Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

She kept the heat in her house low, for David’s sake. While she was bathing him, Pedasen came into the steamroom behind her.

“The Akellar wants you in the Manhus.”

She glanced at him. David yawned; the inside of his mouth was pink as a cat’s. She wrapped him in a towel.

“What I’d like to know is why you let him go in there when I was still in the middle of it,” she said to Pedasen.

“I didn’t do anything. He just came. I think he was following us, on top of all the rest. Here, I’ll take him.” He reached for the baby.

Pedasen could dress David and put him to bed. She crossed the yard to the Manhus. During the brawl she had been stepped on twice and fallen on once and her ribs still hurt. Sril was standing just outside the maproom door, in the hall of the Manhus.

“Mendoz’,” he said. “You got us all blood-pay. I’ll buy you a cup sometime.” He opened the door for her.

The oval room beyond was lined with maps, set in frames along the wall like windows, green maps of Uranus and blue and white maps of the solar system. Saba sat on a pedestal chair in the middle of the room. He waved to her to stay where she was. The two men before him had their backs to her, but she recognized Tssa and Mikka.

“There is such a thing as family loyalty,” Saba said. “Honor, and regard for your own blood. Although anybody who would put his head together with a thug like Kolinakin—”

Kolinakin was dead. They had dragged him into the street and broken his neck. She put her hand to her sore ribs. Neither of the two bound men noticed her. Saba made a gesture with his left hand. A plastic glove sheathed his right to the elbow; he had broken three fingers in the fight. Sril brought him a pair of shears.

“I’m giving you a choice,” he said to Tssa. He nodded at the broad-bladed shears in the gunner’s hand.

Under his shirt Tssa’s shoulders were rigidly straight. “You never gave my father any choices. What are you trying to pay for, uncle?”

Saba nodded at her, where she stood in the doorway. “Look over there, Tssa.”

His nephew’s head turned. When he saw Paula his round eyes narrowed. Saba said, “That’s how I caught you. That slavewoman caught you for me. Your father was stupid but he would never have let a nigger trap him, and a woman at that.”

The younger man’s gaze fell. Mikka was staring at the far wall. Saba swiveled his chair back and forth in tiny rhythmic squeaks. “Take your choice. It makes no difference to me.”

Tssa’s head was bowed. The room was silent a long moment while he thought. At last he reached for the shears in Sril’s hand. He hacked off his own hair, just above the club, and dropped the knot of hair and the shears on the floor. His eyes looked blind. He came toward Paula, long-striding, and she moved out of the doorway and he brushed by her without looking at her. The door shut.

Saba tapped Sril’s arm. “Make sure he leaves Matuko.”

“Yes, Akellar.” Sril hurried out after Tssa.

Saba turned to Mikka. “Now, what about you?”

His brother took a step toward him. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. Ask her. I was just there having a jar.” He put his hand out to Paula. “Tell him. I saved your life, didn’t I?”

She looked from him to Saba. “He was Tssa’s lookout. He saw me, but he was too drunk to come upstairs.”

“I saved your life!”

Saba pushed at the hair knot on the floor with his foot. “Go get drunk in somebody else’s city.”

“I don’t have any money.” Mikka wiped his hand over his mouth. “Tssa owed everybody.” He tramped out of the room, grumbling.

Saba rotated the chair back and forth. Paula said, “I’m not a slave.”

“When you go out, you’ll use the slave door, and you’ll wear slave clothes. I won’t have people thinking I’d let my wife run around in the street.” He waved his plastic hand at her. “You can go.”

Boltiko sat down, pulling her skirts smooth over her knees, and sighed. “Sometimes I think I’ll just die. I can’t eat anything any more without getting sick.” She fanned her vast face, smooth with fat. Illy’s slave poured kakine, the sweet green Matukit liquor, into three glasses on the table before her.

Paula’s chair was a sling of white shaggy fur, big enough to sleep in. She curled her legs under her. Illy’s whole house was done in white, chrome, and glass. The young wife came in from the sleeproom. Against such a background, her beauty was riveting: there was nothing else to look at. Boltiko glared at her.

“That boy of yours is incorrigible.”

Illy had three children. Paula could never pick out which of the horde they were. The young wife sat down in the chair between the other women. “I’m sure I can’t be blamed.”

Boltiko snorted. She reached for a glass of kakine. “That baby is tiny,” she said to Paula. “You aren’t feeding him enough.”

“If he were any bigger I’d have to put wheels on him to move him around.”

“He cries. That’s a sign he’s hungry.”

“I think he’s just bad-tempered,” Paula said.

“He cries all the time.”

“All you ever talk about is children,” Illy said. She sent the slave away with a wave of her hand. “He’s in a good mood now.”

All she ever talked about was Saba. Paula rubbed her hand over the long white nap of her chair. The treaty had come back, signed, and the trade contracts had been covered by a syndicate of fifty-two Martian traders.

Boltiko said, “Nobody is blowing down Matuko, that’s why. Dakkar says the city is very peaceful.”

The house slave came in again with a tray of cut fruit. Like Pedasen, he was a eunuch. In his whispery voice, he said, “Mem, Pedasen is in the back. The Akellar will see Mem Paula in the Manhus.”

“In the Manhus,” Illy and Boltiko said, in one voice.

“I wonder what he wants,” Paula said. She slid down from the chair.

Pedasen waited in the back doorway of lily’s house, David in the crook of his arm. When the baby saw her he burst into an enormous smile. She took him from the slave. With Pedasen beside her she crossed the yard to the Manhus door.

“Boltiko says it means he’s hungry when he cries,” she said to Pedasen.

He shrugged. On the steps, he reached for the baby again. “She thinks that’s all that can be wrong with people, that they’re hungry.”

Paula laughed. He loathed the Styths. She watched him take the baby back toward her house, and went herself into the Manhus.

Saba was in the maproom, staring at a green hologram of the Planet, his hands on his hips. She went into the oval room and shut the door. He turned his head; the light whitened the side of his face.

“How is Vida?”

“He’s fine. He cries a lot.”

“That’s good, that means he’s strong-minded.” He turned off the map and she could no longer see his face. “I’m going to Vribulo. Do you want to go with me?”

“Yes, of course.” She sat down in the pedestal chair, her gaze on his solid featureless shape among the maps. He sauntered around the room and came up behind her.

“I got a record slip from a bank in Luna. They’re holding a million dollars in iron at my order.” His hand rumpled through her hair.

“What about my commission?”

“That isn’t how we do things here.” His fingers worked in her hair. His voice was smooth. “I’ll take care of you and Vida. I give you everything you want, don’t I?”

“I suppose so.” She could not help but smile.

“Then what do you need money for?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

“You’re a very reasonable woman,” he said.

Vribulo was darker than Matuko, almost like full night, and bitterly cold. The air smelled rancid. The streets swarmed with people. They walked faster here than in Matuko, hurrying along in a continuous crowd. She stayed close by Saba. If she got lost here she would have to find her own way back. Ketac had come with them, together with Sril and Bakan. The young man walked along beside her, looking around him, his bed slung over his shoulder.