Floating Worlds

by Cecelia Anastasia Holland

  She laughed. Unbuckling his belt, she tugged on his shirt. “Take this off.”

  “What was your mother like?”

  “Flat-chested.” She watched him strip himself. His body was magnificent. “My mother is an architect. She has all the best qualities of an I-beam.” She propped herself up on one elbow.

  “What about your father?”

  “He was crazy. He collected skulls. And slept in his clothes. I think he was flat-chested too, but I never saw him with his clothes off.”

  They kissed again, lying in the sand, their arms around each other. Behind them, down the golf course, there was a long shrill whistle.

  He rolled away from her, sitting up, and said an obscenity in his own language. She asked, “What was that?”

  “Marus. One of my crew.” He reached for his shirt. “Cover yourself up.” She dressed. Putting two fingers into his mouth he whistled so loud she winced at the pain to her ears. A man she did not know jogged up to them.

  “Akellar, there’s a fight in the public room.”

  “Shit.” He turned to her. “Stay here.” He ran off, Marus on his heels, down the long dark fairway.

  Paula stood up. The two men disappeared in the trees. She went after them at a trot. The light gravity filled her with energy. She stretched her legs, running as fast as she could, and ran herself off-balance and fell rolling. When she sat up, her head seemed to turn around in circles. Maybe that was why the Styths moved so slowly. She walked down through the gardens.

  At the end of a row of hedges was the entrance to the Ninus, the club’s blue-sash restaurant. She pushed the door open and went in. The small lobby was massed with people, men in black velvet tunics and women in long white gloves. They were staring down a short flight of steps into the restaurant. She could not see what they were looking at. She went into the narrow lobby. The cushioned red flooring yielded under her feet. Behind the crowd, next to a double door, was a placard on an easel:

  Readings from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Ravishavanji’s The War Bride

  She went between two fancy-dressed men to look where the crowd was looking.

  “So help me, I’ll shoot.”

  The people around her murmured in excitement. They were crowded around the head of the stairs. A woman blocked Paula’s way, bare white shoulders above a low white dress. She went by to the carpeted steps.

  Three steps led down to the restaurant. The tables near the bar had been shoved up against the wall, the white linen rucked up, and the crystal knocked over. On the far side of the room, a young man, a Martian, was standing on a chair, a gun in his hand.

  “Don’t come near me—”

  The gun was aimed at the four Styths ranged along the bar to Paula’s left. The Akellar was among them. In his own language, he said, “Somebody has to get behind him and distract him. Sril—”

  “Any of you come near me,” the man with the gun cried, “I’ll kill you.” He was very young, no more than twenty, and his face glistened with sweat.

  The crowd shifted around Paula. More people were coming down into the lobby to watch. Crowded, she went down the two steps to the level of the restaurant. Plaintive, a woman behind her said, “I can’t see.”

  The Styths were moving. Sril went across the restaurant, through the scattered tables, and the others spread out between him and the Akellar like a cordon. The young man on the chair followed them with his gun, pointing it now at one and now at another. He was too frightened to shoot.

  “This I have to see,” a man in the crowd murmured. “They’ll hash the poor kid.” Paula licked her lips. She went down the steps into a miasma of coppery Styth temper. The big Styth with the scar on his cheek stood in front of her, his back to her. She passed him, and he jumped.

  “Akellar.”

  The man with the gun had seen her. He jerked around. His foot slipped on the chair seat and he caught at the back to hold himself still. The gun was shaking, aimed at her. She walked slowly toward him, her eyes fixed on his face. The art was to keep moving. If she stopped to talk it would be hard to start toward him again. “Paula,” the Akellar said, and she waved at him to be quiet.

  “Stop right there,” the young man cried.

  “I’m from the Committee,” she said. She was only five feet from him. His mouth opened, red and wet, and his eyes shifted past her toward his audience. In the silence she heard someone behind her smother a cough.

  “Don’t come any closer—”

  “You’ll be a real hero, won’t you, if you shoot an unarmed woman?”

  He shifted the gun to one side, to aim past her at the Styths, and she moved to stay in front of it. She reached out her hand for it, her eyes on his face. “Give me the gun,” she said, almost whispering, so that no one else could hear her. “You are interfering in a Committee negotiation, and you’re making me angry.” She took hold of the gun behind the wide bell-shaped muzzle. He pulled back, and she let go.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Oh, yes, you are. If you stay here, the police will be here, with gas and spray and probably dogs.”

  She took hold of the weapon again. He was shaking so hard she was afraid the gun would go off by accident. He swallowed, his gaze fixed on hers, and let go of the gun.

  With it in her hand, she sighed, relaxing, and felt the quiver in her knees. She looked around them. In the back of the dark restaurant, past Sril, a red sign shone marking the exit. She said, “Come on,” and took him by the arm and led him on a crooked course through the tables.

  “Where do you live?” she said. They passed tables left in the middle of the meal and reached the door under the red light.

  “Barsoom. I only came for the—” His face was deeply lined, like a wax mask. “You’re really from the Committee?”

  “I’ll send you a bill.” She pulled open the door and let him go out ahead of her. The crowd was streaming back into the restaurant. The Akellar watched her over their heads. She went after the young man along the concrete walk toward the front of the hotel. His gun was in her hand. She held it carefully, afraid of setting it off. They went up a flight of steps. At the top was the curved parking apron at the main entrance.

  “There. I’ll get you a cab.”

  They went along the walk past the lobby. He said, “I could have taken them.”

  “Are you crazy? They have inch-long claws. A couple of them weigh over three hundred pounds.”

  “That’s why I brought the gun.” He reached for it in her hand. “Let me have it back.”

  “No.” She went ahead of him toward the line of cabs parked along the edge of the apron. He followed her, talking.

  “I have to have it. It’s my father’s. He’ll kill me if he finds out I took it.”

  She stopped beside the cab at the head of the line, and the driver came around to open the door. She said to the boy, “Get in there and I’ll give it to you. Go on. And don’t come back, or you’ll get hurt.”

  “I can—”

  “Get in there.”

  He climbed into the back seat of the cab. She shut the door on him and gave the gun to the driver. “He lives in Barsoom. Make his father pay you.”

  The driver held the gun by the barrel. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Give it to his father.” She went into the lobby.

  In the dark by the stairs, in the warm dry air, she stood wondering what to do. He had come just to fight a Styth. Bringing a gun he was afraid to shoot. She climbed the stairs. If she were the Akellar she would break off the talks for violations of the safe-conduct, fly away in a righteous huff, and demand all kinds of apologies and sureties before she came back. The door was still jammed halfway open. She went into the dark room. Something moved behind her. Before she could turn, a blow struck her in the head, and she fell.

  She woke in the dark, her head ringing, and sat up. After a moment she dragged herself up to her feet. She could have been lying there for hours. Her head boomed like a drum, and sh
e sat down heavily on the arm of the couch and tried to pull her mind together.

  “Go get yourself a drink,” the Akellar said, behind her.

  She jerked around. He was sitting on the end of the couch; she could just make out his shape.

  “Did you hit me?”

  “No. You were out when I came.”

  It had been Tanuojin, then. She went to the bar and felt out a glass and ice and the bottle of whiskey, without turning on the light. While she was pouring the whiskey, he settled himself on the stool opposite her.

  “Whoever it was gave you grace,” he said. “Because I had a chance to cool down. If you’d been awake when I got here, I’d have killed you.”

  “Me. Why?”

  “Because you made me look bad.”

  She gulped down a steadying jolt of the whiskey. Her head pounded, spinning, in an alcoholic rush. She put the glass down. “Well, maybe you are.”

  He moved, and she tried to elude him, but he was too fast. His grip fastened in her hair. She whined through her teeth. He pressed her face down toward the counter of the bar. She shut her eyes. With her nose against the counter, he said, “You talk too much. You think you’re so damned smart, but you don’t know about me.” With a wrench that burned her whole scalp, he let her go.

  She sagged against the bar, tears streaming down her face; her head was stitched with pain. She wiped her eyes. “I learn fast.”

  “Here.” He pushed her glass toward her.

  “That makes you feel better?”

  “Shall I do it again?”

  “No. No.” She drank from the glass; it nearly fell out of her fingers. Her eyes were still watering. Her elbows on the bar, she wiped her hands over her face.

  He went to the videone and called his suite. She turned the ceiling lights on half-bright. Sitting down on the couch, she stared at the red fish schooling across the wall.

  He said, “I want to go to the Earth.”

  “Maybe you’d better leave me alone for a while.”

  “I’ll decide what I do.” He sat down on the other end of the couch and put his feet up on the magazine table. “I’ve been thinking about this contract you want for me. The only way you could guarantee that much money is if you’re talking about trading in crystal. Is that what you mean?”

  “Get out.”

  “Come on. You’re such a tough little bitch, are you sulking about getting your hair pulled?”

  The fish performed a mathematical turn. She refused to look at the Styth. “All right. Yes, crystal.”

  “You don’t understand what you’re getting me into. There’s an imperial law in Styth against selling crystal off the Planet. I can’t stand against the whole rest of the rAkellaron.”

  “We can arrange contracts for them too. They can all get rich.” She put her head back against the couch and shut her eyes.

  He grunted. “I don’t know if I want that. But it makes it easier. Except that everybody’s going to ask why we should supply you with crystal so you can fill the Council Fleet with ships that are as good as ours.”

  “The Council Fleet has about eight ships. The people you are fighting is the Martian Army.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  Sril appeared in the doorway, made a salute to his master, and knelt down to look at the foot of the door. He opened a little roll of tools across the floor. The Akellar said, in his own language, “Where is Tanuojin?”

  “Back in the trap.”

  The Akellar turned back toward Paula. “I can’t promise anything. If you take me to the Earth, I’ll try to arrange this contract.” He put his feet on the floor and rose. “That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “Whatever you say, Akellar.”

  “You come down to my place at seven and have dinner with me and we’ll talk about the fine points. There’s somebody you have to meet.” He stepped wide past Sril and out the door.

  Paula was holding her breath. She let it out in a little sigh. Sril stood up, lifted the door, and set it down carefully, watching the foot. With one hand he pushed it in and out of the wall. He stooped to put his tools back into the roll.

  “Who do I have to meet?” she asked.

  He made a vague gesture. “I no—I know not.” When he struggled with the Common Speech his voice was pitched higher than when he spoke his own tongue. He said, “That you did, in the—the feed place—you are brave, Mendoz’.”

  “Your boss didn’t think so.”

  “He thinked so,” Sril said. “Good leave.” He went.

  It was Tanuojin she was supposed to meet. When she went into the Akellar’s bedroom his length was arranged across an oversized inflated chair, his back to the window, and his legs reaching halfway across the room. The Akellar gestured at him.

  “That’s my lyo.”

  “Hello,” she said, and got no answer. The room was freezing cold. She was glad she had worn her jacket. The other Styth’s yellow eyes stared at her, unfriendly. The balloon chair looked too small for him. The Akellar took her by the arm and maneuvered her to another chair.

  She sat down. “I just spent half an hour on the videone with my boss. When do you want to go to the Earth?”

  The two men exchanged a quick look, and the Akellar smiled. “We have a rendezvous to make first. Where are you taking us?”

  Ketac and another young man brought in a hotel cart full of bottles and glasses. She said, “Anywhere you want. New York is as much of a capital as we have.”

  Tanuojin said, “What about the ship?” He wore the same long gray shirt, the boots and leggings and slot-buckled belt as the Akellar. He had no order medal. One of the young men took him a glass of ice-water.

  Paula said, “You’ll have to leave the ship parked in orbit around Luna. That’s going to be a kind of a problem. The government of Luna—”

  The Akellar’s head flew up. “I thought you didn’t have governments.”

  “Not on the Earth. Luna is ruled by a military clique. They’re paranoid about their security.”

  The two men looked at each other once again. Ketac brought her a glass full of sparkling cider. He avoided her eyes. Although she was tempted to make some remark to him about their previous meeting, she did not want to embarrass him in front of his father. The cider was cold and delicious and she drank half of it before she put it down.

  “What about when we’re in your Planet?” the Akellar said. “What about security there? It must be a pretty damn dangerous place, all you people doing whatever comes into your heads all the time.”

  She crossed her legs at the ankles and folded her hands on her stomach. “You’ll be safe as babies, believe me.”

  “How can you promise that? You’ve seen what’s happened here. Like that boy in the restaurant.”

  “He was a Martian.” Now the two young men were bringing in a cart of steaming food. She said, “The Martians admire force, so do you, naturally you’d get in trouble.”

  “But you don’t use force,” Tanuojin said.

  “No. We’re very peaceful people.”

  Behind the drooping strings of his mustaches his mouth curled into a sneer. “I don’t believe you.”

  “If you knew anything about it, you wouldn’t have to rely on faith, would you?”

  That made him angry; his off-color eyes glittered. The Akellar was watching him, amused. Ketac brought his father a dish, and he picked through it, eating neatly with his claws. Tanuojin said, “If you won’t use force, you can’t defend yourselves. You’d be slaves. And you would deserve it.”

  “We don’t use force, we don’t submit to it, either. It isn’t easy, living on the Earth. Most people can’t do it.” Now Ketac was serving Tanuojin, or trying to serve him, but the tall man ignored the dish offered to him.

  He said to her, “If it’s true, then it’s vile.”

  “No,” she said. “If it’s true, then you’re wrong, and that’s vile. To you.”

  “Are you trying to offend me?”

  “I’m just
talking.” Ketac brought her the dish. She shook her head at him. She did not want to look stupid trying to eat like a Styth. Tanuojin’s face was rigid with bad temper. Abruptly he got up and walked out of the room.

  The Akellar sent the boys away with a gesture. Fishing a spoon out of the cart, he brought her a dish of lamb and sat on the floor beside her chair with another dish. He said, “I knew that would happen. He hates women.”

  “I’m glad it’s not personal.”

  He laughed. They ate in silence; when she had done, he took her bowl, still half-full, and finished it, and went back to the cart for more. She watched him eat that, amazed at his appetite.

  “He isn’t married? Your lyo.”

  “No. His wife is dead. Actually I think he hates everybody, except me. But he’s brilliant, he’s read all kinds of books.” He chuckled under his breath. “And he hates to be wrong.”

  She watched the big man chew his way through another bowl of the lamb. He had enjoyed setting her against Tanuojin. Finally he put the bowl down and belched and patted his stomach.

  “Give me one hundred fifty watches between now and when we come to the Earth.”

  She divided in her head. “All right. That’s about six weeks, our time.”

  “I promise I won’t shoot anybody in the meanwhile.” He went over to the serving cart for a towel to wash his hands. “Sleep with me,” he said.

  “I have to work,” she said to the cart. She followed him and drank the last of the cider from the bottle.

  “Do it next watch.”

  “I don’t have the time.”

  He pushed her away. “Go.”

  Her door was open. Heavy synthetic music blared through into the hall. She stopped in the doorway. Sril was cross-legged on the floor, inhaling smoke through a tube from a small bowl on the floor in front of him. Ketac sat on the couch. The air was sweet with opium. Ketac looked asleep; his cheeks fluttered. She took her clothes off in the bathroom and went into the shower.

  The Styths’ taste in music was distinct and narrow. When the synthesizer gave way to something more complex, they hunted through the radio and found some hard rock. The music reached her clearly even in the washroom. While she was drying off, the music stopped and a shocked Martian voice said, “What’s going on in here?”