and chair, another chair, and a file. The window let in no direct sunlight because of the high wall of the gulch just outside. She had already decided not to put anything on the walls since she was keeping this job only until she found other work. She sat down beside the desk and opened the file on the Styths, but before she had read more than a paragraph, two men came into the office.

  “We have a case for you,” the shorter of the two said.

  Paula shut the file. She looked from one man to the other. “Yes, what?” Immediately she disliked them: they were smiling. She opened the deep drawer in her desk and stuffed the file in on top of a pile of multicolored forms.

  The shorter man sat down. He wore a brown sweater with the initial R in red on the right breast. “We live in a building in the south dome that’s owned by a Mister Roches, and we want something done about it.”

  “We’ve been writing him letters of complaint for a year,” the other man said. “Without even the grace of a reply.”

  The man in the chair crossed one leg over the other. Carefully he straightened his trousers. “We aren’t the only ones who are complaining. The place is infested with mice, it smells of mildew, the verticals are usually broken, none of our flats has been painted or refloored in more than two years, and the old fellow is a dreadful gossip. The piping is absolutely antique, you can’t get an air filter installed—”

  She put her elbows on the desk. “What do you want me to do?”

  Their faces slid down out of their smiles. Intense, she leaned forward, looking from one to the other. “Why the hell do you come in here with something like this? You’re supposed to be anarchists. You’re supposed to take care of yourselves. If you don’t like it, move. If nobody likes it, get everybody to move, open the gas cocks and throw in a match. Get away from me.”

  The shorter man popped up out of his chair. “You’re supposed to be here to help people.”

  “If you need help for something like that, go someplace where there’s a government. Like Mars.” She yanked the drawer open and put the Styth file on the desk in front of her.

  “No wonder everybody hates the Committee.” The taller man rushed to the desk. She ignored him, pretending to read. He and his friend strode out of the office.

  She leaned back in her chair, pleased. Outside the window the sunlight was at last reaching the ground, where a green sprinkling of grass grew near the tree. In places the claybank was yellow as lemons, in places orange. She sat thinking of the Styths in the Martian prison. The man from Vribulo had been waiting to be gassed for murder. Lonely and angry and homesick and frightened, he had shouted at her and tried to attack her and talked, when she had finally begun to understand him, talked in a desperate flood. That had been five years ago. She had not thought of him in a long while. She had liked him and his death had hurt; she had made herself go to witness it. She turned over the first page of the file.

  Overwood’s Import Shop was in the Old Town of Los Angeles, between an optometrist’s and an astrologer’s. When Paula went in, a bell rang in the back of the store. It was so dark she ran into an air fern hanging from the ceiling in a bucket. The air smelled of marijuana. At the back of the shop a little man in an apron leaned on a counter.

  “Help you?”

  “Are you Thomas Overwood?”

  “That’s right, honey. Call me Tom.”

  She went up to the counter. “I understand you deal in crystal.”

  His round face settled. “Call me Mr. Overwood.”

  “I’m from the Committee.”

  “Oh.” He reached his hand out to her, smiling again. “Whyn’t you say so? Sure, I traffic in crystal. But it’ll cost you.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “Uranus. Farmed in the White Side.” Overwood ducked down behind the counter and brought up a stack of black and white holographs. “One thousand dollars the ounce.”

  She lifted off the top photograph. Against the black background the crystal polyhedron looked like a jewel. Overwood tapped the photograph.

  “That’s Relleno. There are five grades, all I deal in are the premier grades, Relleno and Ebelos. Sixteen O-Z’s of Ebelos would power the whole California dome for six months.”

  Paula leafed through the photographs. “I don’t believe you.”

  Overwood muttered something.

  “How do you get it?” she said.

  “Oh, now—”

  She put the holographs down. “We have a message for someone in the Styth Empire. Can you arrange to deliver it?”

  His wide eyebrows rose. “I see. That will cost you, too.”

  “Can you guarantee?”

  “Who do you want to reach?”

  “Melleno. The Saturn Akellar.”

  Overwood leaned his forearm on the counter. “Maybe.”

  “For a maybe, you’d better not ask much.”

  He gathered up the photographs and put them away under the counter. Even here on the Earth, where there were no laws and no police, he was cautious. She wondered who his enemies were. Maybe other smugglers. He said, “My connection can get into Saturn-Keda.”

  The doorbell jangled. She turned to watch a woman with a white dog cross the dark shop. Overwood went from behind the counter.

  “Help you?”

  “I’m looking at your splendid glassware.”

  Paula strolled around the display cases along the wall. They showed rows of incense jars, plates, figures of animals. Amulets and books on Zen. She admired an old ivory and ebony chess set. On the wall above it was a corkboard, with bits of paper pinned to it.

  Commune share 25/mo. Drugs check, one kid check.

  Overwood sprayed foam around a dish of Venusian glass. While the casing dried, he took the woman’s money and gave her change. She tucked her white dog under one arm and the foam case under the other. The bell rang her out.

  “Cost you fifteen hundred dollars to send a message to Saturn-Keda,” Overwood said. “In advance.”

  Paula glanced at him over her shoulder. “For a maybe?”

  “For certain. He’ll deliver.”

  “One thousand. When we know it’s delivered.”

  “No chance. My connection is a busy man.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Where does he go? Does he go to Uranus?”

  “Vribulo. Matuko. Flying around in a Gas Planet isn’t something I’d do, for instance. These spacemen are crazy.” Overwood took a tray out of the counter. “Direct from Saturn.” With a little flourish he turned back the lid. “Genuine reproductions.”

  There were five big medals inside the box. Paula lifted one out by the chain. “What are they?”

  “When a Styth warrior goes into military orders, you see, he wears a medal with his sign, here.” He pointed at the design cut into the medal’s face. “That’s the Fish. They’re very superstitious people.”

  She reached for another. “What’s this one mean?”

  “Unh—”

  “Twelve hundred. Seven in advance, five when we know it’s delivered.”

  “Now, my connection is a busy man.”

  “So are we.”

  He pursed his lips. “For the Committee.” He offered his wide hand, and Paula shook it.

  The SoCal dome reached out to the deep water. The surf was too dirty to swim in. She walked alon
g the beach, watching the waves break sluggishly over, brown with dirt. Garbage encrusted the sand. The filth lowered her mood, or maybe she had come here because her mood was already low and needed celebration.

  The poet Fuldah had thought that all societies contained a finite number of persona, and the people left over from this cast could only wander around outside making trouble. She felt herself being forced into a role. Her life was closing in on her. She hated the Committee job, even the Styth case bored her, but it paid well and she kept putting off quitting because she liked the money. Tony would make her pregnant which would determine the next eighteen or twenty years while she raised her child. She felt as if her life were over.

  The beach was studded with black rocks. Ahead, the brown cliffs rose, cut with gulleys. The edge of the water was strewn with purple and white jellyfish. A sea carrot, alive with flies, lay rotting along the high-tide line. She swerved away from its stink toward the cliffs, took her clothes off, and sat on a warm rock.

  In spite of her restlessness she could not think of anything to do. Free as a bird, her father would have said. Free to do what every other bird did. She picked at the white scale on the rock. Out past the surf, the dome wall shone in the sunlight. It was not solid: ionized gas, held by a magnetic field, because of the earthquakes. Two boys came down the beach looking for rocks. She waved; they waved. After a while she put her clothes on and went back to the rooming house to eat.

  Bunker was coming in on the underground train; at ten in the evening she went to meet him. He came across the platform toward her, putting on his sweater. “I thought it never got cold here.” Paula turned to walk beside him. They climbed the stairs to the ground level. She handed him an envelope.

  “That’s the message to Melleno.”

  They went out of the tube station and the cold wind struck her in the face. The paper flapped in Bunker’s hands. He turned to shelter it. Although the night had fallen long since, the domelight was bright enough to read by. Paula looked up at the hills. The wind was roaring out of the canyon behind them. The SoCal dome was huge; they were proud of their winds.

  Bunker nodded. “I hope he can read it.” He gave her back the paper and they walked along the flat desert, their backs to the wind. The tall palm trees that marked the path milled their broad leaves like arms. “Do you suppose anybody there speaks the Common Speech?”

  Paula shrugged. “Overwood does business with them. Overwood thinks crystal is some kind of super-battery.”

  “I take it from your tone of voice that that shows his ignorance.”

  “It’s not a battery. A transformer, sort of. Maybe.”

  The path took them in toward the flank of the steep hills, where the houses clustered like a colony of barnacles above the bare dusty desert floor. A bike was wheeling toward her and she moved out of the way. They went up a steep path into the Old Town. The wind had blown weeds and leaves up against Overwood’s door. It was locked and the shop was dark. Paula stood looking in the window. Bunker turned.

  “He must live around here somewhere.”

  “I called him,” Paula said. “He said if he wasn’t at the shop, he’d be in the bar.” She pointed down the street. Two men were just going in a bright doorway. “I’ll bet that’s it.”

  As they went through the doorway a bell clanged. There were three tiltball machines against the far wall, half-hidden behind a crowd of players. The room smelled of beer. Overwood was sitting in a booth in the back, behind a potted jacaranda tree, his hands laced over his little round stomach. Paula went up to him.

  “Hello, there,” he said. “Have a seat. I’ll sit you a drink.”

  Bunker shook his hand. “My name’s Richard Butler.”

  “Whatever you say. Thomas Overwood here.”

  Another chorus of bells rang out behind her. She slid between the jacaranda and the wall into the booth across from Overwood and held out the envelope to him. “For the Saturn Akellar.”

  “Seven hundred dollars,” Overwood said.

  Bunker pulled a chair around to the end of the table between them. He took a wallet out of his hip pocket and sat down. A waiter brought them a pitcher of beer and glasses. Bunker counted out money into a stack before him: fourteen fifty-dollar bills. The fifteenth he gave to her. “Sign that.”

  It was an expense chit. She signed it.

  “How long will this take?” Bunker said.

  “Maybe four months.” Overwood put the money in one pocket and the message in another. “Maybe less. That’s a long way away, that.” The waiter poured the bright beer. “What’s the Committee’s interest in Styth?”

  Paula reached for a glass. “Who supplies you with crystal?”

  Overwood smiled at her. “Now, now.”

  Bunker pushed the money over to him. “We want information. The Committee’s favorite food. We need good sources of information, first-generation, on the politics of the rAkellaron.”

  “That’s funny.” Overwood laughed; his bushy eyebrows went up and down. The laughter rumbled on steadily, like a motor. “That’s very funny. I’ve been told they’ll buy information about the Earth.”

  Paula put her elbows on the table. “I’ll send you a price list.”

  “What have you told them?” Bunker asked.

  “All they’re interested in is military stuff.”

  “They don’t know much about the Earth,” Paula said.

  “Our interests are a little broader,” Bunker said.

  “I can’t help you.” Overwood nodded at her. “I don’t know anything about Styths. Ask her, she stepped on me twice today, trying to fake it. Venusian glass, maybe, or chess, or smuggling, but Styths—” He spread his hands.

  “Do you buy the crystal directly from them?” Bunker said.

  Overwood shrugged elaborately, smiling, his eyebrows arched. “I can’t talk about that.”

  “We’ll pay.”

  “Sorry.”

  Paula watched Bunker’s face. There were deep creases marking the corners of his mouth, but otherwise he looked bored. She lifted her glass. The tiltballs bells rang like a carousel. Lights flashed.

  “If I hear anything,” Overwood said, “I’ll let you know.”

  “Call me.” Paula wrote down her name and extension number for him. With Bunker she left the bar.

  They went to the end of the street, where the ground pitched off sheer to the desert below, and stood in the shadows of the trees. From this height she could see the even furrows of the cropfields on the desert below. Two circles of lights burned on the dark flat land. Bunker was looking back down the street toward Overwood’s shop.

  “Come on.” He went at a swinging walk across the street. Paula followed.

  “Where are you going?”

  He led her down the alley between Overwood’s shop and the astrologer’s. When she came up beside him he was trying to open the back window.

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “No. I’ll go keep Overwood busy.” She went down the alley to the street again.

  Even from here she heard the jangle of the tiltball bells in the bar. Two women walked unsteadily out of the bar and went off down the hill, their arms around each other. Paula strolled back to the doorway of the bar. The domelight drove her shadow to a puddle around her feet.

  Overwood was standing up beside his booth, paying the waiter. She crossed the crowded room toward him. “Overwood.”

  He looked up, his hands full of money. She went around beside him. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Oh? Where’s the other fellow?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. Let me buy you a beer.”

  Overwood let her buy him a beer, two beers, and a third. She impressed him with the necessity of dealing with her and not Bunker, even though Bunker had the money, asked him if anybody in Saturn-Keda could read the Common Speech, and finally talked him into going out with her to show her the fastest way down the hillside. He took her to the end of the street, right past his sh
op, and pointed out three different trails, white as thread down the slope, among the aloes and manzanita.

  “You’d better be careful. If you fall and hurt yourself, you could lie there all night.” He beamed at her. “To say nothing of the coyotes.”

  “I like dogs.” Over his shoulder she saw Bunker coming down the alley by his shop.

  He let out a rumbling laugh. “You wouldn’t like a coyote.”

  She was looking out across the vast dome. The bracelets of lights on the desert floor held her gaze. “What are they doing down there?” She pointed. Each of the circles seemed to be made of a dozen little fires.

  “Trance circles,” he said. “They sit around and chant and watch the fires and throw themselves into trances. Kids, bums, people like that.”

  “Why don’t they just take drugs?”

  “That’s too easy.”

  “Well,” she said, “maybe I’ll try it. Thanks.” She started down the nearest of the paths he had shown her.

  The hill was steep. She was inching across a narrows, her clothes snagged on the brush, when Bunker caught up with her.

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. He was watching his feet on the thin trail. The hillside was studded with spiky plants. Ahead the trail widened, tame.

  “Nothing at all? I don’t believe you.”

  “He’s smart. Nothing’s written down.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Frankly, junior, I don’t give a damn.”

  “Why do you call me that?”

  Beside her, his hands in his pockets, he smiled at her. “You don’t like it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Junior,” he said, “you have a lot to learn.” He went off ahead of her down the trail. Burning, she stood still and let him walk up a good lead before she started off again.

  Paula took the midnight train to New York. Walking up the aisle of the car, she saw Bunker sitting next to the window on a forward bench. After a moment she put her bag on the rack over his head and sat down opposite him. He had a book plug in his ear; he ignored her. She stretched her legs out before her. The train was almost empty. The lights flashed on and off, and the bench under her jerked forward. She braced herself. The train bounded forward, stopped cold, and started up again. They rolled off into the dark.