“Actually burglary is only a hobby. How well do you know Cam Savenia?”
“I traveled with her for eight weeks. That was a long time ago.”
“She’s ambitious.”
Paula lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “She’s a Martian. And a woman.”
“I’ve never noticed women are more ambitious than men.” His spoon clicked on his bowl.
“I meant being a woman on Mars she has a lot to make up for,” Paula said.
The videone buzzed. Paula leaped to her feet, dropping the empty bowl. She reached the cabinet one step ahead of Bunker, got between him and the controls, and flipped the switch from radio to intercom. The camera swung on a flexible arm. She yanked it down to her level. The face on the screen belonged to the desk clerk.
“I have a message coming through for you from Crosby’s Planet.”
“Jefferson,” Bunker said.
A flicker rolled across the screen. Paula rapped her fingers on the cabinet. The message was in block letters; it appeared slowly on the yellow ground, at first too dim to read, and she reached for the adjustment knob and Bunker caught her hand. Slowly the print darkened.
Jefferson to Bunker. Council voted 270–265 to continue the case.
Zed.
Paula screeched. She backed away from the videone and spun in a circle. Bunker said, “Five votes. Nobody handles the Fascists like Roland.”
“Do you think she had to negotiate the vote?”
“Any time it’s that close, she doesn’t leave it to their goodwill.”
He switched the videone back to the music. Paula sat down on the floor again. “What did you call her? Roland.”
“Madame Roland,” he said. “Always meddling.” Rolling to his feet, he went into the kitchen. She heard the hiss of the washer.
Paula took a shower. While she was drying herself off, Bunker came into the bathroom doorway. “What’s this?” He had the propaganda leaflet in his hand.
“Overwood gave it to me. It’s supposed to be by the Sunlight League.” She shook the damp towel and hung it up on the back of the door. “Some of it’s true.” She glanced at herself in the mirror. Little drops of water glistened in her puffed coppery hair. She went out to the bedroom.
“The bed on the left is mine,” he called.
She pulled back the red cover on the right bed and climbed in. Limp, her eyes shut, she stretched out, and the fluid mud-filled mattress gave softly beneath her. Bunker came in, reading the pamphlet.
“Listen to this. The Styth is incapable of culture. Like all the dark races. The cities of Uranus were designed and built by technicians of the Earth of the Pre-Contention Period. Most of the ships in the Styth Fleet are Martian. At least 75 per cent.” The paper crackled in his hand. “Are broken sentences the product of a broken mind? Also remark what goes for culture to the Sunlight League.”
“What’s the Pre-Contention Period?” Paula asked.
“I guess the Three Planets Empire.”
The mud bed gave in waves beneath her whenever she moved. Bunker lay down on the other bed. She had to admire his ability but she refused to like him. She yawned, drowsy.
Kary unstopped the bottle of wine. The armchair was too small for him, and he hitched himself awkwardly up straight in it again, his legs braced on the floor. He drank once, looked around, and drank again. “Nice trap you have here.”
“Thank you. The Lenin Hotel thanks you. Do you mind speaking Styth? I need the practice.” Paula sat down sideways on a straight chair in the sunlight. “What does ‘Ybix’ mean?”
“Ybix.” He put the bottle down on the arm of the chair, keeping fast hold of it. “That’s a fish. In the lakes in some places in Uranus.” Without letting go of the bottle, he formed a square of his thumbs and forefingers. “Kind of that-shaped. A little fish, but it bites.” The bright sunlight behind her was making him squint. She got up and pulled her chair into the shade.
“What is ‘Kundra’?”
“That’s a spell-caster. A witch.”
“A man?” ‘A’ was a masculine ending.
Kary shook his head. “All witches are women.”
“How did you get here? After the fight in Vribulo.”
“Shipped out. Some friends of mine were running a load of crystal down to meet somebody in the Trojan Asteroids. A couple of us kept on going down toward the Sun. Just to see, you know. Got in trouble in Mars, because in fucking Mars being the wrong fucking color is a fucking crime—”
He stopped to drink, and she watched the level of the liquor fall in the bottle. He wiped his mouth on his hand.
“So when I got out of prison they said Where do you want to go, and I’d heard there weren’t any police in the Earth. I’ve been here ever since.”
“You haven’t had any trouble here?”
“Not me. You won’t catch me picking trouble with an anarchist. They always get you in the end.”
Bunker was coming in, with more wine. They worked with Kary the rest of the morning. He drank three bottles of red wine and ate some of Bunker’s stew, taught them a children’s song, and told them his life story. He had been on the Earth at least twenty-five years; he remembered the riots of the thirties, water rationing, and Noah Mataki, who had been on the Committee until 1829.
Kary told them that the Styths had been born of the wives of the first Uranian colonists—Moon-people, he called them, “because they left the Planet and went up to the moons to live, when the strange babies were born. But they sent the Styths into the crystal farms and made them slaves, and if a Styth fought back, the Moon-people caught him and chained him, hand to hand and foot to foot, and threw him into the farm to starve, in the dark and the cold. That’s why the Prima wears a cuff, to remind us where we came from.”
He drank another bottle of wine. In the middle of a long sad monologue on the beauties of Vribulo, he fell off the armchair. Bunker took his shoulders and Paula his feet, and they dragged him in and put him to sleep in her bed, which she had not made anyway.
“You’re as much of a slob as he is,” Bunker said.
“If it bothers you so much, make it yourself.”
They went up to the roof. Below, in the gray trees, several people were shooting their bows. The wind flapped her jacket. They sat on the low rail at the edge of the building and watched the sunset light flash on the dome wall. She taught him Styth grammar.
“It’s like a game. All those rules.”
Darkness settled over them, so cold the air hurt her lungs. The blue domelight flickered overhead. She thought of Tony, wondering what he was doing. If he had another friend yet.
“What do you make of the Sunlight League?”
She bundled her hands into her sleeves. The domelight ran in ripples across the darkness high overhead. “The Styths are black. You know how Martians are about skin color. They’re harmless.”
“Fascists are always harmful in mass. And they don’t come any other way.”
“I’m freezing. I’m going inside.”
He slid off the rail to his feet. They went down the stairs together.
“By Melleno. We will take Richard Bunker for a hostage. Paula Mendoza will meet at the Nineveh Club with the Matuko Akellar, by your time the ten mid-days of April 1853. You arrange safe-conducts for the Styth Fleet ship Ybix and fifteen men. Ended. Melleno.”
MARS
April 1853
Paula walked down an accordion tunnel from the rocket. Every few yards, there was a sign on the pleated wall reading “Terminal,” with an arrow pointing ahead, like encouragement, since there was nowhere else to go. When she walked out of the mouth of the ramp into the expanse of the waiting room, a tall blond woman stepped forward to meet her.