Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“I am the Matuko Akellar. Does anybody challenge me?”

The whole Chamber was on its feet. They let out another buoyant cheer. She was sweating from their heat. Tanuojin sat down, and the other men began to settle. Paula shifted, her heavy coat on her shoulders. Tanuojin called, “How long did it run?”

“Fifty-two seconds,” Machou called, hoarse. “He’s no Saba.”

Dakkar’s friends were stooped over him. Ketac leaned on the pit rail. Dakkar put one foot under him and pulled himself up on his friends’ shoulders. They were both bleeding, she could not see the wounds, just the red slime on their faces. Ketac spoke to Dakkar, and the taller man nodded. He hung one arm around Ketac’s neck. The rAkellaron cheered again, pleased. Paula sat down. Ketac and Dakkar climbed the steps.

Leno stood again. Again, none of the other men stood up in respect for him. The Prima said, “If nobody else has any special business—”

Tanuojin said, “She has a question.”

Leno put his hands on his belt. His head thrust forward. “Mendoz’, what do you want now?”

Paula stood up. “I’m going to need money.”

Across the pit, Bokojin shouted, “What is she doing in here, anyway? Saba is dead. She has no place here. She had no place when he was alive.”

Paula looked down at the blood-splattered sand. Three or four men shouted back and forth at each other, and Leno made no effort to order them. She said to Tanuojin, “I thought ten dollars a watch.”

“I don’t see why we should pay you. Why don’t you tax the Middle Planets for it? If you’ll be doing their work.”

“Because they don’t need me,” she said. “And you do.”

Bokojin was leaning forward over the rail. “This makes me long for the old times when a man’s widows burned with him.”

A quarter of the round away, another voice rose, clear and mild. “It makes me long for the old times when the servants of the Empire were treated with respect.”

“Hear,” someone muttered, behind her.

“Are you challenging me, Saturn?” Bokojin roared. He and Melleno’s son Mehma traded jibes.

“Every one of you gets some revenues from the Middle Planets,” she said to Tanuojin. Down the ring, Leno was playing with his mustaches, his eyes on them. “You need me to keep the arrangements going. In fact, make it twelve dollars a watch.”

Tanuojin stood up, and all the other men rose at once to their feet. Bokojin’s voice cut off. Tanuojin said, “Give her enough to live on. Eight hundred a turn. Until someone else can take over her work with the slave-worlds.”

Leno said, “Done.” Tanuojin sat down, and the rest went back to their seats. They talked of other business. Paula slid down the bench to the steps and climbed out of the pit.

Ybix ’s crew was carousing along the arcade in front of the Barn. She went through them, ducking a swinging arm. Someone shouted her name.

“Mendoz’. Have a drink.” Ketac’s helmsman poked a jar into her face. While she was pretending to drink he whirled her around again, her skirts flying out. There was a burst of thunderous laughter all around her. She reached the ground, dizzy.

“Mendoz’! Kib, pass her over here.”

Kib snatched for her. She dodged around behind him to the door into the Matuko office.

A washtub of beer stood on the desk, and two men had their faces in it. Dakkar slumped in the chair before the window. She thought of Pedasen. Dakkar’s face was striped with blood. He looked half-drunk and very gloomy. Probably he had forgotten the slave he had killed. That warmed the revenge, the years she had waited to pay Dakkar back. She went through the file room, where three men were pouring beer and minji sauce over two girls from Colorado’s.

Even through the door she could hear the men shouting in the little back room where the bed was. She let herself in among them. Half a dozen of his crew surrounded Ketac in a ring. Small as she was, she stood overlooked behind them. At the end of their rhythmic bellow of a cheer they poured a bucket of beer over the new Akellar’s head.

“Paula.” Dripping, he pulled her in among them by the arm and put a mug into her hand. “Drink to me. What did you think? It was a great fight, wasn’t it.”

“I don’t know anything about fighting.” She was standing in a puddle of beer. She moved toward the window. His hand on her arm, Ketac followed her out of the circle of men. Beer dripped from his mustaches and his shirt.

“Did you see that cross-block? Papa would have liked that.”

“Yes, I saw.” She looked out the window. In the street an old man with a shawl over his head was straining to see through the next window into the party. Ketac lifted his head and shouted to his men to leave.

“I don’t want to interrupt your good time,” she said.

He took a towel from a bin in the wall and scrubbed vigorously at his wet hair and face. “My good time? I couldn’t have done it without your help. Why did you help me?”

“I like you,” she said.

“You went to some trouble to put me in your debt.”

“I need someone to stand up for me in the Chamber,” she said.

“You need a husband,” he said. He hung the towel over his shoulder.

“Not formally.”

“Do I get what husbands get?”

She had to smile at him. She said, “Go lock the door.”

When she got back to the Prima Suite, in the low watch, David was in her sitting room. She was glad to see him, but she was used to hiding her feelings from him. She took her coat off and hung it over the arm of her chair.

“Where have you been?”

“Thinking.” He came up the room toward her. His hair hung in a wild shag around his shoulders. “Getting drunk. Getting loaded. I—” He made a little gesture with one hand. His long eyes made him look belligerent. He said, “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry. What for?” He smelled awful. He had not been out of his clothes since the funeral.

“I’ve spent my whole life fighting over things I can’t change. Maybe I shouldn’t even have wanted them changed.” He made that same motion with his hand, palm up. Asking for something. “So I’m sorry.”

She grunted, her eyes following his gesture. To keep from touching him she slid her hands behind her back. “Did you come on this enlightenment in a junk-gun? I wish you’d told me where you were—you could have helped me.”

“Helped you. What—” He straightened up to respect, his arms at his sides, looking beyond her. Leno tramped into the room.

The new Prima strode up to her, his face knotted in a scowl. “You and Tanuojin set me up, didn’t you?” He glanced at David. “Stand off, little boy, the war is over.”

Paula said, “Did anything else happen in the session?”

“Nothing important to you. Yekka wants to see you.”

She went to her chair, before the window, watching her son. He was scraping the edge of his boot against the floor. His mustaches were beginning to droop over. She wondered what had happened to him to make him like her. Leno said sharply, “He wants to see you now.”

“I’m busy now,” she said. She leaned on the carved arm of the chair. “Jesus, Leno, aren’t you high-born for a messenger boy?”

He bristled up, his neck swelling. “To hell with you.” He marched out, and the door slammed behind him hard.

David was frowning at her. “Mother, he’s the Prima.”

“He isn’t my Prima. I’m my Prima. Come have dinner with me.”

He was already moving toward the door. “No. I have something else to do. Can I use your room to clean up?”

“You can live here. Nobody is using your room.” She smiled at him. “I’m glad you’re back, David.”

“So am I, Mother.”