Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“What was that? Can I come in like this?” She put her hand on the nape of his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him.

“You have fourteen children?”

“Fourteen and a half,” he said. He patted her stomach. A crosswind struck the car and she braced herself while he pulled the car up and turned it back on course. They were crossing a rare clear pocket. Below them the slag heaps spread out gray as ash, gouged with rivers that branched and coiled toward the sea. In the north she could make out the worn red hills. She tried to imagine having fourteen children.

“Is Ketac the eldest?”

“No. My oldest is Dakkar, my prima son. Then there’s a girl, she’s married, you won’t meet her. Then Ketac.”

“You must have married young.” She gripped the seat in both hands as a draft took them straight up and dropped them down again. He flew at the limit of the car’s speed, and very high. If they crashed—

“I was a neophyte. Ketac’s age. My father came back from space and found me in jail in Vribulo. He went on a panic program. Called ‘straightening out Saba’s life.’ In about thirty watches he had me clubbed, commissioned into the fleet, and married to Boltiko. Do you know what a watch is?”

“About ten hours on the Earth. Why were you in jail?”

“I don’t remember. I was put up a lot when I was a neophyte. Probably for buying morphion.”

The car swooped into a long descending turn. Ahead a bank of yellow cloud lay along the river that divided New York from the slag. She could not see the dome. The sweeping curve knotted her stomach.

“For buying morphion. How much did you load?”

“Plenty. I was addicted most of the time I was a neophyte.”

“You couldn’t have done that much or you’d have died.”

“I nearly did.”

She caught herself pulling up on the arm of the seat. He was lowering to circle the dome. They flew into the fog. She could barely see the great smooth shape of the covered city off to their left. He pulled out the sensor panel from under the dash; the car made a red dot crossing it.

“I was in jail once,” she said. “For smuggling. On Mars.”

“You really are a low-life, aren’t you?”

On the black sensor plate, ruby-red lines formed a schema of the dome in intersecting parabolas. Carefully she let go of the handgrip. “Are you reneging?”

“No. I have plans for you.” He pushed the steering grips forward, and the car sank down in an even descent. “I’m going to civilize you.”

She put her head back, offended. He said, “Do you want to renege?”

“Not after that remark.”

“Good.”

Paula jumped gratefully to the solid ground of the East Lock parking lot. “Oh,” she said. “I never thought I’d make it alive.” She crouched and patted the concrete with her palms.

The parking lot was surrounded by woods. They walked side by side down the slope. It was mid-afternoon. From high on the hillside she could see the lake but as they walked down the trees swallowed it.

“I hold eight free-space speed records, and you don’t trust me to drive that slug.”

“It’s me I don’t trust. I don’t trust myself to bounce when we hit the ground.” She circled a thicket. The soft earth gave under her feet. She stopped and took off her shoes and stuck them in the crotch of a tree to pick up on the way back.

“What’s that?”

She went down the steep hillside so she could see what he was pointing at: a round gatehouse. “That’s the entrance to a building.” The sun streamed over the meadow. She walked toward its green warmth.

“Where’s the building?”

“Under the ground.” She held her arms and face up to the sun. He stayed back under the trees, out of the direct light. At the far end of the meadow, a dozen people sat in a circle. Maybe it was a school. They went on toward the lake.

“What’s that?”

She was going through her pockets for a dime to buy an hourly. “That’s a swan.” The narrow mud beach of the lake was striped with the bodies of sunbathers. The swan was feeding in the eelgrass in the shallows. A girl in a yellow swimsuit walked by, and the Akellar watched her, his head turning to follow her course.

They walked up under the trees. The ground smelled moist. The crozier heads of ferns were poking up through the rotting leaves in the deep shade. She read the hourly’s headlines.

“Hunh.”

“What?”

“Cam Savenia was elected to the Council seat for Barsoom. By fifty thousand votes.”

He took the paper from her. They went north, passing through another sunny meadow. “Is it fair?” he said. “An election?”

Paula shrugged. “Depending on the definition of fair. The trick is to be nominated. Do you have hourlies in Styth?”

“We live much closer together than you do.” He bent and picked up a fragment of blue eggshell. Paula took the hourly from him. “Anybody who wants to know anything can just come ask me.”

“You know that Cam’s a member of the Sunlight League?”

He crushed the eggshell in his fingers and sniffed the residue. “Yes, we got that idea.” They were cutting across the campus. A deer grazed beside the turret of the Biochemistry Building. At their approach it bolted away.

“A cow?” he said, uncertainly.

“A deer.”

He took her hand. She was getting used to that; she guessed the touch gave him some kind of comfort. The Styths touched each other constantly. The square mouth of the underground shopping mall opened in the hillside before them. They went down the steps.

Bicycles lined either side, and the walls were covered with graffiti. They passed a boy and a girl drawing in red and blue swirls over a clear space of tile. Three doors on past Barrian’s, the music store, they came to The Circle, a shop that recycled toys, among other things. It was brightly lit. The Styth winced and put his hand up over his eyes. She took him by the arm. Plants and banners and china bells hung down from the ceiling. The shelves were made of planks and bricks. In the back, under a big sign, they found three boxes of toys.

“Here.”

He squatted down on his heels and reached into the nearest box. She watched him sort through the tops and dolls and wooden models, putting what he wanted on the floor by his feet.

“Ah.” He untangled a pull toy from the heap and held it up. “A camel.”

She laughed. “Right.”

He put it on the floor and rolled it back and forth on its wheels. The head bobbed up and down. “Are there live ones? How big are they?”

“Tremendous.”

“Bigger than cows?”

“I think so.” She sat cross-legged on the floor. He was taking other model animals out of the box, inspecting each one.

“What’s this?”

“A mouse.”

“Mouse. We have something— mus . Little things. Brown.”

“Sure,” she said. “Mouse.”

“Aha.” He put the mouse back into the box, uninterested.

He bought a dozen little toys; he also bought a music box and an hourglass. The shop clerk took his credit chit, put everything into a box, and tied it fast with string. She wondered if he traded in crystal. Before long, everyone would, because of her.

“I guess I’ll have to carry this myself,” Saba said. He picked up the box in his arms. They went through the jungle of hanging plants and banners to the door.

Most of the shops in the mall were dark, closed for the night. In the walkway they passed a man wrapped in hourlies, asleep against the wall. Ahead were the bright windows of the Optima, the Martian store. Behind the glass the mannequins walked and turned in a glare of backlighting. The Akellar started.

“Jesus. For a minute I thought they were real.”

“This is a Martian store. Nothing is real.”