Floating Worlds (64 page)

“The computer reconstructed the series awfully well.” The technician pushed the film train back into the bench.

“What’s a rho line?” Paula asked.

Tanuojin’s head turned. He spread the discarded piece of film out on the bench to one side of the screen. Without the lights behind it the film looked dull. He pointed to a band of yellow. “These spectra show which elements make up the Planet—each of the elements absorbed a characteristic wavelength of the light. These—” his claw tapped a broader gray space, “that’s a rho line. Radio interference in the transmission.” He went back to the corrected film. “Have any of the photographs come in?” he asked the technician.

“Not yet.”

“What are these?” Paula asked. A row of dots ran along the edge of the film under the spectrum.

He was bent over the bright rolling film; he did not take his eyes from it. “Pulses. Rate of emission.” He and the technician talked about ferric salts. She looked down at the strip of defective film beside her hand. Those stripes of color bounded her experience. Lalande’s light fell mostly in the infra red; people there would see a world invisible to her. Perhaps inaccessible to her. The Styth astronomer was writing down a formula on a pad of paper, explaining something to Tanuojin. Tanuojin nodded. His interest in this impressed her. He was curious about everything. Her gaze fell again to the ribbons of color on the bench by her hand. The rho lines made thick breaks in the loom of colors. She counted the pulses between them.

“It’s a message,” she said.

The two men swiveled their heads toward her. “What?”

“The spaces between these rho lines,” she said. “Four, nine, forty-one, thirty-six. The number of pulses between them.” She struggled to keep her voice even; she was filled with excitement. “They’re perfect squares, see?”

“Forty-one?” the technician said. He glanced at Tanuojin. “Is she crazy?”

He shook his head. “Sixteen plus twenty-five.” Pushing her away, he stooped over the film and counted dots.

The technician said, surly, “It’s a dysfunction in the transmitting laser.” He scowled down at Paula, a round-faced, smooth-skinned man, who never fought. “What does she know about spectroscopy?”

“Nothing,” Tanuojin said. “That way she doesn’t get confused by facts.” He rolled up the film and shoved it in under the edge of the bench. “You ought to write illusion serials,” he said to her. “You have a full-round imagination.” He went back to the rolling color band.

Paula retrieved the film and spread it out again. He did not want to believe it, but she did. She counted the pulses between the nine rho lines in the spectra: 4, 9, 41, 36, 13, 16, 25, 36. So there were two rho lines missing, mistakes in the mistake. She looked up through the ceiling at the stars, wondering which was Lalande.

“Akellar, I hate to keep mentioning this, but nobody else in the Chamber takes our work seriously—”

“You need money,” Tanuojin said. They crossed the complex of buildings toward the landing field. David went ahead of them and opened the hatch into
Ybicket
, standing on her tail.

“We’ve had to give up some very important work because we just haven’t got the equipment.”

“I’ll talk to the Prima.”

Paula stood beside the slender ship, put her hands on the lower edge of the hatch, and hoisted herself up to the opening. In the light gravity it was easy. David helped her across the narrow aisle, now vertical, between the hatch and the middle seat. Inside her helmet she could still hear the technician’s pitch. Tanuojin filled the hatchway, blocking out the faint sunlight.

“I’ll fly back,” he said to David. “You take the kick-seat.”

David wheeled around in the drive seat ahead of her. “But—”

“Do as you’re told.”

“But—Uncle—I can’t navigate in the Planet.”

“Then this is a good time for you to learn.” Tanuojin climbed into the seat with him, and David tumbled out, giving way.

“Paula—”

“Leave me out of it,” she said. She leaned forward and groped for the lifeline to attach it to her suit. David climbed down past her to the kick-seat.

When they got back to the House, Saba was sitting in her favorite chair in the front room of the Prima Suite, writing on a workboard. Paula took her coat off. “How was the Akopra?”

“Terrible.”

David came in, still warm under the friction of Tanuojin’s pedagogical sarcasms, and Tanuojin after him. Saba put the workboard down. “What did you find out?”

“The films are perfect.” Tanuojin unslung his coat. “All twenty-six of them came through, the probe worked perfectly.”

“I’ll see them when the laboratory sends them down. Have they gotten any photographs yet?”

Tanuojin shook his head. He picked up the workboard from the floor and wound back the surface to read what Saba had written. “I told them not to send the stuff down here piecemeal, to wait until everything is together. They need more money.”

“They always need more money.”

Paula stood watching them together. She saw what she should have noticed long before. Saba was gray-headed, but Tanuojin’s hair was still jet black. He looked no older than he had when she first met him, at the Nineveh, sixteen years before. He was not aging.

“Tell him about your little pink men,” Tanuojin said to her. He threw down the workboard. “Wait until you hear this,” he told Saba. “You’ll like this one.”

Melly turned and turned at the far end of the room, dancing. She held out her skirts in her hands, her head to one side. Paula stood in the doorway watching the girl play. Abruptly the Styth girl saw her and stopped.

“Go on,” Paula said. “Dance. I like it.”

Melly watched her enter the room. Paula’s favorite chair had a little step built into the base for her use. She settled herself in the chair, her back to the window. Melly said, “I am not a toy for your amusement, Mendoz’.”

“Then don’t act like a pompous little lady,” Paula said.

The girl’s face tightened up, much older when she scowled. Paula laughed. Melly was allowed to go unveiled in the suite, but not outside; Paula wondered if she had ever been outside. She wondered if Melly were pregnant yet.

“My father says I ought to be friendly with you,” Melly said. “But I don’t see why. You aren’t friendly to me.”

“I could be.”

“You stole my wedding to make into your—coronation.”

“I’m sorry. We were a little pressed.” She was reminding herself of Jefferson. Uneasily she moved around in the oversize chair.

Melly began to speak. Something she saw in the hall stopped her, and she went to the threshold and made her extravagant bow.

“Prima.”

Paula looked out into the hall. Saba was coming into the room. To Paula, he said, “I have a headache—I’m going to lie down on your bed. Make sure nobody bothers me.” Melly stood watching him expectantly. He touched her face. “Not now, baby.” He went down the hall toward Paula’s room.

Paula climbed down from her chair and ran after him. Going ahead of him into the room, she turned the heat lower and pulled the window shade closed. “What about Tanuojin?”

“He’s sick too. Go on, leave me alone.”

She went out to the corridor and shut the door. Melly was watching her from the doorway of Saba’s room. As Paula came into the hall the bride vanished into the room. Paula went back to the sitting room.

She wrote a letter to Newrose, asking for information and giving him suggestions. They wrote back and forth every three or four watches. The situation in the Middle Planets always seemed desperate. She was beginning to think that was a standing condition of life there.

Just before one bell, she went down to her room. Saba lay on her bed with his head turned away. She walked to the side of the bed. His face was smooth, without any sign of pain. She put her hand on his forehead. He was dead. He had been dead for hours.

She sat down beside him. The room was utterly still. She touched his mouth and the inside of his wrist. With her hand on him she sat still, in the quiet. Finally she went to the door to call David.

The room was so crowded Paula could not see the bed. She backed away toward the wall. Everybody was talking at once. Melly was crying, and Ketac took her away. David stood by the bed like a guard. Paula’s face felt tight and stretched. She was still surprised by the death. Tanuojin came into the room.

His hair was down over his shoulders and his back. Sleep rumpled his face. His eyes were intent on Saba. David saw him and grabbed his shirt in both hands.

“Bring him back. Bring him back.”

Paula went toward them, elbowing a way through the gaping slaves and onwatchers. His gaze never leaving Saba, Tanuojin thrust David hard away from him, but the young man clung to him, his hands fisted in Tanuojin’s shirt.

“Bring him back, you did it before—if you’re a god you can bring him back—”

Paula took him by the arm, turning him to face her. “David, stop.”

“Bring him back.” He twisted to shout at Tanuojin, his mouth open, and she slapped him with all her strength. He ran out of voice. He stared at her, round-eyed, his mouth open and empty. Ketac appeared beside her and took him out of the room. Tanuojin sat down on the edge of the bed. There was nothing he could do; she had known that as soon as she touched Saba. She drove the other people out, to leave him alone with the dead man.

Under the sweet odor of incense she could smell the rotting body. She had been sitting here a watch and would sit here two watches more, Melly beside her shedding tears like a sweat behind her veil, and Boltiko beside Melly, her mouth thin as a seam.

The incense had a woody smell, like cedar. The smoky air and the constant drumming of the rUlugongon had her half-drugged. Her aching eyes dressed each of Saba’s sons, standing around the dead man, in a shimmering cloak of light. They were in the entry to the rAkellaron House. Beyond Ketac and Dakkar the Gold Wall rose, spangled with the names of the rePriman. The people of Vribulo were filing through the right side of the double doorway, around the body on its bier, and out the left. From talk she overheard she knew many of them had come from Matuko, and some from other cities, as far away as Ponka on the far side of the Planet.

David stood near the foot of the bier, between two of his tall brothers. He looked like an old man. His cheeks glistened. He was crying again. She looked away from him, made uncomfortable by his grief, made lonely. She had never loved Saba that much. Now that he was dead her circumstances were utterly changed. Her only assets were her influence in the Middle Planets and her relationship with Tanuojin.

Tanuojin himself had been stripped by the death. The highest ranking officer in the fleet, he had no ship, since
Ybix
would go to Ketac. Officially he was ranked only eleventh or twelfth in the Chamber; Leno would be Prima now, who hated him. None of that would get in his way. He had enemies, but she was his only rival.

Sometime in the next watch David went out and did not come back. She was too numb to care where he went. Probably he would be better off away from the sight of his father. Melly collapsed with much exhibition, and was carried out. Paula’s eyes throbbed. She was determined to sit there until the end. The steady stream of people passed by. They moaned, or reached out to touch Saba, or put something down by the body. The bier was covered with bits of paper and grass braided into rings, mourning symbols.

She closed her eyes a moment. When she looked Tanuojin had come in. He stood by the foot of the bier. Above the neck of his shirt, a metal chain crossed his collarbone. It was Saba’s order medal; she wondered if anyone but her knew he wore it.

One bell rang. The crowd went away. The slaves shut the doors. Boltiko rose, groaning with effort, and stood over the bier. “My boy,” she said, in a low voice. She laid her palm against Saba’s cheek. “My poor boy.” Paula was beside her. The two women turned to each other, reaching out, and took each other in an embrace.

They went up to the Prima Suite. David was not there. Paula poured three fingers of Ponkan gin into a cup and drank it all. The others of the family were wandering around, even Saba’s daughters, with their children, their faces unveiled. Ketac sat in her chair, by the window.

“That’s my chair,” she said, and he moved.

The cold air coming through the window made her feel better, her head clear. Ketac slouched against the wall beside her, one foot propped on her chair.

“Who will be the Akellar now?” she said.

“Dakkar is the heir.”

“I think you’d make a better Akellar than Dakkar.”

Ketac straightened. He put his foot on the floor. “So do I.” He looked around the room. Two of his sisters came in, chattering about children.

“Can you take him?” Paula asked.

“I can try.”

“Where? Not in Matuko, that’s his ground. You’d better do it here.”

“I’m in sack shape,” he said. Two more people came into the room, and he lowered his voice. “I’ll go to
Ybix
. I can turn the pressure up to double and work up my strength.”

“I’ll call you when he comes here to claim his seat in the Chamber.”

“Good.”

She held her jaws together against a yawn. Junna stood just outside the door in the hall. She wondered again where David was. The bland innocence on Ketac’s face almost made her laugh. Saba had preferred him to Dakkar anyway, and obviously he had been thinking about it. He did not come virgin to this bridal. She closed her eyes.

David had disappeared into the city. She knew better than to look for him. Leno was taking over the Prima’s offices on the second floor, and his eight wives sent a slave to ask when Paula and Melly would move out of the Prima Suite. Melly was going back to Lopka, her father’s city. Paula was busy watching Dakkar and had no place to go anyway.

Tanuojin had gone back to Yekka, but every other Akellar was in Vribulo. Leno proclaimed the first session of his Primat for the eighteenth high watch after Saba was made ash. The wives’ slave brought Paula a pointed invitation to move out of the suite. That same watch, Dakkar arrived in Vribulo to claim his father’s place in the rAkellaron.