Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“Take him,” she said. “Go on, you do it.”

Jefferson was watching them from the far side of the room. Bunker put his head back. “Your career with us hasn’t been a raging success, junior. The only other case you’ve even accepted was one where you took a personal interest. Right?”

So he had found out that she had stolen his files. Before she could answer, a light flashed on the wall over her head. They all went out onto the dock platform.

The air wall roared. The big car was sinking down into the cradle of the dock. Paula rubbed her sweating hands on her pants legs. When she touched the railing she got a shock. The Styths poured out of the bus.

The Akellar tramped up the steps. She had forgotten how big he was. Jefferson spoke to him, but he brushed her off. When Bunker approached him the Styth sidled toward him and would have knocked into him if Bunker had stayed where he was. The Akellar reeked; he stood over Paula.

“I told you to come alone.”

“What’s wrong? Did you have trouble?”

“Yes.” He snarled at the other men, crowded onto the platform, and they spilled into the waiting room.

“You’ve made your point,” Bunker said into her ear. He and Jefferson disappeared. The Styths towered around her. Ketac’s wild brush of hair bobbed among the trim heads of the men. Most of the others were strangers to her. There was a brief, fiery argument, which the Akellar resolved by knocking someone down.

Paula opened the door to the ramp. The Akellar shouted his crew into order. Tanuojin came out past her, nearly scalping himself on the top of the door, and made for the railing. The rest followed him. The Akellar took her arm and started off at top speed. She stopped, resisting him, and he turned.

“What’s the matter with you? Look, I’m warning you—”

“Don’t tow me around.”

He opened his hand. His men were packed against the rail. “Look!” They leaned out to stare at New York.

“What happened?” she asked. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

“I had a long talk with General Gordon.”

“Oh.” The spring breeze touched her face. Panicked, she remembered that Gordon knew about the baby. At her pace they went on down the ramp. The other Styths were strung out along the railing, pointing and laughing at what they saw.

“Did you go to surface-Luna?”

He shook his head. Bad-tempered, he shed a harsh rush of his odor. She went ahead of him into the dark parking lot. The hot bright scent had certain connotations for her. The parking lot stretched off into the dark, scattered with air cars, the pavement marked into stalls. The three Committee cars were lined up near the exit. Their drivers leaned against the fender of the big bus, passing a cigarette around.

“We have a house out in the New Haven dome,” she said. “It’s the only place where you could all stay together.” She slid into the back seat of the small car. The Akellar folded himself into the space beside her. If he knew about the baby he would have said something by now. He took her chin in his hand, and she kissed his cool mouth.

The driver said, drawling, “You two want to get going sometime today?”

They pulled apart. Paula touched her mouth. She looked out the window. The driver rolled the door shut and put the plastic divider across the seat between him and them.

“Gordon gave me a whole long sermon on how I ought to behave,” the Akellar said. He was cramped into the narrow seat, his arms and legs folded up to his body. “With a lecture on the side on the sanctity of women.”

The car rolled forward. She said, “He’s an ass.” He leaned forward to watch the driver shift and steer. The car rose off the ground. Below them, the green heads of the trees rolled in the wind. The lake glittered, down toward the south.

“You’re right,” he said. “This isn’t like Mars.”

Above the wood a flock of daws circled and fought. The driver circled over the lake, lined with naked and half-naked bathers. Out the back window she could see the two cars following them. The Styth shaded his eyes from the light.

They left the dome. The stretch of coast between New York and New Haven was heaped with ancient slag. The torrential summer rains had eroded the hills into canyons and cliffs white with the droppings of wild birds. The sun was setting behind them. Sharp against the smoky sky, the ridge ahead poked up its two round humps. She pointed it out to him.

“That’s called the Camel.”

“What’s a camel?”

“A big animal. There’s an old proverb that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” They passed to the south of the Camel and the slag pinnacle just beyond it came into view. “That’s the Needle.” Through the long eye in the spire the sky showed rosy from the setting sun.

“What’s Heaven?”

She sat back. “Forget it.” The sunset streaked the sky with red and orange. “It used to be that the cities were polluted and the air out here was clean. A long time ago.”

A blackbird flapped by them. He said, “How do the birds live here?”

“They adapted. Some of them. Some birds can only live in the domes, some of them go in and out. It’s called the gas-mask effect.” She nodded toward another shape in the gray slag. “That’s the Throne. If you can sit there for twelve hours, you’ll rule the Earth.”

“Oh?”

“The pollution would kill you in six.”

“You people have a strange sense of humor.”

They came to the dome. The Akellar stretched his neck to see all around them while the driver took them through the curved plastic wall. They flew over black earth spiked with green. Night was rolling over them. The domelight came on, blue as a flame in the clear air. A sheer red cliff ran like a barrier along the east. The hillside below them was covered with trees. A clearing opened and the car drifted down toward the two buildings below.

The Committee House was a square two-story wooden block, a replica of a pre-Atomic Federalist house, complete with a broken pediment over the front door and a carved eagle on the bannister. Before all the Styths were out of the cars, Ketac was climbing into the apple tree, and two other men were chasing the cook’s terrified white cat. Paula went into the front hall. The house smelled of cinnamon and ginger.

“This isn’t the Nineveh,” she said to the Akellar. “There’s a cook, but that’s all. You have to look after yourselves.”

He felt of the eagle’s chiseled wing feathers. There was a door at the foot of the stair; he reached down to the knob, pulled it, pushed it, and finally turned it, and the door opened. She led him up the stairs. The front upstairs hall was full of rubber plants and morning star. He pulled a white blossom off a geranium and ate it. Out the window she could see his crew running around in the woods. She brushed through the curtain of beads into the back hall and opened the room on the end.

“Paula!” he shouted, in the hall.

“I’m down here.” She took off her jacket and hung it on the knobbed bedpost and began to unbutton her shirt. He came in the door. “What are you waiting for?” she said. He shut the door.

“Have you been on your ship all this time?”

“My ship and a couple of others.” He was still half-dressed. Sitting up, he peeled off his leggings and his shirt. Paula lay on her side, glutted from the hard sex. The blanket was wet; she threw it back over the foot of the bed. He lay down beside her.

“Did you miss me?” He slid his hands over her. His knee pressed between her thighs. “You didn’t go with anybody else, did you?”

She wondered why that mattered to him. His lust reassured her. As long as he wanted her, she could deal with him. Above his collarbones smooth hollows formed. She touched him, remembering him.