Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“It doesn’t mean much to An Chu any more.”

That was so. And what they had tried to do certainly meant nothing to Jennie Morrison. He smoothed the patch with his thumb.

“What’s on this tape? Where did you get it?”

“Antibiotic. While you were out playing cowboy with An Chu I broke into an apartment building. During a raid.”

“I’m thirsty,” she said.

“The water is where it always is.”

She went the length of the room, limping hard to show him how hurt she was, although her hip felt much stronger. The water was cold. She drank two cupfuls and went back. Willie slept like a child, the blanket snug over his neck. The dip-lamp flickered in the draft of her passing. An Chu’s blanket-coat was slung over the foot of the cot. Paula sat down with her back to the wall, beside Bunker, and folded her knees up to her chest.

The glossy mud of the lake was cracked and dry. Paula swiped at the stinging insects buzzing around her head. She was moving at a fast walk toward the ruins on the lake shore, three shells of houses half-buried in thorn bushes. There had been no rain in the dome since the coup. With the trees and animals gone and so many more people living here, the whole environment had changed. She climbed up a steep slope and went in among the walls of the ruins.

Here it was hot, even hotter than outside, and the bloodsippers and no-see-ems attacked her in clouds. She looked quickly over the snares she had set. A half-dead bird was tangled in the net trap; she killed it. Something bigger had sprung the other snares and eaten the baits and she reset them.

East of the lake the land flattened out. The grass here was full of snakes. She ran toward the north, holding the binoculars with one hand to keep them from banging her chest. The flats broke into a rising hillside. She walked up to the height, sat down on a tree stump, and focused the binoculars on the nearest of the Martian settlements, about a mile away.

The eighteen buildings of the complex were surrounded by a mesh fence over twenty feet high. The grass was jewel green. Dick, who went there all the time, said it was plastic turf. The glasses showed her children playing kickball, a woman in a sun-chair with a pad over her eyes, a dog sleeping in the shade. She looked in the windows of the building. The man on the third floor had almost finished his water color. She watched the Martians for nearly an hour. When dark fell she went back across the lake to her building.

Outside the tunnel hatch she pulled out most of the bird’s feathers, gutted it, and put the innards in her bait-jar. When she went down into the hidden room Bunker was there with three people she had never seen before. She put the bird on a spit.

“This is all of you?” Bunker said to his guests. “Just you three?”

“How many more do you want?” the strange woman said.

Paula took the bird out to Jennie Morrison’s empty flat, where she had dug out a fire pit, and lit the fire. Through the open door she could see the people in the hidden room. She pretended not to be watching. She had eaten nothing but meal for two days and had no interest in sharing the meat.

“Give me ten days to steal the car,” Bunker said. He stood. He wore no shirt and sweat glittered on his washboard chest. The other people rose.

“If there’s anything we can do,” the woman said. “Any way we can pay you for your help—”

“I’m not doing it for you, I’m just hurting Savenia.”

Paula went into the room to get a drink of water. It irritated her that he spent days helping strange people leave the dome. With a lucifer match she lit the dip-lamp in the wall.

“When you get outside,” Bunker said, “you’ll have to dodge the Styths.”

Her back to them, Paula muttered, “Tell them Paula sends her love.”

“What?”

Bunker escorted his clients out through the flat toward the stairs. Paula took her clothes off. The heat made her hair frizzy. Her skin was rough with insect bites. She washed with a towel and a pan of water.

“Have you seen Luhan?” Dick said. He came into the room and slid the door shut.

“Not in days.”

The water in the pot was murky. She threw it out and poured fresh water to wash her face with. Sitting on the cot, she combed her hair. “How many of these people do you think escape from the Martians and the Styths both?”

“Very few.”

“Maybe none.” She watched him walk the length of the room. His gray beard grew like wool along his jaws. Dropping down beside her on the cot, he scratched her back.

“We ought to move,” she said. She squirmed to bring other parts of her back under his fingernails. “I’m getting a bad feeling about staying here.”

“You’re superstitious.”

“We’ve been here too long. You bring half the population of the dome in, everybody knows where we are. You should put out a sign. I’m saving the world, apply here .”

“Savenia has a reward out for those people.”

“She probably has a reward out for us. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Saba and Tanuojin have money out for us.”

“All right.” He scratched her shoulders and down her arms. “We’ll move.”

“Good.”

“After I get these people out of the dome.”

Paula woke up with a jump. Something was crashing against the apartment door. Beside her Bunker thrust himself up on his arms.

“Raid.” He left the bed like a bird from the limb.

The door crashed open. A bright light stabbed into the room. Paula scrambled across the head end of the cot toward the darkness. Men rushed into the room, surrounding her. She lunged for the door, tripped, and fell on her face halfway across the threshold. A boot tramped on her hand. She was hauled up by the arms to her feet.

In the white glare of a hand torch, Bunker stood with his arms gripped behind him and a rifle across his neck. Three men held him. He looked frail. His muscles were strung like wires along his bones. The men around him wore no uniforms, although on their upper arms there were red armbands.

“You’re the forger?” Another man stepped between Paula and Bunker.

“Who are you?” Bunker said. His voice was hoarse.

“My name is Han Ra. I’m the chief of the Red Army. We fight the Martians. If you’re anarchists, you’ll join us.” He was taller than Bunker, and lean, with a wild yellow beard and hair like a mane hanging down over his back.

“I don’t join anybody,” Bunker said.

“You have an air car. Where is it?”

More men crowded into the room. The third man was Willie Luhan, with a rifle in his arms.

“Where is the air car?” Han Ra said. He whipped a long knife out of his belt and aimed it at Bunker’s chest. Dick took a breath; his chest swelled as if to meet the knife.

“Don’t hurt him,” Willie cried.

Han Ra laughed. He ran the tip of the knife down Bunker’s breastbone. “Where is the air car?”

Bunker said nothing. Paula was standing on tiptoe, her arms crooked painfully behind her. She glanced at Willie Luhan again, caught him looking at her, and gritted her teeth, and he brushed by the man in front of him and went to Han Ra.

“You told me you wouldn’t hurt them.”

“I want that car. What about her? Does she know?”

“Yes, but—”

Han Ra drew his arm back and drove the knife into Bunker’s belly. The slight man went down bonelessly to the floor. He made no sound. Han Ra swung to Paula, the knife bright in his hand.

“Where is it?”

Willie clutched his arm. “No. Don’t hurt her. I—I know where it is. I was lying before. Keeping it for myself.” His eyes glistened. The glare of the torch shone on his face and the wild bearded face of the Red chief. “Don’t hurt her, for god’s sake.”