Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

It was packed from wall to wall with men. Half of them wore the red chevron badge of the Uranian Patrol. Machou was captain of the patrol. She hung back, her breath stuck in her lungs, until she saw there were slaves among them. She went slowly in among the Styths, catching snatches of their talk. Several doors opened off either wall of the long, straight hallway, but the men all kept glancing at the first door on the right, so she knew that was where Machou was. They sounded impatient to leave. She wandered among them, watching the door they all watched. One of the other slaves suddenly leaned over to look her in the face. She turned away from him and he went off. Nervously she followed him away with her eyes.

The door behind her burst open, and she wheeled around. The patrolmen around her straightened to stand at respect, their arms at their sides. The man who came into the hall also wore the red chevron. Over his shirt a gold filigree collar hung, covering his shoulders and chest. He was flawlessly handsome, as beautiful as Illy. She looked him over, admiring him. From the room he had just left came Machou’s harsh voice. The door shutting cut it off.

She glanced around her at the white, moving slaves. The one who had remarked her was talking to another slave, and both of them turned and looked at her. She went hastily out of the Prima Suite, following the handsome man down.

She stayed one flight above him. He stopped on the second-floor landing to meet somebody. Higher on the stair, she went to the rail and leaned out, trying to see who it was. All she could see of him was the top of his head and his gold covered shoulders.

One of them said, “Matuko is out tearing the place up. I take it Ymma did his part?”

The other answered, “Yes—he says. You know about Tanuojin’s little kink, don’t you?”

“I saw him cut to the bone once, and he never bled a drop. Are you fighting Saba?”

Over her head, the door opened, and feet clanged on the landing. She went on down the stairs, through the several patrolmen waiting in the handsome man’s train. Absently, they shifted to let her pass through them. She went by the two men standing face to face on the platform where the stair turned corner. The second stranger was older than Saba; he stood with his head thrust forward.

The handsome man was saying, “I know what I can do, and I can’t whip Saba.”

“Even with Ymma to soften him up?” the other said.

“Ymma will only give him exercise. He’s new back from space, he’ll be in perfect condition. He’s strong as a motor anyway. This one is yours. I told Machou already.”

She was by them and no longer heard him. Higher, on the stairs above the landing, a voice called sharply, “Stop that slavewoman!” She broke into a run, going down the stairs two and three steps at a time. The sentries were dozing. She got through the door onto the open porch just ahead of them.

In the open they could not catch her. She reached the Barn out of breath. Saba was lying on his bed in the back room of his office, his arms behind his head. Paula shut the door.

“I’m glad you finally decided to come back,” he said.

“Who is in the patrol, very handsome, a fancy dresser—” She took off the slave’s clothes. “Much taller than you, but lighter-built?”

His head turned toward her. “Younger than me? Bokojin. The Illini Akellar. I can beat him.”

“That’s what he says.” Her satchel was under the bed, and she opened it and took out her robe. “Another one, stocky, older than you, who carries his head—” She thrust her head forward on her shoulders.

Saba watched her from the bed, his head pillowed on his arms. “That’s Leno. Illy’s brother, Merkhiz. I can’t beat him.”

Illy’s brother. He did not look like her at all. There was a blanket folded over the foot of the bed. Paula took it and sat down in the chair between the window and the chest of drawers. “Bokojin said you’d be in perfect shape.” She opened out the blanket.

“Maybe. The trouble with being strong is you never have to learn the tricks. Leno knows every trick there is. You can sleep with me. Don’t you trust me?”

“There isn’t enough room.”

“Maybe I could take Leno, if I didn’t have Ymma to scratch first. I can’t wait to get my hooks into him, that son of a bitch.”

“How is Tanuojin?”

“Not good.”

She pulled the edge of the blanket over her head. The chair was hard as a shelf, but she had no wish to sleep. She rested her head against the back of it. A siren wailed loud along the street below the window and slowly died away. Her legs hurt from climbing stairs. She missed David, whose routine ordered her life in Matuko. Ymma had broken Tanuojin’s body, maybe his mind, maybe all their ambitions: savaged in an alleyway.

“You were right,” Saba said. “We must be crowding close to Machou.”

“You can’t get out of fighting Ymma.”

“No.” He rolled onto his stomach. “Oh, I could, I guess. I could let him go by without revenging Tanuojin. Would you like me to do that?”

“Yes.”

The sound he made in his throat was like a muffled laugh. He turned the back of his head to her. “You’ll do anything.” His loose hair slid over his shoulders, wavy from being clubbed. His back flexed.

“I got in a fight with Leno, once,” he said. He was facing the wall. “In Colorado’s. Before I married Illy. He stretched me out in about fifteen seconds.”

“That was a while ago. He’s older than you are. What about Tanuojin? Can he help you?”

His head swiveled around again, directing his eyes toward her. “If I took him in there, in me?”

She nodded. Her hands and face were cold.

“I’ve thought of that. But he won’t be well. It’s too dangerous. It’s dangerous enough for him when he’s sound.”

“Could he help you?”

Saba propped himself up on one elbow and reached for the crystal lamp on the window sill. He switched it on. The light sprang into the room; she blinked, dazzled. He put the lamp on the floor midway between them.

“He knows half again as many tricks as Leno. But it could kill him. If he leaves his body it will start to bleed again.”

Paula held her legs out to put her feet into the warmth of the lamp. Leno was the Prima Cadet, second only to Machou. If Saba defeated him, Saba took his place. He had to win, whatever it cost him. She wiggled her toes in the glow of the lamp.

The broad porch of the House teemed with people. Paula went through the short entry, with its glittering wall of gold names, and down the hall on the first floor. The hall like a tunnel caught the voices of the men standing thick around the double doors at the far end. She followed a short white figure through the smaller slave door to the left.

She came into a large room full of slaves. Most of the floor was taken by a great open pit with a railing around it. She squeezed through the packed white shoulders to it. The pit was easily a hundred feet across, circular, its sloping walls ringed with three ledges. The rAkellaron sat there with their aides, scratching and drinking and talking, picking their noses, chewing laksi: the masters of the Empire. She leaned on the rail, her chin barely clearing it, stiff with excitement. She wondered if she were the first free Sun-worlder ever to see this.

Machou sat on the second ledge, a little to her right, deep in talk with the handsome man: Bokojin. Leno was across the pit from her on the first ledge. She could not find Ymma. While she looked around, the double doors banged wide, and Saba came into the Chamber.

The other men all craned their necks to see him, and many stood up. Ketac and Sril trailed him. He went straight down the steps of the pit, past her without noticing her, into the round sandy space at the bottom. Now he saw her; he gave her an intense look. Paula held on to the railing with both hands. The slaves around her were avoiding her. Somehow they always knew who she was. Now Ymma came into the Chamber.