Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“What are they made of? Are they solid?”

“Rock,” she said. “Like moons.” On the far side of the mountains, the funnel-chimneys of smelters sent up plumes of red smoke. The dense air closed around them again. The bus bucked up and down. Beside her head Leno’s claws sank into the foam cushion.

Kasuk dropped into the seat next to hers, on the aisle. “This place is mad. Everything curves the wrong way.”

The bus danced through a crosswind. Paula ducked under Leno’s arm, bending closer to the window. The clouds thinned. Now they were swept away again. The bus soared over the whitened crest of a mountain. A banner of snow blew off the peak.

All around her, the Styths yelled, delighted. Kasuk said, “Does anything live here?”

Paula said, “Insects. Lichens. A few birds.” She put her hand on the window sill. She had forgotten how bright the Earth was.

“What’s that white stuff?” Leno pointed.

“Snow.” She used the word from the Common Speech. “Frozen water.”

He frowned at her. “Frozen water is ice.”

“Snow is water that freezes into crystals and falls from the—” She stared at him, startled. There was no Styth word for sky. “From the upper air,” she said, lamely.

Kasuk said, “All this is natural? No one made it?”

“The Sun made it,” Leno said. “Everything comes from the Sun.”

They were flying toward the Western Sea, red with pollution. The shore was encrusted with robot factories. Feathers of thick smoke streamed past the window. Kasuk leaned over her shoulder.

“Can you imagine flying here? This layer is so thin, and I’ll bet you couldn’t even get a ship into that layer down there.” He pointed to the ground.

Behind Leno, Tanuojin said, “Saba has flown over twenty hours in this Planet.”

Paula looked up past the Merkhiz Akellar’s thick shoulder. “Not in a Styth ship.”

“No. Your friend Jefferson is meeting us in New York. We’re staying in that same place we stayed before. That square house with the short beds.”

New Haven House was the only place where the Committee could put up eighteen people. She turned to look out the window.

Kasuk said, “Paula. Does anything live here?”

They were flying over the brown scummy water of the sea. Patches of oil-eating weeds made islands below them. She said, “That’s alive. There are sharks. Fish, gulls. Snakes.” She turned to look between the seats for Tanuojin. Junna had hauled him to a window at the back of the bus. He stood with one hand on his younger son’s shoulder, holding him away. She put her nose against the window again, looking for something else to explain to them.

Sybil Jefferson met them at the entry port. When the Styths walked out onto the broad ramp down to the ground, a swarm of people with cameras and recorders rushed to surround them. The three rAkellaron withdrew into the shell of their men. The cameras whirred. Jefferson hurried around threatening and cajoling. Paula went to the rail. No one paid any attention to her. She looked out over the city. The autumn air was bright and crisp, the grass champagne-colored, the wood toward the south sorrel and yellow and earth-brown. She put her hands on the rail. She had forgotten or never realized how life teemed here. Everything below her was moving, every leaf, every stem of grass, the birds and all the people stirring. A woman in a white coat was walking away from the building, off across the grass. Paula straightened. The woman turned a corner and disappeared.

“Mendoza,” Jefferson called. “Are you coming?”

Sybil had shooed off the picture men and voice men from the hourlies. With the Styths she was going down the ramp. Paula followed them.

Jefferson pattered along beside Saba. “You see, Akellar, you’re celebrated men.”

Paula went to the rail, searching the ground below them for the woman she had just seen. Tanuojin walked beside her, Sybil Jefferson just beyond. Paula reached across him to pluck at Jefferson’s sleeve.

“Jefferson, I saw Cam Savenia just now. What’s going on?”

“Savenia.” Saba stopped where he was. Leno was going on several feet ahead of them, gawking at the city, and did not seem to be listening. Jefferson kept on walking.

“Was it Cam?” Paula said.

“Possibly,” the old woman said. “The Council wanted to send her as an observer, but we talked them out of it.”

Tanuojin walked in between her and Paula, and his hand dropped onto Paula’s shoulder. “Who did they send?” he asked. Paula pulled his hand away.

“Caleb Fisher,” Jefferson said.

They were coming to the foot of the ramp. Saba walked on Jefferson’s far side. Tanuojin grasped Paula’s wrist, his touch cold as metal. She knew who Caleb Fisher was: a Council member for Mars, once a minister, she thought a defense minister. She said, “Is he a member of the Sunlight League?”

“Ask him.” Jefferson’s lips curled into a stiff smile, but her blue eyes looked angry. “Since you’re so full of snappy questions.”

They went into the parking lot. Tanuojin and Saba circled off into the dark behind a row of cars and stood talking. Jefferson sorted out the rest of the Styths among three Committee buses. Paula leaned against the door of a yellow three-seater car with the Committee emblem on the roof. Kasuk came over to her.

“Is this where you lived before?”

“Yes.” She watched Leno’s men line up at the steps to the biggest bus.

“It’s beautiful.”

“So is Styth,” she said.

“But in another way.”

Jefferson came around the rear end of the three-seater. “Mendoza, we were trying to ease them gently into the notion of the observer.”

“You could have warned me,” Paula said. ’I’d have known how to act.” She touched the arm of the young man beside her. “Jefferson, this is Yekka’s prima son, Kasuk.”

“Hello,” he said. He put his hand out to Jefferson, changed his mind, and drew it back. Jefferson had already reached to shake it. She lowered her hand, but Kasuk, with a Styth’s sense of protocol, stuck his out to her again. Finally they connected, Jefferson looking much amused. Kasuk stood head and shoulders over her. He said, in a false voice, “We are all—”

A shout cut him off. Paula slid past him. At the bus Sril faced Leno’s towering second-in-command. He pushed the Merkhizit, and the taller man shouted, “You little worm,” and jumped on him.

Kasuk took a step toward them. Paula caught his sleeve. Sril and the Merkhizit tumbled over the paved ground, and the other men roared. They rushed out of the bus to watch. Bakan leaped out the door. Midway between the fight and Paula, Junna stood fixed in his tracks. From two directions, Saba and Tanuojin and Leno ran up and scattered the men away.

Jefferson said, “Did I err in the programming?”

“You did,” Paula said.

In the midst of the Styths, Saba had Sril by the arm. The small man’s face was bleeding. He shouted, “You should have heard what he said about Ybix , and after we saved them, too.”

Leno turned away. “I’ll never hear the end of that.”

Tanuojin glared at him. “Your crew’s got a big mouth.”

Kasuk moved again, and Paula tightened her grip on his sleeve. The bus swayed back and forth. Saba was herding the crews of the two ships up the steps. His fists on his hips, Leno thrust his blunt head forward at Tanuojin.

“Don’t get me angry, Yekka. I’ll cut you into twenty pieces.”

“I don’t think you can count that high.”

Kasuk laughed. Saba came out of the bus and burst between the two men, driving them apart. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jefferson said. “What was that all about?”

Behind Saba, Tanuojin shot a vicious look at Leno. The Merkhiz Akellar sneered at him. “Nigger eyes.” Tanuojin turned his back. Paula let go of his son’s shirt.