Floating Worlds

VRIBULO Machou’s Akellarat

Vribulo was darker than Matuko, almost like full night, and bitterly cold. The air smelled rancid. The streets swarmed with people. They walked faster here than in Matuko, hurrying along in a continuous crowd. She stayed close by Saba. If she got lost here she would have to find her own way back. Ketac had come with them, together with Sril and Bakan. The young man walked along beside her, looking around him, his bed slung over his shoulder.

The buildings of the ancient city, the oldest city of the Empire, were blackened with time. The upper stories overhung the streets and in places closed above the street into arches. A siren started up behind her. She glanced back. The street threaded away through the dark, picked out with the blue-white of crystal lamps. There seemed to be a million people walking after her. At a run she went back among her own Styths.

The slaves here wore white, like in Matuko, which made them show up in the dark among their dark masters. She heard another siren. High above them, she could just make out the far side of the city: the square shapes of buildings, the dim sheen of water. They came into a street with a lane of thick blue grass down the center.

Sril touched her shoulder. “Look up there, Mendoz’.”

They were coming to the end of the bubble. Something covered it that she thought at first was a natural formation, some kind of Stythite rock laid down in ledges that ringed the blunt end of the bubble. Sril said, “That’s the rAkellaron House.”

Now she could see the windows, the jutting balconies, and a torrent of steps running down from the high open porch. People walked there, so small she overlooked them, her eyes taken by the building. Sril laughed at her as she stood gaping at it. He took her by the arms and lifted her up a step onto the floor of a covered arcade. Saba and the other men had gone on ahead of her along the front of the building.

“This is the Barn,” Sril said. “All the rAkellaron have offices here.” He waved in passing at a door. The arcade stretched along the long front of the building, cut with a door every fifty feet. Over some of them shone blue lights. She went to the edge of the arcade and looked up at the rAkellaron House.

“That must be heavy.”

“Heavy as the Empire,” he said: some proverb. He opened a door for her. They were nearly to the end of the Barn, only two more doorways between them and a black wall. Sril said, “The Creep isn’t here yet. That’s his office, the last.” She went past him into a room full of men.

Saba stood in the middle of everything, talking to a little ring of faces. She circled them to the window on the far wall. Ketac was there, one hip braced on the sill, his rolled bed tipped against the wall beside him. She glanced into the street outside the window, now much below them.

“Nervous?” she asked Ketac. He was staying here, on Saba’s staff.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

“I said I’m fine!”

She laughed. The young man grew hot. His fingers plucked fiercely at his short mustaches. Like his face, his hands were all knobbed bones. In the street below a pack of men was passing by, wearing dark blue shirts with red chevrons on the upper sleeves. Seeing Ketac in the window, one called, “Hey, socks.”

Ketac’s head snapped around. He leaned across the window sill. “Watch what you’re saying, sitdown-sailor.” Sril elbowed him out of the way.

“What are you looking for, pouchy,” he shouted at the chevrons. “Flying lessons?”

The men in the red chevrons were crowding toward the window. Their voices rose in a chorus of insults. Inside the room, Saba called, “Sril, front up.” The little gunner went out from between Paula and Ketac. The men in the street were drifting away.

“Uranian Patrol,” Ketac said. “The first thing they learn is deep breathing. That’s so if their ship’s wrecked they can hold their breath until they get home.” He scratched his nose, not looking at her.

A big desk took up one side of the office; a square paper flag hanging on the wall behind it was marked with Saba’s kite-shaped emblem. Behind the desk was a door. She went through it, through a narrow room lined with analog decks that chuckled and flashed lights, and through another door into a smaller room. Her satchel lay on the low bed along the wall. She sat down in a chair by the window and kicked her shoes off. Through the window came the mechanical roar of the great dark city. She began to shiver. There was a blanket folded on the bed; she wrapped it around herself, over her head and under her feet, and sat in the chair with her knees drawn up and her arms around them, watching the people going by in the street.

After a while Saba came in, looked all around, and started out. He saw her and stopped. “There you are.” He sat down on the bed, opened her satchel, and took out a bottle of whiskey. “You don’t like it, do you?”

“It isn’t very pretty.”

“We’ll go eat in a few minutes, you can see a little more.” He drank deeply of the dark red liquor. At the rate he was drinking it two cases would not last him an Earthish year. She would have to arrange for more. He said, “We’re going to the Akopra, too.”

“Oh.” The Akopra was the Styth theater. “You never go to the one in Matuko.”

“Matuko is a third-rate Akopra. The Vribulo company is the best in Uranus.”

“Where do I sleep?”

“Here. With me.” He lay back on his elbow across the bed, smiling. “You can seduce me, like the first time. I liked that.”

She pushed back the hood of her blanket. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”

He frowned at her. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I just like things the way they are.”

The whiskey sloshed in the bottle. In a crabbed voice, he said, “I don’t care, you know. I’m—I was just trying to do you a favor, that’s all.”

“I appreciate it.” She leaned forward, reaching for the bottle, and he gave it to her.

He said, “I mean, it’s been a long time for you.”

She drank a small warming mouthful out of the bottle and stretched to give it back to him. “When are we going to eat?”

“You’d better not be taking on someone else behind my back.”

“I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”

He stoppered the bottle and put it on the floor under the bed. She could tell by the way he moved that he was angry. There was a narrow rack in the wall opposite the window, and he took out a clean shirt and stripped himself, all in the same hard, short gestures, his back to her.

“Come on,” he said, and yanked the door open.

They went a short way down the street to a drinking dock called Colorado’s, after a Vribulit Akellar who had been Prima some long while past. Paula’s coat had a veil attached to the hood, which she kept fastened across her face under the eyes. The place was huge, the floor deep in sand, and gloomy as an old church. There was nowhere to sit except on the floor. The Styths stood in clumps drinking and talking. The face-cloth narrowed her vision and as soon as Saba had gone off somewhere she lowered it.

There were plenty of other women, and none of them was veiled. Their faces were painted in figures of red and white, yellow, green, as concealing as veils. Their clothes were spectacular. A woman passed her in a dress of ribbons that fluttered around her while she walked. Paula watched them all, fascinated.

“He did bring you,” Tanuojin said.

Paula looked up; she had not seen him come in. “I think he’s still trying to civilize me.” He stood with his hands flat under his belt, his gaze moving slowly over the room. She had forgotten how tall he was. She said, “He’s over there someplace.”

“I know where he is,” he said, as if she had insulted him. He crossed his arms over his thin chest. She moved away from him. She was hungry; she cast around for something to eat. Saba was coming toward her, a woman beside him. Her eyes and mouth were traced in three colors. He and Tanuojin met like lovers, their arms around each other. Paula went in among them.

“I told you to wear that veil,” Saba said.

“I can’t see. And I’m hungry.”

The painted girl was looking down at her. The rings of color glowed faintly in the dark, accenting her huge black eyes. “Aren’t you from someplace strange?”

The two men were talking. Paula nodded her head. “From the Earth. My name is Paula.”

“Mine is Tye. Why did you come here?”

“Dumb, I guess.”

The girl laughed. Her dress covered her from throat to feet; the supple cloth moved like water over her body. “I’ve heard a lot about you, and none of it makes you sound dumb.”

“Look,” Saba said. “Do you want to eat or not?”

There was a slave beside her with a tray, holding it by habit up at the level of his head. She pulled it down to her range and took a plate off it. The plate was divided into sections and held beans and soup and leaf. She sat down on the sand to eat it. Tanuojin went off somewhere into the gloom. Saba and the painted girl stood face to face talking. She laughed at something he said and reached out and started to unbuckle his belt. He caught her hand.

A pair of strange boots tramped up, scattering sand into Paula’s lap. She raised her head. The boots belonged to a tall young man in a shirt much decorated with chips of metal. He was staring down at her. She went back to her half-eaten dinner, now liberally salted with sand.

“Leave her alone, Ymma,” Saba said.

She put the plate down beside her. The young man swung toward Saba. “Oh, is she yours, Matuko? You’ve always had strange tastes. But now the Prima thinks it’s time you came back inside the border.”

Saba had the painted girl by the hands. “Tell him to draw me a map.” He smiled at the girl.

Tanuojin came up behind Ymma, a plate in his hand. “Running messages, Ymma?” He fed himself, his eyes on the dish. The younger man swung around to face him, his head thrust forward, belligerent.

“I have a couple for you, any time you want to take them. What your friends do could hurt you, you know.”

“Talk, talk.” Tanuojin turned away. He spoke without missing a bite.

“Are you sure you’re getting enough to eat?”

“Yes. Want some?” Tanuojin palmed the dish and pushed it into Ymma’s face.

Paula stood up. Across the room someone yelped with laughter.

Everybody turned to watch. Ymma gobbled wordlessly through a mask of thick soup and vegetables. Paula circled around to Saba’s far side, out of their way if they fought. Tanuojin leaned over him.

“If you want to fight me, Ymma, do it in the pit, where it matters.” He walked off toward the gate.

Dripping food, Ymma started after him, and Saba got in his way. “Maybe you should wash your face, Akellar.” Ymma backed up a step, pawing at the mess on his face, and Saba pushed him. The younger man retreated from him.

“Paula,” Saba said, “let’s go.” He turned to the painted girl, Tye. “Come to the Akopra with us.”

“I can’t,” Tye said. “I’m meeting someone else. I’ll get rid of him at one bell, if you want.”

“I’ll meet you here.” He gave her a piece of paper credit out of his sleeve. “Get something to drink.” He herded Paula before him toward the door.

In the street, she remembered the look on Ymma’s face. “Who is he?”

“The Lopka Akellar.” Saba was looking around them. “He sits under Machou’s arm. Something’s cooking.” He threw his hand up over his head and shouted, and went off down the street. She had to run to keep up with him. In the street ahead of them, with people passing by on either side, Tanuojin stopped to wait for them.

“Are you coming to the Akopra with us?” Saba said.

Tanuojin hunched his shoulders. “You see what’s happening, Saba. They’re setting us up over that damned treaty. Only it isn’t you they’ll start into, it’s me.”

They were walking at their regular pace. Paula fell behind them. She broke into a run to keep up.

Ahead, along the side of the street, a line of people was forming. The head of the line disappeared around the next corner to the left. Saba led her alongside it. The waiting line thickened. On the far side of the street was another, all in white: slaves. The lines led up the steps of a round building with a dome roof. Bright paper banners hung from the eaves. Saba took her around the head of the line of Styths to a side door.

“The rAkellaron get in free,” he said. They went into a lobby. “A privilege we pay for by making up the house deficit.” A fat man rushed across the lobby toward them.

“Yes, Akellar—it’s been quite some time since we had the honor of entertaining you.” He ushered them up the flight of stairs, breathless with compliments. The carpet over the steps was worn. The hallway at the top of the stairs was dark. Drapery cushioned the walls. The fat man waddled ahead of them to pull back a section of the hanging.

Saba’s hand on her back pushed her through the gap. She went into a little balcony. Tanuojin sat in one of the four chairs, his back to the curtain. Paula went by him to the rail of the balcony. One story down, the open theater was filling with people. She stood on her toes to see over the railing to the round stage. The lights above it came on. Saba lifted her up from behind like a child and put her down in a chair so deep she felt swallowed.

“Can you see?” He sat down on her left; she was between him and Tanuojin.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Are you warm enough?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you fuss over her?” Tanuojin said, in his deep musical voice.

“She’s making me rich,” Saba said.

“Did you tell her how? Look over there. Machou is here, and Ymma is with him.”

Saba’s head turned, his eyes aimed across the theater at the balcony directly opposite them. Three or four people were milling around in the little space. Saba stood up. On Paula’s right, Tanuojin swore and slouched down and put his feet up on the rail. In the far box, a big man sat, and Saba took his seat.

“You’ve got slave manners,” he said to Tanuojin.

“I stand up for him in the pit. That’s all he’s worth.”

Saba put his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands on his belt. “Neither of you has any breeding.”

“You are all virtue. Tell her how she’s going to make you rich.” Tanuojin’s hand struck the side of her head so hard she was dazed a moment, blinking and stupid. He said, “If any of the rAkellaron want off-world markets arranged, we have to do it through you, don’t we?”

“Don’t hit me,” she said, through her teeth.

“He’s charging us each ten per cent of our advances for the use of what I suppose you call your mind.”

Unsurprised, she gave Saba an oblique look. What Ymma had said about his strange tastes came back to her. In Styth he was probably a dangerous radical. He nodded over the rail.

“Watch.”

The Akopra began. She could make no sense of it. Four men, wearing huge painted masks, moved in stylistic gymnastic poses around the bare stage. The performance was short. At the end, the audience roared and clapped, enthusiastic, the applause lasting for minutes after the four men had left the stage.

“He’s pretty good,” Saba said.

“He’s terrible. They all are.” Tanuojin propped his long legs up on the rail. “It’s supposed to be an art, not a contest.”

Another Akopra was beginning, or perhaps another scene of the same one: the same dancers came back, two in different masks. Tanuojin was not watching. She looked across the theater at Machou, dimly visible in the far balcony.

They watched a third performance, and Tanuojin said, “This is awful. Let’s go.”

Saba rose. “Are you worried about Ymma?”

“I wouldn’t mind if he broke his leg getting down to the street.”

They went back along the quiet hallway toward the stairs, going at a Styth pace. Just as they reached the door, a harsh voice said, “Saba.”

Saba stood back, taking his hand off the door pull. Paula was between him and Tanuojin. A file of men was walking toward them. Ymma was third in the line. The man in front walked up to Saba. His face was rutted with scars around the eyes. His hair was streaked with white and his ropy gray mustaches hung down over his chest. Paula glanced at his hands, fisted on his hips. On his left wrist was an iron manacle. He said, “Open the door for me, Saba.”

Tanuojin hissed. Machou drew his gaze slowly from Saba to stare over Paula’s head. His chest looked wide as a wall. He radiated confidence. Saba pulled the door open, and they stood there while Machou and his whole crew filed out. Tanuojin swore. He charged through the door behind them.

Paula followed in the hot wake of his temper. Saba came after her. She stopped. Machou and his men were just going out the door to the street.

“That’s what having a father accomplishes.” Tanuojin came up to Saba. “Every time you see a gray hair you back off.”

They went out to the street. The men walked along arguing. Paula looked up over her head. The streets were thick with traffic. The air smelled bad, like grease. Rancid. Nearby a siren began to whine. A man tore past her. Two steps behind him, another man ran after him, the siren screeching on his belt.

They went back to the Barn, the long building at the foot of the rAkellaron House. In the arcade Ketac came to meet them. He had a long knife in a sheath on his belt.

“What happened? We heard you were in a fight at Colorado’s.” He turned to walk beside them, down the arcade.

Tanuojin said, “What’s the watch?”

“About thirty minutes to one bell.”

They went through Saba’s office, across the narrow filing room, and into the little sleeping room. There was a crystal lamp burning and the place was relatively warm. She took off her coat.

“Ymma and Machou just backed us off over at the Akopra,” Tanuojin said.

“Backed you off?” Ketac wheeled toward his father.

Saba sat down on the bed and reached under it for the bottle of liquor. “He’s the Prima Akellar. I don’t see how I can pick a fight with him over precedence. What are you so hot over?” He was talking to his lyo; his voice was genial. “If Ymma challenges you and you start to lose, I’ll step in. And Machou will step into me, and we’ll get the teeth kicked out of us. But I won’t close that market.”

There was a cup on the table by the bed. Paula took the bottle from him and poured a slight two fingers of whiskey into the cup and took it over to the window. Outside, the noisy, filthy city stretched away like a vast tunnel. Sirens roamed in the gloomy streets.

Ketac was saying, “You’re going to fight in the pit.” His voice was thin with excitement. Tanuojin came up to the window, ignoring her beside him.

“Well, maybe,” Saba said.

Tanuojin looked the same as he always did, flute-thin, his gray shirt undecorated, his black slot-buckled belt and leggings like anybody else’s. Paula cast a glance back into the room at Saba. She put the cup on the window sill. “Machou is afraid of him,” she said to Tanuojin.

He stared out the window, his long dished profile toward her. “You’ve blown your tubes. Machou hasn’t even had to fight in sixty or seventy sessions.”

“I take it if Ymma is losing, Machou can jump in and help him?”

“Step in. Yes.”

“That’s why he played that farce at the Akopra. Now he can stay out and nobody will say he’s afraid of Saba. Therefore he’s afraid of Saba.”

The corners of his mouth rolled down; he still refused to look at her. He pulled his mustaches between his thumb and his forefinger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What is Ymma to you?”

“My cadet. One rank below me. If he beats me he takes rny place.”

Saba came up behind him and put his arm around the other man’s waist. He was half-drunk. “Why are you heating up? You can handle Ymma.”

“I can’t handle Machou.”

“I’ll take Machou.” He glanced behind him at Ketac, who was going out of the room. The door shut, and Saba turned to Tanuojin again. Saba’s voice fell to a murmur. “Just don’t show off. If you get hurt, stay hurt.”

“I can’t make myself bleed.”

“They know you’re a blood-stauncher. That doesn’t matter. Just don’t let them find out about the rest of it.” He slapped Tanuojin’s ribs. “Go get some sleep.”

“I’ll call you at two bells.” Tanuojin went to the door. Saba had the whiskey bottle with him, which he raised to his mouth. Paula reached for her cup. Machou was old, and Saba was young, strong and young. She thought over the display at the Akopra. Machou had known that Saba would not defy him over a courtesy. Another ritual.

“Can he beat Ymma?” she said.

“Oh, sure,” Saba said. “He’s just panicked. He ran into a hammer the last time he fought in the pit. Bokojin tore him up.” He dribbled liquor into her cup. “I wouldn’t like to be Ymma. Tajin has a lot to prove. Drink that, don’t waste it.”

One bell rang, in the next room, and in the city other bells rang, tuneful and cracked and clanking, all over Vribulo. She said, “You’ll be late to meet Tye.”

“Oh. I forgot.” He put the bottle down empty and strode out. Paula dragged a chair over to the window and climbed onto it to reach the window shade. A siren started up in Machou’s smoky crowded city. She leaned against the frame, her hand above her head, looking out there. Saba was third in the rAkellaron order. With work and some luck, he would be Prima. Work, luck, and money. She pulled the shade down over the window, undressed in the dark, and went to bed.

At two bells Saba and Tanuojin went into the rAkellaron House for the session of the central council of the Empire. Paula wanted to go out to the city, but Sril refused to let her leave the office.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“I’ve got orders,” he said. He was sitting behind the desk in the front office, one leg crooked over the arm of the chair. “One thing I never do is disobey orders.”

Bakan came in, bear-sized. “Any word yet?”

“No,” Sril said. “They have to wait until Machou finishes his own business—it won’t be until the mid-third of the watch. She’s hungry.”

“Take her to Colorado’s,” Bakan said.

Paula started back through the filing room; she would go out the window of the bedroom. Sril reached ahead of her and shut the door before she could leave the main office. He said, “The Man told me not to let her out.”

“Did he tell you to let me starve? You can come with me, I won’t run away.”

Sril’s hand stayed on the latch of the door. To Bakan, he said, “Bokojin offered him fifty thousand dollars for her. You can see what he’s afraid of.”

The hulking man crossed the room to the other side of the desk. “Here, Mendoz’. If you’re hungry, try this.”

“Who is Bokojin?” she said. She took a flat orange strip from his hand. It did not look like food. She bit into the end. The stuff was of the texture of strip protein and as hard to chew. The bitter taste screwed her face up. She spat it out.

“Ugh!”

The two men were laughing; Bakan slapped his thigh with amusement. He chewed a mouthful of the stuff like a cud. “Mendoz’, you aren’t as tough as you think you are.” He turned his head and fired a gob of spit into the wastebin in the corner.

She worked her lips to get rid of the horrid taste. Her tongue was numb. Sril’s face danced with amusement, but he left the chair and went into the next room and came back with a cup of water for her. Gratefully she drank it.

Sril sat down again, his hands behind his head. “Bokojin is Saba’s cadet. Vice captain of the Uranian Patrol. Machou’s favorite. He’s a comet, he’s been in the rAkellaron about the same time as Tanuojin, but he whipped up the rank—”

Bakan spat again. “Until he came to Saba.”

“What is that stuff?” she asked.

“Laksi.”

“Did he fight Saba?”

Sril said, “The Man let him know what he was going to do to him for Tanuojin’s sake.” His gaze went to Bakan, sitting on the corner of the desk. “Do you think The Creep can take Ymma?”

“That lady,” Bakan said. “My opinion, since you asked. The Creep is under-ranked. He’d be eighth or ninth if he’d fight more.”

Paula wandered around the room. The two men talked about fighting. She could not sit still; she was trying to imagine what was happening up in the House—what a pit fight was like. She wondered if she were right about Machou. Being Prima was its own defense. If Tanuojin would fight more, he would be hurt more, and they would all see that he was not just a blood-stauncher. What was he? His touch had healed her wounds in seconds.

“I’m still hungry.”

“Go get her something to eat,” Sril said to Bakan.

“Why should I go?”

“Because I’m on duty. Go on, just go to Colorado’s.”

A shout sounded in the arcade. Paula wheeled around. The door burst open, and Ketac rushed into the room, his face shining.

“Tanuojin just beat Ymma down in seventy-three seconds.”

Sril whooped, throwing his hands up over his head. Bakan spat. “I knew it. It’s just surprising it took him so long.”

“What about Saba?” Paula said.

Ketac turned on his heel in the center of the room. “It was The Creep’s fight from the beginning. Machou never even stood up.” He looked at Bakan. “The Creep worked on him a little. Once he saw that Machou wasn’t stepping in, he tore Ymma’s face off.” Ketac clapped his hands together. “I’ve never seen anybody fight like that. Smart like that.”

Paula went to the door. The arcade was filling up with men. Their voices rose, jubilant. She reached for the door, but it sprang out of her hands. Tanuojin shouldered in past her. His shirt was splattered with blood and his hair hung down over his shoulders. His face was scored with half-healed scratches. He was hot and he stank and his rare smile showed. Paula moved away from him. Marus and Kany and others of his men flooded in the door behind him. He shouted, “I wish I could afford it, I’d buy for the whole city of Vribulo.” His hands were covered with blood. The other men slapped him on the back. Saba came in behind him and draped one arm around him. Paula lowered her eyes.