Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“Yes,” she said. “You saved both of us.”

His heavy shoulders lifted and fell. “I just kept thinking about my father. I couldn’t let him down again. So it was really my father.” He grabbed Junna by his shaggy hair and shook him. “Go keep watch. Make sure nobody sneaks up on us.”

The boy raced off. Paula’s eyes followed him in his headlong run across the gulley and in among the trees. The swan’s broad wings sprawled around her, the feathers broken. Kasuk wiped his hands on the grass.

“My father told me to protect him. I’m just dragging us deeper. Can we leave the dome?”

“You’ll need an air car,” she said. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going with you.”

“Saba told me—”

“I don’t care what he said. I’m telling you what I’ll do.”

He made a little harried gesture, avoiding her eyes. A flap of his torn shirt hung down over his stomach. His chest was massive, his shoulders like a beam. His strength was perfect. He wore no scars from fighting, no killing marks.

“I have to follow orders,” he said.

“I can only help you if you let me go.”

“Then I’ll have to get us out by myself.”

The smell of smoke reached her nose. She said, “Which way is the lake from here?”

“Out there.” He pointed behind them. “There’s fighting here, too—what’s going on?”

“Here comes your brother.”

Junna was bounding down the slope, tall as a young tree, scattering stones and dirt on ahead of him. He jumped across the stream and ran up to them. Scratches decorated his body; he was naked.

“Cover yourself up,” Kasuk said.

“Why? She doesn’t care. I’m hungry again. When will Papa come? Will we start fighting when he gets here? There are fires up there, and people shooting guns.”

“What’s going on?” Kasuk turned to Paula. “I thought the Martians were just attacking us, but there aren’t any Styths up there.”

“The Sunlight League is staging a coup against the anarchy.”

“To kill us,” Junna said.

She bobbed her head, her gaze on Kasuk. He said, “What does Gemini have to do with it?”

“Everything.”

Junna raked at the ground with his claws, his head bent. “Papa knows what he’s doing.”

Kasuk said to her, “Then I can see why you don’t want to go back. I won’t take you back.”

“Kak!” Junna cried. He grabbed his brother’s arm. “Who will protect her?”

Kasuk scrubbed his face with his hand. He crooked his fingers in the neck of his shirt and pulled at it. “I wonder what’s happening to the rest of the Ybix .”

“Kak!”

“Shut up. I’ve made up my mind.” He looked at Paula. “You get us an air car.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

Night came. The domelight did not shine. She made her way toward the middle of the dome. A siren raised its hound-voice ahead of her. In the dark she had trouble finding a way through the trees. She skirted the east edge of the lake. Faint moonlight gleamed on the water. The swans were all roosting in the high grass near the head of the lake. As she crossed the open ground between the beach and the wood, near the hourly stand, a shot cracked out.

She sprinted into the cover of the trees. Another bullet followed her, whining like a hornet. She stopped beside a tree. Her ears strained to hear. The wood was full of sounds. The brush crackled behind her. Leaves rustled. The wind rose in a low call that lifted the hackles of her neck. In spite of the cool, she was sweating.

She went on, trying to keep silent. Twice she saw lights moving in the trees ahead of her. An air car droned above her. The wind made the branches dance. She went around the edge of a meadow. On the far side, four little deer grazed, their tails busy. Through the trees she saw a building burning like a torch, crackling, sending up a thick roll of smoke. The bright yellow light spilled into the wood so that pebbles and ferns and bits of twig threw shadows ten feet long. She circled a great pit, still smoking, where an underground building had been blown up.

She heard more gunshots. The woods ended. She trotted across the south end of the campus. The place looked different in the dark. The air hummed with cars. Three or four searchlights swung back and forth over the uneven ground. She went into the shadow of the turret of a university building. Voices sounded, coming toward her. Several people passed by, arguing. She ran across the campus into the mouth of the gulley where the Committee office was.

The smoke around the building made her eyes itch. On the hillside to the north, a mob of people was gathered. She heard the rattle of a gun. The door to the building was open.

The waiting room was jammed with rubble. The back wall ended halfway up to the ceiling. The place had been bombed. She stopped in the smashed doorway. The floor of the hall was covered with broken glass. She went down through the darkness toward Jefferson’s office. An overturned desk blocked the way. She crossed the slippery spill of papers beyond it. Jefferson’s door was unlocked. She opened it slowly inward.

The room was dark. A little light came from the window. She touched the inside wall, hunting for a light switch, and the wall crumbled away under her fingers. She went toward the window and tripped on a piece of the shattered desk.

Something clicked behind her. A thread of bright light shot past her, shining on the edge of the ruined videone. Dick Bunker said, “Junior, I knew you’d come here, sooner or later.”

She turned one hand up against the light. He was sitting on the floor behind the door. She saw him only for an instant; he switched off the torch and the dark covered them.

“What happened?” she asked.

“The Martians are rescuing the Earth from the Styths. As you can see, the Committee is considered Styth. You aren’t alone, are you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you, Paula, you aren’t that stupid.”

She sank down on her hams, her feet under her, her arms around her knees. He would know where to find a car and how to smuggle Kasuk and Junna out of the dome. She rubbed her nose, itching from the smoke.

“How did the League find out we knew about the coup?” she asked.

“Jefferson told them.”

“Jesus. Why?”

“To bring them on before they were ready.” His voice speeded up into a snarl. “I was hoping they’d account for the Styths, but that fool Savenia can’t do anything well.”

She caught the glint of light on his hand torch. She was beginning to make out his shape in the dark. She groped over the floor around her, over shards of split plastic, the shell of the videone screen, and sat cautiously down on the litter.

“Where’s Jefferson now?”

“I don’t know. The Central Committee had a meeting. What we always do in times of crisis, talk. It lasted five minutes, we voted the strike notice in three and disbanded the Committee in two.”

“Strike,” she said. “You’ve called a general strike?”

“What else are we supposed to do? There are three thousand Martians in New York and New Haven alone. It’s too late to talk them out of it.”

She pursed her lips. Bunker moved, the trash grating under him. He said, “Mr. Black escaped.”

“Yes. Both of them.”

He grunted. “She can’t do anything right.”

“I have Tanuojin’s two sons with me. I have to get them out of the dome. Will you help me?”

“I hate the Styths.”

“Don’t be so emotional.”

“Find your own way home.”

“I’m not going. I’ve had enough of the master race.” Now she could see him passing the torch from hand to hand. His sweater was ripped at the elbow and his white shirt showed through.

“Then why help them at all?”