Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

Paula ate the sweet fruit. She went through the crowd and down the hall after her son.

They led her into a darkened stretch of hallway, and she lost them. While she was going back toward the wedding party, she heard a sharp stranger’s voice through a window.

“Just like a nigger, running for help!”

The window was over her head. It seemed to look over the courtyard. She stood under it, looking up at the patch of barred light on the ceiling. Outside, David said, “They’re to watch. I’m tired of getting jumped just when I’m beating the shit out of one of you.” Paula walked away down the dark hall.

She went back into the room where the wedding guests were drinking and talking in a din. As she came in, a voice was shouting, “Suppose what would have happened if Yekka had been here,” so she knew what the main subject of talk was. At the end of the table there was a pump. She pumped a thin stream of Lopkit beer into a cup. Leno came over to her.

“Somebody brought this for you.” He gave her a folded paper.

She put the cup down to open the message. It was from Newrose, sounding desperate. With three Styth ships cruising mysteriously in their immediate space, the Council of the Middle Planets had decided to disband after all, but they still refused to ratify the Luna Agreement. That made no difference, as long as they disbanded. Leno was watching her from his advantage of height. He had read the message. She folded the paper in thirds and put it away in her sleeve.

“Of course they accepted it,” Saba said. “I told you I wouldn’t have any trouble.” They were in his office in the House, and he leaned back in his chair and spread his arms out. “Just the same, I want you to stay out of the Chamber. Unless there’s an emergency.”

“You don’t have to convince me. I have too much to do anyway, to waste my time sitting around with those politicians.”

“Good.”

She put her elbow on the broad arm of her chair. They had been back from Lopka six watches, but she had seen little of him. He spent most of his time with Melly. “How is your marriage?”

“Ah, Paula—” He smacked his stomach with one hand. “I’m getting old.”

“That bad?”

“It’s that good. I—” He looked up, beyond her, and his whole face smiled. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you the long watch.”

Paula turned. Tanuojin was coming in the door. He had a three-cornered coat over his shoulder. She sat back into the corner of the couch. His height even now sometimes surprised her. He and Saba hugged each other in greeting.

“You’re getting fat, being married.”

“It’s good for me. I’ve just been telling Paula, you should try it.”

Tanuojin snorted with laughter. He glanced at Paula and turned back to his lyo. “You know the probe we sent to Lalande in Melleno’s Primat—”

“No.”

“Melleno 372. The planetary spectra are coming in now. Come up to Oberon with me and look at them.”

Saba went back behind his desk to his chair. “When?”

“Now.”

“I can’t—I told Melly I’d take her to the Akopra next watch.”

“I’ll go,” Paula said.

Tanuojin flung his arm out. “To the Akopra. Here? Jesus, you’ll ruin her taste, if she has any. Bring her down to Yekka. These are the first accurate composition bands we’ve ever gotten from another solar system. Why wait?”

“Go on. Take Ybicket . Vida can fly you.”

“I’ll go,” Paula said again.

Tanuojin gave her a sour look. “With you inboard, it would take a watch and a half just to get there.” He turned to Saba, across the desk. “Go to the Akopra some other time.”

“I promised her.” Saba shrugged. “Come see me when you get back. Let Paula go with you. She’s having another one of her fits.”

She left the couch and started toward the door. Tanuojin stayed to argue with Saba. The waiting room, as large as the office, was crowded with men waiting to see him. She lingered a moment, in among the Styths, and Tanuojin came out, looking sullen.

“Are we taking David?” she asked.

“I can’t fly Ybicket by myself,” he said.

Lalande was a Class M star eight light years from the Sun, with a family of twenty-six planets. Under Melleno, the rAkellaron in a rare constructive moment had sent out six probes to nearby stars. Two had failed. Three were still in course, but waves from the Lalande probe had begun to reach the radio-pans on Oberon, outermost of Uranus’ moons. Paula strapped herself into the middle of Ybicket ’s three seats. Tanuojin hooked her suit into the lifeline.

“Don’t forget,” he said to the front of the cab. “She can’t take too much acceleration, even in this fancy suit that eats up all the energy in the ship.”

“Yes, I know that,” David said.

“Don’t mouth off at me, little boy, you won’t like it.”

“How long will it take?” Paula asked. She looked up at the window, covered with the dark shutter, reflecting a red light winking on a dial on Tanuojin’s radio deck. He put the dark helmet over her head.

“Six hours.” Round inside the helmet, his voice came from over her head. He and David climbed into their places.

The ship butted down five miles of the chute into the Planet. In the holograph, Vribulo was a fibrous wall to the right of the ship, streaming long threads of tunnel. They left the city and traveled off through the magma. A thick yellow wave rushed on them. Ybicket slid in a long swoop down its crest.

“Why did he get married?” Tanuojin said. “He’s making a fool out of himself with that baby.”

“Let him alone,” Paula said. “He’s having a good time.” The ship rolled from side to side, barreling through a stretch of clear green. Ahead of them lay the Vribulo Stormbank, five thousand miles of turbulence. She remembered thinking once that two hundred kilometers an hour was a breakneck speed. David drove as fast as Saba.

The ship hurtled through the edge of the storm. She clutched her harness with both hands. Her stomach churned. If she were sick inside the helmet they would be all the way to Oberon cleaning up the mess. Tanuojin, navigating, talked steadily in her ears, guiding David through the layers of the storm. His voice was quicker than usual. She changed her mind about his lethargy. He was wound up tight as a set trap. Waiting, she thought. Waiting for something to happen.

The ship bucked and swerved, and she gulped. She had been sick once and they had teased her mercilessly for three watches. Grimly she fought against her nausea all the way to the surface of the Planet, until they escaped into space.

Oberon, second biggest moon, and farthest from Uranus, kept one face always turned to the Planet, but now, with Uranus in its variant season, the Sun seemed to rise and set. They reached the observatory in early morning. David set Ybicket down on a pad in the landing field and they got out and walked through the light gravity toward the group of buildings. Paula looked around them. Beyond the buildings of the observatory complex, with their clear domed roofs, stood the ruins of ancient houses built by the first settlers of Uranus. They had been stripped down for material to make the laboratory and the spherical houses for the telescopes. Only the foundations remained.

They went into the observatory. Through the clear domed ceiling she could see the black of space, scattered with stars. She unbuckled the wrist straps of her gloves and took them off.

Three or four men in long coats converged on them. Tanuojin greeted one by name and was introduced to the others, who bowed to him. She went slowly across the huge room before her. The floor was inlaid with a schema of the solar system. She walked down a gap through the Asteroids.