Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

The Martian turned toward her, her blue eyes direct above the gun. “That’s right. Put that lock on him. Take his arms behind his back.”

Paula reached across him for his right arm and hauled him up onto his side, his back to Lore Smythe. His wrist seemed cooler, his pulse slower. She had to hurry.

“Be careful when you roll him over,” the Martian girl said. “Do it slow and you won’t run that nail through his lung.”

Paula stepped around him, between him and Lore, to turn him onto his stomach. She brought his hands behind him and took a tight grip on his shirt. When she rolled him slowly onto his stomach, just as his chest turned onto the floor, she wrenched on his shirt to tilt the dart. For an instant the dart braced him up. She leaned on him and heard a tiny splintering crack, and he lay flat. She crossed his thumbs behind him and bound them with the plastic bridge.

“Back off,” Lore said, and she moved away across the room. The redhead went cautiously to him and pushed him with her foot.

“He doesn’t look so big now, does he? Not so big at all.” She kicked him. Bending, she pulled on the bond on his thumbs. “Good, you did it right.”

“That’s my motto,” Paula said. “If I can’t do it right, I don’t do it at all.” She folded her arms over her chest.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you? You think you’re tough.” Lore kicked him again.

“I admit I’m not that brave, to kick him when he’s tied up and unconscious.” A thin trickle of fluid seeped out from under him, running across the floor. She tore her eyes away from it. “You think you’re brave enough to kick me, Lore?”

Lore turned toward her, the gun aimed at her face. “I don’t have any orders about you at all. You’re supposed to be dead. I can do anything I want with you.” She strode up to Paula, waggling the gun, and took another thumblock out of her silvery clothes. “Turn around.”

Paula turned her back. “You won’t make it out of this room, Lore. You might as well give up.”

The girl’s sweating hands fastened on Paula’s wrists. She wrenched her arms behind her. Paula said, “By now they know everything that’s happening here.”

Lore was hooking Paula’s thumbs together. By the quality of her grunt Paula knew she had the gun in her teeth. She said, “The place is wired, Lore.”

“I don’t believe you,” Lore said. She stepped back. “These barbarians aren’t that sophisticated.”

“This is Luna, remember?” Paula faced her, her arms fastened painfully behind her back. “Everything is wired.”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Lore told her. “You made a lot of trouble for us.”

“The Sunlight League.”

“That’s right.”

“You know Dr. Savenia is here.” It took effort to keep from looking beyond the redheaded girl at Saba. Frantically she kept talking. “Only I doubt you’d know her now.”

“She goes with me too,” Lore said. She tipped the gun up at Paula’s face. “Maybe I’ll take you, if you cooperate.”

“I’d sooner eat dirt.”

The cold barrel of the gun pressed under Paula’s chin. “Oh, you think you’re so tough.” The gun pushed her head up.

“You won’t know Cam.” Paula’s tense muscles throbbed. Her arms began to hurt from her thumbs to her shoulders. “She’s had a Styth education. She isn’t—”

Behind Lore Saba heaved himself up onto his knees. The redhead saw him. She wheeled, the gun swinging toward him, and Paula lunged into her. With a flat crack the gun fired into the floor. Saba blundered up onto his feet. Lore thrust Paula off and raised the gun again and Paula dove into her. She heard the nasty snap of the gun firing again. Lore struck her in the neck and she fell, but before Lore could turn Saba crashed into her.

The gun sailed off and Paula on her knees scrambled after it. Saba was still only half-conscious. He tripped, and Lore got away from him. She raced for the gun. Paula dropped stomach-first across it. Lore was panting. She wrenched at Paula, grabbing for the gun pressing into her stomach. Saba stumbled toward them. Lore dodged. She came up against the bed and tried to duck past him, and the Styth knocked her down and fell on her.

Paula rocked onto her side. She brought her knees up to her chest and dragged her cramped arms around under her feet. Lore Smythe lay still on her back. Beside her, Saba was trying to sit, his head wobbling. Paula went over to him and helped him get up.

“What’s going on?” he said, muzzy.

“You are a champion.” The dart was gone. On the front of his shirt was a damp stain. “I forgive you every rotten thing you’ve ever done. How do you feel?” Sliding her joined hands under his shirt, she found the wound in the heavy muscle of his chest. Part of the barbed needle was still stuck in his body.

“I feel…” He shook his head. His eyes were not focusing well. “She shot me.”

“She was about to shoot me, and with me it would have been permanent. Do you have any scissors?”

He blinked at her. She held up her hands and he blinked at the thumblock. He wagged his head down the room. She went past the bed to the washroom. On the glass shelf below the mirror was a pair of clippers. When she came out, the bedroom door was shaking under a heavy pounding knock.

“Prima!” It was Ketac.

“It’s all right,” she called. “Wait a minute.” She knelt behind Saba. The clipper blades were shorter than the thumb-bridge. She hacked at the tough plastic.

“She shot me,” he said.

“She shot you with a drug. She’s from the Sunlight League.”

“Paula,” Ketac roared. “Let me in.”

Saba’s head swung toward the door. “Stay the hell out!”

Paula bore down hard with both hands on the clippers, her teeth clenched, and the tool bit through half the thumblock. “Unh. She was taking you to Mars. I guess to ransom the Middle Planets. Cowboy stuff. All Fascists are romantics.” She struggled with the clippers.

Lore Smythe groaned. He flexed his arms, and the half-severed lock broke. On his hands and knees he went over to the Martian girl.

“Don’t—save her to question,” Paula said.

He put his hand on Lore’s throat and choked her. When she was dead, he came back to Paula and unfastened the lock on her thumbs.

“Damn Newrose.” He pulled her hands apart. “I told you he was fake.”

“He didn’t have anything to do with it.”

He touched his chest, and she caught his hand and held it away from the wound. “Be careful. There’s a piece of the needle broken off in there.”

He ground the heel of his hand into his eye and shook his head. “It’s still no good. Newrose.”

“Think about it, Saba. We have a hook in him now—we can pressure him now.”

“I don’t see the use.”

“You will when you wake up.”

Lore Smythe lay on the table, covered with a red blanket. Paula sat down in one of the three chairs before it, her back to the body. The only lights in the room were the two ceiling lamps near the door, and this end of the room was plunged in shadow. The Styths moved past her like shadows. Tanuojin went behind her to the table and pulled back the blanket.

“I wish you hadn’t killed her.”

“Don’t blame me. He did it.”

Ketac and David came single-file through the door. Ketac said, formal, “The Prima.” Saba walked into the room, and David ran up to arrange a chair for him.

“I’m telling you, this Martian is hoaxing us.” He sat down. “This won’t do any good.” Ketac and David hurried around bringing him a cup, putting a little round table beside him, turning out one lamp that shone in his eyes and turning on another. Junna came in to serve Tanuojin.

The tall man walked around the room, his hands on his hips. “If he really didn’t know about this Leaguer woman, maybe we can use it to get something out of him.”