Floating Worlds (11 page)

“No. You have nothing I want.”

“But there is a lot of smuggling.”

“Not much.”

“Whatever you say.” She watched the fish reverse direction, perfectly aligned. “I could get you a report on it. We estimate about forty to fifty thousand dollars’ worth of goods come and go between Matuko and the Earth every Earthish month.”

“That’s exaggerated.”

“Suppose you brought the smuggling inside the law and controlled it yourself, you’d make that money, instead of the smugglers getting it all.”

He said nothing. She turned around to face him. He had his belt in his hands; after a moment he seemed to remember it was there and rose and slung it around his waist.

“You’re brave,” he said, “offering me a bribe.”

“That’s your word.”

“Why would I sell my people for a couple of thousand nigger dollars?”

She leaned on the couch. “We can negotiate you a contract that would guarantee you one million dollars the first year, a caesium year, climbing to ten million a year by the fifth year.”

There was a long silence. She drew with her fingernail in the yellow plush of the couch. He sat down again to put on his boots.

“It’s still a bribe.”

“Whatever you want to call it. Why don’t you go think about it?”

“I don’t have to think about it,” he said, and walked out. In his wake the door slammed shut, rebounded, and bounced off its track. She tried to shut it but it was stuck halfway open. She took a shower, wrapped herself up in her robe, and went out to the front room again. Jefferson had worked him out, sight unseen: his key was money. She turned out the lights, barricaded the bedroom door with chairs, and went to sleep.

Tanuojin’s bassoon voice said, “You mean she seduced you?”

“I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, looking at her—she’s nothing to look at, is she? What do you think they’re trying to do?”

“They’re trying to buy you.”

Paula was washing her hair in the bathroom sink. The soap smelled of egg. The Akellar’s voice came up from the recorder on the floor by her feet. “How long is a caesium year?”

“It’s a lie. She’s lying. Why do you go soft-headed over any woman who sleeps with you?”

“Ah, shut up.”

“Can you keep her out of her room long enough for me to search it?”

Paula rinsed her hair and turned on the dryer in the ceiling. The Akellar said, “I can think of something to do with her. And she doesn’t cost me fifty dollars an hour, either.”

A strange voice said, “Jesus, it’s hot.” “Jesus” was their favorite expletive. They pronounced the J like a hard g.

“You think it’s hot in here, stud, stand out there in the radiation.” That was Sril, the small one with the wire in his nose. His voice grew louder. “Akellar, I see you get along better with that Earthish woman now.” Several men laughed.

“No,” the Akellar said. “She gets along better with me.”

She took the recorder into the sitting room and listened to it while she collected everything she did not want Tanuojin to find: the wires from the recorder, the devices Savenia had left. The men talked about their ship and the Martian food, which they loved.

“How long is a caesium year?”

“Saba, don’t listen to her!”

“I asked you a question.”

Sulky: “Around twelve hundred watches.”

The Akellar and Tanuojin puzzled her. They talked like equals, intimately, not the way the Akellar talked to the other men, but now and then he leaned over Tanuojin, and Tanuojin always yielded. Now the deep, surging voice said, “I called the ship, while you were down there letting that woman make use of you.”

“Ah?”

“Kobboz says they—”

The wire ran out. She loaded the recorder again, packed everything she was removing from the suite into her satchel, and took it down to the lobby.

“My door is broken,” she said to the clerk.

He was bent over the desk doing the anagram in the ten o’clock hourly. He did not look up. “Did it involve a Styth?”

“Unh—”

“We’ll have to move you to another room.” He circled an answer in red ink. “We’re leaving all that damage for the underwriters’ inspector.”

“Never mind.” She put the satchel on the desk. “I want this kept in the vault.”

He took it away. She went into the restaurant to eat her lunch. While she was sitting at a table near the windows eating a minji and drinking coffee, Lilly M’ka came up and took the chair opposite her.

“The one with the yellow eyes is back.”

“I know that,” Paula said.

“Yes, I guess you have your own ways of finding things out.” The whore straightened the ruffles on her halter top. Paula envied her tiny waist. “I hope you don’t plan on taking any more of my clients.”

“Do you have any more like that?” Paula bit into the minji.

“He’s good, isn’t he?”

Paula swallowed a mouthful of bread and sausage and hot sauce. “He has a beautiful body.”

“He’s a very handsome man. Or haven’t you looked that far?”

Over the girl’s shoulder, at the far end of the room, Paula saw the Akellar coming in the door. “You sound as if you’re in love with him.”

“I have a thing for men who pay cash.”

He had seen them; he was coming toward them. Lilly said, “Besides, he—” and Paula jabbed her chin at him, and the whore turned and saw him. She sat back. The Styth stood beside the table, between them, looking from one to the other.

“Hello, Saba,” Lilly said. She got up, taking her shoulderbag off the back of her chair.

“Hello, Lilly.”

“See what I mean?” Lilly said to Paula, and went off across the bar to the door. The Akellar sat down in her place.

“Comparing things?”

Paula drank her milk. “What do we have in common? I thought you were giving up on me.” She pushed her plate out of the way. Lilly was wrong: his features were too coarse to be handsome.

“I may give you another chance,” he said. “After all, you’re just a woman.”

“You broke my door.”

“One of my crew will fix it. Come outside with me. It’s like a hot-box in here.”

She went with him out to the park. She had gotten up well after noon, and the sun was falling toward the horizon, the domelight was coming on. He stayed in the cool and shade of the great deodar trees that lined the golf course. The ground was deep in spongy grass, even where the trees’ cloaking branches kept the light out all day long. Paula lagged behind him. On the far side of the path he stopped to let her catch up. Two Martians in knee-length pants, a man and a woman, were coming toward her. Another man in the hotel’s livery pulled a cart full of golf clubs after them. She paused to let them pass.

“Stunning little negress,” the woman said.

The man had seen the Akellar, standing in the deep shadow on the far side of the path. He hurried the woman on. Paula went up beside the Styth, and the Martians gave her another, harder look.

“They hate us together,” he said. “They don’t like us one at a time but they hate us together.”

The sun had gone down. They went into the cool open ground of the golf course. Paula walked fast and he walked slow. He bent to take her hand.

“Are you married?” she said.

“Four times. Two of them are back with their fathers where I should have left them in the first place.”

Holding his hand made her uncomfortable. They were coming to a bridge and she used the chance to free herself. She went ahead of him across the bridge.

“How many wives are you allowed?”

“As many as I can keep.” He kicked at the ground, tore up a piece of turf, and bent to touch it. “My father had twenty-three wives. He was a greedy son of a bitch.” He pulled apart the bit of turf in his hands. “This isn’t real, is it?”

“Nothing here is real, Akellar.”

There was no wind; the Nineveh dome was too small for wind. The golf course swept off before them, blue-white in the domelight, toward the white three-story block of the hotel. The yellow glow of windows studded it. He said, “We want to go to the Earth.”

“We. Who’s
we?
”

“I.
Ybix
. My ship.”

She went off down the smooth lawn, her back to him. “What’s a ybix?”

“It’s a fish.” He caught up with her. His cold fist closed around her hand again. “It’s one of my family emblems.” His fingers were cold. His grasp held her too close to his side; she felt like a child next to his height and bulk.

“What was your ship’s Martian name?”

“Martian? My father built
Ybix
.”

“I thought your ship was Martian.”

“The hull was Martian-built. Metal is scarce, in Styth. My father captured the original ship off Jupiter and tore out her guts and rebuilt her.” The golf course dipped away. She scrambled down the grassy bank beside him. He said, “Martian ships are fuel-driven. Laser-imploded hydrogen plasmas. My ships are crystal-driven. There isn’t a ship in the Council Fleet that could stay in the same space with Ybix for five minutes.”

She tugged on her hand in his grip. He tightened his hold on her. In the dark sweep of grass, the sand trap in the embankment glinted white and blue. They sat down in the cool sand.

“Why don’t you like me to touch you?”

“Please let go of my hand.”

At last he did. She clasped her fingers over her knees. He said, “You weren’t faking—back in your room. You liked it then.”

“I just don’t favor being dragged around, that’s all.”

He kissed her. She showed him a few more ways to use his tongue and his lips. He began to shed his scent. That reminded her of the night before, which excited her; she enjoyed the smell. They lay back in the sand. She fingered his shirt. It was heavy, some kind of armor.

He said, “Are you going to take me to the Earth?”

“I can try. It would help if it looked as if you were cooperating.”

“By taking your bribe?” He unfastened her blouse down the back. She let him peel her clothes down. His body heat kept her warm. “Are all Earthish women this little?”

She laughed. Unbuckling his belt, she tugged on his shirt. “Take this off.”

“What was your mother like?”

“Flat-chested.” She watched him strip himself. His body was magnificent. “My mother is an architect. She has all the best qualities of an I-beam.” She propped herself up on one elbow.

“What about your father?”

“He was crazy. He collected skulls. And slept in his clothes. I think he was flat-chested too, but I never saw him with his clothes off.”

They kissed again, lying in the sand, their arms around each other. Behind them, down the golf course, there was a long shrill whistle.

He rolled away from her, sitting up, and said an obscenity in his own language. She asked, “What was that?”

“Marus. One of my crew.” He reached for his shirt. “Cover yourself up.” She dressed. Putting two fingers into his mouth he whistled so loud she winced at the pain to her ears. A man she did not know jogged up to them.

“Akellar, there’s a fight in the public room.”

“Shit.” He turned to her. “Stay here.” He ran off, Marus on his heels, down the long dark fairway.

Paula stood up. The two men disappeared in the trees. She went after them at a trot. The light gravity filled her with energy. She stretched her legs, running as fast as she could, and ran herself off-balance and fell rolling. When she sat up, her head seemed to turn around in circles. Maybe that was why the Styths moved so slowly. She walked down through the gardens.

At the end of a row of hedges was the entrance to the Ninus, the club’s blue-sash restaurant. She pushed the door open and went in. The small lobby was massed with people, men in black velvet tunics and women in long white gloves. They were staring down a short flight of steps into the restaurant. She could not see what they were looking at. She went into the narrow lobby. The cushioned red flooring yielded under her feet. Behind the crowd, next to a double door, was a placard on an easel:

Readings from Marlowe’s
Tamburlaine
and Ravishavanji’s
The War Bride

She went between two fancy-dressed men to look where the crowd was looking.

“So help me, I’ll shoot.”

The people around her murmured in excitement. They were crowded around the head of the stairs. A woman blocked Paula’s way, bare white shoulders above a low white dress. She went by to the carpeted steps.

Three steps led down to the restaurant. The tables near the bar had been shoved up against the wall, the white linen rucked up, and the crystal knocked over. On the far side of the room, a young man, a Martian, was standing on a chair, a gun in his hand.

“Don’t come near me—”

The gun was aimed at the four Styths ranged along the bar to Paula’s left. The Akellar was among them. In his own language, he said, “Somebody has to get behind him and distract him. Sril—”

“Any of you come near me,” the man with the gun cried, “I’ll kill you.” He was very young, no more than twenty, and his face glistened with sweat.

The crowd shifted around Paula. More people were coming down into the lobby to watch. Crowded, she went down the two steps to the level of the restaurant. Plaintive, a woman behind her said, “I can’t see.”

The Styths were moving. Sril went across the restaurant, through the scattered tables, and the others spread out between him and the Akellar like a cordon. The young man on the chair followed them with his gun, pointing it now at one and now at another. He was too frightened to shoot.

“This I have to see,” a man in the crowd murmured. “They’ll hash the poor kid.” Paula licked her lips. She went down the steps into a miasma of coppery Styth temper. The big Styth with the scar on his cheek stood in front of her, his back to her. She passed him, and he jumped.

“Akellar.”

The man with the gun had seen her. He jerked around. His foot slipped on the chair seat and he caught at the back to hold himself still. The gun was shaking, aimed at her. She walked slowly toward him, her eyes fixed on his face. The art was to keep moving. If she stopped to talk it would be hard to start toward him again. “Paula,” the Akellar said, and she waved at him to be quiet.

“Stop right there,” the young man cried.