Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

David had Saba firmly by the hand. The big man told him Sybil’s name. “This is the woman your mother worked for, before she came to me.”

“Here,” Sybil said. “I’ll bet I can do something you can’t do.”

Paula, behind her, could not see what Sybil did, but David shrieked with laughter. “Mama, look!” Jefferson straightened, turning her head. Her right eye was white and blind as an egg. David let go of his father and gripped Jefferson’s arm.

“Do it again!”

Jefferson chuckled. Paula said, “Sybil, you are gross.”

“Come meet my guests.” Sybil crooked her arm through Paula’s. She smelled like milk. “We were just talking about the Akellar’s extraordinary grasp of law.”

“For a Styth,” Tanuojin said.

All three strangers were members of the Council, a man and a woman from Luna and a man from Venus. Paula began to see Jefferson’s purpose in bringing the Styths here. She shook a series of hands and introduced the Council members to Saba, using all of his titles she could remember. Jefferson brought them each a tall fizzing glass.

“Where did you study law, Miss Mendoza?” asked the Council-woman from Luna.

Paula shook her head. “Nowhere. I did a flash reading on the way here.” She watched David, who was following Jefferson around. “Yekka is the lawyer.”

“It was quite a display, too,” said the man from Venus, hearty. “Chi Parine is no amateur.”

Tanuojin never even looked in his direction. “I have a good memory,” he said to the empty air.

Saba held his glass out to Paula. “It was a piece of theater. Bring me another of these.”

“Yes, too bad you were playing to the wrong audience.” She gave him her glass and went around the couch to the table against the wall where Jefferson had gotten the drinks. On a table covered with a white cloth were several rows of plastic bottles. She fished ice-balls out of a bucket. Jefferson came up to her side and took a package of biscuits from the back of the table.

“Thank you for coming, Mendoza.”

“Thank Saba.”

“Your son is his image.” Jefferson poured salted biscuits into a hotel dish and went off across the room. Tanuojin was still refusing the attentions of the Venusian and the Lunar woman. Jefferson stood talking to Saba and eating biscuits. The half-light buried the edges of the room in shadows. Paula filled two glasses with ice and whiskey and took them across the room and gave one to Saba.

“Have a cookie,” Jefferson said.

“Where is David?” She looked around the room for him.

“Leave him alone,” Saba said. “Ever since that thing with the dog you’ve been all over him.” He fished an ice-ball out of his glass and ate it.

“You’ve got fourteen others.”

The third Council member, the man from Luna, took the last of Jefferson’s biscuits. “Does he play chess?” He nodded over his shoulder toward Tanuojin. Elaborately unimpressed, he looked up, up at Saba. “What’s an Akellar?”

Jefferson turned to Paula. “What dog?”

Paula sipped her whiskey, her eyes on Tanuojin. “Nothing.” Thin as a withy, the tall Styth leaned against the wall, thumbing his mustaches flat. The Venusian’s hearty voice boomed.

“Actually, strangely enough, the best schools in the system are on the Earth.”

“Why is that strange?” Tanuojin said. Jefferson raised her head, her pale eyes sharp.

“The anarchists have no respect for education,” the hearty man said.

“Maybe that’s why their schools are so good,” Tanuojin said.

The Venusian fished cigarettes out of the pocket of his tunic. His hands busy, he said, “Is that some kind of joke?”

Tanuojin was facing him, but his white eyes glanced toward Jefferson. He slid his hands under his belt. “The anarchists have respect for nothing. They’ll do anything they have to do to keep the rest of you dancing in their act.”

Saba said, in Styth, “Why don’t you shut up?”

Tanuojin straightened away from the wall. “You know why we’re here—she’s trading on—”

“Just shut up when you’re in her place drinking with her and eating with her.”

“I’m not—”

“I am.”

Tanuojin slouched against the wall, sulky, his head to one side. Next to Paula, Sybil Jefferson looked from Styth to Styth, keen as a fox. Paula realized she understood them: she spoke Styth. The Venusian’s match clicked into a little burst of flame.

“It’s a riddle,” Saba said to the Venusian. “Unfortunately riddles don’t translate very well from one language to another. What is that?”

“Cigarettes,” the Venusian said. He held out the package. “Have one?”

Saba went over to the couch and the Venusian showed him how to smoke. He maneuvered the cigarette in his claws, fascinating the Lunar woman, who was slightly drunk. Paula looked for David.

Beside her, Jefferson said, “They couldn’t have done better if they’d been coached.”

Tanuojin was over at the bar, his back to the room. Paula said, “That won’t work too often, Sybil.”

“Just once,” Jefferson said.

“Where’s Mitchell Wylie?”

“He left the Planet. Apparently for security reasons.” Jefferson moved around to put her back to Tanuojin, ten feet away. “What happened?” Tanuojin was watching them. Paula kept herself from a shrug, a movement of the hand, anything that might signal him.

“The obvious. Parine tried to ambush us. Dick tripped, for once.”

“What else?”

Paula raised her eyes again, over the fat woman’s shoulder. Saba caught her glance and held his glass out. She stooped to catch David as he passed her.

“Here. Take this to Papa.” She gave him the glass in her hand.

“What else happened?” Jefferson said, when Paula straightened.

“I just told you, Sybil.”

“Why, suddenly, is Richard oracularly vague on the subject of Tanuojin?”

Relieved, Paula smiled at her. That settled her suspicions. “Ask him,” she said, and went off to make herself two more drinks.

In the morning, on the way to the entry port to leave for home, she bought an hourly. The Council had reconsidered the question of Venus 14 and withdrawn the order to send a peacekeeping force in to settle the chronic civil war in the giant dome. Paula folded the hourly and put it in her jacket pocket. At the entry port, eighteen or twenty people were marching up and down with ribbon banners, calling the Styths names. A vitriolic anti-Styth pamphlet she took from one of them had been printed by the Sunlight League, and wore their emblem in the upper right-hand corner of the cover: a radiant star.

The air of the Empire’s heart-city smelled like grease. The darkness made Paula uneasy and she stayed close by Saba in the street. She kept having the feeling that someone was following them. Her ears hurt from listening behind them through the roar of the city. They went along the crowded street toward the mid-city gate, where they were to meet Tanuojin.

He was standing just outside the door, Marus and two others of his watch behind him. As usual he and Saba met with an embrace. Paula turned to look up and down the street. People in Vribulo walked faster than in other places. The free locks of the Vribulit clubbed hair swayed like tails behind them. All she saw in one direction was a mass of hurrying backs and in the other a mass of hurrying faces. Tanuojin sent his men to the Barn, and he and Saba and Paula started across the city to the Akopra.

“Isn’t your Akopra House finished yet?” Paula asked him.

“Yes.”

She was walking between them, breaking into a jog now and then to keep up. “Then why go to this Akopra, if they’re so bad?”

“They may have somebody I can use.”