Floating Worlds

Now his way of moving was Saba’s: the straight back, the solid step. On the bed the empty body looked like a corpse. She should fix in her mind everything that she was seeing. The inhabited body stood by the window, and she could hear their low voices talking back and forth.

He sat down on the bed and put his mouth on Tanuojin’s mouth. Tanuojin’s long hand rose. For a moment Saba stayed bent over him, his hands on the bed on either side of the other man, protective. They spoke. She could not hear the words. Saba stood erect, turning toward her. Her shoulders slumped with relief. He gestured at her.

“We’re going to Crosby’s Planet—the three of us. You call the Committee.”

“We won’t need the Committee,” she said.

YBIX Watch logs M15, 432—L15, 434

They went to Crosby’s Planet. From a feeling she did not analyze, she insisted that David come with them. He loved Ybix, the free fall and flying, and got into everything and into everybody’s way. He sneaked onto the bridge, where he was not allowed, and nearly blew up the ship. Unfortunately he chose Tanuojin’s watch for this experiment, and Tanuojin took him into the cage, where there was gravity, and spanked him until David’s throat and backside were raw.

For the next several watches he stayed within arm’s length of Paula. Whenever he saw Tanuojin, he hid behind her, which made the men laugh. She took him to the Beak, the little pyramidal room in the nose of the ship, while she talked to Saba about the court.

Tanuojin was going to argue the case for Ybix. Saba was not convinced of it. She said, “He was there. His memory is perfect, and he knows more law than any three other people.” She looked beyond him at the field of stars in the window.

“Styth law.”

“Law is law.”

David pressed his nose to the window. Saba drew his floating mustaches down. “Who argues against us? The—what did you call him?—the adversary.”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody from the Committee?”

“I doubt it. I don’t think anybody from the Committee would get involved in this dubious a case.”

“You think they’ll fake the evidence?”

“They have to. I have three computer graphs to prove Ybix never fired at the second ship. They’ll have General Gordon to swear to their version, and we have you and Tanuojin.”

David flattened his cheek against the window, trying to see behind the stars. The blazing Sun in the lower corner of the glass streamed its fiery hair. The hatch opened, and Tanuojin squeezed up into the little room. David shrank back, circled behind Paula, and dove head-first out the hatch.

Paula nodded at Tanuojin. “The problem will be to break Gordon. That’s why he’s the best defenser. He was there, it’s first-hand for him.”

Tanuojin spread himself out horizontally in the cramped space, his back to the stars. “Can we bribe the judge?”

Paula laughed. She moved around Saba, trying to give them all enough room. “Maybe. If we can, so can the adversary.”

“Hunh.”

Saba said, “Ask her.”

She turned her head. “Ask me what?”

“I want you to do something with me,” Tanuojin said.

“What?”

“That—what Saba and I did, in Yekka.”

When she shook her head, her whole body turned from side to side. “No. I told you before. Do it with Saba.”

“I want to try it with somebody else. To see if I can do it with somebody else.”

“You can’t. Not me.”

Saba got her by the arm and pulled her around in front of him. “You want us to do some strange things, sometimes. It’s not dangerous for you, it’s dangerous for him.”

She made a sound in her throat. Now she was between them. Saba’s hands cupped her shoulders. Tanuojin said, “Besides, I have to know about this court. It would take you hours to tell me everything, and then you might garble it, knowing you.”

That made sense to her. She wondered why she was afraid, anyway, perhaps just of the novelty. She looked over her shoulder at Saba.

“You stay here.”

“I will. Look, there’s nothing to it. I’ve done it six or eight times.”

Tanuojin’s long hands reached for her. She flinched from his touch. He put one hand on the back of her neck and fit their mouths together. There was no sensual interest in the pressure of his open mouth. She tasted copper on her tongue. Her throat numbed downward. She went blind.

“Saba!”

She flung her hands out. Her arm struck something floating in the air. Saba seized hold of her. She said his name again, but no sound came from her mouth. She could hear nothing. Saba held her tight. His arms around her. His breath against her cheek. Then she felt nothing at all: her sense of touch, her body was gone, he was gone; she was alone.

Her mind stuck. A brilliant passage of colors rolled through her imagination. Orange and green stretched in rays infinitely away. She struggled to feel. She had forgotten how. The colors began to spin.

“Paula.”

A very small voice somewhere in her mind. She fought to see. She could not think without some sense to feed on, someplace to start from. The colors wheeled faster, in streamers. She was exploding. Not me: I am not here. Something was here. What? What is I? False. False. The colors pinwheeled brighter and brighter. False.

“Paula!”

Confused, she stopped struggling. The colors faded to black, like space, like a Styth.

“Good, that’s better.”

It was Tanuojin’s voice. She waited for him to say something else. Where is he? In here with me. Abruptly Saba stood in front of her. In an instant he was gone. She had imagined him. Gone. Stray music came into her mind. Flecks of color, odd smells. My wool-gathering imagination. Saw hands plucking fat apples of wool from trees.

She thought of Mella Square in Havana, blue twilight, walking home. The pavement was checked with seams. Step on a crack and break your mother’s back. She stepped on all the cracks. Years of no result made it no less satisfying. Reciting Yeats and Fu Sheng at the top of her lungs. Toil and grow rich—

I wish I had an ice cream.

May I buy you an ice cream?

O thank you.

She ate ice cream, changing the flavor with each bite. Plum. Vanilla. Mint chocolate. Chocolate made her skin break out. When she was a little girl, afraid no one would ever want her. She rode a horse bareback along a country road. The sun was bright and the horse stretched out, it hurtled along the road like a rocket. The trees streamed past in a blur. The triple beat of the hoofs pattered faster. The horse stumbled and threw her. She flew in a tremendous arc through the blazing blue sky and fell softly (it is only a dream) into the grass.

She sat up. She was bored, and slightly disoriented: where was she? Wherever you want to be. In rising panic she blundered through a series of random images until she remembered that she was in Ybix, in the Beak, and Tanuojin possessed her. She thought, I don’t like this.