Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

She began to feel better. Illy washed her face with scented water. Paula moaned in the new luxury of being free of pain. She felt guilty for suspecting Illy of causing it. She took Illy’s hand and kissed it, and Illy hugged her.

Boltiko watched her hands in her lap. She was weaving a shawl. She sat on the swing in Paula’s sitting room; she had claimed as she walked in the door that she wanted to get away from the children. Paula stood by the window, her back to the window, and folded her arms over her chest.

“All right. You want to talk about Illy.”

The prima wife’s gaze remained on her hands. “I’m very disappointed in you. You know you’re betraying Saba?”

“Saba has other women all the time.”

“He’s taken you into our home.”

“That’s because he needs me. We have work together.”

“I know that,” Boltiko said. “You’ve changed him, you’ve made him think differently about almost everything. I admit I’m jealous of you.” She turned the work in her hands, smoothing the intricate design between her weaving needles. “We all have our lot in life.” She nodded down the hallway. “You are the only person I’ve ever known to tame a kusin.”

The little animal was coming out of the baby’s room. It ran down the hall in the opposite direction, to the kitchen to drink. Paula’s eyes followed it. She had done nothing to tame it.

“That’s a compliment, Tiko. It won’t come in when Illy is here.”

“I still think you’re betraying him,” Boltiko said. “He’ll forgive you, because you’re his friend. Illy he will not forgive.”

The bus stopped in Yekka’s city gate, and she and Sril got off with the other passengers in the public section. The little open platform outside the docking tube was loud with their footsteps and voices and the people come to meet them. She unfastened the veil and pushed her hood back. Most of the people around her were farmers who had taken their produce to sell in Vribulo and Matuko. They went off, carrying their baskets. She went to the edge of the platform, blinking in the unexpected bright light.

The gate stood in a green field. The grass was knee-high, like a meadow, and the air rang with the thin voices of insects. The men and women who had just left the bus were walking away along a narrow path. The bubble was so big she could not make out the far ends; she had a sudden feeling of being released into its vast space. Sril came up behind her and shouted, and on the path leading to the gate two men broke into a run toward them.

One was Marus. The other was a boy, a neophyte, his shaggy hair unclubbed, who gave Paula a strange, piercing look. Sril handed Marus her satchel, and the third watch helmsman passed it on to the young man.

“This is Kasuk, Mendoz’. The Akellar’s son.”

“Hello,” Paula said.

“Hello.” The boy stared over her head, avoiding her eyes. Sril went back into the closed part of the gate, to take the bus back to Matuko, and Marus and Tanuojin’s son led her off into a pathway that crunched under her feet.

The city seemed wild, without people. The meadows were fields, cut into long furrows and planted with green. Insects soared from leaf to leaf. They passed through an orchard of little trees. The naked branches were thin and knobbed like arthritic fingers.

“Pala trees,” Marus said to her. “More pala trees in Yekka than people.”

“What are those insects?”

“Krines. You should hear them during the hot time, they really shout.” They were coming to a bridge, humped over a stream, and he took her arm. “Be careful. It’s slippery.” There was no rail.

The green city curled around her, bright as an afternoon. She wished she had brought David. Kasuk was watching her. When she saw him, he jerked his gaze away. They went through a high white wall into a compound yard. The low white buildings on either side were trimmed with red under the eaves and around the windows and doors. Marus took her into the house on her right and along a narrow dark hallway to a room in the back.

Saba and Tanuojin were bent over a long table on the far side, under a window. Their backs were to her. Marus left. She went across the room to the table, whose slanted surface was papered with sheets of clear plastic held fast by clips. Each of the pages was a line drawing of a spaceship. The two men ignored her. She stood on her toes, her arms on the edge of the table, to see the sketches.

“Here.” Tanuojin thrust a folded paper at her. “What is this?”

Her heart quickened. She opened out the paper in her hands. “This must be a first. It’s a subpoena to the Universal Court.” At the head of the clear computer stock was the Court’s wing-and-balance insignia.

“What does that nigger treaty say we have to do about it?”

She was reading through it, delighted. The list of charges ran half the page: two counts of grand piracy, one count of theft, one count of harassment, six counts of refusing a directive, three counts of contempt of authority. She said, “I don’t think they expect you to do anything, or they wouldn’t have thrown in all these bogus charges.”

“Forget it,” Saba said. He straightened, his arms braced on the drafting table on either side of the sketch, and bent and gave her a fast kiss on the forehead. “That was almost before the treaty, anyway.”

Tanuojin came around him and took the paper from her. “This is a lie.” He sounded outraged. He shook the subpoena under her nose. “It’s a biased, prejudiced frame-up. The whole print job is a fraud.”

Paula looked away from him. The walls were chambered with bookracks. Charts and black and white recognition posters of spaceships hung above them. Saba stuck his pen in his hair.

“I like the scoopnose better.”

“That damned Machou. How did he get this?” Tanuojin read through the subpoena again. “They blew up their own ship and they’re hanging it on me. And what’s this theft charge? We should have stolen everything they had. What’s contempt of authority?”

“Do you remember telling General Gordon he was ignorant and superstitious?” Paula said.

“He is.”

“Contempt of authority.” She tapped the paper. “That’s a sieve, those charges. You can’t be held for that, it’s only a crime on Luna.”

“So the damned treaty only works one way, you see? They keep us in line, but they do whatever they please.”

Saba tore the top sheet of his drawing off the pad. “Forget it. Report the kill, maybe the fleet will vote you your fifth stripe.” He bent over the sketchpad. “They can’t do anything to us.”

“Call you nasty names,” she said. “Stop payments on your contracts.”

Tanuojin went to the window. Paula watched him through the corner of her eye. Through the window came the rhythmic ringing strokes of an ax, or maybe a hammer.

“How was the bus ride?” Saba asked.

“Not bad.”

Tanuojin said, “Where is this nickel-dime court?”

“In Crosby’s Planet. The man-made planet at Venus’s aft lagrangian.”

He put his hands on the red window frame, his eyes aimed out toward the sound of the hammer. Beside her, Saba said, “What did you have in mind?”

“I’d like to shove the thing down Machou’s throat.” He turned. “Come on.”

They followed him out to the hall. Paula skipped every few strides to keep up with them. Saba said, “Are you thinking of going down there?”

“Why not?” Tanuojin opened a door, and they went out to the yard. “You said yourself we could use another reconnaissance. Here they are sending us an invitation. And that’s deeper than we’ve ever been, that’s as far down as they go.”