Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“The description’s not even close.” Hair: Black. Eyes: Hazel.

“I’ll fix it.” He rubbed his eyes. She put her arm around him and kissed his cheek. He turned his face toward her so that their mouths met.

“You taste like honey.”

“Try me.”

Standing up, he started to take his clothes off. She lay back on her elbow. She liked seeing him naked. An Chu looked in the door and shut it. In the gloom the light on the wall cast shadows over the floor like hiding places.

“I wish I had something left to surprise you with,” he said. He peeled off his shirt and lay down beside her, and she put her arms around him.

The cold made her shiver. She shifted from one foot to the other, her hands jammed in the pockets of An Chu’s overcoat. Above the fur collar of the coat just ahead of her was a head of hair as gray as Bunker’s, molded into sleek curls. She had been standing in line for three hours and she was still only halfway to the door. The walk was carpeted in hourlies.

The headlines jumped at her:

She rocked back and forth on her heels. Across the plaza was the government building, where she had been jailed. The white trim around the windows was freshly painted. The scaffolding before it carried a brotherhood poster, three stories high: a white hand clasping a brown hand. She wondered what they had done with Sril’s body. Thrown it on the garbage heap. Every time she came here she saw Martians she knew going in and out of the building. Once General Hanse passed within fifty yards of her. She hid behind her hourly.

LIGHT SKIRMISH IN THE ASTEROIDS

Mars Combined Forces has destroyed two Styth cruisers in a three-hour battle near Vesta.

The people around her chafed their cheeks with their hands and blew out plumes of white air. “What’s holding things up?”

“You know I had to wait five hours this week to have my hair done?”

Paula leaned against the wall behind her. The line moved sluggishly forward into the mouth of the building. Probably the dispensa clerks were checking each ticket through a scanner. That had baffled Bunker at first, until he discovered that the Martians used the same metallic ink to print hourlies. They had a connection with the hourly men. A file of soldiers marched by in their dark winter uniforms. Their white gloves swung mechanically in time.

“Halt!”

She stiffened. The soldiers had stopped ahead of her, along the line. The ringing voice of their commander was shouting something. She leaned out to see. The soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder facing the line of civilians. Their commander and another man stood between the two groups. The other man held up a piece of blue and white cloth.

“This is the flag of the Martian Republic. Now it’s also the flag of the Earth. It represents all of us—our solidarity against enemies, our faith in ourselves and the future. To salute—” The officer wheeled smartly. His right arm snapped up, palm flat, toward the flag.

“You will now salute the flag.”

Paula drew back against the wall. Her heart pounded. She looked back along the line. Above the fur collar, the silver-haired head turned. “Now, what’s this all about?”

The soldiers and the man with the blue cloth were moving slowly down the line, stopping to let each person salute. Paula gripped her hands together.

“Salute the flag!”

“Why?” a girl’s voice asked.

“She’s an anarchist. Take her in custody.”

Paula burst out of the line, running away from the soldiers down the string of waiting people. Someone shouted. She ran close to the line; they would not shoot into the crowd. A hand snatched for her and she eluded it. A man raced past her, fleeing. Her foot slipped on a loose hourly and she fell. A bullet whispered past her ear. People screamed. She leaped up, dodging between two buildings. The little metal whisper hummed by her again. She ran around the corner of a building. Something hit her like a hammer and knocked her flying. She rolled over and over, leaped up, and ran on. People shouted, somewhere behind her. Her hip began to hurt. Through the screams behind her she heard the clatter of gunfire. She limped away into the wasteland, panting.

Some while later their building was raided. She and Bunker, Willie and An Chu sat for hours in the tunnel. It was freezing cold. She laid her cheek against Bunker’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Once they heard Jennie Morrison screaming. Finally, just before dawn, they crept down into the secret room again.

Jennie was gone. The apartment was wrecked. The desk had been smashed and the cupboards and counter pulled off the kitchen wall. The wall between this and the next apartment had been broken out. The man who lived there was gone too.

An Chu leaned on Willie’s shoulder and cried. Paula took her jacket off. The healing bullet wound ached in her backside. She and Bunker went out to the hall.

All up and down the hall the doors to the apartments were broken inward. She went along the hall, looking into the rooms. In some of them even the mat flooring had been ripped up and the floors cracked open. No one was there. Paula wiped her hands on her sleeves. So they had done it, rounded everybody up and taken them away. Bunker went ahead of her toward the stairs. She turned back to Jennie’s room.

Willie paced up and down the room, his arms swinging. “This proves it. We have to get out of here.”

“Where?” Paula said. Bunker returned, and her shoulders sank an inch with relief.

“The people hidden under the floor in 73 are still here,” he said. “And the two women who live in the broom closet. I guess the police just didn’t bother to look in there.”

Willie walked past them, his strides quick as a soldier’s. “I’ll kill them. I’ll smash hell out of them, if I can just get my hands on them.” He brandished his fists.

An Chu came in from the secret room with a cup of water. “What are we going to do about Jennie?”

“We have to get out of here,” Willie said.

“We can’t leave,” Bunker said to Willie. “Not right away. They’ll be watching to see if anybody bolts.” He slid under the sink to open the secret door.

Paula and An Chu followed Bunker into the narrow room. The smell of mildew grew strong just inside the door. An Chu dropped down onto the cot she and Willie shared, her face tipped up to Paula’s.

“We have to find out where they’ve taken Jennie.”

At the end of the room, Bunker turned around. “No. There’s nothing we can do for Jennie now.”

“When we find her we can decide what to do,” Paula said. Her left buttock throbbed deep in the wound. Willie Luhan was stalking down the room, his fists still clenched tight.

“You know, I think you’re a coward,” he said to Bunker.

“I think you’re an idiot,” Bunker said. He went head-first out of the room into the ruined building.

An Chu straightened, her hand on Paula’s arm. “They took dozens of people. It won’t be that hard to find them.”

“I’ll help you,” Willie said. “I know where I can get a gun.”

Paula’s hand pressed against her bad hip. She went to the bucket for a drink of water. It was nearly morning. They would have to wait until night to look for Jennie. The pain in her hip nagged her. She was going nowhere with Willie and his gun. Of all the people she knew, the only one she needed was Bunker. He would not help her, and he was right. She hunched her shoulders.

At a lope she crossed the close-cropped lawn to the next building, An Chu behind her, and sat down in the lee of the wall. An Chu raced up beside her. Paula wiped her hand over her face.