Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“Until he lets me out.” He kicked, knocking himself back into the wall. “Nobody cares about me—I’m going crazy—” He banged around the end of the tunnel. She moved away from him, wary.

“Paula, don’t go—”

“I can’t even hear you.” The heat made her face itch. “I’ll come back later.”

“Paula! Stay here—please—”

“Ketac—” A bell sounded, muffled. “I’ll come later.” She left him alone.

She went to the bridge, to meet Saba coming off watch. He had already gone. Kobboz was sitting down in the cage. She looked in the Tank and in the library, and turned on the monitors in her room and hunted through them. He was nowhere. Neither was Tanuojin; they were together. She stopped looking.

She went to bed. The rug folded around her like a great loose skin. Drowsily she wondered why they fastened up the foot instead of the head. It was pleasant to float free in the air. She yawned.

The hatch opening woke her. Saba swung himself in through the oval doorway. She started to call to him but she heard Tanuojin’s voice.

“Come down to the library. I’ll show you.”

“I’m tired.” Saba was stripping off his overalls. “Next watch.”

“Jesus.” The deep voice rasped. “All your off-time now you spend with her.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

The hatch slammed. Tanuojin went away. She heard Saba give a low laugh.

Halfway through the middle watch, she thought of Ketac again and took him a dozen food tablets and two tubes of water. When he saw her his face split in a broad smile. “Paula.”

She wiped her face on her sleeve. He ripped open a water tube.

“Talk to me. Stay here and talk to me.”

“Ketac, it’s hot in here.”

“Nobody else has even come to see me—all my so-called friends—” He ran himself into the wall. “Nobody but a nigger squaw. Oh, Jesus, I have to get out of here.”

“Do you know who Jesus was?”

He stroked his hair back. His sprouting mustaches were pointed, like feathers. “I don’t know. It’s just a curse. It sounds like a curse. It feels good to say it.” His eyes glinted. “Like fuck.”

The corridor was littered with bits of white wrapping. She gathered them up. Around the bend, the hatch banged open. She spun. Saba came feet-first toward them. “Paula. What are you doing in here?” He took her by the arm. “Hot, isn’t it?” he said to Ketac.

“Pop, let me out—please—”

“You sound pretty lively yet to me.” He pulled her off along the tunnel. “One more watch, Ketac.”

“I’ll die!”

“I’ll miss your company.”

In the corridor, the cool air bathed her face; her shirt was stuck to her arms and she pulled her sleeves free. Saba pushed her along ahead of him.

“Stay away from him.”

“He was hungry.”

“He’s supposed to suffer. He isn’t your crumb.”

The computer in the supply room made her several sets of overalls, like the uniforms of the men, with the black three-pointed star on the back but no rating stripes. She wore two sets at a time to keep warm. In the dim light she learned to use her other senses more than before. Quickly she lost track of time. The high watch, the low watch, the middle watch ran after each other like clock gears. The time didn’t seem to change at all, any more than the ship seemed to move, suspended in the dark, the stars unchanging before the window. In the Asteroids near Pallas three Martian ships ambushed them, but Ybix outran them in fifteen minutes. Paula was starved for real food. The chewy protein strips sometimes satisfied her need to eat but she dreamt of gingerbread and whipped cream and sugar candy. As if she were gorging herself, her stomach began to bulge.

Sril played a ulugong, a sheet of metallic plastic that he held on his lap and struck with his knuckles, like a drum with bell tones. She brought her flute to the Tank and they played together. The other men threw darts and made models and argued the various merits of the posters on the wall. Occasionally they got into a fight over the paper women spreading their legs on the curved wall. She read, and she worked on the first draft of the trade contract, but the music kept her mood light. The low mellow voice of the ulugong went well with the flute. They made up songs, she and Sril, by the hour.

They clubbed Ketac. All the crew but two men left to mind the bridge packed into the Tank. Ketac knelt down in the air before Saba, who took his hands and stretched his arms out before him. Behind him Tanuojin pulled the young man’s hair back.

“Who is the man?” Saba asked.

“Styth,” Ketac answered. His voice trembled, passionate.

“Which is the way?”

“To the Sun.”

“Keep faith.” Saba slapped him hard across the cheek.

The other men cheered. His face glowing, his hair fastened neatly down, Ketac whooped in their midst. Behind them all, Paula tucked her hands into her sleeve. It was such a simple ritual. She wondered uneasily why they could not do without it altogether. Saba brought out a bottle of Scotch. Ketac tried to drink out of it, while the other men laughed and pounded him on the back. She picked up her flute and withdrew into the music.

Saba steered her down the arrow corridor, past the mouth of the blue tunnel. After 121 watches she moved as easily as he did, faster sometimes, but he still maneuvered her around whenever he could. They went into the Beak, the room in the nose of the ship. The window was shut. While she felt around the rim for the switch, Saba came in beside her and closed the hatch. She pressed the switch, and the window cracked and light spilled through the widening gap into the little room. In half-phase, banded in cream and gold, wrapped in the curved blades of its rings, Saturn filled the window.

Paula lay back in the air. The brilliant golden light dazzled her. The rings were tilted down away from her, like thin dust veils.

“The first time I ever came here,” he said, “it was my third voyage into space. Tanuojin’s first. My father brought the ship down on the trade lane and we stopped everything that came by. Melleno was the Prima then. After we’d held up about a dozen freight ships going to Saturn, he sent his Saturn Fleet out and chased us off. My father howled so hard, you could hear him all over the ship.”

“Why?”

“The Prima wasn’t supposed to have any rights in deep space. My father didn’t approve of other people breaking the law. Just him. Jesus, that was an awful voyage. My father took such a hate to Tanuojin—Tajin had worked for Melleno. Then when we got back to Uranus, Tajin went to Melleno and they mended their quarrel and he wrote a law for Melleno putting a 100 per cent tax on goods stolen from Styth hulls and sold in Styth markets. They took all the profit out of piracy. It almost ruined the fleet.”

She looked out the window at the ringed Planet. The shadow of one of its moons lay on the golden surface of the clouds. “What was your father’s name?”

“Yekaka. It fitted him, too.” The name meant loudmouth. “Do you want to go down to Saturn-Keda?”

“Oh. Yes. Can I? Will you take me?”

“If you promise to keep quiet.”

She looked out at the Planet. The surface was patterned in whorls and streamers of clouds, changing shape while she watched, changing hue. “I promise.”

“Good. It’ll give you an idea what Matuko is like.”

The yellow light shone over the side of his face. She put her hand on his legs, lying beside her. “I want to name the baby David.”

“David. What kind of a name is that? It sounds like a girl’s name. Call him Vida. It’s the same thing. Vida—David.”

“Then you call him Vida, and I’ll call him David.”