Tanuojin stood up, and all the other men rose at once to their feet. Bokojin’s voice cut off. Tanuojin said, “Give her enough to live on. Eight hundred a turn. Until someone else can take over her work with the slave-worlds.”
Leno said, “Done.” Tanuojin sat down, and the rest went back to their seats. They talked of other business. Paula slid down the bench to the steps and climbed out of the pit.
Ybix’s crew was carousing along the arcade in front of the Barn. She went through them, ducking a swinging arm. Someone shouted her name.
“Mendoz’. Have a drink.” Ketac’s helmsman poked a jar into her face. While she was pretending to drink he whirled her around again, her skirts flying out. There was a burst of thunderous laughter all around her. She reached the ground, dizzy.
“Mendoz’! Kib, pass her over here.”
Kib snatched for her. She dodged around behind him to the door into the Matuko office.
A washtub of beer stood on the desk, and two men had their faces in it. Dakkar slumped in the chair before the window. She thought of Pedasen. Dakkar’s face was striped with blood. He looked half-drunk and very gloomy. Probably he had forgotten the slave he had killed. That warmed the revenge, the years she had waited to pay Dakkar back. She went through the file room, where three men were pouring beer and minji sauce over two girls from Colorado’s.
Even through the door she could hear the men shouting in the little back room where the bed was. She let herself in among them. Half a dozen of his crew surrounded Ketac in a ring. Small as she was, she stood overlooked behind them. At the end of their rhythmic bellow of a cheer they poured a bucket of beer over the new Akellar’s head.
“Paula.” Dripping, he pulled her in among them by the arm and put a mug into her hand. “Drink to me. What did you think? It was a great fight, wasn’t it.”
“I don’t know anything about fighting.” She was standing in a puddle of beer. She moved toward the window. His hand on her arm, Ketac followed her out of the circle of men. Beer dripped from his mustaches and his shirt.
“Did you see that cross-block? Papa would have liked that.”
“Yes, I saw.” She looked out the window. In the street an old man with a shawl over his head was straining to see through the next window into the party. Ketac lifted his head and shouted to his men to leave.
“I don’t want to interrupt your good time,” she said.
He took a towel from a bin in the wall and scrubbed vigorously at his wet hair and face. “My good time? I couldn’t have done it without your help. Why did you help me?”
“I like you,” she said.
“You went to some trouble to put me in your debt.”
“I need someone to stand up for me in the Chamber,” she said.
“You need a husband,” he said. He hung the towel over his shoulder.
“Not formally.”
“Do I get what husbands get?”
She had to smile at him. She said, “Go lock the door.”
When she got back to the Prima Suite, in the low watch, David was in her sitting room. She was glad to see him, but she was used to hiding her feelings from him. She took her coat off and hung it over the arm of her chair.
“Where have you been?”
“Thinking.” He came up the room toward her. His hair hung in a wild shag around his shoulders. “Getting drunk. Getting loaded. I—” He made a little gesture with one hand. His long eyes made him look belligerent. He said, “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry. What for?” He smelled awful. He had not been out of his clothes since the funeral.
“I’ve spent my whole life fighting over things I can’t change. Maybe I shouldn’t even have wanted them changed.” He made that same motion with his hand, palm up. Asking for something. “So I’m sorry.”
She grunted, her eyes following his gesture. To keep from touching him she slid her hands behind her back. “Did you come on this enlightenment in a junk-gun? I wish you’d told me where you were—you could have helped me.”
“Helped you. What—” He straightened up to respect, his arms at his sides, looking beyond her. Leno tramped into the room.
The new Prima strode up to her, his face knotted in a scowl. “You and Tanuojin set me up, didn’t you?” He glanced at David. “Stand off, little boy, the war is over.”
Paula said, “Did anything else happen in the session?”
“Nothing important to you. Yekka wants to see you.”
She went to her chair, before the window, watching her son. He was scraping the edge of his boot against the floor. His mustaches were beginning to droop over. She wondered what had happened to him to make him like her. Leno said sharply, “He wants to see you now.”
“I’m busy now,” she said. She leaned on the carved arm of the chair. “Jesus, Leno, aren’t you high-born for a messenger boy?”
He bristled up, his neck swelling. “To hell with you.” He marched out, and the door slammed behind him hard.
David was frowning at her. “Mother, he’s the Prima.”
“He isn’t my Prima. I’m my Prima. Come have dinner with me.”
He was already moving toward the door. “No. I have something else to do. Can I use your room to clean up?”
“You can live here. Nobody is using your room.” She smiled at him. “I’m glad you’re back, David.”
“So am I, Mother.”
While she was walking up the street toward Colorado’s, she heard her name called behind her. She stopped and looked back. Marus was jogging down the curved street after her. He veered around a pushcart and reached her, breathing hard.
“The Akellar wants you.”
“Later. I’m hungry.” She walked off up the street.
“He says it’s about David Mendoza.”
She went back to him. “What about David?”
“I don’t know. The Akellar said I should tell you that.”
She hurried back toward the end of the city. On either side of the street were buildings marked to be torn down; she heard children playing in them. They reached the Barn and she went into Tanuojin’s office.
David was not there. Tanuojin was sitting at the desk in the front office recording a book tape, a set of earphones over his head. He gestured to Marus to leave. She leaned on the desk, impatient. He turned a switch on the recorder and another on the left earcup.
“What is this about David?” she said.
“Nothing. That was the best way to get you here. I have to talk to you.”
Her shoulders sank an inch. For a moment, speechless, she could only stare at him. He took off the headset and put it on the desk. She went out of the office.
He came after her. “I have a tax I want you to arrange in the Middle Planets. Newrose will accept it if it comes from you.”
“Get away from me.” She was walking as fast as she could, even though there was no way to outrun him. She left the arcade and turned into the street past Colorado’s, and he steered her toward the drinking dock. She gave up trying to go anywhere else and went into the vast dark room.
It was all but empty. The blue lights were lit along the pipe-wall and a slave on a ladder was swabbing out a barrel with a mop. Two more slaves raked off the sand. She went into the brightest corner and sat down.
“No,” she said to Tanuojin. A slave hovered nearby; she sent him for her meal.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “Listen to me before you refuse.”
The slave brought her a split dish of beans and leaf, Colorado’s staple lunch. She broke the piece of bread in half. “No. I don’t like taxes, and I don’t work in the Middle Planets for your benefit.” She used a piece of bread to shovel up the beans.