He kicked her. In the shower, Ketac let out a yell. He had found the cosmetic bar. She rolled onto her feet and went to the bathroom door and stood watching him lather himself. He was too large for the shower; he had to stoop to put his shoulders under the spray. The white soap washed down his body.
“Newrose is coming.” Tanuojin went to the other door. She turned. Ketac got out of the shower, and the roar of the air blower started. Tanuojin was standing in the doorway to the next room, his head bent to clear the lintel. Paula looked quickly through her bag for her shoes. She heard Newrose’s knock and went barefoot behind Tanuojin into the sitting room.
Junna let Newrose into the room. The Martian’s egg-shaped head was smooth and pink, his face babyishly bland. He knelt down before Tanuojin and put his right cheek against the floor beside the Styth’s boot.
Paula murmured. She went back into the bedroom.
“Well?” Ketac said. He stood at the closet, half into his leggings.
“He did it.” She bounced down onto the bed. “I’m getting old. Betrayed like a gull by Alvers Newrose.”
He was bent over to lace his boot. “Do you mind if I take one of the whores?”
“Do what you want.”
He got out a red shirt, stitched with gold in his kite-shaped emblem. In the next room, there was another knock. Cam Savenia was making her entrance. Paula stayed to watch Ketac dress. She knew Cam would perform the kutal. Ketac sat on the bed next to her.
“How do I call the slaves?”
There was a console built into the night table at the head of the bed. She took the receiver off the cradle. Beside it was a row of buttons. One was marked PERSONAL SERVICES. She said, “Are you having a party?” When she pressed the button it flashed red.
“Marus and Tibur and I.”
A clerk answered into her ear. She said, “Hold on, please,” and put her hand over the receiver. “Not here,” she said to Ketac.
“Upstairs.” He reached for the receiver. She got up. For a moment, unused to the gravity, she nearly fell over. Carefully, she went into the next room.
They had swung the couch over perpendicular to the fireplace, and Tanuojin sat in the corner, his head propped up on his fist. Junna stood on the hearth, and Marus, his hands behind him, leaned against the drapery-covered windows behind him. Two junior officers were bringing a white service cart in the door. Paula veered around them to the fireplace.
Newrose stood before Tanuojin, talking about Mars. Cam Savenia waited behind him. Paula glanced at her and their eyes caught. Simultaneously they looked away. The two Styth lieutenants turned up the lid of the service cart to uncover bottles and glasses.
Newrose said, “Will you be staying on Mars the whole mission, Akellar?”
Tanuojin stretched out his legs, long as rope. “The Mendoz’ wants to go to the Earth.”
Savenia glanced at her. “The Earth isn’t much of a tourist hell these days.”
Paula took the empty glass from Ketac. On her way to the couch she gave it to the aide by the serving cart. “I like to go in circles.” She sat down on the soft-cushioned couch at the far end from Tanuojin.
The aide brought her glass. Junna came along the back of the couch to give it to her. Newrose backed away two steps from Tanuojin, bowed, and went behind Savenia to Paula’s end of the couch. His hands disappeared behind his back.
“We just heard today that you’ve lost your son as well. You have my deepest condolences.”
Tanuojin said, “Don’t do that.” He was talking to Savenia. She stopped in the act of fitting a cigarette into her holder. Her gaze swung toward Paula. She put the cigarette back in the case and the black holder back into her pocket. Tanuojin looked at Newrose.
“You saw the demograph?”
“Yes, Akellar.” Newrose wet his lips. “I hope we can change your mind…convince you to change your mind.”
Tanuojin drank water. “Go on. Give me your speech.”
Newrose gave Paula a quick beseeching look and faced him again. “The people of the Middle Planets are used to a high—perhaps an unnaturally high material standard. What you propose is nothing less than a conversion of the whole society to slave labor.” Newrose tilted forward slightly from the waist, intense. His voice was low. “Akellar, we’ve avoided serious trouble here because the Prima was wise enough to preserve the continuity of our traditions and institutions. If you attempt this, there will be resistance, perhaps violence. The work of the last several years will be lost.” His gaze went to Paula again, pleading.
Tanuojin stretched his arm along the back of the couch toward her. His eyes never left Newrose. His voice was deeper than usuaclass="underline" pontifical. “I don’t have a choice. Junna—”
His son circled around the couch, a spherical star map in his hands, and put it on the floor at Tanuojin’s feet. Tanuojin turned it around in its bracket until Lalande was on the top.
“This is Lalande. There are twenty-six Planets here, iron, calcium, plutonium, uranium, gold, argon, salts—everything we are starved for now.”
“Also life,” Paula said. “With a prior claim to its worlds.”
“You believe that because you want to.”
Newrose’s cheeks shone. He stooped beside the dark blue globe. Tanuojin gave his empty glass to Junna. “The Martians build the best hulls. We design the best drives. Sometime in the next year—Uranian year—we’ll break the light barrier. After that we can go to Lalande.”
Newrose straightened up, his eyes on the Styth. “That’s impossible. The speed of light is the absolute speed limit.”
“There are no absolutes,” Tanuojin said. “There are no limits.”
“But—”
“We have to do this. It’s the purpose of life, to grow. The only way is for everybody in the system to work together. If there’s resistance, I can deal with that.”
Newrose said, “Yes, sir.”
“You can go.”
“Yes, sir.” Newrose backed up three steps. His egg-face was white. He left the room. As he went out, two hotel waiters in white coats rolled another serving cart in the door past him, and the two lieutenants went to take it from them.
Tanuojin said to Savenia, “Have you worked it out?”
Savenia looked significantly at Paula. He said, “She’s not involved any more.” Junna brought him a dewy glass of water.
“I have everything,” Cam said. “Names and addresses, meeting places, even their hideouts and escape routes. I can jail fifty thousand dissidents in two days.”
“Good.”
The two lieutenants were setting out the food in the serving cart. Paula stretched her neck to see. A roast chicken lay in a dish in the middle of the top tray surrounded by vegetable flowers and cranberry sauce. Her tongue ran with water. Savenia said, “What about Newrose, Akellar?”
“I’ll handle him. He may still cooperate. You can go.”
Cam bent from the waist, a marionette bow, and backed away. Paula rubbed her hand over her eyes. She felt sorry for Newrose; she hated Cam. Lowering her hand, she looked around the room. The furniture was upholstered in gold brocade. The walls and floor were shades of brown. In the hearth, behind a pile of plastic logs, a cylinder of crinkled foil turned under an orange light to simulate fire.
Tanuojin said, “Ketac, where is the Earth?”
“About thirty-five light seconds behind Mars.”
The aides brought the cart of food around beside the couch. Junna served his father. Ketac came around the knot of people by Tanuojin and sank down on his heels beside Paula.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Just don’t wake me up when you come in.”
He kissed her hand and her cheek and stood up. The fancy red shirt hissed when he moved. “Akellar—”
Tanuojin nodded, put his head back, and said, “Marus, you can go.” The big man followed Ketac out. Paula was still barefoot, and her toes were cold. She went into the bedroom and found a pair of Ketac’s socks. When she came back into the sitting room, everybody was gone but Junna and Tanuojin.