Floating Worlds

NEW YORK April—May 1853

“If he won’t do it,” An Chu said, “you can go to the women’s center. They give you a pill and you go to sleep and when you wake up there’s no more baby and you hardly bleed at all.”

They walked down a flight of steep gray stairs into the doorway of the building. The corridor beyond was lined with doctors’ offices. Paula rubbed her palms on the thighs of her trousers. Her father had hated doctors. If you go in with a hangnail you have a fifty-fifty chance of coming out alive. On each door they passed, a white rectangle told the doctor’s name, followed by several letters. At Thomas Adena, M.D., O.B., GYM., she and An Chu went in.

The waiting room was divided in half. Three women sat on one side, all pregnant, so huge they could hardly sit up straight. Four little children climbed and screamed in the bright-painted bar-gym beyond the railing down the middle of the room. Paula sat on the couch and leafed through a magazine full of pictures of babies. An Chu told the enormous women a web of lies about her sex commune, her thirty-three friends, their fourteen mutual children. They shared recipes for baby food.

The doctor was a man. He took a blood sample and made her lie on her back on a white table so that he could feel around through her insides. An Chu followed them patiently from room to room until they reached his office again. The office walls were painted with sunflowers. On the shelves behind his desk were several models of human guts.

“How do you feel?” the doctor said.

“Awful. I can’t eat, I throw up all the time, my breasts are sore, I go to sleep in the middle of dinner. I feel terrible. Maybe I’m just sick.”

The doctor shook his head. He was almost as dark as a Styth. His trim little beard reminded her of Tony. “You’re two weeks’ pregnant. I gather this is unplanned?”

She nodded. Counting back on her fingers, she came to the Nineveh Club.

“Your friend didn’t warn you he was natural? He might not know, sometimes the valve opens spontaneously—”

She said, “The father is a Styth.” She was on the verge of a hot temper, for no reason, although the sudden hilarity on the doctor’s face was a reason.

“A Styth. Where did you find a Styth?” He reached for a long yellow notepad and a pencil.

“On Mars. I’m on the Committee.”

He scribbled. “Well, well. And this conception was in the course of a normal relationship?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean he didn’t attack you, or—”

“No.” She glared at him. “Would you ask that if he were Earthish?”

He smiled at her behind his prim little beard. “He isn’t Earthish.”

Behind her, An Chu whispered, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go to the women’s center.”

“Are you planning an abortion?” the doctor asked. He rolled his pencil in his fingers. His eyes reflected two little sparks of lamplight.

“Yes.”

“Then let me offer you an alternative. I can transplant the fetus into an artificial uterus.” He got up. The back of his white coat was wrinkled from the chair. He took a clear plastic model down from a shelf over his head and put it on the desk. “This is constructed to allow the fetus to develop as normally as possible outside the mother. We can observe it at every stage.”

The model was threaded with tubes and chambers like a tiltball maze. An Chu whispered, “Come on, Paula, let’s go.”

The doctor sat down, one hand resting on his plastic mother. “I realize it’s a little hard to accept at first—”

Paula said, “What about when it’s born?”

“We’ll find a suitable foster home and continue observations.” His hand patted the uterus, which resounded softly. “You could be saving the lives of hundreds of babies. The first being your own.”

They were both watching her. After a while she looked up. “Is it alive?”

“It was alive from the moment of conception. I’d like to examine the father—”

She sat up straight. “He’s gone. He’s in space.”

“Oh. Is he a diplomat too?”

“No, he’s a pirate.” She was getting angry again, her mood boiling over. She could not look away from the chambered shell under the doctor’s hand. An Chu was tapping her foot on the floor. Paula said, “I’ll keep it.”

The doctor leaned back. His chair creaked. “That’s a risky—”

“I don’t care. If you can raise it, I can.”

“It might be a better idea to transplant it anyway—as it develops, it may—”

“No. I’ll keep it.”

His mouth crooked behind his mustache, and he took his hand off the plastic uterus. Standing, he put it up on the shelf again. “Do you want me to deliver it?”

“No,” An Chu said.

Paula said, “Yes.”

“Very well.” He sat. “My fee is three hundred fifty dollars.”

Paula leaned on the arm of the chair, her gaze on his face. “Why don’t you do it for free? After all, you’ll be able to observe it almost as well in me as in that thing.”

The doctor was writing on his yellow pad. “I’ll have to do a lot of tests. There will be some inconvenience.”

“Fine.”

“Half price. One hundred seventy-five dollars.”

“Fifty.”

“One hundred.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Agreed.” He nodded at her. “Come into the lab again and let me have a few more blood samples.”

“Does Daddy know yet?” Sybil asked. She was driving.

“No,” Paula said.

“When are you—”

“I’m not.” She crooked her arm over the back of her seat. Jefferson drove at an elephantine pace just above the trees. Other cars swerved in and out around them, barely missing them. In the back seat, Bunker was staring fixedly out the window. Paula had been watching Jefferson since they left the Committee building; the old woman had traveled three miles without referring to any of the side-view mirrors. They were lowering down over the park. Ahead was the beehive shape of the entry port. Sybil beat a long green taxi into the entrance to the parking lot.

Paula sighed. Sybil seesawed the car back and forth, trying to fit it into a parking space large enough for a bus. At last they got out of the car. They crossed the dark parking lot to the door to the outside ramp. Paula walked along the rail. Gradually the city appeared, spread out below her. All the trees were springing with green leaves, burying the above-ground houses and offices. The lawn below her was spotted with dandelions.

Jefferson said, “Dick thinks you should resign the case.”

Paula swung around toward him. “Oh? Why?”

He gave her an oblique, feline look. Jefferson said, “Some of your techniques are rather original, Mendoza.”

“Pah.”

“The Council is not happy.”

“The Council loves it,” Paula said. On the curved wall of the building was the door to the Committee’s reserved port. She followed the other diplomats into the waiting room, and Jefferson turned the lights on.

“What you really mean is you think I might sell you out,” Paula said to Bunker.

He dropped into a molded plastic chair against the wall, sliding down, sitting on his spine as usual. “That’s exactly what I mean.” He wore a thin shirt, plain dark pants, cloth shoes, nondescript, like a disguise. She braced her shoulders against the clear wall between the waiting room and the dock.

“Take him,” she said. “Go on, you do it.”

Jefferson was watching them from the far side of the room. Bunker put his head back. “Your career with us hasn’t been a raging success, junior. The only other case you’ve even accepted was one where you took a personal interest. Right?”

So he had found out that she had stolen his files. Before she could answer, a light flashed on the wall over her head. They all went out onto the dock platform.

The air wall roared. The big car was sinking down into the cradle of the dock. Paula rubbed her sweating hands on her pants legs. When she touched the railing she got a shock. The Styths poured out of the bus.

The Akellar tramped up the steps. She had forgotten how big he was. Jefferson spoke to him, but he brushed her off. When Bunker approached him the Styth sidled toward him and would have knocked into him if Bunker had stayed where he was. The Akellar reeked; he stood over Paula.

“I told you to come alone.”

“What’s wrong? Did you have trouble?”

“Yes.” He snarled at the other men, crowded onto the platform, and they spilled into the waiting room.

“You’ve made your point,” Bunker said into her ear. He and Jefferson disappeared. The Styths towered around her. Ketac’s wild brush of hair bobbed among the trim heads of the men. Most of the others were strangers to her. There was a brief, fiery argument, which the Akellar resolved by knocking someone down.

Paula opened the door to the ramp. The Akellar shouted his crew into order. Tanuojin came out past her, nearly scalping himself on the top of the door, and made for the railing. The rest followed him. The Akellar took her arm and started off at top speed. She stopped, resisting him, and he turned.

“What’s the matter with you? Look, I’m warning you—”

“Don’t tow me around.”

He opened his hand. His men were packed against the rail. “Look!” They leaned out to stare at New York.

“What happened?” she asked. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

“I had a long talk with General Gordon.”

“Oh.” The spring breeze touched her face. Panicked, she remembered that Gordon knew about the baby. At her pace they went on down the ramp. The other Styths were strung out along the railing, pointing and laughing at what they saw.

“Did you go to surface-Luna?”

He shook his head. Bad-tempered, he shed a harsh rush of his odor. She went ahead of him into the dark parking lot. The hot bright scent had certain connotations for her. The parking lot stretched off into the dark, scattered with air cars, the pavement marked into stalls. The three Committee cars were lined up near the exit. Their drivers leaned against the fender of the big bus, passing a cigarette around.

“We have a house out in the New Haven dome,” she said. “It’s the only place where you could all stay together.” She slid into the back seat of the small car. The Akellar folded himself into the space beside her. If he knew about the baby he would have said something by now. He took her chin in his hand, and she kissed his cool mouth.

The driver said, drawling, “You two want to get going sometime today?”

They pulled apart. Paula touched her mouth. She looked out the window. The driver rolled the door shut and put the plastic divider across the seat between him and them.

“Gordon gave me a whole long sermon on how I ought to behave,” the Akellar said. He was cramped into the narrow seat, his arms and legs folded up to his body. “With a lecture on the side on the sanctity of women.”

The car rolled forward. She said, “He’s an ass.” He leaned forward to watch the driver shift and steer. The car rose off the ground. Below them, the green heads of the trees rolled in the wind. The lake glittered, down toward the south.

“You’re right,” he said. “This isn’t like Mars.”

Above the wood a flock of daws circled and fought. The driver circled over the lake, lined with naked and half-naked bathers. Out the back window she could see the two cars following them. The Styth shaded his eyes from the light.

They left the dome. The stretch of coast between New York and New Haven was heaped with ancient slag. The torrential summer rains had eroded the hills into canyons and cliffs white with the droppings of wild birds. The sun was setting behind them. Sharp against the smoky sky, the ridge ahead poked up its two round humps. She pointed it out to him.

“That’s called the Camel.”

“What’s a camel?”

“A big animal. There’s an old proverb that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” They passed to the south of the Camel and the slag pinnacle just beyond it came into view. “That’s the Needle.” Through the long eye in the spire the sky showed rosy from the setting sun.

“What’s Heaven?”

She sat back. “Forget it.” The sunset streaked the sky with red and orange. “It used to be that the cities were polluted and the air out here was clean. A long time ago.”

A blackbird flapped by them. He said, “How do the birds live here?”

“They adapted. Some of them. Some birds can only live in the domes, some of them go in and out. It’s called the gas-mask effect.” She nodded toward another shape in the gray slag. “That’s the Throne. If you can sit there for twelve hours, you’ll rule the Earth.”

“Oh?”

“The pollution would kill you in six.”

“You people have a strange sense of humor.”

They came to the dome. The Akellar stretched his neck to see all around them while the driver took them through the curved plastic wall. They flew over black earth spiked with green. Night was rolling over them. The domelight came on, blue as a flame in the clear air. A sheer red cliff ran like a barrier along the east. The hillside below them was covered with trees. A clearing opened and the car drifted down toward the two buildings below.

The Committee House was a square two-story wooden block, a replica of a pre-Atomic Federalist house, complete with a broken pediment over the front door and a carved eagle on the bannister. Before all the Styths were out of the cars, Ketac was climbing into the apple tree, and two other men were chasing the cook’s terrified white cat. Paula went into the front hall. The house smelled of cinnamon and ginger.

“This isn’t the Nineveh,” she said to the Akellar. “There’s a cook, but that’s all. You have to look after yourselves.”

He felt of the eagle’s chiseled wing feathers. There was a door at the foot of the stair; he reached down to the knob, pulled it, pushed it, and finally turned it, and the door opened. She led him up the stairs. The front upstairs hall was full of rubber plants and morning star. He pulled a white blossom off a geranium and ate it. Out the window she could see his crew running around in the woods. She brushed through the curtain of beads into the back hall and opened the room on the end.

“Paula!” he shouted, in the hall.

“I’m down here.” She took off her jacket and hung it on the knobbed bedpost and began to unbutton her shirt. He came in the door. “What are you waiting for?” she said. He shut the door.

“Have you been on your ship all this time?”

“My ship and a couple of others.” He was still half-dressed. Sitting up, he peeled off his leggings and his shirt. Paula lay on her side, glutted from the hard sex. The blanket was wet; she threw it back over the foot of the bed. He lay down beside her.

“Did you miss me?” He slid his hands over her. His knee pressed between her thighs. “You didn’t go with anybody else, did you?”

She wondered why that mattered to him. His lust reassured her. As long as he wanted her, she could deal with him. Above his collarbones smooth hollows formed. She touched him, remembering him.

“I thought you’d like to go to Manhattan tomorrow. That’s an ancient city, under the ocean—the same people who built it built the first Styth cities.”

“What’s the ocean?”

“You’ll see.”

“And why should I want to see something those people made? They were monsters.”

“They were your ancestors.”

His hair had come half-unknotted, and he pulled it loose. Wavy from being bound up, it hung over his shoulders down nearly to his waist. He said, “Not really. They were the medium, perhaps, but it was Uranus who made Styth. Uranus and the Sun.”

She played with his hair. He lay on his back, his eyes half-shut, while she fondled him. The Committee would drop her as soon as they could do without her. She had to keep him her property. Bending, she licked his breastbone, and he draped one arm around her shoulders.

Across a smashed inlaid floor, fluted columns stood up into the dark. Deep inside the ruin, something rained down slowly from a great height. Paula climbed over a block of stone down into the vast room. The Akellar came in behind her.

“Look at this place.” He leaped across the broken stone of the steps down to the floor. “It’s bigger than the rAkellaron House.” He was speaking Styth.

Tanuojin came after him. Their voices echoed in the pitch of the ceiling, invisibly far above them in the dark. “There are hundreds of these buildings. Who could have lived here?”

“She says the Moon-people.”

“She’s lying. They never built anything like this.”

Paula put her hand out to the wall, covered with scale and dry moss. She had thought of telling him about the baby; she knew she should tell him, since it was his baby, but she was afraid of what he might do. Kill her. She imagined him scooping the baby out of her belly with his hands. At her touch the patina over the wall crumbled. There were letters under it carved into the brown marble.

hn Jaco

Some kind of incantation. She climbed up a pile of square stones to the door and went back to the street.

The two men followed her, talking. Ketac raced down the middle of the street toward them. “Pop! How big is that one? Fifteen hundred feet? What ruined them? Was there a war?” He rushed across the street to the foot of a towering wreck of a building. Paula stood with her hands in her pockets, watching the Styths. Tanuojin at the foot of the tower was so small she could not make out his face. She walked up the street away from them.

When they reached New Haven again, the Federalist house was empty. It was long after dark. A turkey was browning in the oven, but even the cook was gone. The Akellar swore. He went out to the backyard and whistled and got no answer. Paula opened the cold box. Ketac walked into the kitchen and she took out a beer for each of them.

“Where are they?” The back door banged open. The Akellar walked in. On his heels Tanuojin hit his head on the ceiling lamp and let out a gross obscenity.

“Where’s my crew?” the Akellar snarled at her.

“I don’t know. I’ve been with you, remember? Ask him.”

The cook was coming in the back door. He was a small man, tree-dark; under his arm he carried two gallon sacks of milk and a package of sweet potatoes. He said, “Thought I’d make a sweet potato pie,” and went to the cold box to put the milk away.

“Where’s my crew?”

“Halstead’s, I think.” The cook stooped to look through the oven window at the turkey.

Paula said, “That’s a roadhouse. Sweets, how did they get there? All the cars are here.”

“Walked.” The cook took the sweet potatoes to the sink to wash them. His white cat trotted in and leaped onto the counter.

“What’s a roadhouse?” the Akellar said. “Where are they?”

“It’s a bar,” Paula said. “Come on—we can go pick them up.”

“Come on.” The Akellar pushed her ahead of him toward the door.

She went out the back door into the dark. The wind blew in a low moan over the meadow. She climbed into the driver’s seat of the big bus. The cab was colder than the outdoors. The Akellar slid into the passenger seat. She thumbed the starter button. The engine growled sluggishly and she reached down under the seat for the choke.

Halstead’s was toward the southwest. She took the car up to 150 feet, watching the compass on the dashboard. “If you see a sign, tell me. I’ve never driven to this place before.”

She flew down the hill, over the woods, toward the long barrier hill in the east. The trees thinned. The fields below were planted in strips of corn and marijuana. They flew over the farmhouse and barn.

“This place is much more beautiful than Mars.”

“That’s because everything is alive.”

“There.” He pointed. “Is that a sign?” On the roof of a cattle barn ahead were white letters. She swerved to fly over.

Halstead’s, the roof said, Cave-cooled Beer, and an arrow pointed off to the right. She turned the wheel and pulled back on it to ease the car around the curve. Ahead, a light shone in the blue night. She drifted down on it, holding the air car slightly into the wind. The three buildings below were Halstead’s. She settled down on the roof of the biggest.

“Let me fly back,” he said.

She slid out of the car. “Don’t you like the way I drive?”

“Not particularly.”

She went across the parking lot to the head of the stairs. “You don’t want your crew to see a woman driving you around.” The stairs were steep. She held on to the rail. He came after her down into the warm lamplight.

“I don’t want you to get used to it.”

At the foot of the stairs they went into the short end of an L-shaped room with a plank floor. There were people crowded around the open hearth in the middle and in the booths along the walls. The Styths were scattered at random among them. Paula went into the long part of the room to the bar. Behind it, a man with black wooly whiskers stood talking to two of the Styths.

“Hup!” the Akellar said, loud, behind her.

All around the room, the Styths bounded to their feet. The anarchists, turning their heads, stayed in their chairs.

“What are you doing here?” the Akellar said, in Styth. “Line up at the stairs. Who said you could come over here?”

Paula turned to the barman. “How much did they drink?” The Styths hurried to the stairs. The Akellar was cursing them individually and in mass.

The barman scratched busily in his whiskers. “Military discipline.” He took a piece of paper from his apron. “You owe me eighteen dollars and thirty-six cents.”

The Akellar crowded her off to one side. He dropped a plastic disk on the bar. “I’ve got a rating at the Luna Credit Bank.” He sidestepped into her again, shoving her away, and leaned over the man with the whiskers. “Well? What are you waiting for, a tip?”

The barman took the credit disk off the bar. He tossed it up high and caught it. “It’s on the arm, captain.” He flipped the disk to the big Styth. In his wooly beard his teeth showed yellow in a smile. “Part of the tour.” Along the bar, other people laughed.

The Akellar stiffened. Paula said, “Come on, the turkey will be done by now.” She went toward the stairs. He put his hand on her shoulder and steered her up the steps to the parking lot, where his crew was roaming around in the dark.

“I thought you said they wouldn’t fight.”

“Who fought?” She pulled open the air-car door and climbed up into the front passenger seat. The other men crowded into the back. There was sitting room for only four of them and the others crouched on the floor, their arms and legs all at angles. The Akellar got behind the steering deck. Paula showed him how to run the seat back.

He started the motor and took hold of the wheel. The car rose steeply off the roofs. Halstead’s sailed away. Paula found herself clutching the seat, her breath stuck in her lungs. He circled once, climbing steadily up into the domelight, and raced back up the tree-covered ridge. A creek glittered a hundred feet below, winding between two fields. Horses drowsed in a pasture.

“Is this your car?”

“The cars belong to the Committee. I can’t afford one. Please don’t crash it.”

“All the Martians have air cars.”

“The Martians are rich.”

He went straight across the ridge and swooped in a long descending spiral toward the Committee House. His sense of direction was perfect. She wondered if he were using the compasses. Ketac ran out across the yard, yelling and waving his arms. The Akellar set the car down on its skids at the edge of the meadow.

The men piled out through the side doors. Ketac cried, “You should have seen where we went!” The Akellar sat behind the wheel, his hands moving uncertainly over the lighted dashboard. The engine hummed, overchoked. “How do I turn it off?”

She turned the switch on the steering column. He caught her hand. The last of his men went inside, and quiet fell. Hissing through the meadow, the wind bent the high grass and rustled the leaves under the oak tree. His fingers tightened on her hand.

“This is not what I expected,” he said.

She had to smile. She liked him, even if he had made a fool of himself at Halstead’s.

“What’s funny?” he said, his dignity still tender.

“Nothing. You’re a nice man.”

“Am I. I never thought I was that ordinary.” He leaned toward her to kiss her. His mouth tasted pleasant. She slid her fingers down the nape of his neck. They nuzzled and caressed each other, moving around on the broad seat. The steering grips gouged her in the ribs. Her hand slid over his thigh and he parted his legs. His fingers rolled and pulled at her nipple. They kissed again hotly. Abruptly he put his head back. His hand pressed exploring over her breast.

“Are you pregnant?”

She jumped. The steering grip dug into her side. “How—what makes you think that?”

“I’ve had some experience. You are, aren’t you. Is it mine?”

She put her hand up to her face. Her fingers smelled of him. They moved apart; now she was behind the steering panel, her back to the door.

“You people are so damned smart,” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how to prevent things like that. Did you do it on purpose?”

“No!” Pulling her shirt closed, she fastened the clips. “Here all the men are—you don’t have babies by accident here. A boy has an operation. To close the duct. If you want a baby, the man has to go have another operation.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “It never occurred to me you’d be natural. It was just once.”

“That’s all it takes. Why didn’t you tell me before? I can probably arrange an abortion.”

“If I wanted an abortion I’d have gotten my own.”

Behind her, in the yard, the rhythmic crunch of footsteps came nearer. She twisted to see through the window in the door. Ketac stood there, stooped to look in, and she swung the window open.

“Sweets wants to feed you,” he said past her to his father.

“I’m talking to her. Serve Tanuojin without me.”

“Yes, sir.” Ketac went away. Through the open window the wind blew cool. She turned her hot face to it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

“I didn’t know what you’d do.”

“What should I do?”

“Nothing. Forget you know.”

“You’re going to have it and bring it up, all by yourself? Can I ask you a delicate question? Are you sure it’s mine?”

His tone of voice grated on her feelings. She swung toward him. “I’ve had about two hundred different tests. It’s half-Styth, a boy, and you’ll be gratified to learn that claws and scent glands and probably hot tempers are dominant. I didn’t plan this, you didn’t plan it, so why don’t you forget the whole thing?” The domelight lay in a bar across his shoulder. His face was invisible in the dark. She turned her face back into the wind.

“A boy. He’ll go mad here. How can you tell that it’s a boy?”

“They have a test for it.” She drew a deep breath. Clear light poured over the meadow. The shadows lay black and sharp under the elm tree and the wheelbarrow tipped up against the side of the barn. “I was going to have an abortion. I went to a doctor and he tried to talk me into letting him transplant the embryo into a—a kind of a plastic mama. So he could study it. It was grotesque. I guess it was funny, too. I realized the baby was there, and alive, and mine.”

“It’s impossible. A Styth, in this place.”

“He won’t be a Styth here, he’ll be an anarchist.”

He took her hand and turned it over in his fingers. “Do you have enough money? I could send you money.” He held her hand against his cheek.

“I’ll do all right.” She stroked his face. That was how Styths kissed. “I’m hungry.”

“Let’s go eat.”

She woke up shivering. The window was open and the curtains blew in; the room was freezing. She burrowed down under the covers. She was alone in the bed, and she began to doze off again, warm under the covers. The door creaked, and the Akellar sat down on the bed beside her.

“Are you awake?”

“Ummmm.”

“What did you dream about? You were moving around.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Get up.” He poked her through the covers. “I want to go out. It’s dark now, I can see better.”

“Out where?”

“In the trees. Get up.” He pulled the blankets off her.

She put her clothes on. She remembered the dream: the baby had been born in two halves, and they had lost one half. The Akellar had been there in the delivery room, which had looked like an observatory. It would have been simple to sew the two parts of the baby together if they could have found the other half. Dressed, she went down with the Akellar to the kitchen and made them coffee. He strolled around the darkened room eating bread and cheese and apples.

“Turn the light on, if you want,” he said.

“I don’t mind. I spent half my childhood in the dark. My father never turned the lights on. He read somewhere that artificial light induces early puberty in girls.”

When he laughed his teeth flashed in the dark. “I’d like your father.”

“You’re too late, he’s dead.”

They walked up the hill, through old meadows. A line of white beehives stood under the trees at the edge of the open grass. A small dark beast loped away toward the trees, brush-tailed. The place was called Fox Hill. Paula stopped at the head of a slope and looked off to her left. The high meadow rolled down steep toward the valley, flat in the distance, ending at the foot of West Rock. She followed the Styth into the trees.

He stopped to look at everything; it was easy to keep up with him. The floor of the wood gave soft under her feet. White birch grew in clumps among the dark trunks of bigger trees. They circled the broken foundation of a long ruined house. Part of an old fireplace still stood at one end. Climbing a wall of piled stones, they started across another meadow.

A dog raced toward them through the grass. Paula froze. She could hear its growls. It charged past her toward the Styth and burst into a volley of barks. It was huge, some kind of mastiff. A chain collar glittered in the rolls of its neck.

“What’s that?” the Akellar said. The dog circled him, barking, and Paula went in between it and the man.

“Are you protecting me?” He sounded amused. The dog’s lips snarled back from its teeth. Paula flinched. The animal charged, not at her, at the Styth.

He pushed her out of the way. She fell onto one knee. The dog sprang at him and he swiped at it, one-handed. In mid-air the snarl broke into a ki-yi-yi-yi, and the dog bounced into the grass. It scrambled onto three legs, one forefoot curled up near its body. Down its fawn side welled four long stripes of blood.

Paula got up, cold, and shaking all over. The dog hobbled in a circle around the big man. Its throaty snarling raised the hair on her neck. She had never seen a dog act like this before. The Styth’s teeth showed white, like a smile. Under his breath, he said, “Want some more, little thing?” He moved back, stooping, and the dog lunged after him. The man wheeled around with an animal’s fluent grace and slashed out. The dog gave a single cry. When it hit the ground it lay still. Paula took a step toward it. Its forepaws were twitching, trying to run. Blood ran from its belly. Its eyes were like blue glass in the domelight.

“Are you all right?” the Akellar said, amiably.

“Oh. I’m fine,” she said. “Just lovely.” She started on toward the trees, her legs unsteady.

“Do you have a rag—something I can wipe my hand on?”

There was a scarf wadded up in the pocket of her jacket. Under the trees, she stood watching him clean the blood off his fingers and claws. He said, “It jumped on me. I have a right to protect myself.”

“Yes,” she said.

They went on, now going downhill, skirting thickets of thorny vines and steep rocks. An old dirt road cut over the flank of the hill. Dry puddles of cow dung spotted it. They followed the road down to the creek, curving off between two pastures, lined with willow. Frogs and night insects made a racket its whole length. Paula led him down the bank a hundred feet from the road and sat down and took her shoes off.

“You said he’ll have claws. Our son.” He dropped on his stomach and put his face down to the water to drink.

“That’s what the doctor says.”

“He’ll go out of his head here when they start to grow in.”

She stuck her feet into the icy water. In the open pasture beyond the stream, six or eight black and white cows lay sleeping, all facing the same way. “When he gets old enough maybe I can send him to visit you.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

He sat on the bank digging stones out of the ground. “Because somebody from this world would have the shit torn out of him in Styth.”

“Oh, really? It’s that bad.”

“No. That’s just the way we live.” He piled white river stones before him on the flattened grass.

“An anarchist can live anywhere.”

“Not in Styth.”

Almost in front of her a frog plopped into the water. A moment later its eyes bumped above the surface. “You don’t expect much of a future for this baby, do you? He’ll go crazy here and be killed there.”

“That’s right.”

She frowned across the river at the cows. His certainty sawed on her temper. Around her the capes of willow branches rustled in the light breeze.

“About this treaty.”

“Un-hunh,” he said.

“We need a truce.”

“A truce!” His head flew up. “You mean I have to stop fighting?”

“That’s the accepted definition.”

“No. Impossible. That’s my only money. I have to support my crew. I have fourteen children, and the way my wives expect to live—and Ybix costs me more than a wife.” He took one of his stones and threw it down the creek. It splashed into the water a hundred feet on, and several other splashes echoed it: frogs.

“You’ll have all that money from the trade agreements, remember?”

“I’m going to use that for something else.”

“Oh? What?”

“That’s none of your concern. No truce. Get me the rest of it without a truce.”

“I can’t. No truce, no money.”

He bounded onto his feet. “I should have known there was a hook in it somewhere.” He walked off into the pasture behind her. She waggled her feet in the water. He came back and squatted beside her. “No truce.”

“What about just with the Council?”

“The Council only has a couple of ships.”

“I know.”

“Then it’s a sham. Forget it. I don’t traffic in lies.”

“No truce, no money.”

He took another white stone from the pile and threw it with a scythe motion of his arm. This splash sounded much farther away than the first. She reached for his hand. Down the backs of his fingers the tendons ran like wire. She remembered the dog; she had not realized how strong his hands were. She remembered how he had tricked the dog into attacking him. He closed his hand over hers and held her.

“All right,” he said. “With the Council, for a definite length of time. Not too long.”

She let her breath out. “Ten years, I thought.” Jefferson would settle for seven.

“Ten years. But that had better be everything—the trade agreements, the truce. Nothing more.”

“One more thing.”

“What?”

“I want to go with you. Back to Uranus. To Matuko.”

He released her hand. Bending over his collection of stones, he fingered one after another, choosy. “Why? To be with me?”

Her feet were dry. She put her shoes on again. He said, “Not for me. You aren’t very flattering, you know.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“You could rub me up a little, you know, I mean, cater to me a little.” He cocked his arm back and fired a stone across the stream. On the grass opposite them a black and white cow jerked up her head out of a drowse, turned suspiciously toward her flank, heaved herself first to her hindfeet and then to all fours and trotted away. The Akellar swore.

“I thought that was a rock. What is it?”

“A cow. They make the milk.”

They walked back up the stream to the road. The Akellar said, “It’s a different kind of life, in Styth. It won’t be easy, even with me there to take care of you.”

She ducked her head and shoulders through two rails of the fence along the road. “I don’t want to do things that are easy. I want something hard.”

“It’ll be that.”

Down in the pasture, the cows were moving in their leisurely pace up toward the gate. The big man vaulted the fence and took her hand.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll take you. Do you want me to marry you?”

“No.”

“That way the baby would be legitimate.”

“No.”

The road led steadily upward. Dawn was coming. The wood looked strange, clogged with shadow, while the road grew lighter. They crossed a cattle guard and went down the brick path toward the Committee House.

“You’ll have to insist on it,” she said. “On me going. Or Jefferson and Bunker will get suspicious. Maybe even null the treaty.”

“You don’t trust them.”

“Well, I trust them.” She scratched her nose. “They don’t exactly trust me.” She glanced at the Akellar, curious. She had expected him to balk at taking her. She should call him by his name now, stop thinking of him by his title, and as an instrument. In the yard, he let go of her hand and veered over toward the air cars. She went inside.

All the spice cake was gone; the sweet potato pie was gone. She poured a glass of milk. The Akellar did not come in. She opened the back door. He was sitting on the steps, his legs out before him. She said, “Come inside, it’s about to rain.”

“Rain?”

“Every morning after the sun comes up it rains here. It has something to do with the shape of the dome. Look.” She pointed. The oncoming rain was shaking the trees on the far side of the meadow. The downpour swept in across the grass. He went out to meet it. He held his face up to the rain and opened his mouth. The rain streamed over him. It drummed on the air cars and beat on the roof and went on busily off across the dome. The Akellar came up to her, his mustaches plastered to his jaw and neck, laughing, his arms spread.

“What was that? Can I come in like this?” She put her hand on the nape of his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him.

“You have fourteen children?”

“Fourteen and a half,” he said. He patted her stomach. A crosswind struck the car and she braced herself while he pulled the car up and turned it back on course. They were crossing a rare clear pocket. Below them the slag heaps spread out gray as ash, gouged with rivers that branched and coiled toward the sea. In the north she could make out the worn red hills. She tried to imagine having fourteen children.

“Is Ketac the eldest?”

“No. My oldest is Dakkar, my prima son. Then there’s a girl, she’s married, you won’t meet her. Then Ketac.”

“You must have married young.” She gripped the seat in both hands as a draft took them straight up and dropped them down again. He flew at the limit of the car’s speed, and very high. If they crashed—

“I was a neophyte. Ketac’s age. My father came back from space and found me in jail in Vribulo. He went on a panic program. Called ‘straightening out Saba’s life.’ In about thirty watches he had me clubbed, commissioned into the fleet, and married to Boltiko. Do you know what a watch is?”

“About ten hours on the Earth. Why were you in jail?”

“I don’t remember. I was put up a lot when I was a neophyte. Probably for buying morphion.”

The car swooped into a long descending turn. Ahead a bank of yellow cloud lay along the river that divided New York from the slag. She could not see the dome. The sweeping curve knotted her stomach.

“For buying morphion. How much did you load?”

“Plenty. I was addicted most of the time I was a neophyte.”

“You couldn’t have done that much or you’d have died.”

“I nearly did.”

She caught herself pulling up on the arm of the seat. He was lowering to circle the dome. They flew into the fog. She could barely see the great smooth shape of the covered city off to their left. He pulled out the sensor panel from under the dash; the car made a red dot crossing it.

“I was in jail once,” she said. “For smuggling. On Mars.”

“You really are a low-life, aren’t you?”

On the black sensor plate, ruby-red lines formed a schema of the dome in intersecting parabolas. Carefully she let go of the handgrip. “Are you reneging?”

“No. I have plans for you.” He pushed the steering grips forward, and the car sank down in an even descent. “I’m going to civilize you.”

She put her head back, offended. He said, “Do you want to renege?”

“Not after that remark.”

“Good.”

Paula jumped gratefully to the solid ground of the East Lock parking lot. “Oh,” she said. “I never thought I’d make it alive.” She crouched and patted the concrete with her palms.

The parking lot was surrounded by woods. They walked side by side down the slope. It was mid-afternoon. From high on the hillside she could see the lake but as they walked down the trees swallowed it.

“I hold eight free-space speed records, and you don’t trust me to drive that slug.”

“It’s me I don’t trust. I don’t trust myself to bounce when we hit the ground.” She circled a thicket. The soft earth gave under her feet. She stopped and took off her shoes and stuck them in the crotch of a tree to pick up on the way back.

“What’s that?”

She went down the steep hillside so she could see what he was pointing at: a round gatehouse. “That’s the entrance to a building.” The sun streamed over the meadow. She walked toward its green warmth.

“Where’s the building?”

“Under the ground.” She held her arms and face up to the sun. He stayed back under the trees, out of the direct light. At the far end of the meadow, a dozen people sat in a circle. Maybe it was a school. They went on toward the lake.

“What’s that?”

She was going through her pockets for a dime to buy an hourly. “That’s a swan.” The narrow mud beach of the lake was striped with the bodies of sunbathers. The swan was feeding in the eelgrass in the shallows. A girl in a yellow swimsuit walked by, and the Akellar watched her, his head turning to follow her course.

They walked up under the trees. The ground smelled moist. The crozier heads of ferns were poking up through the rotting leaves in the deep shade. She read the hourly’s headlines.

“Hunh.”

“What?”

“Cam Savenia was elected to the Council seat for Barsoom. By fifty thousand votes.”

He took the paper from her. They went north, passing through another sunny meadow. “Is it fair?” he said. “An election?”

Paula shrugged. “Depending on the definition of fair. The trick is to be nominated. Do you have hourlies in Styth?”

“We live much closer together than you do.” He bent and picked up a fragment of blue eggshell. Paula took the hourly from him. “Anybody who wants to know anything can just come ask me.”

“You know that Cam’s a member of the Sunlight League?”

He crushed the eggshell in his fingers and sniffed the residue. “Yes, we got that idea.” They were cutting across the campus. A deer grazed beside the turret of the Biochemistry Building. At their approach it bolted away.

“A cow?” he said, uncertainly.

“A deer.”

He took her hand. She was getting used to that; she guessed the touch gave him some kind of comfort. The Styths touched each other constantly. The square mouth of the underground shopping mall opened in the hillside before them. They went down the steps.

Bicycles lined either side, and the walls were covered with graffiti. They passed a boy and a girl drawing in red and blue swirls over a clear space of tile. Three doors on past Barrian’s, the music store, they came to The Circle, a shop that recycled toys, among other things. It was brightly lit. The Styth winced and put his hand up over his eyes. She took him by the arm. Plants and banners and china bells hung down from the ceiling. The shelves were made of planks and bricks. In the back, under a big sign, they found three boxes of toys.

“Here.”

He squatted down on his heels and reached into the nearest box. She watched him sort through the tops and dolls and wooden models, putting what he wanted on the floor by his feet.

“Ah.” He untangled a pull toy from the heap and held it up. “A camel.”

She laughed. “Right.”

He put it on the floor and rolled it back and forth on its wheels. The head bobbed up and down. “Are there live ones? How big are they?”

“Tremendous.”

“Bigger than cows?”

“I think so.” She sat cross-legged on the floor. He was taking other model animals out of the box, inspecting each one.

“What’s this?”

“A mouse.”

“Mouse. We have something—mus. Little things. Brown.”

“Sure,” she said. “Mouse.”

“Aha.” He put the mouse back into the box, uninterested.

He bought a dozen little toys; he also bought a music box and an hourglass. The shop clerk took his credit chit, put everything into a box, and tied it fast with string. She wondered if he traded in crystal. Before long, everyone would, because of her.

“I guess I’ll have to carry this myself,” Saba said. He picked up the box in his arms. They went through the jungle of hanging plants and banners to the door.

Most of the shops in the mall were dark, closed for the night. In the walkway they passed a man wrapped in hourlies, asleep against the wall. Ahead were the bright windows of the Optima, the Martian store. Behind the glass the mannequins walked and turned in a glare of backlighting. The Akellar started.

“Jesus. For a minute I thought they were real.”

“This is a Martian store. Nothing is real.”

He looked in the door. It hissed open, and he took a step toward the vast bright store inside. “How much time do we have?” Paula followed him into the store. He put the box down to turn a rack of book plugs. When he went off he left the box on the floor and she carried it. He led her up and down the aisles; he looked at everything, the stacks of shoes, a three-color animation selling vitamin lamps, boxes of buttons, wrapping paper and ribbon. She picked up a child’s striped shirt. It looked too small to fit anything human. Next to the counter of children’s clothes was a counter of bright little sweaters and boots for dogs. When she looked around, the Styth was gone.

“Saba?”

“Here.”

She went into the next aisle. Three illusion helmets were sitting on a display shelf; he was reading the price tags. He said, “Everything here costs about twice as much as it’s worth. How do these things work?”

The counter behind them was piled up with cut-rate illusions. She took one at random and stuck it into the slot on the back of a helmet. “These knobs adjust the size. Put it on your head.”

He stuck his head into it, stood a moment clutching the plastic bubble, and yanked it off. He held the helmet out in front of him and tried to see the illusion without putting his head into it.

“It won’t go on unless your head’s inside.”

“It feels—” He looked around, taking a reconnaissance, and put the helmet back on. Paula set the box down on the counter. Illusion helmets always made her feel locked in a closet. He took it off again and studied it.

“I want one of these.” He put it back over his head and played with the knobs. She looked up at him, dismayed.

He bought the illusion helmet and six cartridges, drew on his hand with red lip-slicker and blue eye color and bought several boxes of that. He bit a cheap necklace and lost interest when he realized it was plastic. He flicked his claws at a headless mannequin wearing a bra and a girdle. “That’s disgusting—putting that up for people to look at.”

She laughed. “We ought to go. I think we’re late already.” Her arms ached from carrying the box. She shifted it elaborately, to draw his attention, but he ignored it. They went toward the door. A mechanical female voice was talking out of the ceiling; she said, “Have you bought your Optima card yet? Remember, every month, card-holders receive special low prices on a wide range of needed items.” The door opened itself for them.

The mall was cool and dark. Paula boosted up the big package in her arms. They went up the wide steps to the surface. He slung the bag with the illusion helmet over his shoulder.

“I went all through there looking for something I could give you but there wasn’t anything I thought you’d want.”

They walked along a wide graded path. On either side of it were dogwood trees. She could not make out his expression. “You’re very smooth.”

“You suspect everything I do.”

“Everything you do is suspect.”

“No—you’re just a suspicious bitch.” They went across the dark grass to the Committee office.

Jefferson and Bunker were in the meeting room. The woman sat at the table, eating candy, while the man sat in a chair by the wall and argued with her. Paula went into the room, taking her jacket off. She turned to Michalski, who had followed them in.

“Can you dim the lights down?”

“Sure.”

Jefferson said, “You’re improving, Mendoza, you’re only an hour and ten minutes late. Good evening, Akellar.”

He turned a chair around, its back to the table, and put one knee on it.

The ceiling lights dimmed to half-strength. The Akellar looked up. Paula went off to the end of the room, past Bunker, who was watching the big Styth. They had only met once before, at the entry port. Jefferson was explaining how the transcribing equipment in the table worked.

“Is it on now?” the Akellar asked.

“No,” Jefferson said.

“Then turn it on, because I have an offer to make you.”

Paula swung around, and Bunker took his hands out of his pockets. The big man faced the three anarchists. He rocked his weight forward; he looked cramped in the room, his head and shoulders confined under the low ceiling. He said, “I don’t pretend I understand you people, but I know what you want. I’m willing to sign a truce with the Interplanetary Council, and I’ll sell licenses to trade in Matuko and sell Matuko crystal to the rock-worlds. I want that money, in metal, iron if you can get it, and I want my rights with her and her baby.”

Paula went up to the table. Her mouth was dry.

Jefferson said, “How much money?”

“It comes to twenty-six million dollars over five years,” Paula said.

Bunker kicked at the floor. “What rights with her?”

“She goes with me,” the Styth said. “Now.”

“To Uranus?”

Paula sat down. Jefferson’s mouth was pursed, her thin gray eyebrows arced like bows. The Akellar rocked back and forth on his knee on the chair, staring at Bunker.

“It’s my baby.”

Jefferson said, “How long a truce?”

“One hundred thousand watches.”

“Ten years,” Paula said.

“Good,” Jefferson said. “That’s a good length.”

“You aren’t serious?” Bunker shot a furious glance at Paula and went the length of the table to Jefferson. “What the hell are you doing? She set this up with him. She’s trading us off.”

“Do you agree to go?” Jefferson asked Paula. She put a mint into her mouth. Paula nodded. The old woman sucked on her candy, her hard blue eyes going to Bunker. “I like it. It’s practical, it might work, and I can sell it to the Council.”

The anarchist circled the table. “You Fascist,” he said to Paula. He went past the Styth and out the door. It slammed behind him.

Paula sat down. Jefferson said, “He’s getting narrow, Richard, in his dotage.” She tipped up the lid of the recorder in the table and pushed buttons. Above her head, Paula met the round black eyes of the Styth, triumphant.

An Chu spread out the skirts of the black dress and folded them carefully in layers of tissue. “Can I write you?”

“I don’t see how you’d post it.”

“Maybe it would be easier for you to write me.”

Paula was packing her books into the pockets of a flannel cloth. She rolled it up and tied the tape. The room was stripped to the walls and floor. She had sold her bed and given away everything else she was leaving behind. She put her flute into the satchel bag with the books.

“Help me,” An Chu said, sitting on the suitcase. While they were buckling the straps there was a knock on the door.

It was Dick Bunker. Paula bent over the suitcase again. “What do you want?”

“Junior, why are you doing this?”

“It’s my treaty.” She closed the satchel. “I can manage it better in Styth than here.” She stood up. The naked room looked smaller, like a cage. An Chu glanced from her to Bunker and lugged the suitcase out. He tipped himself up against the wall.

“You won’t be much use dead, or locked up in a harem, or in a slave market, which is where you’ll be.”

“You certainly know a lot, for somebody who spends all his time talking.”

They faced each other. His eyes were black as a Styth’s. After a moment, he said, “I apologize for losing my temper yesterday.”

“It doesn’t bother me if you get emotional. Do you have something you want to say?”

“The Lunar Army blotted the scan of Ybix.”

“Oh. That’s typical.”

“Will you take a sensor inboard with you?”

She snatched her jacket off the doorknob and thrust her arms into the sleeves. “He’d kill me. I’m not that stupid. Get out of my way.” She grabbed the satchel. He backed up, and she went out the door after An Chu.