Floating Worlds

VRIBULO

The mid-city gate was massed with people. Paula got off the bus in a tide of other passengers from Matuko and fought through the people trying to board to go on to Yekka, the next stop. Most of these were Yekkit farmers, with empty baskets on their shoulders, going home from the markets of Vribulo. She ducked a swinging elbow and slid between two fat veiled women toward the street.

“Paula.” Ketac came across the chipped tile floor. Two slaves carried a handtruck past her, and she went by it to meet him.

“I brought a chair,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

“Where is he?”

Ketac took a firm grip on her arm and maneuvered her toward a side door. “I found him coming in, as you said, but he got away.”

“He—”

“Easy. I caught him again, I have him in my room. He’s a slippery little nigger.”

The clear doors to the street had white X’s drawn on them, to keep people from walking through them. Outside, in the crowded street, a chair sat on its stump feet, the slaves who carried it squatting at the poles. Ketac hurried her inside. She sat facing forward, and he sat opposite her. The chair bucked up into the air, back end first, and sped away.

“How long has he been here?” she asked.

“Only three or four watches. You were right, he came in from Yekka.”

The drapery of the chair enclosed them like a cloth room. She opened the front of her coat. “Good. You did a good job.”

“If Machou gets a smell of him, I’ll have to give him up. You know that.”

She nodded. The chair hurried along, rolling from side to side. Ketac sat deep into the bench across from her, his head back against the fabric wall. She said, “Have you heard anything from Ybix?”

“No, nothing.”

Saba had been gone over three hundred watches. She rubbed her fingers together, wishing she knew where they were. The chair tipped steeply forward and she pulled the curtain open enough to see out. They were going down the hill around the foot of the lake. Pale blue grass grew along the street, the leaves shaped like swords.

“We’d better walk from here,” she said.

“Why?”

“If you don’t want Machou to know I’m in Vribulo.” She leaned out of the chair. “Stop here.” The slaves stopped, panting. She put her hood up and fastened the cloth across her face. Ketac helped her down to the street.

They went into the Barn. Dick Bunker sat on the bed in the back room of Saba’s office, his hands and feet yoked together. A Styth stood guard over him. Paula sent that man out and shut the door.

“Hello, junior,” he said. “Do I owe you for this?”

She sat on the foot of the bed where she could reach the yoke on his ankles. “I told you not to come back here.” She jammed her thumb against the spring tab in the side of the white plastic yoke. It would not budge. “I can’t open this.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in force. This is the second time you’ve gotten me arrested.” He moved his feet out of her range. His eyes glinted; he was angry. She sat back and looked him over. He looked much the same as ever, graying, but still slight and dry.

She said, “My sense of territory is highly developed.”

“I was coming to Matuko when I finished here.”

“How long have you been in Styth?”

“Awhile.” His thin shoulders rose and fell, casual. “I lose track of time here.”

Then the Committee had known Ybix was leaving before she broke orbit. Their spies were probably all over Styth, in every White Market. She looked around the room. The washbasin stuck halfway out of the wall, a dirty towel draped over the edge, and Ketac’s used clothes covered the chair. The wall over the battered chest of drawers was scribbled on. She went to look. Most of the scribbles were women’s names with checkmarks after them. A scoreboard.

“What’s going on in the Middle Planets?” she asked.

“The more it changes. Venus 14 is enjoying its third government in two years, or was, when I left, who knows but they’re on their fourth by now, and Mars is threatening to send the Army in. Mars had their mid-term elections last summer, and the Newrose coalition lost. Cam Savenia was elected First Secretary of the Council.”

Paula turned around, startled. He nodded. “Check. She’s all for sending the fleet to Venus 14, she wants the Earth to admit all the Interplanetary Police apparatus and hold elections to the Council, she wants to null the Styth truce and cut off the trade between Mars and the Styth cities. She has a monomania about Saba. Never heard the name Tanuojin. Thinks Saba is plotting to take over the Universe. Fortunately, if Newrose has no majority, neither does the Sunlight League, and Dr. Savenia, I’m pleased to say, is no master of nuts and bolts politics.”

“No—she’s an actor on the stage of life.”

Bunker smiled at her. “Her opinion of you is baroque. Jefferson can handle her. So far. Somebody took a shot at General Marak.”

“Who?” She opened the top drawer in the desk, exposing a clutter of weapons, tapes, and small junk.

“I think the Sunlight League, but I hate them, so my opinion doesn’t count.”

“What do they think of you?” The other drawers held clothes. She went to the rack in the wall and looked in among Ketac’s shirts.

“What are you doing?” Bunker said.

“His mother will want to know how he’s living. What’s of interest to the Committee in Vribulo?”

“Your friends seem to be—”

“Don’t call them that.”

“I’m using the word in the Styth sense. They seem to be rising to new heights.”

She knelt by the bed and slid her hand under the mattress pad. Bunker was watching her sleepily. She said, “Saba is the Prima Cadet now, yes. I wouldn’t call that particularly high.” Deep under the mattress, her fingers grazed something long and flat. She tickled out a packet of papers.

“That depends on your ambitions, doesn’t it?” he said. “What you call high. Which is something I’d be interested to know.”

She slit the seam on the packet with her thumbnail and unfolded it. Inside was a coded message and a white card punched with holes and lines. She pressed the seam closed again and rammed the packet back under the bedpad.

“That certainly looked like the key for a photo-relay,” he said.

She stood up, frowning. Ketac was lying; he had heard from his father. That meant Ybix was coming home. She sat down next to Bunker’s feet, her mind busy with arithmetic. Certainly in that amount of time they could have gone no farther than the Asteroids.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” she asked.

“Something I want you to tell me. Who are you working for?”

Her gaze snapped up toward his face. “Anybody who will pay me. What kind of a question is that?”

Bunker leaned toward her, his body rolled into a ball. “Junior, I don’t know what you’ve talked yourself into. What I know is you are cheek to cheek with two men who shoot holes in the Universe as a matter of routine.”

She wiped her hand over her mouth, staring at him. Finally she called, “Ketac!”

The door creaked on its hinges. Ketac stepped in across the threshold. He had been listening to them. She waved at Bunker.

“Take him to Yekka. There’s a boat leaving in ten hours for Mars. Put him on it.”

“Why should I—”

“Damn it, Ketac,” she said, “don’t run me over. Get rid of him before Machou finds him.” She brushed past the young man into the next room.