Floating Worlds

She punched out blue tablets. “Are you glad to be home?”

“We’re a long way from home. There are fifty ships of the Uranian Patrol stacked up around us.”

“What?”

The speaker hummed in the wall. “Paula,” Saba said, “get down here now.” Her sleeves stuffed with food, she went along the corridor to the blue tunnel, where the library was, next to Tanuojin’s cabin.

He and Saba were crowded against the lower wall of the library. A little projector threw an eight-inch cube of green light into the other end of the room. She had to go through it to reach the only open space. Yellow shovel- nosed ships floated around her like darts. In the middle of the cube was Ybix, huge among the fog of little ships.

“What is this?”

Tanuojin’s eyes were shut. Saba said, “They were waiting for us when we fell into orbit.”

“Bokojin?”

Under his breath Tanuojin muttered an oath against Bokojin. She looked from him to Saba, whose arms were stretched out relaxed along the curved wall behind him. “What about the rest of the fleet?” she said.

“The patrol has let them dock. This is our war, not theirs.” The grainy red beam of the holograph projector ran diagonally across his face.

“We can make it their war,” Tanuojin said, without opening his eyes.

“No.”

“Damn it, Saba—”

“I told them I wouldn’t ask them to fight Styths.”

Paula watched the coils of ships around Ybix. She tore open a water tube. Uranus lay below them, the crystal heart of the Empire. “What does Bokojin want?”

“It’s more than Bokojin,” Tanuojin said. “He must have a couple of the others with him.” He put his hand up to his face.

“What’s wrong with you?” Paula asked.

“I’m just tired.”

Saba was watching her, his mustaches floating back over his shoulders. He said, “Do you have any ideas?”

“That depends on what Bokojin wants,” she said.

Tanuojin reached out and turned the projector off. Ybix disappeared. Saba said, “Start talking.”

VRIBULO

Huge in the pressure suit, David’s arm stretched up above the seat in front of her to a switch in Ybicket’s ceiling. She tipped her head back inside the helmet. Behind her Junna was talking in a string of numbers, reading off the navigation signals. Ybicket flew down the D corridor toward Vribulo; Paula would meet Bokojin in Vribulo.

The radio crackled. “SIF-16 Ybicket, this is Vribulo mid-city gate. We will dock you.”

She turned her head. On the curved wall beside her an ax hung in brackets. Behind her, Junna said, “Vribulo, we have orders from our commander not to surrender control of the ship.”

“Stand by, Ybicket.”

“Overflying Vribulo,” David muttered.

Junna’s voice fell to a ringing whisper. “Are you sure you can fly this jog?”

“I could take Ybicket through the Sun.”

Paula swallowed. A burst of static rattled out of the radio. “Ybicket, this is Vribulo. You may dock your own ship.”

The voices of the two young men sounded softly in the helmet above her ears. They guided the ship through the maze of the entry chute. She kept her eyes straight ahead, careful not to look at the hologram. Junna gave directions in a level singsong. She realized she was hanging onto the harness of her seat. The ship banged into the side of the tunnel and she shut her eyes an instant. Junna said, “Steady, little boy.”

“Sorry,” David said.

Ybicket flew out across Vribulo. Paula sighed, relieved. She wrenched her helmet back and forth until the seal broke. The ship rolled over and descended in a long swoop toward the surface. She looked up. The roofs of houses flew past over her head. People walked upside down in the street above her. Ybicket’s secondary engines thundered; she slid forward into the harness. David settled the ship down into the dark gate of the dock. A roof clanged shut over the window. She felt the slap of the anchor hitting the hull under her feet.

David let out a whoosh of breath. He and Junna unbuckled their harnesses. Paula fought with the spring clips that held her into her seat. David came around to help her.

“I’m sorry I hit. In the tunnel.”

“I love surprises.” She climbed out of the deep broad seat toward the hatch. Junna threw an arm around him, buoyant.

“You did it. I’d never even try it. You’re like the Prima, little boy, you can fly anything.”

She stood on the dock ledge beside the ship, watching David’s face shine at Junna’s words. She should have praised him like that. Won that look from him. They came up to the ledge beside her.

When they had shed their pressure suits they went out the front of the dock into the city street. The cold and greasy air struck her; she raised her head, her heart racing. A man brushed by her without breaking stride. His hair hung down his back in the Vribulit club. A siren wailed nearby. The blackened, ancient buildings tilted out over the street. A fat woman came down the alley across from Paula, arguing. Paula looked up at the lake of Lower Vribulo, six miles across the twilit air, bounded in blue grass like surf.

“Mother—”

She went down the street, flanked by the two young men.

“Bokojin could have sent a chair to meet us,” Junna said.

“He could have.” Bokojin had refused to let either Saba or Tanuojin into Uranus. When Saba suggested sending her to negotiate with him, Tanuojin had shown enough distaste for that to make Bokojin insist. She trotted along beside David, one hand on his arm, looking around. They went through a fish market, gleaming with scales, and a chicken market, white with feathers. The street narrowed to a steep lane cut into steps.

At the top was Bokojin’s house. He kept her waiting long minutes at the door, and David fumed.

“I’m not leaving you here alone.”

“The Prima gave you orders.”

“They didn’t know what this was like. You’ll need help.”

She remembered Tanuojin’s closed eyes: he knew what was happening here. She glanced at Junna. Tanuojin’s son went down the steps that led from Bokojin’s door to the street. David lingered. His inch-long mustaches bristled. “Vida,” Junna called, and the boy said a very colorful oath and followed him.

A few moments later Bokojin’s slaves let her into his house. Bokojin, Machou, and two other rAkellaron were waiting for her in a room of blue and green lights, rippling in slow sweeps through the room. The walls were decorated with a network of knotted ropes. When she came in, the four men stared at her, moveless in their chairs, each with an aide behind him like a standard. She went inside the arc of chairs.

“Mendoz’,” Bokojin said. He sat with his feet together before him, his knees apart. “The talk was that you were dead.”

“I was visiting another life.” She looked at Machou on her left and the two men on her right. Even sitting they were taller than she was. Machou looked drunk. To Bokojin, she said, “The Prima is tired. He wants to come home and rest. Why are you putting yourself in his way?”

“We all know Saba,” Bokojin said. “He’s always had exotic ideas. We want assurances he isn’t coming back with any strange notions of walking all over us just because he’s taken the Middle Planets.”