Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“Dakkar,” his father said, “nothing like this is ever spontaneous. Somebody is back of it.”

An edge crept into Dakkar’s voice. “I think I’m looking at him. Sir.”

“Oh, you do?”

“Everybody is saying you sold us out. This treaty—”

“Sir.”

“I’m serious about—”

“Sir.”

Paula frowned at the wall. If the treaty failed, she was finished.

“Yes, sir,” Dakkar said, behind her.

“That’s right,” his father said. “And you don’t close my crystal farm.”

Raising her eyes, she looked around the barren room. The gravity dragged at her, drawing the burden of her pregnancy down, so that she had to stand with her hips thrown forward to support it. She put her hands on the small of her back.

“Yes, sir,” Dakkar was saying stiffly.

“Go find out who’s trying to knock us. You can leave.”

His son left. Saba said, “Paula, let’s go.”

She went after him up the hall. They passed through a formal room, massed with huge furniture. A swing couch hung from the ceiling by chains. She felt too small to be noticed, a mouse in a rat world.

They crossed the yard toward the next house, cat-corner on the wall on the compound. On the eave of its roof, the brown animal sat washing its face with its forepaws.

“What’s that?”

“A kusin.” He still sounded angry. “They’re harmless, except to the dog-mice and snakes.”

“It was in my house.”

“It won’t come back, now that somebody is living there. They don’t like people.” His hand dropped to her shoulder and aimed her at the door into the house ahead of them. “Go in there. I have something to do. Boltiko knows who you are. I’ll see you later.” He walked off across the yard toward the biggest building in the compound, against the wall opposite her little house. She stopped and looked back the way she had come, to see what the house looked like. A white box. She thought of going back there. But she had to face his wives sometime. She went on toward Boltiko’s house.

His prima wife was years older than he was. Her body was lost in rolls of fat. Necklace creases indented the column of her throat. Paula sat uncomfortably in a chair in Boltiko’s kitchen while children dashed in and out screeching and the wife cut bread and cooked meal.

“Were you married in the Earth?” Boltiko asked.

“We aren’t married.”

“Oh.” Boltiko turned and swatted a passing child on the backside. “Didn’t I tell you not to run in the house?” She smacked him again. The little boy scurried out the door, his spread hands protecting his rump. Paula knew he was a boy because his head was shaven; the girls all wore their hair in braids. Boltiko looked Paula over covertly while she stirred the meal.

“Will you be married here?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Another woman came in, this one very young, tall, and extravagantly beautiful, like an advertisement. The sleeves of her dress were of silver lace.

“Illy,” Boltiko said, “this is Paula.”

“Hello,” Paula said.

Illy stared at her, unfriendly. “Hello,” she said, after a moment. Her voice had the same musical quality as Tanuojin’s. She sank into a chair down the table from Paula.

“Where is he?” she asked Boltiko.

“He went somewhere with Dakkar, into the city.”

“What did he bring you?”

“A timepiece, the same as usual. Quaint.”

“He gave me skin-color. Gold, can you imagine?” Illy turned toward Paula. Her hair was gathered on the crown of her head in an aureole of perfect curls. She was the most beautiful woman Paula had ever seen, Styth or other. “Where did he meet you?”

“On Mars,” Paula said.

“Mars,” Illy said, astonished, and Boltiko said, “Mars,” as disapproving as her reaction to the news that Paula and Saba were not married. Illy said, “I thought you were Earthish.”

“I am. But we met on Mars.” She looked from one black face to the other. “At a very fancy sex park.”

Illy’s lips parted. Boltiko said, “I don’t know what manners are in the Earth, but in my house we don’t use words like that around the children.” She poured something liquid into the meal and set the covered pan on the back of the counter.

“I don’t understand,” Illy said. “What were you doing there? Were you alone?”

“Yes. I was talking to him. Politics.”

“Oh.” Boltiko wiped the already spotless table. “Was that how you got the baby? Talking?”

“That was where. How was the usual way.”

To her surprise, Boltiko laughed. The back door burst open. Saba came in, with his son Dakkar, and behind them Ketac. Paula glanced startled from Ketac to Boltiko; under all that fat, her face was shaped like his. Illy raised one hand delicately over her mouth, veiling herself before the young men. To Boltiko, Saba said, “I’ll eat in the Manhus. Hurry up, I’m starving.” He went out again, trailing his sons, without looking at the other women. Illy lowered her hand.

“I’ll show you the timepiece he gave me,” Boltiko said.

They went down a hall, past rooms full of children and children’s things, to a large dim room. The furniture was packed into it like hoardings under a ceiling painted with an abstract design. The chairs and hanging lamps were shielded in clear plastic bags. The three women made a winding course through the clutter to a corner cabinet. On the shelves were several little clocks. The sandglass Saba had bought on the Earth stood among them.

“Oh,” Illy said. “Isn’t that clever.”

“This cabinet is so pretty,” Boltiko said to Paula. “I had nothing to put here, so I asked Saba to bring me something when he goes on his trips.”

Paula reached for a watch with a clamshell case. She found the spring catch and opened it. Boltiko said, blankly, “Why—it has an inside.”

Paula showed her the open watch. In one half was a picture of a white baby, with wisps of fair hair and a stupid babyish smile, and in the other half a fancy scrolled initial T. Boltiko took it.

“Illy, look.”

The other woman glanced at the watch. “Ugh. What an ugly baby.”

Paula backed away from them. She realized Boltiko had no notion what Saba did on his trips. She went around the room looking at the heavy furniture, protected in its wrap of plastic.

On the far side of the room, Illy said, “She’s a slave! He didn’t marry her!”

Paula raised her head. The furniture hid her from the other women.

“No,” Boltiko said. “But he says we’re supposed to treat her like a wife.”

“She’s ugly. He’ll get tired of her. He’ll sell her.”

“Sssh, she’ll hear you.”

Paula was behind a chair. She leaned against it, staying out of their sight. Illy said, “She’s gone.”

“If you ask me,” Boltiko said, “he’s already tired of her—he just feels responsible for getting her that way.” Her skirts swished. She and Illy went to the door into the hall. “That’s all the more reason to be nice to her.”

“At least he didn’t marry her.”

They left, and Paula let them get down the hall before she followed. The baby rolled up in her body anchored her down. Her back hurt. Slowly she waddled back toward the kitchen.

Boltiko was putting covered dishes on a tray. Illy sat in one of the big chairs inspecting her beautiful hands. Paula lowered her eyes. For a moment she hated them both; she burned to say something to wither them. She climbed up into the chair beside Illy’s.

“Pedasen,” Boltiko called, out the back door.

A dark man came in from the yard. He wore a loose white quilted tunic. For an instant he and Paula stared at each other. He was of her race, with Tony’s coloring, and he had pale eyes like Tony’s. Boltiko tapped the tray.