“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.
“Enter the Grand Fink, attended by constabulary.”
His hands were tied, and a yard of rope connected his ankles together. He ignored her. The policeman beside him said, “We caught him at the excursion boat terminal—he’d sabotaged all the boats.”
Bunker said to Cam, “You told me if I delivered Mendoza you’d let me go.”
“A promise to an anarchist,” Cam said, smiling. Before the ragged man she stood spotlessly white and clean. “Especially to you.” She looked at the police. “Was he alone?”
“Yes.”
Paula licked chocolate off her fingers. Then Kasuk was gone. She thought of Sril again. If he was dead Bakan was surely dead. As she would soon be dead.
Bunker was looking at the floor. He shot a murderous sideways glance at Cam. His trouser legs were wet to the knees. Cam swaggered around him toward Paula.
“He’ll talk. He’ll tell us where they all are, from Jefferson on down. Mendoza is mine. We made an agreement. I handle the civilians and you handle the military.”
“Exactly,” Hanse said, genially. He sat down again, his knees spread to accommodate his great melon of stomach. “She’s necessary for military intelligence. She probably knows half their general staff.”
Savenia’s cheeks were patched with red. “She’s a criminal. She—”
“I’m not exactly letting her loose,” Hanse said.
“Neither am I.”
A man in a brown uniform brushed through the crowd, stopped before Hanse, and stuck out one arm in salute. “General, the Styth Manta is maneuvering very close to the dome.” Hanse went at top speed out the door.
Paula sank down into the yielding chair. Now that she saw a way out of it, she began to be frightened of dying. Cam bent over her.
“Don’t get your hopes up, baby. You’re done.”
Behind her, Bunker murmured, “The Bearded Lady of the Sunlight Freak Show.”
Cam turned around and slapped his face. Paula blinked. “I thought that went out with girdles.” Bunker had not moved; the only sign he had been hit was the faint mark on his dark cheek.
“Shut up,” Cam said, and went away down the room.
“Why did you listen to her?” Paula said to him. “She’ll kill you.”
General Hanse came back down the room, trailing a little plume of cigar smoke. “They’ve made another rendezvous. If Luna would cooperate we could gun down the bastard when he stops dead in the air like that.” He huffed at Cam, whose back was to him. He pointed at Paula with the cigar between his fingers. “You speak Styth?”
“Like a Styth,” she said. She could not resist robbing Cam. She stuck her chin out at Bunker. “So does he. If you need corroboration.”
Hanse swung around, interested. “Oh?”
Cam hurried down the room. “I’m serious, General. I need these two for propaganda purposes.”
“Do you need the Army?” Hanse said. He planted the cigar between his teeth. Cam’s face settled. He nodded to Paula. “Lock them both up.”
The Martians gave her pills, weighed her, bandaged her arms, bathed her like a baby, and locked her into a small room on the sixth floor of the same building. She slept. She dreamt of Sril and woke up crying. She paced around the room, thinking of David. He was safest in Matuko. She would never see him again.