Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

Cam Savenia was with him. While Newrose was settling himself across the table from her, Paula said, “You can go, Cam.”

“The Akellar—”

“This isn’t the Akellar’s meeting.”

“As you wish,” Cam said, sulky. Her feet rang down the treads of the ladder into the dark below. Paula sat down.

“She tells him everything. Even what she forgets.”

“You seem fond of riddles.” Newrose opened his papercase and laid out a pad of notepaper, styli, his pencase on the table before him. She picked up the pencase and snapped it open.

Inside the case a clear button with a tiny coil of wire in its heart was fastened to the lining beside one hinge. She broke it out of the case with her fingernails and slid the case back over the table to him. Newrose looked troubled. His small hands pattered on the tabletop.

“What’s happened to Dr. Savenia?” he said.

“Nothing she didn’t do to herself.” She laid her forearms on the table. “You know, Newrose, you need a settlement of the war now. If the war continues, the League will destroy everybody,”

“The League,” he said. “What about the Styths? They seem to do an ace job of destruction.”

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?” She reached for his styli. “Actually, you’ve caught them at a good moment. They might be willing to end the war now, before they take so many prisoners they glut the slave trade.”

“Slaves,” he said, rigid.

She made dots on the table with a stylus and connected them with straight and curved lines. “Surely you aren’t going to protest on principle, Newrose? After all, there were work camps on the Earth all through the war.” The stylus scratched on the tabletop.

“I can’t believe you support the Styths,” he said. “After what they did to your Planet.”

“Therefore I must support you?”

“I’m your own kind, Mendoza,” he said, earnestly.

“My kind.” She watched her hand making scribbles.

“Whose side are you on?”

She raised her head. “Did you know Richard Bunker?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And Sybil Jefferson?”

“Naturally.”

“I’m on their side.”

“They’re dead.”

“That’s why I am on their side.”

“Another riddle.”

“I’m their witness,” she said. “I’m the last witness to what happened down there, what you want to forget, and the Styths want to forget.” Her hands were shaking. She spread them out flat on the table, over her scribbles. A bump pressed against the palm of her hand. She sat back, her anger broken, and picked Newrose’s spy device up in her fingers.

“But you’re working for them,” Newrose said.

“Oh,” she said. “I have learned to forgive my enemies.” She dropped the plastic button onto the table again. Where there was one cheat there would be two. “I am a practical woman, Newrose.”

“Will they let you go back?”

That struck her; she gave him a single swift glance and reached for the stylus again. He leaned across the table toward her.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. But we would. If the Earth were under our control.”

“Are you trying to bribe me, Newrose?”

He tilted back in his chair, and his white hands folded themselves into his lap. “These people are savages, you know. When you’re of no further use to them, they’ll turn on you. You’re just as inferior as we are to them.”

She had to laugh at that. Putting the stylus down, she pushed it and the spy button across the table at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Newrose.” She climbed down the ladder into the Planet.

The floor around the swimming pool stood an inch deep in water. The hard walls of the room reflected back the racket. Paula leaned against the doorjamb, watching. Naked, glistening, David rushed along the side of the pool and jumped in among the other men. The water slopped up over the rim of the pool. Ketac and another man were wrestling, their bodies coiled together; while they fought to drive each other under the water they laughed.

Saba came in the door beside her. “What are they doing?”

“Killing each other.”

One hand on the top of the door, his weight slouched onto one leg, he watched his crew in the pool. “You’ll have to finish with Newrose by yourself. The Martian Fleet is regrouping. We have to go meet them.”

She gathered her breath, her eyes turning toward the pool, looking for David. The boy shot up out of the water, caught the edge of the bottom diving board, and swung himself onto it.

“It’s too bad he’s so small,” Saba said. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All around the leaping surface of the pool the Styths’ heads turned. He called, “Report to the ship in two hours. My watch on watch.” He went off through the dressing room, splashing through the puddles. Paula moved away, to let the naked men out of the water.

Newrose said, “Then we’re all alone here.”

“ Kundra is still here. Ymma’s ship. The man with the scarred face.” She leaned back in her chair, her eyes on the clear ceiling above the crater. The sun was setting. In the mid-heaven the Earth shone in half-phase. “Twelve Styths, eighteen of your people, and me.” She leveled her gaze at him. “What did Tanuojin tell you?”

The Martian’s pink cheeks sucked hollow. “We talked for two hours. I should say he talked for two hours. The conversation ranged from the superiority of Styths to the superiority of the Styth Fleet to the superiority of the Styth legal system. I was unimpressed. Frankly, I think he suffers from some kind of mental disorder.”

Paula hooted with laughter. The tabletop was still covered with the marks she had made during their first meeting. She rubbed her hands over it. “If you can diagnose it, Newrose, do let me know.”

“Probably he came away with no good impression of me,” Newrose said.

She turned sideways in her chair. Up overhead, through the clear roof, she could see the blue Earth. Above it were the stars of Scorpio’s tail. Paula said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said, the other day.”

“Have you? I’m glad to hear that.”

“What if I did help you? Where would that take me?”

Newrose pulled his chair closer to the table. “Isn’t this interesting? Now you seem to have changed your heart.”

“Tanuojin is gone,” she said.

“Ah.”

“I can see why you don’t trust me.” She glanced up at the Earth again and back to Newrose.

“I want to trust you,” he said.

“Suppose I were to give you a proof? Could you get me out of Luna?”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

Newrose’s pale eyes gleamed. He said, in a taut voice, “Well, that depends.”

“Suppose you were to get me to Mars,” she said, “and suppose I were to take the Styth codebooks with me?”

The Martian’s throat worked in a swallow. His gaze never left hers. “Yes. I can see why you’d have to get out of Luna. Under those circumstances.” His hand rose toward his face. “You can do this?”

Feet crashed on the metal treads of the ladder just below them. She stood and lost her balance and nearly fell. Ymma came up through the hatch in the floor. He shot a fiery look at Newrose, still sitting.

“Get him out of here.”

She nodded at the Martian. “You’d better go.” He looked sharply from her up to the hatched face of the Styth and climbed away down the ladder. Ymma scowled, all the creases dented in his cheeks.

“I just got a message from Tanuojin. The Martians ambushed them—we lost twelve ships in thirty-two seconds.”

She thought unwillingly of David, floating in the metal bubble of the ship. “I don’t know anything about fighting,” she said, and went away down the ladder.