Floating Worlds

by Cecelia Anastasia Holland

  He stopped to look at everything; it was easy to keep up with him. The floor of the wood gave soft under her feet. White birch grew in clumps among the dark trunks of bigger trees. They circled the broken foundation of a long ruined house. Part of an old fireplace still stood at one end. Climbing a wall of piled stones, they started across another meadow.

  A dog raced toward them through the grass. Paula froze. She could hear its growls. It charged past her toward the Styth and burst into a volley of barks. It was huge, some kind of mastiff. A chain collar glittered in the rolls of its neck.

  “What’s that?” the Akellar said. The dog circled him, barking, and Paula went in between it and the man.

  “Are you protecting me?” He sounded amused. The dog’s lips snarled back from its teeth. Paula flinched. The animal charged, not at her, at the Styth.

  He pushed her out of the way. She fell onto one knee. The dog sprang at him and he swiped at it, one-handed. In mid-air the snarl broke into a ki-yi-yi-yi, and the dog bounced into the grass. It scrambled onto three legs, one forefoot curled up near its body. Down its fawn side welled four long stripes of blood.

  Paula got up, cold, and shaking all over. The dog hobbled in a circle around the big man. Its throaty snarling raised the hair on her neck. She had never seen a dog act like this before. The Styth’s teeth showed white, like a smile. Under his breath, he said, “Want some more, little thing?” He moved back, stooping, and the dog lunged after him. The man wheeled around with an animal’s fluent grace and slashed out. The dog gave a single cry. When it hit the ground it lay still. Paula took a step toward it. Its forepaws were twitching, trying to run. Blood ran from its belly. Its eyes were like blue glass in the domelight.

  “Are you all right?” the Akellar said, amiably.

  “Oh. I’m fine,” she said. “Just lovely.” She started on toward the trees, her legs unsteady.

  “Do you have a rag—something I can wipe my hand on?”

  There was a scarf wadded up in the pocket of her jacket. Under the trees, she stood watching him clean the blood off his fingers and claws. He said, “It jumped on me. I have a right to protect myself.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  They went on, now going downhill, skirting thickets of thorny vines and steep rocks. An old dirt road cut over the flank of the hill. Dry puddles of cow dung spotted it. They followed the road down to the creek, curving off between two pastures, lined with willow. Frogs and night insects made a racket its whole length. Paula led him down the bank a hundred feet from the road and sat down and took her shoes off.

  “You said he’ll have claws. Our son.” He dropped on his stomach and put his face down to the water to drink.

  “That’s what the doctor says.”

  “He’ll go out of his head here when they start to grow in.”

  She stuck her feet into the icy water. In the open pasture beyond the stream, six or eight black and white cows lay sleeping, all facing the same way. “When he gets old enough maybe I can send him to visit you.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  He sat on the bank digging stones out of the ground. “Because somebody from this world would have the shit torn out of him in Styth.”

  “Oh, really? It’s that bad.”

  “No. That’s just the way we live.” He piled white river stones before him on the flattened grass.

  “An anarchist can live anywhere.”

  “Not in Styth.”

  Almost in front of her a frog plopped into the water. A moment later its eyes bumped above the surface. “You don’t expect much of a future for this baby, do you? He’ll go crazy here and be killed there.”

  “That’s right.”

  She frowned across the river at the cows. His certainty sawed on her temper. Around her the capes of willow branches rustled in the light breeze.

  “About this treaty.”

  “Un-hunh,” he said.

  “We need a truce.”

  “A truce!” His head flew up. “You mean I have to stop fighting?”

  “That’s the accepted definition.”

  “No. Impossible. That’s my only money. I have to support my crew. I have fourteen children, and the way my wives expect to live—and Ybix costs me more than a wife.” He took one of his stones and threw it down the creek. It splashed into the water a hundred feet on, and several other splashes echoed it: frogs.

  “You’ll have all that money from the trade agreements, remember?”

  “I’m going to use that for something else.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “That’s none of your concern. No truce. Get me the rest of it without a truce.”

  “I can’t. No truce, no money.”

  He bounded onto his feet. “I should have known there was a hook in it somewhere.” He walked off into the pasture behind her. She waggled her feet in the water. He came back and squatted beside her. “No truce.”

  “What about just with the Council?”

  “The Council only has a couple of ships.”

  “I know.”

  “Then it’s a sham. Forget it. I don’t traffic in lies.”

  “No truce, no money.”

  He took another white stone from the pile and threw it with a scythe motion of his arm. This splash sounded much farther away than the first. She reached for his hand. Down the backs of his fingers the tendons ran like wire. She remembered the dog; she had not realized how strong his hands were. She remembered how he had tricked the dog into attacking him. He closed his hand over hers and held her.

  “All right,” he said. “With the Council, for a definite length of time. Not too long.”

  She let her breath out. “Ten years, I thought.” Jefferson would settle for seven.

  “Ten years. But that had better be everything—the trade agreements, the truce. Nothing more.”

  “One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “I want to go with you. Back to Uranus. To Matuko.”

  He released her hand. Bending over his collection of stones, he fingered one after another, choosy. “Why? To be with me?”

  Her feet were dry. She put her shoes on again. He said, “Not for me. You aren’t very flattering, you know.”

  “Do you want me to lie?”

  “You could rub me up a little, you know, I mean, cater to me a little.” He cocked his arm back and fired a stone across the stream. On the grass opposite them a black and white cow jerked up her head out of a drowse, turned suspiciously toward her flank, heaved herself first to her hindfeet and then to all fours and trotted away. The Akellar swore.

  “I thought that was a rock. What is it?”

  “A cow. They make the milk.”

  They walked back up the stream to the road. The Akellar said, “It’s a different kind of life, in Styth. It won’t be easy, even with me there to take care of you.”

  She ducked her head and shoulders through two rails of the fence along the road. “I don’t want to do things that are easy. I want something hard.”

  “It’ll be that.”

  Down in the pasture, the cows were moving in their leisurely pace up toward the gate. The big man vaulted the fence and took her hand.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll take you. Do you want me to marry you?”

  “No.”

  “That way the baby would be legitimate.”

  “No.”

  The road led steadily upward. Dawn was coming. The wood looked strange, clogged with shadow, while the road grew lighter. They crossed a cattle guard and went down the brick path toward the Committee House.

  “You’ll have to insist on it,” she said. “On me going. Or Jefferson and Bunker will get suspicious. Maybe even null the treaty.”

  “You don’t trust them.”

  “Well, I trust them.” She scratched her nose. “They don’t exactly trust me.” She glanced at the Akellar, curious. She had expected him to balk at taking her. She should call him by his name now,
stop thinking of him by his title, and as an instrument. In the yard, he let go of her hand and veered over toward the air cars. She went inside.

  All the spice cake was gone; the sweet potato pie was gone. She poured a glass of milk. The Akellar did not come in. She opened the back door. He was sitting on the steps, his legs out before him. She said, “Come inside, it’s about to rain.”

  “Rain?”

  “Every morning after the sun comes up it rains here. It has something to do with the shape of the dome. Look.” She pointed. The oncoming rain was shaking the trees on the far side of the meadow. The downpour swept in across the grass. He went out to meet it. He held his face up to the rain and opened his mouth. The rain streamed over him. It drummed on the air cars and beat on the roof and went on busily off across the dome. The Akellar came up to her, his mustaches plastered to his jaw and neck, laughing, his arms spread.

  “What was that? Can I come in like this?” She put her hand on the nape of his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him.

  “You have fourteen children?”

  “Fourteen and a half,” he said. He patted her stomach. A crosswind struck the car and she braced herself while he pulled the car up and turned it back on course. They were crossing a rare clear pocket. Below them the slag heaps spread out gray as ash, gouged with rivers that branched and coiled toward the sea. In the north she could make out the worn red hills. She tried to imagine having fourteen children.

  “Is Ketac the eldest?”

  “No. My oldest is Dakkar, my prima son. Then there’s a girl, she’s married, you won’t meet her. Then Ketac.”

  “You must have married young.” She gripped the seat in both hands as a draft took them straight up and dropped them down again. He flew at the limit of the car’s speed, and very high. If they crashed—

  “I was a neophyte. Ketac’s age. My father came back from space and found me in jail in Vribulo. He went on a panic program. Called ‘straightening out Saba’s life.’ In about thirty watches he had me clubbed, commissioned into the fleet, and married to Boltiko. Do you know what a watch is?”

  “About ten hours on the Earth. Why were you in jail?”

  “I don’t remember. I was put up a lot when I was a neophyte. Probably for buying morphion.”

  The car swooped into a long descending turn. Ahead a bank of yellow cloud lay along the river that divided New York from the slag. She could not see the dome. The sweeping curve knotted her stomach.

  “For buying morphion. How much did you load?”

  “Plenty. I was addicted most of the time I was a neophyte.”

  “You couldn’t have done that much or you’d have died.”

  “I nearly did.”

  She caught herself pulling up on the arm of the seat. He was lowering to circle the dome. They flew into the fog. She could barely see the great smooth shape of the covered city off to their left. He pulled out the sensor panel from under the dash; the car made a red dot crossing it.

  “I was in jail once,” she said. “For smuggling. On Mars.”

  “You really are a low-life, aren’t you?”

  On the black sensor plate, ruby-red lines formed a schema of the dome in intersecting parabolas. Carefully she let go of the handgrip. “Are you reneging?”

  “No. I have plans for you.” He pushed the steering grips forward, and the car sank down in an even descent. “I’m going to civilize you.”

  She put her head back, offended. He said, “Do you want to renege?”

  “Not after that remark.”

  “Good.”

  Paula jumped gratefully to the solid ground of the East Lock parking lot. “Oh,” she said. “I never thought I’d make it alive.” She crouched and patted the concrete with her palms.

  The parking lot was surrounded by woods. They walked side by side down the slope. It was mid-afternoon. From high on the hillside she could see the lake but as they walked down the trees swallowed it.

  “I hold eight free-space speed records, and you don’t trust me to drive that slug.”

  “It’s me I don’t trust. I don’t trust myself to bounce when we hit the ground.” She circled a thicket. The soft earth gave under her feet. She stopped and took off her shoes and stuck them in the crotch of a tree to pick up on the way back.

  “What’s that?”

  She went down the steep hillside so she could see what he was pointing at: a round gatehouse. “That’s the entrance to a building.” The sun streamed over the meadow. She walked toward its green warmth.

  “Where’s the building?”

  “Under the ground.” She held her arms and face up to the sun. He stayed back under the trees, out of the direct light. At the far end of the meadow, a dozen people sat in a circle. Maybe it was a school. They went on toward the lake.

  “What’s that?”

  She was going through her pockets for a dime to buy an hourly. “That’s a swan.” The narrow mud beach of the lake was striped with the bodies of sunbathers. The swan was feeding in the eelgrass in the shallows. A girl in a yellow swimsuit walked by, and the Akellar watched her, his head turning to follow her course.

  They walked up under the trees. The ground smelled moist. The crozier heads of ferns were poking up through the rotting leaves in the deep shade. She read the hourly’s headlines.

  “Hunh.”

  “What?”

  “Cam Savenia was elected to the Council seat for Barsoom. By fifty thousand votes.”

  He took the paper from her. They went north, passing through another sunny meadow. “Is it fair?” he said. “An election?”

  Paula shrugged. “Depending on the definition of fair. The trick is to be nominated. Do you have hourlies in Styth?”

  “We live much closer together than you do.” He bent and picked up a fragment of blue eggshell. Paula took the hourly from him. “Anybody who wants to know anything can just come ask me.”

  “You know that Cam’s a member of the Sunlight League?”

  He crushed the eggshell in his fingers and sniffed the residue. “Yes, we got that idea.” They were cutting across the campus. A deer grazed beside the turret of the Biochemistry Building. At their approach it bolted away.

  “A cow?” he said, uncertainly.

  “A deer.”

  He took her hand. She was getting used to that; she guessed the touch gave him some kind of comfort. The Styths touched each other constantly. The square mouth of the underground shopping mall opened in the hillside before them. They went down the steps.

  Bicycles lined either side, and the walls were covered with graffiti. They passed a boy and a girl drawing in red and blue swirls over a clear space of tile. Three doors on past Barrian’s, the music store, they came to The Circle, a shop that recycled toys, among other things. It was brightly lit. The Styth winced and put his hand up over his eyes. She took him by the arm. Plants and banners and china bells hung down from the ceiling. The shelves were made of planks and bricks. In the back, under a big sign, they found three boxes of toys.

  “Here.”

  He squatted down on his heels and reached into the nearest box. She watched him sort through the tops and dolls and wooden models, putting what he wanted on the floor by his feet.

  “Ah.” He untangled a pull toy from the heap and held it up. “A camel.”

  She laughed. “Right.”

  He put it on the floor and rolled it back and forth on its wheels. The head bobbed up and down. “Are there live ones? How big are they?”

  “Tremendous.”

  “Bigger than cows?”

  “I think so.” She sat cross-legged on the floor. He was taking other model animals out of the box, inspecting each one.

  “What’s this?”

  “A mouse.”

  “Mouse. We have something—mus. Little things. Brown.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Mouse.”

  “Aha.” He put the mouse back into the box, uninterested.

  He bought a dozen little toys; he also bo
ught a music box and an hourglass. The shop clerk took his credit chit, put everything into a box, and tied it fast with string. She wondered if he traded in crystal. Before long, everyone would, because of her.

  “I guess I’ll have to carry this myself,” Saba said. He picked up the box in his arms. They went through the jungle of hanging plants and banners to the door.

  Most of the shops in the mall were dark, closed for the night. In the walkway they passed a man wrapped in hourlies, asleep against the wall. Ahead were the bright windows of the Optima, the Martian store. Behind the glass the mannequins walked and turned in a glare of backlighting. The Akellar started.

  “Jesus. For a minute I thought they were real.”

  “This is a Martian store. Nothing is real.”

  He looked in the door. It hissed open, and he took a step toward the vast bright store inside. “How much time do we have?” Paula followed him into the store. He put the box down to turn a rack of book plugs. When he went off he left the box on the floor and she carried it. He led her up and down the aisles; he looked at everything, the stacks of shoes, a three-color animation selling vitamin lamps, boxes of buttons, wrapping paper and ribbon. She picked up a child’s striped shirt. It looked too small to fit anything human. Next to the counter of children’s clothes was a counter of bright little sweaters and boots for dogs. When she looked around, the Styth was gone.

  “Saba?”

  “Here.”

  She went into the next aisle. Three illusion helmets were sitting on a display shelf; he was reading the price tags. He said, “Everything here costs about twice as much as it’s worth. How do these things work?”

  The counter behind them was piled up with cut-rate illusions. She took one at random and stuck it into the slot on the back of a helmet. “These knobs adjust the size. Put it on your head.”

  He stuck his head into it, stood a moment clutching the plastic bubble, and yanked it off. He held the helmet out in front of him and tried to see the illusion without putting his head into it.

  “It won’t go on unless your head’s inside.”

  “It feels—” He looked around, taking a reconnaissance, and put the helmet back on. Paula set the box down on the counter. Illusion helmets always made her feel locked in a closet. He took it off again and studied it.