Floating Worlds

MARS August 1870. Tanuojin’s Empirat

The lobby of the Nineveh was dimly lit. Shadows hid the edges of the room. Paula sidled away from Ketac. The Styths were pressed tightly together. In this strange place they were all shedding a faint cold fear. At the staircase, the five or six Sun-worlders stood neatly posed like mannequins. Alvers Newrose stepped forward to greet Ketac. Behind him Cam Savenia’s face was white as pipe-clay.

“We are honored to receive you,” Newrose said. His head was cocked back toward Ketac’s, a foot and a half above him. “Our first business must be to express our grief and the grief of all the Middle Planets at the death of Saba. He was as just an overlord as he was terrible an enemy. We don’t expect to see his like again.”

Paula chewed the inside of her cheek. Around the broad, dim lobby, the unlit display cases like mirrors reflected back the people massed around her. Ketac was making a stiff little speech in answer to Newrose’s stiff little speech. She circled between two men to the door.

Tanuojin was already in the corridor beyond, looking out at the gardens through the glass wall, his hands on the rail. She went past him, reading the numbers on the room doors.

“Why did you do this? Why here?” She found 110 and put her thumb on the white patch. The door slid back into the wall. The lights in the room beyond came up overbright. After so long with the Styths, the bright light dazzled her. She found the wall switch and turned them down. There was no aquarium.

“To remind myself how rich these people are.” Tanuojin came in behind her.

“Savenia doesn’t look any different,” she said.

“Leave her alone. I’m tired of your sniping at her.”

She went into the next room. The bed was draped in a black fur cover. The lime green carpet made her hungry. She stretched her arms out. After so long in Ybix she welcomed these expanses of space and color.

“The older I get,” he said, “the more I hate that ship.” He walked around the room. She twisted to reach the hooks on the back of her dress.

“Undo this for me, will you?” She turned her back to him. The dress opened down to her waist. She shed it and went into the washroom.

The walls were glossy white. The hot water of the shower needled her skin. A row of push buttons ran across the tiled wall above faucets. She pushed one and the middle nozzle sprayed white suds over her. She revolved in the stream, pressed other buttons: perfume, deodorant, body finisher. The back of her neck tingled.

“Come in—try this. You could have it installed in Ybix.”

There was a deep Puritanical mutter behind her in the doorway. The panic in her nerves subsided. He had gone away. She rinsed herself clean of the cosmetic mud and odors and dried herself in the warm air blower by the sink.

When she went back to the big green room, Tanuojin was lying on his stomach across the bed. “Watch.”

She sat down beside him. He held his hands cupped before him. After a moment, a big red poppy appeared on his fingertips, its brilliant petals cupped around the black center. She touched its papery soft edge.

“Are you making it up?”

“No. It’s in the garden.” When he talked, the flower shivered and faded. She bent down to sniff it, but there was no smell. Maybe poppies had no odor.

“I’d be more impressed if you were making it up.”

In the next room, Ketac’s voice sounded, loud. “Bring me something to eat. A real spread. For her, too. And some liquor. And—” He strode into the room, saw Tanuojin, and stopped, coming up to respect, his head back. Paula slid off the bed and went to her bags for her robe.

“Are you eating here?” she said over her shoulder.

Tanuojin nodded at Ketac. The poppy was gone. “Yes. Call Alvers Newrose here. And Dr. Savenia.”

Ketac relaxed, his feet apart. “When?” There was a blowgun in his belt.

“Whenever they’re ready.”

She pulled the white fur robe down over her head. “See if they have any decent whiskey.”

Ketac went to the door and talked through it to his aides in the sitting room. She tied a belt around her waist and groped around the sides of her bag for her comb.

“I want to go to the Earth,” she said.

Tanuojin lay back on his elbows. “There’s nothing left of it. It’s a desert. Red sand.”

“Maybe you could make up some trees for me.”

“I have too much to do.”

“Ketac can take me.” She sat down on the foot of the bed. Her hair crackled from being washed. Ketac went past her to the bathroom, giving no sign he heard. He would do whatever Tanuojin said. Through the half-open door she saw him turning on the shower.

“Do they still have the women?” He threw his clothes out onto the bedroom floor.

“Probably. It’s the same old Nineveh.” She glanced at Tanuojin behind her on the bed. “Down to and including Cam Savenia.”

“Paula—”

“Your deputy in the Middle Planets.”

He kicked her. In the shower, Ketac let out a yell. He had found the cosmetic bar. She rolled onto her feet and went to the bathroom door and stood watching him lather himself. He was too large for the shower; he had to stoop to put his shoulders under the spray. The white soap washed down his body.

“Newrose is coming.” Tanuojin went to the other door. She turned. Ketac got out of the shower, and the roar of the air blower started. Tanuojin was standing in the doorway to the next room, his head bent to clear the lintel. Paula looked quickly through her bag for her shoes. She heard Newrose’s knock and went barefoot behind Tanuojin into the sitting room.

Junna let Newrose into the room. The Martian’s egg-shaped head was smooth and pink, his face babyishly bland. He knelt down before Tanuojin and put his right cheek against the floor beside the Styth’s boot.

Paula murmured. She went back into the bedroom.

“Well?” Ketac said. He stood at the closet, half into his leggings.

“He did it.” She bounced down onto the bed. “I’m getting old. Betrayed like a gull by Alvers Newrose.”

He was bent over to lace his boot. “Do you mind if I take one of the whores?”

“Do what you want.”

He got out a red shirt, stitched with gold in his kite-shaped emblem. In the next room, there was another knock. Cam Savenia was making her entrance. Paula stayed to watch Ketac dress. She knew Cam would perform the kutal. Ketac sat on the bed next to her.

“How do I call the slaves?”

There was a console built into the night table at the head of the bed. She took the receiver off the cradle. Beside it was a row of buttons. One was marked PERSONAL SERVICES. She said, “Are you having a party?” When she pressed the button it flashed red.

“Marus and Tibur and I.”

A clerk answered into her ear. She said, “Hold on, please,” and put her hand over the receiver. “Not here,” she said to Ketac.

“Upstairs.” He reached for the receiver. She got up. For a moment, unused to the gravity, she nearly fell over. Carefully, she went into the next room.

They had swung the couch over perpendicular to the fireplace, and Tanuojin sat in the corner, his head propped up on his fist. Junna stood on the hearth, and Marus, his hands behind him, leaned against the drapery-covered windows behind him. Two junior officers were bringing a white service cart in the door. Paula veered around them to the fireplace.

Newrose stood before Tanuojin, talking about Mars. Cam Savenia waited behind him. Paula glanced at her and their eyes caught. Simultaneously they looked away. The two Styth lieutenants turned up the lid of the service cart to uncover bottles and glasses.

Newrose said, “Will you be staying on Mars the whole mission, Akellar?”

Tanuojin stretched out his legs, long as rope. “The Mendoz’ wants to go to the Earth.”

Savenia glanced at her. “The Earth isn’t much of a tourist hell these days.”

Paula took the empty glass from Ketac. On her way to the couch she gave it to the aide by the serving cart. “I like to go in circles.” She sat down on the soft-cushioned couch at the far end from Tanuojin.

The aide brought her glass. Junna came along the back of the couch to give it to her. Newrose backed away two steps from Tanuojin, bowed, and went behind Savenia to Paula’s end of the couch. His hands disappeared behind his back.

“We just heard today that you’ve lost your son as well. You have my deepest condolences.”

Tanuojin said, “Don’t do that.” He was talking to Savenia. She stopped in the act of fitting a cigarette into her holder. Her gaze swung toward Paula. She put the cigarette back in the case and the black holder back into her pocket. Tanuojin looked at Newrose.

“You saw the demograph?”

“Yes, Akellar.” Newrose wet his lips. “I hope we can change your mind…convince you to change your mind.”

Tanuojin drank water. “Go on. Give me your speech.”

Newrose gave Paula a quick beseeching look and faced him again. “The people of the Middle Planets are used to a high—perhaps an unnaturally high material standard. What you propose is nothing less than a conversion of the whole society to slave labor.” Newrose tilted forward slightly from the waist, intense. His voice was low. “Akellar, we’ve avoided serious trouble here because the Prima was wise enough to preserve the continuity of our traditions and institutions. If you attempt this, there will be resistance, perhaps violence. The work of the last several years will be lost.” His gaze went to Paula again, pleading.

Tanuojin stretched his arm along the back of the couch toward her. His eyes never left Newrose. His voice was deeper than usual: pontifical. “I don’t have a choice. Junna—”

His son circled around the couch, a spherical star map in his hands, and put it on the floor at Tanuojin’s feet. Tanuojin turned it around in its bracket until Lalande was on the top.

“This is Lalande. There are twenty-six Planets here, iron, calcium, plutonium, uranium, gold, argon, salts—everything we are starved for now.”

“Also life,” Paula said. “With a prior claim to its worlds.”

“You believe that because you want to.”

Newrose’s cheeks shone. He stooped beside the dark blue globe. Tanuojin gave his empty glass to Junna. “The Martians build the best hulls. We design the best drives. Sometime in the next year—Uranian year—we’ll break the light barrier. After that we can go to Lalande.”

Newrose straightened up, his eyes on the Styth. “That’s impossible. The speed of light is the absolute speed limit.”

“There are no absolutes,” Tanuojin said. “There are no limits.”

“But—”

“We have to do this. It’s the purpose of life, to grow. The only way is for everybody in the system to work together. If there’s resistance, I can deal with that.”

Newrose said, “Yes, sir.”

“You can go.”

“Yes, sir.” Newrose backed up three steps. His egg-face was white. He left the room. As he went out, two hotel waiters in white coats rolled another serving cart in the door past him, and the two lieutenants went to take it from them.

Tanuojin said to Savenia, “Have you worked it out?”

Savenia looked significantly at Paula. He said, “She’s not involved any more.” Junna brought him a dewy glass of water.

“I have everything,” Cam said. “Names and addresses, meeting places, even their hideouts and escape routes. I can jail fifty thousand dissidents in two days.”

“Good.”

The two lieutenants were setting out the food in the serving cart. Paula stretched her neck to see. A roast chicken lay in a dish in the middle of the top tray surrounded by vegetable flowers and cranberry sauce. Her tongue ran with water. Savenia said, “What about Newrose, Akellar?”

“I’ll handle him. He may still cooperate. You can go.”

Cam bent from the waist, a marionette bow, and backed away. Paula rubbed her hand over her eyes. She felt sorry for Newrose; she hated Cam. Lowering her hand, she looked around the room. The furniture was upholstered in gold brocade. The walls and floor were shades of brown. In the hearth, behind a pile of plastic logs, a cylinder of crinkled foil turned under an orange light to simulate fire.

Tanuojin said, “Ketac, where is the Earth?”

“About thirty-five light seconds behind Mars.”

The aides brought the cart of food around beside the couch. Junna served his father. Ketac came around the knot of people by Tanuojin and sank down on his heels beside Paula.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Just don’t wake me up when you come in.”

He kissed her hand and her cheek and stood up. The fancy red shirt hissed when he moved. “Akellar—”

Tanuojin nodded, put his head back, and said, “Marus, you can go.” The big man followed Ketac out. Paula was still barefoot, and her toes were cold. She went into the bedroom and found a pair of Ketac’s socks. When she came back into the sitting room, everybody was gone but Junna and Tanuojin.

“He never makes himself that pretty for me.” She went to the cart. The chicken was neatly sliced. She put a piece of the brown skin into her mouth.

“Newrose is still your thing,” Tanuojin said to her.

She tried eating cranberry sauce with her fingers and switched to a spoon. Tanuojin came up to the cart to feed. Junna followed him. They stood around the roast chicken and the pots of gaily colored vegetables, eating.

“He’ll believe anything you tell him,” Tanuojin said.

“Don’t you ever get tired of thinking, Papa?” Junna said. “There must be something more important than thinking.”

“Why don’t you tie up your hair like a man?”

Junna flicked back the loose lock of his hair. He was Tanuojin’s height and build, supple, bonelessly graceful. His father had been that way once. Now Tanuojin was stiffening, slackening, as he used his body more and more only to carry his head around. Paula ate meat. The Emperor walked away through the room, his back to her. She imagined him in his final phase, a great soft brain resting in a chair.

“Why do you want to go to the Earth?” Junna asked her.

“It’s my home.”

“You mean you want to stay there?”

“She’s crazy.” Tanuojin sat down in a corner of the couch.

Paula wiped her hands on a white napkin. Junna frowned at his father, one hand on his hip, his body curved like a bow. He turned to her.

“I’ll take you.”

“You stay out of this,” Tanuojin said.

“Why? She’s your oldest friend. She saved your life. Vida died for you. Why shouldn’t I help her?”

The Emperor settled into the couch, one arm across the back, his head down. “Is that your substitute for thinking?”

Paula hung the white napkin over the handle of the cart. “He’ll take me himself,” she said to Junna. She went back for her glass, on the floor beside the couch. “Sooner or later.”

Junna was scowling at Tanuojin. Paula held out her empty glass, and he took it and went to the cart full of drink.

“Sooner or later,” Tanuojin said to her, “you’ll do as I say.”

She went to sleep alone in the wide cool bed. Presently she woke, or seemed to wake. The back of her neck crawled with nerves. Tanuojin stood beside the bed. His eyes were like mirrors. She felt unable to move, as if in a dream. He lay down on the bed next to her.

“Paula—” He took her face between the cold blades of his hands. “Pauliko, now you submit.” She thought, It is a dream. His narcotic touch lulled her. She closed her eyes. His mouth touched her. A dream. He disappeared. Silence and darkness closed around her. Restless, she tried to waken. Her mind was scattered. She struggled to think. It was no dream; Tanuojin had her.

She collected her mind, floating in a black emptiness like deep space. Without her senses she was confused and could not decide what was actually happening, or what she should do. Perhaps nothing. Other people panicked and fought uselessly until they died or were too tired to resist. If only she could see, she would have something to hold on to. She strained to see.

A green world spread out around her, trees and meadow grass yellowed with sunlight. That was her imagination. She could go in there and rest. With an effort she wiped it away. The black blindness fell around her again. She had to keep away from that trap of telling herself what to see. She organized her mind to use her eyes.

A light flashed so bright it dazed her. Her mind stopped, stupid, in the grip of a gray after-image. It faded. She mastered herself again, encouraged; she must have almost broken out, to be driven back like that. She pitched herself against the dark.

This time the brilliance shattered her. Five or six of her circled aimlessly around each other, like voices talking at once, all numb. What happened? Give up, one voice said, loudest. Give up. Give up. She was lost in the midst of herselves, helpless. Two brushed together, saying the same thing, and she made them lap and fit together. Several after-images of the light flash hung around her. As she formed her mind together again all the images blended into one, and she focused on that. The cogent loud voice telling her to give up faded away. That was Tanuojin. She fastened her attention on the after-image, dying in the black.

The image was not featureless, like the first time. In it she saw white on white a doorway, another room. A roll of light showed in the background, the bright false fire in the hearth of the sitting room of her suite.

The dark closed over her. She rested, hoarding her strength. All her selves had melded again, and she could not find the seams between them. This time she had to keep trying, she could not let him drive her back. She gathered herself up and went forward into the dark.

Suddenly, without the blast of light, the corridor of the hotel lay before her. A Styth coming toward her stopped and saluted her. She relaxed, triumphant. The corridor was darker than before, and the colors strange, muted to halftones, the shading between dark and light more distinct than she was used to. It was a Styth image. Styths saw that way; he was tricking her. She refused to see what he was feeding into her mind, she forced it to dissolve.

The light struck her, dazzling, destroying her. In the sheet of light figures moved. She strained toward them. The light pierced her, merciless, she was glass, she was sheer to the brilliance, and she passed through into a dim room, where a white Martian face hung before her, concerned, mouthing words she could not hear.

She was in some other part of the hotel. The Martian, looking reassured, went out a side door. She had no physical control over the single eye she occupied, and it blinked and she was blind. Not the same dark as before: blood tinged the eyelid. When the eye opened, Newrose was there in front of her.

He talked, smiling all over his pink face, and she apparently answered him. They passed into another room. On the left was a plush stuffed couch and on the right a desk. She went straight between them to a window and stood staring out over the garden, one story below her. She could see nothing of Newrose; she might as well have been blind again.

She needed to hear. She reached out, struggling to hear. Newrose’s voice sounded faintly somewhere behind her, and she snatched for it. It was a bait. She was thrown back. Like a knife the black fell across her sight. The sound was gone. She was locked tight in her mind again.

He was in here with her. It was her body. She had done it wrong, the first time, stupidly attacking the dominant, most disciplined sense. She had to move fast. Collecting her will and her concentration, she flung herself out along all her nerves.

Feeling sprang alive in her hands and feet and along her back, spread over her face and her belly, running hot like blood under her skin. She shut her blind eyes and doubled up, falling. Her cheek and hip hit the yielding floor. Her stomach clenched in a cramp. Something clawed at her, deep in her body. She almost weakened. She nearly yielded. Gasping for breath, she struggled to hear, and sound burst alive in her ears.

“Miss Mendoza—” Newrose squeaked. “I’ll get help.”

“No! Leave me alone.”

She blinked, panting. Her guts and belly were knotted, like the fierce cramps of labor. The light hurt her eyes. She forced herself to see. The floor stretched away shiny past a pair of modish two-tone shoes. Over there was the couch. She pushed herself up to her knees and the claws ripped her as if he were trying to tear a way out through her stomach. She could not straighten. Newrose held his pink hands down to her. His eyes were round as a Styth’s. She shook her head at him.

He spoke to her. She paid no attention. Putting her feet under her, she lurched up and staggered to the couch. Her muscles fluttered with weakness. Her mouth tasted of copper. The jagged edge slashed her stomach. She wiped her drooling mouth on her hand.

“Shall I bring you something?” Newrose danced around her. “Water? A little brandy?”

“No.” Her strength was ebbing. A long pain stabbed into her lungs. She pressed her arms against her body, where her prisoner gnawed her.

“Please,” Newrose said.

She got up onto her feet and started toward the door. Her lungs were burning. She wondered if he could save himself by killing her. Newrose came into her way, and she brushed by him to the door.

“You have to help me.” Newrose pursued her across the anteroom beyond, past his startled aides rising like puppets off their chairs. “I need your help.”

She threw him a wild look. Her throat was closed; she could not speak even if she had wanted to tell him anything. Her breath burned going down. She went out to the hall.

“Miss Mendoza!”

Her knees were buckling. For a moment her lungs froze and she could not breathe, and she nearly panicked. She leaned against the glass wall of the corridor and made herself calm and insisted on breathing and the air crept down her swollen throat. The glass before her was fogged with the breath leaving her. Out there lay the gardens. She started down the hall toward the stairs.

Twice on the steps she fell, and the second time she rolled all the way to the bottom. She nearly lost consciousness. Lying in a knot at the foot of the stairs, her face against the floor, she felt him rising through her, ready to seize her as soon as she weakened, and she throttled him down again. This time it was easy. He was tiring. She got to her knees and pushed herself up to her feet and went across the corridor to the door.

The gardens spread off toward the thick fence of the trees along the golf course. The colors of the flowers were drowned in the blue domelight. The air chilled her cheeks. The pain seemed to be gone, or she was numb to it, but her body felt as if it were melting away. She could not lift her feet, she dragged them along, plowing through the beds of poppies, the peonies and wildflowers.

No, he said, in her mind; not a voice but a thought. Go back. Take me back.

She blundered on through the heavy branches of the deodars to the edge of the sweeping lawns of the golf course. Behind her someone shouted her name: she thought it was Ketac. She let her body down to the ground, her dense flesh like mud, all the feeling gone, and shut her eyes. If she died, he would die.

No. Don’t. No.

Her will had kept her alive, and she could will her death. Freed of her nature she would reach across the Universe, she would instantly be home.

Tajin, she thought, you made a mistake. He still needed her for shelter. He was her child, her beast, the unimaginable future, which she had nurtured and protected until he was strong and his course was inevitable. She thought, We are finished with each other.

Please, he said. I’ll do anything you want.

Ketac shouted again, closer. She turned her head to answer.

“I’m getting rid of her.”

She raised her head, coming awake in a start. She was lying on her bed, alone, with her clothes on. She could not remember anything beyond the moment when Ketac found her lying on the grass. The door to the next room was open and voices came through it: Junna’s now.

“You can’t kill her, Pop.”

Sliding off the bed, she went to the open door and stood on the threshold. The back of her neck hummed. Ketac was directly in front of her, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the room. He said, “I don’t see how you can even think of killing her.”

“She’s malicious,” Tanuojin said. “And she’s perverse. Whatever I think she believes the opposite, to spite me.”

Paula went by Ketac and stood between him and the wall. Junna faced Tanuojin, who was sitting on the couch. Tanuojin was excited; the measure of it was that he did not notice her.

“She’s your friend,” Junna said.

“She has never been my friend. We have always hated each other.”

Ketac was staring at her. She said, “I’m thirsty. Bring me a glass of water.” Tanuojin had seen her. He was unexcited. He was simply refusing to look at her.

Junna said, “You can’t kill her, Papa, she hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“I said I would get rid of her. I didn’t say I’d kill her.”

Paula looked down at his head. Studiously he avoided her glance. He could not help but see her in his mind. Ketac came back with a cup of cold water. She went back into her bedroom to change her clothes.