Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

They were nearly all Martians, their hair clipped short in the military fashion. They sat or lay in the dirt, their heads down, and did not look at her as she passed. Their expressions frightened her and she stopped looking at their faces. The stench was making her sick to her stomach. Halfway along the row she passed two men shoveling the waste and filth into buckets. On one round white back there were deep scratch marks like ruts. She began to hurry.

The next row was of old men. She started on to the string beyond until she remembered that Bunker was gray-headed. She knew he was not old but a Styth might think so. She went along the line. Halfway along the row a scrawny old man lay curled on the ground. His flesh was white as cheese. His open eyes were glazed and unseeing. His hands were already stiff. On either side of him other old men sat, their heads turned away. She stepped across an iridescent stream of piss. The hem of her skirt was heavy and wet and scraped her bare feet. She went along the third string, still without finding Bunker. The fourth row was of adolescent boys and she skipped over it to the fifth.

Bunker was sitting on the ground halfway along the row. His eyes were closed. He seemed to be asleep. She squatted down beside him.

“Dick.”

His head rose, his eyes opening, and to her surprise he smiled at her. “I thought it was probably a waste of time to worry about you, junior. What happened?”

“Somebody recognized me,” she said. “Dick—” She held out her hands to him. He took her wrists and pressed his face against her palms. It was so like the Styth gesture that she drew back, and he let her go.

“What will they do now?” he said.

Her ears caught the drone of an air car. She looked around the sky for it, then stood up. The air car was hovering down above them. Ten feet over her head Tanuojin swung out the door and dropped to the ground beside her. He gave a humorless yelp of laughter.

“Richard Bunker.” He put his foot on Bunker’s shoulder and knocked him on his back.

“Let him go,” Paula said.

Tanuojin looked down at her from his towering height. “Why?”

“You said you wanted my help. Well, I’ll help you, if you let him go.”

He pulled his catfish whiskers straight. “It’s no use, Paula. There’s no place to let him go to. When I’m done here, we’ll blow up the dome, and we’ll blow up all the others as soon as we can get the people out.” He kicked Bunker again, and the anarchist got up onto his feet. “If you want him,” Tanuojin said, “take him. I’ll give him to you.”

Bunker’s neck was rubbed raw by the rope. He said to her, “Come with me. What kind of a life will you have with them?”

“I can manage,” she said. “Go.”

Tanuojin made a scornful sound in his chest. He pulled the rope off the anarchist’s neck, and Bunker started down the row of prisoners. After a dozen strides he broke into a run. Paula watched him until he was out of her sight. Tanuojin stood beside her like a tree. Slowly she went back toward the buildings in the distance.

She went with Tanuojin down to the third level of the cellar. In the vertical, he took her suddenly by the hand, and the unexpected cold touch startled her and she snatched her hand away from him. The vertical car boxed her up. She felt unable to breathe.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Don’t touch me,” she said.

The car settled to a stop, and the doors began to slide apart into the walls. He glanced at them and they shut again.

“Oh,” she said, “that must be useful.”

“Are you going to cooperate with me?”

She hunched up her shoulders. “I said I would.” She refused to look at him.

He opened the doors with another look and they went into a narrow gray corridor. The concrete floor was icy to her feet. A guard let them in a metal door to a wide room. The only lights were on an I-beam suspended from the center of the ceiling. The floor under her feet shone with wax. It was painted with red circles and alleys: a games floor, a gymnasium. The walls were lined with Martians. Tanuojin’s fingers closed on her wrist.

“Bring a light,” he said to the guard. He held her arm doubled in his grip. Against her will she felt the cool pleasure of his touch. With the guard carrying a light before them, Tanuojin led her along the rank of Martian prisoners against the wall.

“Who do you want?” she said to Tanuojin.

“Just look at them and let me do the thinking.”

She went on along the row of prisoners, staring into their faces. Some of them she had seen before, at Cam’s and Hanse’s meetings. At the end of the first row was Captain Rodgers, his uniform crisp, his buttons shined, his feet exactly eighteen inches apart.

Their eyes met; she remembered the things he had done to her and her cheeks went hot. His wet lips parted. Before he could speak Tanuojin let go of her and grabbed the Martian by the front of his uniform. Rodgers squealed. Tanuojin threw him flat back against the wall and his head hit the concrete with a thud. He sank down, limp, against the base of the wall. Paula went away across the gymnasium.

Tanuojin came after her. His hand gripped her again. She said, “You’re no different than he is.”

“You made me do that.” He stooped to talk into her ear. “You did that.”

“You have an excuse for everything, don’t you? Don’t talk to me. It makes me sick to talk to you.”

“Saba’s right. You’re hysterical.” He pushed her toward the next row of prisoners. “Who is that?”

Against the wall stood a line of women, medics, in white uniforms. Paula scanned their faces. The third from the end was Cam Savenia.

Tanuojin said, under his breath, “I thought so.” He nodded to the guard. “That one. There’s a room up on the sixth floor all ready for her.” He let go of Paula.

The guard took hold of Cam’s arm. Her face went dark with rage. “You swine.” She shouted at Tanuojin, her eyes flashing. “You dirty black dog. You can do what you want, but you can’t break me. You can’t break me!” The guard hauled her away bodily. Tanuojin laughed, his hands on his belt. He kicked the heel of his boot against the floor.

“It’s the same room they kept you in,” he said. Paula left.

The prisoners were gone. The barren hillside stretched down toward the lake. A haze of dust stood in the air. Three or four buildings, ruins, rose among the forest of tree stumps. The dead pan of the lake was cracked and dry as the surface of a moon. She stood there trying to remember what it had been like before the war, green and alive, a free world.

The Styths were still claiming that they fought to save the Earth from the Sunlight League, but the last anarchists were mixed in with the Martians in the slavepens, and the Earth was wasted, and the war was not over. Hanse had escaped with most of the Martian Army. Saba was in a hurry to take his base of operations to Luna, which he could defend. Paula was going with them. She could stay here. She could die with planet. She wanted to go with them; she had some vague tangled thought that she could make them feel her rage. And she was afraid to die. Bunker was somewhere in the ruined dome, maybe dead already. Unwitnessed. Her son was calling her. She went back up the barren slope toward the government building.

“I don’t understand,” David said. “Why aren’t you living with me and Papa?”

Paula opened the rattan cabinet on the wall. Inside were two shelves of bottles. “What does Saba say?”

“He says you’re crazy.”

“I’m crazy.”

She took out a bottle of gin. Behind her, two men brought more furniture into the room. She had the whole suite to herself, three rooms, pretty as a hotel. Ketac came in, directing the workmen around. She poured gin into her glass and filled it up with limon-woda. Luna was stocked with the spoils of the Earth. It was like being in jail again.