Floating Worlds (65 page)

She went down to the second floor, to talk to Leno.

She could not see the door to the Prima’s office through the thick press of men around it. She wound a way through them to the open door. The waiting room was jammed. The benches were full of men, and other people stood leaning against the walls between the maps and recognition charts. At the table in the middle, Leno’s pitman argued in a loud voice with a man in a patrol uniform. She went around him to the half-glassed door in the back and knocked.

“Who is it?” Leno called. He sounded angry. She tried the latch, which was unlocked, and went into the long room.

Tanuojin was sitting on the bench before the middle window. Leno glared at her from the middle of the room. “You could wait until you’re asked.” He pulled his belt up over his stomach. Both of them were giving off a marginal reek of bad temper. Shutting the door, she crossed the room, going in between them.

“Leno,” she said, “let me stay here. You can open up the rest of the Prima Suite—there’s plenty of room.”

His lips parted with surprise. Tanuojin laughed. The Prima flung his arms out. “Here. No.” He wheeled away, his broad back to her. A dark patch of sweat showed between his shoulder blades. “Get out. I’m busy.”

“I have to have someplace to stay.” She glanced at Tanuojin. “When did you get back? I thought you were in Yekka.”

“Last watch.”

Leno loomed over her, his hands on his hips, his blunt head forward. “I told you to leave.”

“I have nowhere to go.” She raised her eyes to his face, shining with temper. He and Tanuojin had been arguing before she came in. She put that away in her mind to think about later. Her eyes on the Prima’s angry face, she said, “I suppose you’ll want Saba’s presidency?” She turned back to Tanuojin. “I’m sending Newrose a notice of Saba’s death—what about Dr. Savenia?”

Leno said, “I’m the Prima now. Why is it neither of you will admit that? You’re both insane.” He strode off across the room. The three windows across the wall let in the city racket. “You don’t belong here, Mendoz’. And the presidency of the Middle Planets goes with the office of Prima.”

“I’ll have to look that up,” she said. She scratched her nose, staring at his back. It did not work to be subtle with him. “I could go back to the Earth, I suppose. Although without me you’d certainly lose four-fifths of the Empire.”

Leno turned. Rather than look at her he faced Tanuojin. The tall man shrugged. “Well, she is the only one of us who knows anything about the Middle Planets.”

Leno’s shoulders dropped an inch. Paula went to the door. With her hand on the latch, she looked over her shoulder at the new Prima. “You don’t have to feed me, I’ll eat by myself.”

“I’m the Prima!”

“Yes, Prima. Thank you.” She went out.

The Fleet Office was in Upper Vribulo. The broad street, patched with blue grass, was lined with drinking docks and sack-houses. She passed a swinging half-door that let out a boom of noise and a rush of odors: beer, Styth, and vomit. A man slept in the high grass in the next alley. The narrow front of the Fleet Office was indistinguishable from the docks and flops around it and she walked past it twice.

The dark, deep room inside smelled of copying ink. A handprinter was clacking behind the high barrier that cut off the back of the room from the front. A line of men in fleet uniforms slacked up against the wall beside a closed door.

“Hey, I love you, let’s go next door.”

An old man with jewels in his nose came up to the barrier. Paula’s head just cleared the top rail. She said, “I want to send a message to a ship in orbit.”

“Which ship?” He leaned on the barrier, looking down at her.

“
Ybix
.”

“
Ybix
hasn’t been answering our signals since the Prima died.” He spat past her; she smelled the rich odor of laksi. “Deep sleep to him.”

“He doesn’t have to answer,” Paula said. “Just say that his mother wants him to come home.”

The old man’s mouth curled thoughtfully. “His mother.”

“Just send that message.”

“Yes, Mendoz’.”

She walked back past the Akopra. A loudspeaker on the porch announced the theater was closed to mourn the Prima. The new Off-World Market was empty. Green paper banners, the Styth mourning color, hung from the gates of the houses. She climbed the steps to the rAkellaron House and went inside.

She went in through the slaves’ entrance to the top rung of the Chamber. Her coat made her uncomfortably warm and she opened it down the front. Half the rAkellaron stood and talked and scratched and spat and bragged on the ledges above the pit. A slave scampered past her with a tray of cups. She went down the enormous steps, her skirts and the heavy skirts of her coat bunched in her hands.

Tanuojin was in his place on the second tier, his arms out straight across the rail and his head down. No one spoke to him. His own aides stayed away from him. She stood beside him. Machou was up on the high ledge, talking to Bokojin. She sat down on the hard bench. Tanuojin did not move.

Leno came down the steps. Behind him was Dakkar, with three of his men in his track. Leno went to his place on the second tier, and Dakkar continued down the steps to the pit. He looked like Saba, a black-haired, slender Saba.

“This session is open,” Leno said. “Dakkar, you are in the pit.”

Dakkar walked across the sand. “I am Dakkar, Saba’s oldest son. I’m dominant in Matuko, and I mean to take my father’s place here. Does anybody challenge my right?”

The men on the ledges canted forward to watch him. Leno stood. His mustaches hung down heavy with braid to his chest. Paula looked around the Chamber, surprised. None of the other men were standing up.

“If nobody—”

“I challenge,” Ketac said, above her. He came down the steps past her.

She got up onto her feet, her fingers tight around the rail. Several of
Ybix
’s crew followed him. David was not among them. Dakkar crouched. When Ketac stepped into the pit, his brother attacked him.

The rAkellaron roared. All around the rings they leaped up, bellowing. Their hot reek made her stomach heave. Ketac fell and rolled, Dakkar hanging on his back. Even through the screams of the men watching she heard the brothers’ snarls. Her heart pounded in her throat. Tanuojin towered over her, banging his hands on the rail. The sand was splattered with blood. Dakkar jammed his knee into Ketac’s spine, his hands splayed over his brother’s face, bending him backward.

“Kill him!” someone howled. “Kill him!”

Ketac reached over his shoulders. His claws hooked in Dakkar’s shirt. Tanuojin shouted so loud she flinched. Ketac dragged his brother down into the sand. He reared up and brought his elbow like a club into Dakkar’s face.

Paula let go of the rail. Ketac leaped up, panting, his shirt crusted with sand. Dakkar doubled over, one arm across his broken face. The cheers of the rAkellaron faded, cooling. Ketac held his hands over his head.

“I am the Matuko Akellar. Does anybody challenge me?”

The whole Chamber was on its feet. They let out another buoyant cheer. She was sweating from their heat. Tanuojin sat down, and the other men began to settle. Paula shifted, her heavy coat on her shoulders. Tanuojin called, “How long did it run?”

“Fifty-two seconds,” Machou called, hoarse. “He’s no Saba.”

Dakkar’s friends were stooped over him. Ketac leaned on the pit rail. Dakkar put one foot under him and pulled himself up on his friends’ shoulders. They were both bleeding, she could not see the wounds, just the red slime on their faces. Ketac spoke to Dakkar, and the taller man nodded. He hung one arm around Ketac’s neck. The rAkellaron cheered again, pleased. Paula sat down. Ketac and Dakkar climbed the steps.

Leno stood again. Again, none of the other men stood up in respect for him. The Prima said, “If nobody else has any special business—”

Tanuojin said, “She has a question.”

Leno put his hands on his belt. His head thrust forward. “Mendoz’, what do you want now?”

Paula stood up. “I’m going to need money.”

Across the pit, Bokojin shouted, “What is she doing in here, anyway? Saba is dead. She has no place here. She had no place when he was alive.”

Paula looked down at the blood-splattered sand. Three or four men shouted back and forth at each other, and Leno made no effort to order them. She said to Tanuojin, “I thought ten dollars a watch.”

“I don’t see why we should pay you. Why don’t you tax the Middle Planets for it? If you’ll be doing their work.”

“Because they don’t need me,” she said. “And you do.”

Bokojin was leaning forward over the rail. “This makes me long for the old times when a man’s widows burned with him.”

A quarter of the round away, another voice rose, clear and mild. “It makes me long for the old times when the servants of the Empire were treated with respect.”

“Hear,” someone muttered, behind her.

“Are you challenging me, Saturn?” Bokojin roared. He and Melleno’s son Mehma traded jibes.

“Every one of you gets some revenues from the Middle Planets,” she said to Tanuojin. Down the ring, Leno was playing with his mustaches, his eyes on them. “You need me to keep the arrangements going. In fact, make it twelve dollars a watch.”

Tanuojin stood up, and all the other men rose at once to their feet. Bokojin’s voice cut off. Tanuojin said, “Give her enough to live on. Eight hundred a turn. Until someone else can take over her work with the slave-worlds.”

Leno said, “Done.” Tanuojin sat down, and the rest went back to their seats. They talked of other business. Paula slid down the bench to the steps and climbed out of the pit.

Ybix
’s crew was carousing along the arcade in front of the Barn. She went through them, ducking a swinging arm. Someone shouted her name.

“Mendoz’. Have a drink.” Ketac’s helmsman poked a jar into her face. While she was pretending to drink he whirled her around again, her skirts flying out. There was a burst of thunderous laughter all around her. She reached the ground, dizzy.

“Mendoz’! Kib, pass her over here.”

Kib snatched for her. She dodged around behind him to the door into the Matuko office.

A washtub of beer stood on the desk, and two men had their faces in it. Dakkar slumped in the chair before the window. She thought of Pedasen. Dakkar’s face was striped with blood. He looked half-drunk and very gloomy. Probably he had forgotten the slave he had killed. That warmed the revenge, the years she had waited to pay Dakkar back. She went through the file room, where three men were pouring beer and minji sauce over two girls from Colorado’s.

Even through the door she could hear the men shouting in the little back room where the bed was. She let herself in among them. Half a dozen of his crew surrounded Ketac in a ring. Small as she was, she stood overlooked behind them. At the end of their rhythmic bellow of a cheer they poured a bucket of beer over the new Akellar’s head.

“Paula.” Dripping, he pulled her in among them by the arm and put a mug into her hand. “Drink to me. What did you think? It was a great fight, wasn’t it.”

“I don’t know anything about fighting.” She was standing in a puddle of beer. She moved toward the window. His hand on her arm, Ketac followed her out of the circle of men. Beer dripped from his mustaches and his shirt.

“Did you see that cross-block? Papa would have liked that.”

“Yes, I saw.” She looked out the window. In the street an old man with a shawl over his head was straining to see through the next window into the party. Ketac lifted his head and shouted to his men to leave.

“I don’t want to interrupt your good time,” she said.

He took a towel from a bin in the wall and scrubbed vigorously at his wet hair and face. “My good time? I couldn’t have done it without your help. Why did you help me?”

“I like you,” she said.

“You went to some trouble to put me in your debt.”

“I need someone to stand up for me in the Chamber,” she said.

“You need a husband,” he said. He hung the towel over his shoulder.

“Not formally.”

“Do I get what husbands get?”

She had to smile at him. She said, “Go lock the door.”

When she got back to the Prima Suite, in the low watch, David was in her sitting room. She was glad to see him, but she was used to hiding her feelings from him. She took her coat off and hung it over the arm of her chair.

“Where have you been?”

“Thinking.” He came up the room toward her. His hair hung in a wild shag around his shoulders. “Getting drunk. Getting loaded. I—” He made a little gesture with one hand. His long eyes made him look belligerent. He said, “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry. What for?” He smelled awful. He had not been out of his clothes since the funeral.

“I’ve spent my whole life fighting over things I can’t change. Maybe I shouldn’t even have wanted them changed.” He made that same motion with his hand, palm up. Asking for something. “So I’m sorry.”

She grunted, her eyes following his gesture. To keep from touching him she slid her hands behind her back. “Did you come on this enlightenment in a junk-gun? I wish you’d told me where you were—you could have helped me.”

“Helped you. What—” He straightened up to respect, his arms at his sides, looking beyond her. Leno tramped into the room.

The new Prima strode up to her, his face knotted in a scowl. “You and Tanuojin set me up, didn’t you?” He glanced at David. “Stand off, little boy, the war is over.”

Paula said, “Did anything else happen in the session?”

“Nothing important to you. Yekka wants to see you.”

She went to her chair, before the window, watching her son. He was scraping the edge of his boot against the floor. His mustaches were beginning to droop over. She wondered what had happened to him to make him like her. Leno said sharply, “He wants to see you now.”

“I’m busy now,” she said. She leaned on the carved arm of the chair. “Jesus, Leno, aren’t you high-born for a messenger boy?”

He bristled up, his neck swelling. “To hell with you.” He marched out, and the door slammed behind him hard.