Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“I want my baby.” Carefully she raised herself up on her feet, gratified by her strength. She went toad-legged to the clothes rack on the wall.

“Boltiko knows all about babies. Let her take care of him.”

“I want him.”

“You aren’t the mothering type.”

“How do you know what I am?” She took a pair of her Ybix overalls, to keep her warm, and a long dress.

“I know you. He’s my son too. I won’t let you mistreat him.”

She glanced at him, standing by the door with his hand on the latch, and pulled the overalls up over her shoulders. “What do you think I’m going to do to him, whip him?”

“I won’t let you turn him into some freak anarchist.”

She put the dress on. Her body was still thick, sway-backed from the baby. Saba went out; she heard the front door slam.

The baby’s eyes were not round, like a Styth’s, and not black. They were long and slanted, brown like hers, set far apart in his round chinless face. Boltiko gave her heaps of clothes for him, showed her how to mix his food and how to feed him, and called in the slave Pedasen to carry everything over to her house for her. “He’s a fine, strong baby,” the prima wife said, “although he’s so small. Saba doesn’t breed weaklings. If you need help, send for me.” She put the baby into Paula’s arms. He was heavy. Paula shifted his weight against her shoulder. Looking down at him, she felt a sudden wild surge of love.

Pedasen carried the basket of clothes and food after her out to the yard. She slowed down so that he could catch up with her, and he stopped behind her. She went back to his side. His face was smooth, like a child’s; he had never shaved his beardless cheeks.

“Is that your whole name?” she said.

“Mem,” he said, blank.

“Don’t you have another name?”

She had been speaking Styth. Now he turned his gaze on her, his arms wrapped around the basket, and said, “Why did you come here?” in a slurred, liquid version of the Common Speech. “Why didn’t you stay where you belong?”

“Come on,” she said. “Standing up makes me dizzy.” She went off toward her house. He followed her, and she stopped, irritated, and said with force, “Come on,” and made him walk beside her. They went into her house.

He spoke only enough Styth to take orders. While they put away the baby’s things, she talked to him in the Common Speech, and he answered in the dialect. He had no other name, just Pedasen, which had been his mother’s name too. Somewhere out in the compound a bell rang, and he hurried away to answer it.

Most of the time the baby slept. Boltiko sent another slave to bring Paula her high watch meal. When she had eaten and slept, she took the baby and went out to walk in the yard. The biggest building in the compound was the Manhus, on the wall opposite her house. Long and low, it ran the length of the yard, its door like a mouth and its front porch like a jaw. She had never been there, and she went in there now.

The door led her into a wide dark hallway. Sril was standing in the back, reading from a message board on the wall. When he saw her, he grinned all across his wide face.

“Mendoz’. Let me see.” He came up to look at the baby.

“You don’t live here, do you?” she said.

He was bent over the baby, cooing. “No—up the curve. Ah, he’s pretty. I like little babies.” He straightened up, his eyes on her. “Are you supposed to be in here?”

“Probably not.” Three doors opened off the hall on either side, and she went to the nearest and went through it.

It was crowded with Styths, their backs to her, so that no one noticed her. The baby slept heavily in her arms. She moved to one side to see what was happening. At the head of the room Saba walked up and down past a broad table. A lone man faced him, his hands behind him fastened together with a white plastic yoke. Paula stood back near the wall. The twenty-odd men packing the rear half of the room were watching intently, silent.

“My family has dominated Matuko for eighteen generations,” Saba was saying. “For the blood we’ve lost for this city, the least we could get is trust.” He circled the table. The men watching him were utterly silent. “I don’t care what you call it,” he said to the man on trial. “I say you started a riot.”

No one moved. The bound man said, “You can put me up for the rest of my life, Akellar, but you can’t make me believe you haven’t betrayed us.”

“I know what’s right for my own city.” Saba walked up and down before the table, his hands on his hips. “I haven’t betrayed anybody. This treaty will give us a kind of life none of you has ever dreamed of, and all you can do is squawk at me. I’m risking my back and my rank in the Chamber to make my city great, and all I get is hysteria.”

The baby stirred, flinging out his arms. Paula went back to the hall. He had opened his crystal farm again and his slaves were refusing to work. Pedasen brought her wild rumors from the street about fires and riots. She carried the baby across the yard to her house to feed him. Saba told her nothing. In fact, she had seen him little since David’s birth. He was busy. She knew he still wanted her. She fed the baby and rocked him on the swing until he fell asleep. She was strong again, and her body had healed. She knew he would come to her.

“Boltiko is much older than he is,” she said.

“The blacks do that,” Pedasen answered. He carried an empty pack on his shoulders that flapped with each step. “If a boy’s wild, they marry him to some old mare who steadies him.” They were coming to the market. In the open lot above the lake shore, Styths and slaves in white milled around bright-painted open stalls. She looked back over her shoulder. On the perpendicular wall of the city Saba’s compound was an open square, head-on. She could just make out the roof of her house.

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“I was born in Yekaka’s Manhus,” Pedasen said. “My mother came from outside the Planet.”

“Do you know where?”

“No.” He stopped and pointed through an alley. “Down there is the Varyhus. That’s the district where the plastics factory is—it’s a terrible place, full of thieves and murderers. Don’t ever go there.”

She stood looking down the alley. It dipped along a short hill. On either side were low red buildings, brick-colored, peeling posters hanging off the walls. The air smelled bitterly of resin. She trotted after the eunuch, who was going into the market.

There were many more slaves than Styths. Pedasen led her through the thick stream of people to a booth piled with fish. There was an awning spread under the table to protect them from the radiation corning from the ground. Paula reached for a fish. Its belly was slit open from head to tail; inside, the flesh was translucent pink. Pedasen smacked her hand and she put the fish down again. A slave in a blue apron came up to the far side of the booth to serve him. Fish scales glittered on his sleeves and the round sealer was stuck in his cuff.

Paula wandered away through the crowd. The next line of tables was stacked up with live chickens. Styth chickens: they had no wings, their feathers were like silky white hair. They huddled mute on the counter, their long red feet tied together. She went along the street, her hands in her sleeves to keep them warm.

The city was large enough that the ground under her feet seemed flat and the street rose and fell in little hills, but whenever she lifted her eyes she saw the vast bubble around her, closed over her head, like a tremendous cave. The slaves around her chattered in their liquid speech. The few Styth women among them were veiled to the eyes. She felt the vast drone of the city around her, oppressive. In the next lane were slaves hanging cloth from the eaves of their booths, red and white striped canvas, black silk, the heavy gray cloth Saba’s shirts were made of. In the alley beyond she found beer vendors. She turned a corner and came into a narrow street where they sold people.