Floating Worlds

LUNA Averellus 26.5, 1853

All Luna was built below the surface, thirty decks of halls and rooms cut from the rock. Its only important industry was cryogenics. The natural gravity was weaker even than on Mars and the floors were treated with plastograv. The officer who met the three anarchists at the space port took them through customs, where they changed out of their own clothes into blue and white striped coveralls with their names and photographs on the left breast. With the officer they rode the fast track of the moving sidewalk past blocks of living rooms. Here and there, the walls were painted with flowers and bushes and grass. Most of the people they saw on the sidewalk wore uniforms: the black and white of the Lunar Army, the tan of the Martian Army, now and then the dark blue tunics and white pants of the Interplanetary Police. The ceiling and walls shed an even light. There were no shadows.

Paula rubbed her face. She was tired. The trip from Mars had taken 135 hours. She was space-sick and she could not eat. Bunker tapped her arm. She went after him and Jefferson down a step to the middle track and onto the slow track and to the motionless floor. The officer took them down ten levels in a vertical car.

“We’re coming to a security area,” he said, smiling. “We’ll try to keep the inconvenience to a minimum.” The vertical settled to a stop and the doors whirred open. They went out to a small room; the lights came on automatically. Paula looked up at the ceiling. She walked beneath a round lens like an eye that moved to keep her in its field. Jefferson sat down on the sofa. She crossed her legs.

A tall redheaded girl came in, carrying a box. She said, “My name is Karene, I’m your technician.” Her voice was meaninglessly intimate, like a nurse’s. She took a small box off the bigger box and showed it to them. “A simple radiation detector.” One at a time, she ran the device over them, an inch from their bodies. Cleared, they all went down a corridor, single-file, and through a narrow door. When Bunker stepped across the threshold the door buzzed.

“You must be carrying something metal,” Karene told him.

“I have two gold fillings,” he said.

“That would not register. Oh. It must be your ring.”

He took the ring off his little finger and gave it to her. Without it the door passed him. Karene put the ring in her bag. “I’ll just hold this for you. Now, if you’ll come this way—”

They were in a corridor painted glossy white. Jefferson was already standing on a red dot in the floor. “Oh,” Karene said. “You’ve been here before. Look straight ahead, please.”

Paula turned to the slight man beside her. “Gold fillings?”

“I meant it in a lighter spirit than it was taken.” The corners of his mouth were stressed in deep lines. She knew that meant he was trying not to smile.

“Next,” Karene said, and he took Jefferson’s place on the dot. The redheaded girl stood by the wall, pressing buttons.

“Next.”

“If that’s an X-ray,” Paula said, “I’ll pass.”

“I’m sorry. We can’t change our procedures.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Oh.” Karene’s face fell. She stood still a moment, staring at Paula. Nobody said anything. Finally the girl said, “I’ll have to ask. Please wait here.” She went to the end of the corridor. A door clanged open and shut. Almost at once, a young man in a black uniform came in. He smiled at the three diplomats and stood with his hands clasped behind him. They waited a long while, in silence, until Karene returned.

Her cheerful smile was back. She sent the soldier away. “If you’ll come this way, please.”

They went down the corridor. Every few steps they passed through a sensor ring built into the walls. Cameras watched them from the ceiling. Paula walked along behind Jefferson.

“If you’ll wait in here, General Gordon will see you soon.” Karene stood beside an open door. “I hope you enjoy your visit to Luna.”

Paula went through into a wood-paneled room. The bulky furniture was made of leather and wood. She crossed the room to a white window frame opposite the door. Beyond lay a green meadow, flecked with yellow and red flowers. The three-dimensional effect was perfect, even to the puffy clouds in the sky. When she looked down, she could see over the outer sill. She touched the window: plastic.

“General Gordon,” a mechanical voice announced.

The Luna tyrant came in a side door. He was short and balding. His uniform looked padded. He went behind his desk.

“My apologies if I’ve kept you waiting. I’ve been in my chapel.”

Jefferson lowered herself into a corner of the overstuffed couch. “Do you know my associates, General? Richard Browne—”

“I know who you are.” Gordon did not offer to shake hands.

“And Paula Mendoza.”

Gordon gave her an instant’s glance and sat down. She rubbed her upper lip with her forefinger. This would not be easy. Gordon fussed with the styli and pencils on his desk blotter while Jefferson made talk. The photograph on the wall behind him was of Marshal David King, the first tyrant of Luna. Between it and the state emblem was a large tau cross.

Jefferson said, “Now we need your cooperation, General.”

Bunker was sitting down on the couch beside her. Paula glanced at the window again. Gordon said brusquely, “I do not cooperate with gross immoralism, Miss Jefferson.”

“That’s a highly subjective comment.”

“No, it isn’t. You were hired to negotiate a truce with the Styth Empire, not flaunt your godless anarchist immorality all over the Middle Planets.”

“General,” Bunker said, “from certain perspectives there’s no difference.”

Gordon jabbed his sharp chin at Paula. He talked almost without moving his lips. “You don’t deny she became the mistress of a Styth pirate.”

Paula frowned at Bunker. “What’s a mistress?”

“What you think.”

Jefferson said, “The Matuko Akellar is one of the most powerful men in Styth. If he’s a pirate, General, so are you.”

Gordon stood up, turning his back on them, his eyes on the cross on the wall. He jammed his fists into his pockets. “My tolerance for insult is very low, Miss Jefferson.”

“The Styths are there,” Jefferson said. “The interface between them and us will only grow with time. We’d like to develop a relationship that will give everybody a reasonable stake in keeping the peace.”

“By seducing them?” Gordon sat down again. His hands danced over his collection of pens. “God is not mocked, Miss Jefferson. The future won’t belong to those who suck tit with the devil, but to those who serve god.”

Paula thought of the Akellar, flying away into space, sucking tit with Planck’s Constant. She raised her eyes; the ceiling was pocked with sensors and cameras.

“Is that his baby?” Gordon barked.

She leveled her gaze at him. “It’s my baby.” Taking the treaty out of her pocket, she went up to his desk and put the paper down on the blotter. “We have two objectives, a truce and a workable trade agreement. We have the trade. If he comes to the Earth, we’ll get the truce.”

“A piece of film.”

Jefferson said, encarameled, “The Council is enthusiastic.”

The general’s sharp face was stiff. His cheeks sucked in. To Paula, he said, “What guarantee do you have he’ll keep this?”

“He signed it,” she said. “He’ll keep it. Which is the kind of devil you like to deal with.”

“The devil’s always handsome to a whore.”

Thinking of Lilly M’ka, she had to laugh. His mouth pinched to a slit. He snapped the paper around and read it. She moved away from him. Bunker slid down on the couch, his hands in his lap.

Gordon said, “If this ship comes here, she’ll spy on every facet of our operations. Luna is the chief harbor of the Middle Planets. You want to bring this damned pirate—”

“We’d like you to take a look at the ship, if you can,” Bunker said.

“The Martian Fleet’s scan failed.”

“They looked in the wrong places for the wrong things. I just spent six days inboard Ybix, I have some ideas.” He crossed the room, past Paula, to the desk. “This ship has accounted for three out of the five patrol craft lost so far in the war. Including both ships lost below Vesta.” He dropped the packet of photographs on the blotter.

Gordon took out a laser cutter and opened the envelope. He spilled the photographs onto the desk. “Unh.” His white hands held the strips of film up to the ceiling lights. “That’s certainly a Manta hull. How do they make it go so fast?”

Jefferson said, “We’ve been running into static from some of the Martians, General. If they’ve been talking to you—”

“I don’t listen to the Martians.” Gordon sprang up again. His hands disappeared in his pockets. “I’ll keep these photographs. You can park that ship here for ten days Earth. Send me your recommendations for a scan.” He pressed a button on his desk. “Escort these people out.” He gathered up the strips of film and left the way he had come.

“That’s the kind of devil you don’t like to deal with,” Bunker said.

“Richard,” Jefferson said, “park your mouth.”

They were escorted back the way they had come. On the moving sidewalk none of the anarchists spoke. The officer who had brought them took them through customs again. They got back their clothes, sealed into clear plastic bags. Bunker’s ring was attached in its own little sack.

With the hundred-odd other passengers they boarded the Earth-Luna shuttle. The benches in the coach section were just wide enough for two people, and they found a pair in the back where no one else was sitting and Bunker and Paula turned one to face the other. Bunker sat down.

“You know, Gordon’s cracked. They’ll pick him up someday in sackcloth and ashes announcing the Second Coming.”

Paula took off her jacket. The bus was stifling hot and smelled of antiseptic. “He seems reasonable to me. So he’s a little paranoid.” She watched Jefferson fish inside her purse.

“We could sell him a report on his security system,” Bunker said. “That would make him even more paranoid.”

Jefferson popped out her right eye and split it between her fingers like an egg. She picked out the sensor inside. “They’re looking for weapons.” She took her false eye from her purse and slipped it into the socket. Paula swallowed, her stomach quivering. On the armor-gray wall of the bus, next to her, was a face drawn in black ink. During the fifteen-hour shuttle flight a graffist could take time on a piece. The hair swirled away in ringlets, which turned into curlicue words.

She turned her head almost upside down to read it. It sounded like Zen. She would have to look it up. She sat thinking of the thousands of things she had always meant to look up.

“What have you done with that crystal?” Jefferson asked.

Paula straightened on the bench. Bunker said, “What crystal?”

“The Styths gave her a huge energy crystal,” Jefferson said.

“Oh?”

“It’s in my luggage,” Paula said. She glanced over her shoulder. The other passengers were sleeping, or singing; no one was within hearing. She turned back to Jefferson. “He gave it to me. It’s mine.”

Bunker was frowning at her. The old woman said, “We paid for the knife.”

“Why did they give you something that rich?” Bunker said. “The knife is a bauble.”

“What do you think—that I took their bribe?” She looked from Jefferson to him. “Because he wanted to keep the knife. Therefore he had to give me something, or he’d have stood in my debt. Crystal isn’t worth that much to them.”

“Exactly,” Jefferson said. “He gave it in return for the knife, which we gave him, not you.”

Paula crossed her arms over her chest. She was already resigned to giving up the crystal. She thought of the baby, the Akellar’s other little present. She would rather have the crystal. Morose, she stared at the wall.