Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“They are my children,” Tanuojin said. “I’m sick of the way you meddle with my children.”

“Tut tut tut,” Saba said.

“Junna is still a little boy! The next he’ll be taking morphion—” His voice rose, and Paula took the tape plug out of her ear and turned the volume down. She put her feet up on the frayed arm of the couch. None of the Styths was awake yet. A flat blade of sunlight pierced the curtained window opposite her, yellow with dust motes. In her ear Tanuojin and Saba differed sharply about Junna. She picked at the threads on the worn couch cover.

“You and Paula, you both take your crumbs so seriously.”

“You’re such a hypocrite.”

She heard her conversation with them in the car going down to New York, and the meeting with Jefferson and Fisher. Something was missing. She had expected to hear something between them that would tell her where Tanuojin had gone. Glumly she realized they had talked about that before Saba put his clothes on.

“We’re just trying to get rid of the pinch-faced Martian,” Saba told Leno.

The time meter on the wall read ten minutes to noon. At four they were due in New York again. Stacks of bound hourlies cluttered the floor. She sat up and rested her feet on a bundle. In her ear the plug played back the maddening small talk of the trip from New York to New Haven. Maybe she should wire Tanuojin. Plant a homing device on him in case he went somewhere else. That was desperate. She wondered what they would do when they found out she was spying on them.

“What about Fisher?” Saba said. “Did you reach him?”

“When he’s angry he’s clear as water. He saw Savenia over the rest-days, it’s all set up. I’d love to know how much the old woman knows.”

“Paula must have told her not to let you touch her.”

“No. She figured that out for herself. Or Bunker told her.”

“Does Paula know? About the coup.”

She went taut as a wire. Tanuojin said, “No. Not yet.”

“I don’t like treating her as an enemy.”

“Part of her is everybody’s enemy. You heard her tell Jefferson that she’s only interested in what she can get for herself. The bitch. After all we’ve done for her.”

“I also heard her call me the Emperor.”

“That’s how she sells it to you. It sounds a little different when she’s talking to Jefferson.”

“Naturally. Did you check on Ybicsa?”

“Saba, we can’t go back and forth every watch between here and the ship. I hid her in a ditch. Nobody will find her. The League is planning to spring the coup the day we leave. They’ll arrest the Committee first, and then they’ll take us. All we have to do is let them destroy the Committee, and then we step in and save the Earth from the Martians. What could be simpler?”

She yanked the plug out of her ear. Everything fitted. She should have made sense of it before, when Saba was telling her she had to choose.

She sat down on the couch and made herself think about what she would do. There seemed very little choice. The League probably thought they could pull off their plot without enlarging it into a war, and Tanuojin thought he could contain everything in a counterplot. There was too much involved, too many rearrangements, too many people. The coup would spread like bursting atoms. It would stop only when it had brought everything else in the system into a balance with itself. She went down the hall to the library, where the videone was, and called the Committee office in New York.

Jefferson took a long time to answer; or Paula imagined that she did. Paula stood over the cabinet banging her fingers on the screen. The red and white holding pattern on the videone screen split apart to show her Jefferson’s face, tinged green.

“Yes, Mendoza. I—”

“I can’t chat,” Paula said. “The Sunlight League is mounting a coup against the Committee and the Styths. Saba and Tanuojin know about it and intend to use it to wipe you out and grab the Earth.”

Jefferson’s eyes popped round as a Styth’s. “The League. Who?” She leaned forward into the screen, and the green color increased in her cheeks: she looked dead. “Fisher and Savenia?”

“I don’t know anything more,” Paula said. “I’m going up to talk to them—they can help you if they want to.”

“Mendoza, wait.”

She went out to the hall and up the stairs. The house was quiet enough that she could hear the whisper of the upstairs hall curtains billowing over the open windows. The bed in her room was empty. She went back around the corner to Tanuojin’s room.

They were both there, Tanuojin before the closet putting his shirt on, and Saba lying on his back across the bed. She threw the tape plug at him. “You have one hell of a gall talking about honor.” She slammed the door.

Saba caught the tape. He sat up on the bed. Tanuojin was staring at her with an intent look on his face. She turned on his weakness: Saba. “You pirate. You’re no better than your father. You’re a cheap, sleazy politician, just like Machou.”

“Don’t listen to her.” Tanuojin reached his lyo in one long stride. Saba put the tape into his ear.

“Has she told anybody else?”

Paula looked beyond him at Tanuojin. “If this is all you can do with your mind, you should do it for money in a carnival.”

His heat flared. He pulled back one arm to hit her, and Saba caught him. There was a knock on the door. Paula backed away from the bed. Her head was pounding as if she were feverish.

“What is it?” Saba shouted.

Sril answered him through the door. “Akellar, that fat old woman is on the box downstairs.”

“Jefferson,” Paula said. “Who I told. Talking about choices. What are you going to do?”

Saba still sat on the bed; he looked back over his shoulder at Tanuojin, and she saw in their faces that their minds were set. She started toward the door.

“You can do it without me.”

Saba grabbed her arm. “They’ll kill you.” He pulled her around bodily and pushed her toward Tanuojin. “Send her back to the ship.”

“Akellar,” Sril called.

“I’m coming!” He thrust her into Tanuojin’s grasp and went out the door.

Tanuojin twisted her arm up behind her back and hoisted her over to the unmade bed. “I brought something for you all the way from Yekka, in case this happened.” He let go of her, and she took her throbbing wrist in the other hand. He swung a straight chair down in front of her. In his other hand was a plastic hand-yoke.

“Tanuojin, don’t do it. You’ll lose everything. You can’t manage a war.”

He pulled her arms through the slats in the back of the chair. “I’m not doing anything. It’s nigger eating nigger, just like in the books.” He snapped the yoke onto her wrists.

“Ouch.” The inside edges of the yoke were knife-sharp. The tight fit pinched her.

“Bleed.” He went out. The door shut. She heard the key turn in the lock.

She put her head against the back of the chair before her. In the hall, Sril called some question. Her wrists throbbed in the yoke. She straightened, lifted the chair up on her forearms, and carried it over to the window.

From here she could see the backyard, the barn, and the meadow. The Dutch car was parked beneath the window. The bonnet was tilted up, and Leno bent over the engine. Kasuk walked across the meadow. Her wrists were numb. There was a springtab in the side of the yoke. Her fingers would not reach it, and when she pressed it against the wall, the knife edges of the yoke slit her skin. She cocked her arms up and bit the tab, without result.

Saba spoke in the hall. She turned toward the sound of his voice. No one came in. She took the chair once around the room. The sunlight streamed in the window and stretched across the floor. Leno was still working in the car’s engine. The yoke cut into her wrists. If she broke the back of the chair she could at least free herself of that. She laid the chair down on its side, one end against the bedframe, put her foot on the middle slat, and kicked it out.