Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“That’s a low point, even for you. How could you do that to me? I thought you cared about me.”

She shut the door into the hall, so that David would not waken. Saba had his temper back. He watched her cross the kitchen and draw a cup of water to loosen her throat. The kusin had left the window over the hose slightly open. She shut it hard.

“What did you do to Illy?”

He came up behind her. “She did it to pay me back, didn’t she? For chasing around.”

She put the cup down on the counter. Pedasen’s frightened face appeared in her memory. Illy’s frightened voice. He slouched against the counter beside her, his elbow bracing him up.

“Why are you so white, Paula? You think I’m going to whip you too, don’t you?”

“No,” she said, evenly.

“How long have you been debauching my wife?”

She turned on him, ready to blast him, and the hall door sighed. She and Saba in unison turned toward David, coming into the kitchen. The long shirt hung rumpled to his knees.

“Papa!” He leaped up into Saba’s arms. “When did you get back? Will you take me to Ybix? Will you take me for a ride in Ybicsa? Pedasen died. I whipped Itak and made him eat mud.” Saba boosted him up in the crook of his arm.

“Say good-bye to your mother.”

She gripped the edge of the counter in both hands. Her heart began to thud. David twisted around in Saba’s arms. “Good-bye. Where is she going?”

“To Yekka. She’ll be back before you miss her.”

She looked away, relieved. David said, “Can I go too?”

“I thought you wanted to ride in Ybicsa? ”

“Yes!”

With David riding on his arm, the big Styth went to the door. Paula said, “What if I refuse?”

“Don’t make it harder for me, Paula.” He shouted out to the yard for Sril. She stared at his back. She could refuse. But she did not want to be around him. David squirmed out of his arms and came down the room to Paula.

“Will you call me on the screen? Just to me and nobody else?”

She nodded. Sril stood in the doorway. Saba gestured at her. “Take her to Yekka.”

The trip was stormy. She was sick all the way from Matuko to Vribulo, the midway stop. Drenched with sweat, she sat in the compartment drinking tea. Sril gave her a towel and she mopped her face. The bus swayed and lurched along in its course.

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel awful.”

“You’ll never make a Styth, Mendoz’.”

She emptied her cup of the sweet tea. The bench was slippery. She had to hold the grip in the wall to keep from landing on the floor. But she felt better, her stomach steadier than before. Sril stretched his feet across the aisle to the opposite bench, his arms spread out across the back of their seat.

“How did your mission go?” she said. She put the cup into the clamp on the wall.

“Perfect. We took about four hundred slaves. Everybody on the Asteroid who didn’t die.”

“Terrific,” she said, glum. The only Asteroid he could mean was Vesta; Ceres, the only other of the minor Planets so densely populated, was on the far side of the Sun.

“The Man took Ybicsa down over the base and pulled off every attack-craft they had, and Ybix went in and blew up the satellites. I hit three out of three shots. Of course The Creep put me in the green window, I couldn’t miss.”

She leaned against the wall of the compartment. Illy’s scream sounded in her memory. But it was Pedasen she longed for. The bus lurched and she jumped. Sril put his arm around her, holding her fast, and she moved over against his side.

“Did you and the Old Man fight?” he said. His hand grazed her side. She shut her eyes. Gently he stroked her side and her shoulder. “It looks odd, he comes back and an hour later you’re going.” His palm curved over her breast.

“Sril,” she said. “Switch off.”

His hand left her. The bus lurched along toward Yekka.

Yekka was bright as an Earthish afternoon: the pala fruit was ripening. The whole city rang with the sizzling music of insects. Kasuk, Tanuojin’s elder son, met her at the city gate, and Sril got back on the bus to go home. Kasuk took her across the green city to the Akellarit compound. Remembering he was shy, she made no effort to talk to him. He looked nothing like his father. A heavyset young man, with broad plain features, he walked slightly stooped, his eyes on the ground. In the compound yard, she looked first for the bilyobio tree that grew near Tanuojin’s window. It was sprouting again.

Tanuojin was in the public room of the main building, giving orders to a row of his men. The walls, like much of the compound, were half-paneled, glossy dark on the bottom and flat white on top. The ceiling was held up on square dark pillars. Paula stopped to look at a postboard near the door. Under a permanent heading for his Akopra, which he called the Black Company, was a list of times and dances. They were doing Capricornus in a few watches. She began to be pleased she had come, even without David; she liked Yekka.

“I’m supposed to read the book to you,” Tanuojin said, behind her. His crew had gone. He cuffed her. “Didn’t I tell you to stop doing that?”

“Frankly, I don’t remember that you did.”

“Tell him I gave you the book.” He walked away across the hall toward the far doorway. When she did not follow he threw her a hard look, and she trotted after him.

“You took Vesta,” she said, in the corridor.

“It was a damned stupid move. The Martians went back again as soon as we left.” He pushed her ahead of him into the room where Saba slept when he was here. “You stay here.”

“All the time?” She looked up at his face, arm’s length above hers.

“You can go anywhere you want, I don’t care. I don’t see how he has a right to call you loose. At least you didn’t do it with a man.”

She went over to the narrow bed and climbed up to sit on it. She was sweating under her heavy clothes; this was the warmest she had ever been in Styth. Tanuojin leaned against the side of the door, his long dished profile toward her. One mustache lay over his shoulder. He said, “While you’re here, you can do something with me.”

“Oh.” The skin quivered over her shoulders. “What?”

He came into the room and shut the door. “I’ll show you.”

“Who have you done it with? Anybody else but us?”

“Just you and him. Who else is there?”

She lay on her side on the bed, between Tanuojin and the wall. The light from the ground outside shone up through the window behind her onto the ceiling. There was a krine in the room somewhere, the Yekkit insect, sawing out its violin screech. “Is it different with him than me?”

He rolled onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. “What do you think? You’re entirely different people. Your memory is older than his. You know things in different ways than he does.” He was sleepy; his eyes half-closed.

She wondered how long they had shared the same body: an hour, perhaps two hours. The krine was coming closer. Now she could see it on the floor, a thumb-sized transparent worm with wings.

“What do you do?” she said. “What does it feel like?”

“I don’t do anything. It feels like what you feel like. That doesn’t help, does it? So why don’t you stop asking questions?”

“I don’t understand why you’re so kinked about it.”

“I’m tired of being treated like a freak.”

She propped her head on her fist. Through the neck of his shirt she could see his collarbones. The krine’s voice stopped.

“You know the treaty is ending soon,” she said.

Tanuojin’s eyes opened, shell-white. His eyes had gotten several shades paler since she had first met him. He said, “We talked about that on the way back from Vesta. You should have asked that man from the Committee what they’re going to do.”