“We have the gun she brought, the dart she shot at him—several darts, in fact—and the wound.” The wound was gone. They would not need it. Saba was watching him, his chin on his fist. Tanuojin came back toward them.
“He didn’t know,” he said, in Styth.
“I can see that.” Saba tapped her arm. “Tell him about the Sunlight League.”
The League’s name was almost the same in the two languages; Newrose recognized it and said, “Was she from the League?”
Paula nodded. He made a little gesture with one hand, palm up. “I didn’t know. Her credentials were quite in order. She had the highest recommendation—”
“Fortunately as usual the League misjudged the Prima.”
Newrose turned toward the big Styth in his chair behind her. Low, he said, “You have my wholehearted congratulations on your escape. I trust the wound isn’t serious?” His voice sounded stronger. To Paula, he said, “If you’ll allow me, I’d like to go collect my—”
“Oh, no,” Paula said. “Not yet. You’ll talk to your party, and who knows how many of them are Leaguers?”
“I can assure you—”
“You can’t assure us of anything, Newrose. You didn’t know about her, you say. Even if that’s true, which we doubt, you’re nothing better than a Trojan Horse for the League.”
Tanuojin said, “Shall we introduce him to Dr. Savenia?” He crooked his finger at Junna. “Send Marus for my poppet.”
Newrose frowned at Paula. “Now, Miss Mendoza—”
She cut him off with an abrupt shake of her head and turned to Saba. “Do you want to talk to him yourself?”
“Yes. You translate it.”
“I—”
“Just do as I say.” He rose, looming over Newrose, and gave the Martian his finest autocratic look. “We aren’t afraid of the Sunlight League. Even if she had killed me, I’m unimportant, only Styth is important, and Styth is immortal.”
Newrose was collecting himself; he squared his shoulders. The hiss of the surf ran under Saba’s voice and Paula’s voice translating. The Prima said, “We have our honor to consider. If we deal with you for the sake of expediency and lose our honor, we fail even if we succeed.”
Newrose inclined his head. “I’m sure we can make some agreement that serves everybody’s interests.”
Paula glanced at David, who stood beside the wall, watching his father. His smile showed in the faint light from the illusion wall. She straightened her gaze. “I don’t think they have much respect for your honor.”
Marus appeared in the doorway. “Akellar, I have Dr. Savenia.”
Tanuojin thumbed his mustaches back. “Send her in. Paula, tell this nigger who I am.”
“Newrose,” she said, “this is the Yekka Akellar, Tanuojin, the Prima’s lyo, the cadet general of the fleet.” She nodded toward the door. “You know Dr. Savenia.”
“Of course,” Newrose said.
Cam walked down the room toward them. She wore a gray tunic over a long black skirt: probably Tanuojin’s choice; he took a gruesome interest in every detail of her life. Her face was perfectly drawn. Before Saba she dropped to one knee, bowing her head.
“Prima.”
Saba said nothing. He despised her. She rose and crossed to Tanuojin and bowed from the waist. Newrose watched her, his damp lips parted.
“Hello, Cam,” Paula said.
“Paula,” Cam said, coolly. “You look very well.” She turned to Newrose, whose gaze had been fastened on her since she had come in. “Hello, Alvers. I understand you’re here to negotiate a surrender.”
Newrose coughed. “I’m not…I don’t think we’ve settled what we’re negotiating.”
“Of course it’s a surrender,” Cam said, in an irritated tone. “What else can you do? The Styths are our genetic superiors—our natural masters. It’s the will of history. What else can we do?”
Paula leaned on the back of her chair. Newrose scratched his nose. “You seem to have changed your opinions, doctor.”
“I recognize my mistakes.”
Tanuojin said, in the Common Speech, “Dr. Savenia, you can take Mr. Newrose around while he’s in Luna.”
“Thank you, Akellar. I’d like that.”
Saba said, “Paula, tell him we’ll send for him again later. And get her out of here.” He leaned past her toward Tanuojin. “Can you reach him? What is he thinking?”
“No—just at the beginning, when he saw the dead one, he shed it like a scent.”
Ketac and Marus were ushering out the two Martians. Paula went around her chair and sat down. She put her elbows on the chair’s arms.
She went up to the surface of the Planet. In an ancient room there, outside the artificial gravity, she sat looking up at the Earth. Blue and brown, it shed its soft reflected light toward her. A blinking red beacon passed by in the high distance. She guessed it was a slavepen. The room was built in a crater. Around it the toothed walls rose, jagged and airless. She sat watching the Earth, until Newrose came to meet her.
Cam Savenia was with him. While Newrose was settling himself across the table from her, Paula said, “You can go, Cam.”
“The Akellar—”
“This isn’t the Akellar’s meeting.”
“As you wish,” Cam said, sulky. Her feet rang down the treads of the ladder into the dark below. Paula sat down.
“She tells him everything. Even what she forgets.”
“You seem fond of riddles.” Newrose opened his papercase and laid out a pad of notepaper, styli, his pencase on the table before him. She picked up the pencase and snapped it open.
Inside the case a clear button with a tiny coil of wire in its heart was fastened to the lining beside one hinge. She broke it out of the case with her fingernails and slid the case back over the table to him. Newrose looked troubled. His small hands pattered on the tabletop.
“What’s happened to Dr. Savenia?” he said.
“Nothing she didn’t do to herself.” She laid her forearms on the table. “You know, Newrose, you need a settlement of the war now. If the war continues, the League will destroy everybody,”
“The League,” he said. “What about the Styths? They seem to do an ace job of destruction.”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?” She reached for his styli. “Actually, you’ve caught them at a good moment. They might be willing to end the war now, before they take so many prisoners they glut the slave trade.”
“Slaves,” he said, rigid.
She made dots on the table with a stylus and connected them with straight and curved lines. “Surely you aren’t going to protest on principle, Newrose? After all, there were work camps on the Earth all through the war.” The stylus scratched on the tabletop.
“I can’t believe you support the Styths,” he said. “After what they did to your Planet.”
“Therefore I must support you?”
“I’m your own kind, Mendoza,” he said, earnestly.
“My kind.” She watched her hand making scribbles.
“Whose side are you on?”
She raised her head. “Did you know Richard Bunker?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And Sybil Jefferson?”
“Naturally.”
“I’m on their side.”
“They’re dead.”
“That’s why I am on their side.”
“Another riddle.”
“I’m their witness,” she said. “I’m the last witness to what happened down there, what you want to forget, and the Styths want to forget.” Her hands were shaking. She spread them out flat on the table, over her scribbles. A bump pressed against the palm of her hand. She sat back, her anger broken, and picked Newrose’s spy device up in her fingers.
“But you’re working for them,” Newrose said.
“Oh,” she said. “I have learned to forgive my enemies.” She dropped the plastic button onto the table again. Where there was one cheat there would be two. “I am a practical woman, Newrose.”