Read Online Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland - Free Book Online Page B

beyond the cab window a private air car flew. Inside it, the old woman driving hunched forward over the steering grips, her teeth set. Below them the land was cut into perfect squares of green, each framing a tilted roof, set with the blue jewel shapes of swimming pools.
    “He’s at the Nineveh. What’s he like?”
    Cam shook her head. “Impossible.” She took a cigarette from her purse and set it into a long black holder.
    “Does he speak the Common Speech?”
    “Yes. He’s not stupid. I didn’t realize they’re so big.”
    They were coming to the lock. The driver swore softly. The traffic was packed around the entrance to the lock, and far ahead a red light flashed. The driver turned his head.
    “Be a little while, ladies.”
    Cam leaned forward. “Go around by the auxiliary.”
    “I’m not supposed—”
    The Martian woman flashed a badge under his nose. “My authority.”
    “Yes, Senator.” The driver pulled the car straight up, out of the traffic jam, and swung it off to the side, and Cam sat back, smiling. She puffed on her cigarette.
    “How old is he?” Paula said.
    “I can’t tell. Older than I am.” Cam was thirty-two. “God, they are black, too.”
    Paula stiffened. She looked out the window again. They passed through the auxiliary lock in the wall of the dome and went into the dark Martian day. Barsoom was at the edge of a line of craters. They flew above the hollow hills. For miles around them the surface of the Planet was heaped up with red dust, the wastes of the water bears, the native organisms that mined out the minerals and water. There was no wind. They flew above a crater. The dust lay in geometric cones among the steep red walls. She wondered if Cam were here to pitch to her or just to spy. The smoke from the Senator’s cigarette hurt her nose. Now they were flying over the virgin Planet. They crossed a rill like a seam in the red crust. Paula knew Cam was watching her. Ahead, the sunlight glanced off the shining dome of the Nineveh.
    “What do you think of the Committee?” Cam asked.
    “It’s a job.”
    “Sybil Jefferson has the morals of an ax-murderess. As for that rat Bunker—”
    “The guts of a burglar,” Paula murmured, looking out the window.
    “Right. And to prove it they send a green girl in to take their beating for them.”
    “Thanks for the confidence.”
    “Damn it, you don’t know what you’re into.”
    Paula stared out the window at the dark world. “I learn.”
    “These people are animals.”
    “You’re so civilized, Cam.”
    “You’re damned right.” Cam sucked intently on the last of the cigarette. Her fingernails were shaped to points. “I believe in law and order and authority, right and wrong, little old-fashioned things like honor and responsibility and morality. Why did you bring him to Mars? He’s interested as hell in the dome, I’ll tell you that.” She pushed the butt out of her cigarette holder. “I guess to a primitive, Mars must be mind-swamping.”
    Paula cleared her throat. They passed through the wall of the dome, from the subdued natural light to the brilliant green of the Nineveh Club. They flew over an arm of a golf course, a patch of dark trees, another long strip of lawn. She sat up straight, looking forward over the driver’s shoulder. Surrounded by lakes, the hotel stood in a long white wedge among the trees in the distance.
    “There’s the river,” Cam was saying. She pointed past Paula’s shoulder. “Every drop of water manufactured in Barsoom.”
    The car circled once and lowered toward the front of the hotel. They swooped over a swimming lake, formed into round coves and little inlets framed in trees.
    “How long has he been here?” Paula said. Probably Cam had pitched to him, too.
    “The Akellar? Since yesterday. His ship is parked in orbit. If he’s taking a look at Mars, I can tell you we’re taking a good look at Ybix . It’s an old Martian Manta destroyer, which proves something, I guess.”