Floating Worlds (48 page)

“I have to follow orders,” he said.

“I can only help you if you let me go.”

“Then I’ll have to get us out by myself.”

The smell of smoke reached her nose. She said, “Which way is the lake from here?”

“Out there.” He pointed behind them. “There’s fighting here, too—what’s going on?”

“Here comes your brother.”

Junna was bounding down the slope, tall as a young tree, scattering stones and dirt on ahead of him. He jumped across the stream and ran up to them. Scratches decorated his body; he was naked.

“Cover yourself up,” Kasuk said.

“Why? She doesn’t care. I’m hungry again. When will Papa come? Will we start fighting when he gets here? There are fires up there, and people shooting guns.”

“What’s going on?” Kasuk turned to Paula. “I thought the Martians were just attacking us, but there aren’t any Styths up there.”

“The Sunlight League is staging a coup against the anarchy.”

“To kill us,” Junna said.

She bobbed her head, her gaze on Kasuk. He said, “What does Gemini have to do with it?”

“Everything.”

Junna raked at the ground with his claws, his head bent. “Papa knows what he’s doing.”

Kasuk said to her, “Then I can see why you don’t want to go back. I won’t take you back.”

“Kak!” Junna cried. He grabbed his brother’s arm. “Who will protect her?”

Kasuk scrubbed his face with his hand. He crooked his fingers in the neck of his shirt and pulled at it. “I wonder what’s happening to the rest of the
Ybix
.”

“Kak!”

“Shut up. I’ve made up my mind.” He looked at Paula. “You get us an air car.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

Night came. The domelight did not shine. She made her way toward the middle of the dome. A siren raised its hound-voice ahead of her. In the dark she had trouble finding a way through the trees. She skirted the east edge of the lake. Faint moonlight gleamed on the water. The swans were all roosting in the high grass near the head of the lake. As she crossed the open ground between the beach and the wood, near the hourly stand, a shot cracked out.

She sprinted into the cover of the trees. Another bullet followed her, whining like a hornet. She stopped beside a tree. Her ears strained to hear. The wood was full of sounds. The brush crackled behind her. Leaves rustled. The wind rose in a low call that lifted the hackles of her neck. In spite of the cool, she was sweating.

She went on, trying to keep silent. Twice she saw lights moving in the trees ahead of her. An air car droned above her. The wind made the branches dance. She went around the edge of a meadow. On the far side, four little deer grazed, their tails busy. Through the trees she saw a building burning like a torch, crackling, sending up a thick roll of smoke. The bright yellow light spilled into the wood so that pebbles and ferns and bits of twig threw shadows ten feet long. She circled a great pit, still smoking, where an underground building had been blown up.

She heard more gunshots. The woods ended. She trotted across the south end of the campus. The place looked different in the dark. The air hummed with cars. Three or four searchlights swung back and forth over the uneven ground. She went into the shadow of the turret of a university building. Voices sounded, coming toward her. Several people passed by, arguing. She ran across the campus into the mouth of the gulley where the Committee office was.

The smoke around the building made her eyes itch. On the hillside to the north, a mob of people was gathered. She heard the rattle of a gun. The door to the building was open.

The waiting room was jammed with rubble. The back wall ended halfway up to the ceiling. The place had been bombed. She stopped in the smashed doorway. The floor of the hall was covered with broken glass. She went down through the darkness toward Jefferson’s office. An overturned desk blocked the way. She crossed the slippery spill of papers beyond it. Jefferson’s door was unlocked. She opened it slowly inward.

The room was dark. A little light came from the window. She touched the inside wall, hunting for a light switch, and the wall crumbled away under her fingers. She went toward the window and tripped on a piece of the shattered desk.

Something clicked behind her. A thread of bright light shot past her, shining on the edge of the ruined videone. Dick Bunker said, “Junior, I knew you’d come here, sooner or later.”

She turned one hand up against the light. He was sitting on the floor behind the door. She saw him only for an instant; he switched off the torch and the dark covered them.

“What happened?” she asked.

“The Martians are rescuing the Earth from the Styths. As you can see, the Committee is considered Styth. You aren’t alone, are you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you, Paula, you aren’t that stupid.”

She sank down on her hams, her feet under her, her arms around her knees. He would know where to find a car and how to smuggle Kasuk and Junna out of the dome. She rubbed her nose, itching from the smoke.

“How did the League find out we knew about the coup?” she asked.

“Jefferson told them.”

“Jesus. Why?”

“To bring them on before they were ready.” His voice speeded up into a snarl. “I was hoping they’d account for the Styths, but that fool Savenia can’t do anything well.”

She caught the glint of light on his hand torch. She was beginning to make out his shape in the dark. She groped over the floor around her, over shards of split plastic, the shell of the videone screen, and sat cautiously down on the litter.

“Where’s Jefferson now?”

“I don’t know. The Central Committee had a meeting. What we always do in times of crisis, talk. It lasted five minutes, we voted the strike notice in three and disbanded the Committee in two.”

“Strike,” she said. “You’ve called a general strike?”

“What else are we supposed to do? There are three thousand Martians in New York and New Haven alone. It’s too late to talk them out of it.”

She pursed her lips. Bunker moved, the trash grating under him. He said, “Mr. Black escaped.”

“Yes. Both of them.”

He grunted. “She can’t do anything right.”

“I have Tanuojin’s two sons with me. I have to get them out of the dome. Will you help me?”

“I hate the Styths.”

“Don’t be so emotional.”

“Find your own way home.”

“I’m not going. I’ve had enough of the master race.” Now she could see him passing the torch from hand to hand. His sweater was ripped at the elbow and his white shirt showed through.

“Then why help them at all?”

“One of them is honest.”

A dull explosion sounded outside the building and something fell off the wall. The floor heaved under her. She flung one hand out, startled. She had to get out of here.

“Do you think a strike will work?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing will ever be the same again, that’s sure. You have your revolution, junior.”

“Help me get Tanuojin’s sons off the Planet.”

“Why should I? They’re no better than the Martians. Why help a pack of Fascists?”

“The debt owed to common humanity.”

He squinted at her in the darkness. “What?”

“Insurance.”

“You are baroque.”

Another bomb rumbled in a long explosion, farther away than the first, and the window behind her rattled. She said, “Put Tanuojin in your debt. You may need that someday.”

“For what?”

“Don’t be obtuse. You know what he can do. The more he does, the more he’s capable of. Who knows what his limits are? I need an air car.”

“The Committee cars are all in the entry port. The League holds that, and the locks.”

“The Manhattan boat.”

“What?”

“Why not? The tourist boat to the underwater dome.” She shivered. The broken window breathed cold air down her back. “They love water.”

“Maybe. I can…I have a key to the lower lock.” He opened the door. “Come on, junior.”

She followed him out to the corridor. He walked with a limp. The hall reeked of char. “They’re down at the southern end of the dome, in the park, near the wall.” Carefully she picked a way over the rubble blocking the hall. “Can you whistle?”

“Yes.”

She taught him Ybix’s recognition code. “Remember, everything you tell them, Tanuojin will find out.” She stumbled on the pile of papers and nearly fell. Bunker let her go first down the hallway past the overturned desk. She put one hand on the wall for balance.

“Go right,” he said.

Innocent, she went in through a door, and he slammed it shut on her. She whirled. Her shin collided with a chunk of plastic, and she fell. The lock clicked in the door. She slammed against it.

“Dick!”

Silence. She shook the latch. The room was totally dark. She stepped on trash. Stooping, she ran her hands over the littered floor. Books, and a bookcase, and a jumble of wires half-melted into a clump. The meeting room. She brought an image of it into her mind. There were no windows and only the one door. In the table, somewhere, was a switch to unlock the door. On her hands and knees she crawled into the depths of the room and found the tabletop, lying on the floor, its broken legs under it.

Another bomb exploded, so close the building trembled. She felt carefully along the underside of the table’s edge. Maybe Kasuk would develop a vicious streak and take Bunker along with them to
Ybix
. Hunting for the switch, she occupied her mind with the various things the Styths would do to him for doing this to her. She found a switch and pressed it. A light flashed on in the ceiling and exploded. The wrong switch. While she was searching for the right one the door burst open. A blinding torchlight glared in her face.

“Stay where you are! We are government police. Put your hands up.”

She turned her back to the light. Her eyes hurt. Grim, she raised her hands, surrendering.

“Out.” The gun jabbed her in the back.

She climbed out of the air car. She had paid no attention to where they were taking her. They were somewhere in the north of the dome. She stepped down into a plaza in the middle of three tall buildings. Banks of light shone down from the roofs, flooding the place with a blue-white glare. The soldiers pushed her forward. Other people swarmed around her. She was so tired she staggered.

She was coming to a scaffold. A crowd gawked around it, shading their eyes from the blazing lights. She slowed, her eyes on the carcasses that hung upside down from the frame. There were four of them. One was Sril. She stood staring at him, ignoring the men around her and their orders. The gold wire had been ripped out of his nose. Her eyes swam and overflowed with tears.

They took her into the nearest building. She wiped her eyes but they filled again instantly. She wondered how long it would be before she was hung up beside him. The soldiers hustled her along a wide carpeted lobby and through a door.

“Yes,” Cam Savenia said. “That’s Mendoza.”

The Martian woman came down the long office toward them. Her fair hair was smooth as metal over her head, her mouth was painted on. “You said Bunker wasn’t there.”

“No, Dr. Savenia. We posted a guard.”

“Go look for him. I don’t want that particular specimen out loose.” Cam waved impatiently. She wore white gloves, buttoned at the wrist. “And find out how she got into this dome. It must have been the air bus. Check into it.”

Paula stood in the center of the room. At the far end was a desk, and heavy matching wooden chairs were ranged along the walls: an office. The doors behind the desk probably went to a private vertical car. The soldiers left, and Cam sauntered back toward Paula. Her trousers and tunic were white, like a uniform.

“There must be something we can say to each other,” she said.

Paula gave her a hard look. She was too tired to argue. Cam circled her. “Your big hero won’t rescue you. In two hours half the Martian Army will be here to blast
Ybix
and
Ebelos
into another Universe.” Cam struck her hard in the chest with the flat of her hand. “Do you understand? You are through.”

A stream of soldiers came into the room, their feet loud on the floor. Cam turned, crisp, to meet the little fat man in their midst. “General Hanse. You’re right on time. Have you heard from the Army?”

The fat man stared curiously at Paula. “Still two hours out, doctor, we can only go so fast.” Paula looked into his glittering little eyes. He was only a few inches taller than she was. He said, “Who’s that?”

“General Joseph Hanse,” Savenia said. “Meet Paula Mendoza. Late toady of the Styth Empire.”

Paula sat down in the big soft chair behind her. Her stomach was gripped with hunger. She felt wrung up to the breaking point, ready to scream. Their voices sawed back and forth over her head.

“What are you going to do with her?”

“Put her on trial,” Cam said. “Get a full public confession, and execute her.”

Paula lifted her head. The front of Cam’s white coat was buttoned in gold. “I’m hungry.”

“You’ll live,” Cam said.

The fat man waved, and a soldier hurried up with another chair. The general sat. He took a stick of candy from one pocket and a long brown cigar from another. He gave the candy to Paula and licked off the cigar.

“How well do you know the Matuko Akellar?”

“I worked for him for ten years.”

“General,” Cam said, “she’s my prisoner.”

“Worked for him. How?”

“She was his whore,” Cam said.

Paula stripped off the candy wrapper and bit into the flat chocolate. “Kind of a lawyer, I guess.”

“Kind of a traitor.” Cam planted her fists on her hips. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said to the little fat man.

Hanse stuck the tail of his cigar into his mouth. A soldier sprang forward to light it. The general and Savenia measured each other. If they had been Styths they would have been starting to smell. Savenia said evenly, “We have an agreement, remember?”

More people were crowding into the room. Cam sidled away from Hanse, her head rising. “Good. You got him.”

Three of her gray-jacketed police were leading Richard Bunker down the room. Paula crowed.