“My father can tell you.” His tone warned her: something bad.
He took her up to the Prima Suite. In the white front room, half a dozen men were sitting, Leno, Mehma, and other rAkellaron. When she came in, they all stood up. It was like them; when she had been one-third of a Prima, they would not have done that.
“Where is Ketac?” she said to Junna.
“I don’t know. I’ll get him.” The tall young man left. Her favorite chair was still in its place and she took it, and the six aristocrats sat down. She did not want to talk to them. Turning in the big chair she stared out the window at Vribulo.
After a while Marus came in. He gave something to Leno, who left, and said, “Mendoz’, the Akellar wants to talk to you.”
She followed him across the hall. At the threshold of Saba’s old room, the back of her neck began to tingle. She rubbed it with her fingers, wondering what it meant.
The two windows on the far side of the room let in oblongs of light onto the ceiling. All along the blank walls were piled boxes of film and books and paper. Marus came in behind her. She touched the back of her neck again. Tanuojin came in from the next room, and the tingle grew stronger. He handed a paper to Marus.
“Give that to Mehma. Tell the others to come back in a watch.”
Paula looked around the room. It was still painted light yellow, Boltiko’s choice of color. There was no furniture except the table below the windows and a sling chair pushed away under it. Marus left, and she swung around to face Tanuojin.
“What did you do with my son’s body?”
“He was burned.” Tanuojin sauntered away from her toward the table. His back to her, he hitched his belt up with both hands. His shirt hung loose from his shoulders; he was much thinner. “I thought better of bringing you down for the ceremony. It got very emotional. People took him for a symbol. You don’t like ceremonies anyway.”
“No,” she said, angry. “Especially not when they’re arranged for your purposes. Damn you, that was my son you used.”
“He always wanted to be a hero.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned on it, sideways, facing her. “You are getting old, Paula. Old and hidebound.”
“Well,” she said, “we all get what we deserve.” She put her hand to the back of her neck.
“You still think you can avenge the anarchy.”
“I don’t have to,” she said. “You are my revenge.”
He shook his head at her. “I think too many people have died on you.”
She looked around the bleak room again. All the decoration was in his mind. There was nothing in here she wanted, and the rustle of her nerves bothered her. She went out to the corridor to find Ketac.
MARS
August 1870. Tanuojin’s Empirat
The lobby of the Nineveh was dimly lit. Shadows hid the edges of the room. Paula sidled away from Ketac. The Styths were pressed tightly together. In this strange place they were all shedding a faint cold fear. At the staircase, the five or six Sun-worlders stood neatly posed like mannequins. Alvers Newrose stepped forward to greet Ketac. Behind him Cam Savenia’s face was white as pipe-clay.
“We are honored to receive you,” Newrose said. His head was cocked back toward Ketac’s, a foot and a half above him. “Our first business must be to express our grief and the grief of all the Middle Planets at the death of Saba. He was as just an overlord as he was terrible an enemy. We don’t expect to see his like again.”
Paula chewed the inside of her cheek. Around the broad, dim lobby, the unlit display cases like mirrors reflected back the people massed around her. Ketac was making a stiff little speech in answer to Newrose’s stiff little speech. She circled between two men to the door.
Tanuojin was already in the corridor beyond, looking out at the gardens through the glass wall, his hands on the rail. She went past him, reading the numbers on the room doors.
“Why did you do this? Why here?” She found 110 and put her thumb on the white patch. The door slid back into the wall. The lights in the room beyond came up overbright. After so long with the Styths, the bright light dazzled her. She found the wall switch and turned them down. There was no aquarium.
“To remind myself how rich these people are.” Tanuojin came in behind her.
“Savenia doesn’t look any different,” she said.
“Leave her alone. I’m tired of your sniping at her.”
She went into the next room. The bed was draped in a black fur cover. The lime green carpet made her hungry. She stretched her arms out. After so long in Ybix she welcomed these expanses of space and color.
“The older I get,” he said, “the more I hate that ship.” He walked around the room. She twisted to reach the hooks on the back of her dress.
“Undo this for me, will you?” She turned her back to him. The dress opened down to her waist. She shed it and went into the washroom.
The walls were glossy white. The hot water of the shower needled her skin. A row of push buttons ran across the tiled wall above faucets. She pushed one and the middle nozzle sprayed white suds over her. She revolved in the stream, pressed other buttons: perfume, deodorant, body finisher. The back of her neck tingled.
“Come in—try this. You could have it installed in Ybix.”
There was a deep Puritanical mutter behind her in the doorway. The panic in her nerves subsided. He had gone away. She rinsed herself clean of the cosmetic mud and odors and dried herself in the warm air blower by the sink.
When she went back to the big green room, Tanuojin was lying on his stomach across the bed. “Watch.”
She sat down beside him. He held his hands cupped before him. After a moment, a big red poppy appeared on his fingertips, its brilliant petals cupped around the black center. She touched its papery soft edge.
“Are you making it up?”
“No. It’s in the garden.” When he talked, the flower shivered and faded. She bent down to sniff it, but there was no smell. Maybe poppies had no odor.
“I’d be more impressed if you were making it up.”
In the next room, Ketac’s voice sounded, loud. “Bring me something to eat. A real spread. For her, too. And some liquor. And—” He strode into the room, saw Tanuojin, and stopped, coming up to respect, his head back. Paula slid off the bed and went to her bags for her robe.
“Are you eating here?” she said over her shoulder.
Tanuojin nodded at Ketac. The poppy was gone. “Yes. Call Alvers Newrose here. And Dr. Savenia.”
Ketac relaxed, his feet apart. “When?” There was a blowgun in his belt.
“Whenever they’re ready.”
She pulled the white fur robe down over her head. “See if they have any decent whiskey.”
Ketac went to the door and talked through it to his aides in the sitting room. She tied a belt around her waist and groped around the sides of her bag for her comb.
“I want to go to the Earth,” she said.
Tanuojin lay back on his elbows. “There’s nothing left of it. It’s a desert. Red sand.”
“Maybe you could make up some trees for me.”
“I have too much to do.”
“Ketac can take me.” She sat down on the foot of the bed. Her hair crackled from being washed. Ketac went past her to the bathroom, giving no sign he heard. He would do whatever Tanuojin said. Through the half-open door she saw him turning on the shower.
“Do they still have the women?” He threw his clothes out onto the bedroom floor.
“Probably. It’s the same old Nineveh.” She glanced at Tanuojin behind her on the bed. “Down to and including Cam Savenia.”
“Paula—”
“Your deputy in the Middle Planets.”