Floating Worlds Read Free Page A

poured coffee into the remaining cup. “Not unless you give it up.”
    The broad breast of Jefferson’s red tunic was snowy with frosting. “I suppose you know about that. You were in prison once, weren’t you?”
    “On Mars,” Paula said. “For six months.”
    “What for?”
    “For trying to take something out of Barsoom illegally.” Barsoom was the capital of Mars.
    “A camera,” Jefferson said. “Did you forget about the export duty?”
    “No. I didn’t think the Martian government had any right to charge me for taking my own camera with me.” She drank her coffee. They were watching her as if she were performing. She supposed she was. Bunker pushed his cup away across the table. He had a reputation for double-dealing; “Mitchell Wylie,” Michalski had called him once, behind his back, the folk name for Machiavelli.
    Someone else said, “I thought you had connections on Mars, Mendoza?”
    She put the cup down on the table. They did know everything about her. “I worked for Cam Savenia, when she ran for election to the Martian Senate, but when I was arrested, she fired me.”
    “Cam Savenia.” Bunker’s head snapped up, wide-eyed. “Dr. Savenia? You worked in a Martian election?”
    “I wanted to see what it was like.”
    “That’s suspect.”
    “It wasn’t my Planet.”
    “Well, well, well.”
    “What was it like?” asked the woman who had mentioned her connections.
    “Hocus pocus,” Paula said, and the other people laughed. She looked at Bunker. “Why is that a well-well-well?”
    “Dr. Savenia and R.B. do not get along,” Jefferson said. “You’re twenty-nine, Mendoza? You’ve never had a full-time job before?”
    “Just with Dr. Savenia, that time.”
    “But not on the Earth? How do you live?”
    “I substitute with the university orchestra, I do a little pick-up work with the recording studios. That’s all the money I need.”
    “What do you play?”
    “Flute.”
    “Oh, really?” The old man at the end of the table tilted himself forward over his fisted hands. “Do you like Alfide? Why didn’t you make a career out of that?”
    “I’m not good enough. Alfide is my favorite composer. And Ibanov. And me.”
    “What do you know about the Styths?” Jefferson said.
    She drank the rest of her coffee. Obviously they had even discovered that. “They’re mutants. They live in artificial cities in the Gas Planets—Uranus and Saturn.”
    “We all know that much.” The old woman pulled a sugar-nut apart with her hands. The edge of the table indented her fat stomach. “Don’t you know anything else?”
    “Well,” she said, “I speak Styth.”
    They all moved slightly, inclining toward her, their eyes intent. Bunker said smoothly, “So we’re told. You learned it in prison?”
    “Yes. There were three Styths locked up in the men’s unit. The warden needed somebody to teach them the Common Speech.”
    Jefferson ate the sugar-nut. “But instead you learned Styth. Why?”
    “I couldn’t very well pass up the chance. Styth is the only other language still being spoken.” She stopped; that seemed enough, but they all stared at her as if they expected more. She said, “The warden was driving me crazy.”
    “You don’t really expect us to hire you, do you?” Jefferson said.
    “I’m not sure I want the job.”
    “Well,” Bunker said, “we are offering you a job. The Interplanetary Council wants us to negotiate a truce between the Middle Planets and the Styth Empire. Unfortunately, none of us speaks any Styth.”
    “Oh,” Paula said. “Well, get some tapes. It’s not hard. Lots of little rules and things. Genders.”
    Jefferson was eating the last of the sugar-nuts. Paula saw why she was so fat. “Take the job, Mendoza. We don’t have time to scour the system looking for an anarchist who speaks Styth.”
    “All right,” she said. Meanwhile she would find something else.
     
    Tony said, “You’re selling your soul.”
    “I don’t have a soul. And if I