“I’m aware of that. I’ll deal with it. You have a scanner, don’t you? You’d better look around your suite.”
“I will.”
In the morning, when she tried to call Cam, the computer told her Savenia had checked out. Paula sent down for breakfast. She carried the electronic scanner all over the suite and uncovered two small listening devices. She put them in her suitcase to take back to the technicians in New York. The page who brought her breakfast hovered around her, pouring her tea, and setting out butter and jelly and kefir.
“If you expect a tip, Charley, you’re hanging around the wrong woman.” Her eggs were sprinkled with paprika. She reached for the fork.
“Dr. Savenia gave me a fifty to make things easier for you.” The page set out a dish of sausage. He stepped back, his hands behind him, smiling. He wore a little round cap at an angle on his fair hair.
“Do you see much of Mr. Black?”
“Mr.—” His blank look went suddenly to a broad grin. “Mr. Black. Yes, ma’am. You mean the Styths. They broke up the club last night, up on the roof—did you hear about that?”
“Which Styths?”
His hand flew out toward her, palm up. “Ten dollars.”
Paula ate a link of sausage. Her stomach was still queasy from the space flight. “Charley, I’ll pass.”
The page stiffened. He tucked his arms behind him again. “Yes, ma’am.” He waited until she was finished and took the table away without a word.
She went up to look at the club on the roof of the hotel. The floor was covered with broken glass, and the piany had sat down, its hind legs broken. Three men in aprons were sweeping up. Paula walked through to the back, where a bald, tired Martian sat eating a roll and drinking coffee.
“Hello,” she said. “Did you see the performance?”
The Martian raised his head. “One of them. Who are you?”
“Paula Mendoza. I’m from the Committee.”
“Forget it.” He took a bite out of the roll. “I don’t want to get involved.”
“Do you work for the hotel?”
The bald man chewed, silent. She said, “Last night a Styth broke into my bedroom and the hotel police didn’t see fit to ask him not to do it again.”
His jaw moved steadily. She stood there while he ate the rest of the roll. He pushed the plate away.
“Sit down.”
She sat in the chair across the table from him. “You said you saw one fight. There was more than one?”
“Three.” He held up three fingers. “The first two were nothing. Some regular person bumped into one of those big black bastards, or said something, you know, just funny, and got decked, I didn’t even call Security for the first.” He shrugged. His eyes were puffy with fatigue. “The late-night fight was the all-black wrecking crew. They had some of the cats with them, you know, the working women, and there was some competition, and—”
“Who? Did you hear any names?”
“The names all sound the same. One of them, he’s got a brush cut—” He ran one hand back and forth over the crown of his head. “He’s the high muck-muck’s son, he says, you know, loud. He was the loser. One with a scar—” he gestured at his cheek, “he was the champ.” The Martian’s pale eyes blinked at her. “One of them broke into your room. You know, honey, you’re in trouble.”
She looked around at the rooftop. A sweeper tipped his dustpan over the trash barrel and broken glass rained down into it. “Do you think your troubles are over?”
“That’s right. Because I’m closing. If Security won’t protect me, I’m going on vacation.” A sweeper brought the coffee pot and filled his cup again. “Give this young lady some coffee.”
“No, thank you,” Paula said. “You said they had some of the whores with them?”
“The braver ones.”
“Who?”
“Try Lilly M’ka. She’ll take anything on.” He stirred his coffee, his head turning. What he saw of his club made his face sag. “I wouldn’t go near one. That’s a mean pack. I’d like to see one matched up against something like a little more, you know, natural armament. A wolfdog. Or a leopard.”
Jolted, she said nothing. She watched him drink his coffee down. When she left, she went down to the sportshop in the lobby and bought a hand torch with an intense beam.
In the afternoon, she met Lilly M’ka in the lounge on the second-floor mezzanine. They sat near the windows. A steady parade of models sauntered through the tables, showing off fur clothes. The whore was dark, almost as dark as Paula, and several years younger, in her early twenties. She said, “Funny you should ask. Dr. Camit Savenia asked me the same question.”
“I’m happy to hear it. How well do you know Cam?”
“Not very. I thought you were interested in the Styths.”
A tall model in mink pants strolled past their table, reversed, posed a moment, and went off. “Did you talk to her much?” Paula said.
“Just once, since the Styths came.”
On the far side of the room the Martian guests applauded in a patter of gloved hands. Paula took the straw out of her soda and licked cream off it. “How long was she here?”
“Two or three days. She’s easy to get to know. She likes an audience.”
“I’ll say.”
Lilly’s eyes were dramatically painted, like a butterfly’s wing. With her dark skin, she was probably not Martian-born. Paula said, “Who’s your client with the Styths?”
“The main one? Saba. The Akellar.”
“Oh, really.”
“He thinks he’s a rocket.”
“Is he any good?”
The whore made a little languid gesture. “Not as good as he thinks he is.”
“Who is?”
Lilly laughed. She put her forearms on the table and leaned forward, her voice softer. “Are you interested in the fact one of them is gone?”
“Gone.” Paula glanced at the clock. It was four-thirty. “What do you mean?”
“A real tall one with yellow eyes. I haven’t seen him since the first night they were here.”
“Yellow eyes.”
“That’s how I remembered. All the others have those big round black eyes.”
Paula stuck her straw back into the soda glass. “I’m interested.”
“I thought so.” Lilly gave her a broad wink and walked away.
Paula went to her room and put on her fancy black dress. She stood at the mirror combing out her kinky red-gold hair. Her chin was pointed, and her eyes tipped up at the outer corners. Cat-faced, Tony had called her. That reminded her of the clubman’s euphemism for the whores: working women. She got the package out of her satchel and unsnapped the lid.
The short jeweled knife inside had come from Persepolis. There was a listening device in the handle, which would tune itself to the first voice it heard after the knife was drawn out of its brocaded sheath. She put it back in its satin bed and took it down the hall to the Styths’ suite.
The man who answered her knock was short, his face broad across the cheekbones. A round of thin gold wire pierced his left nostril. He backed off a step and called, in his own language, “It’s not one of the whores, so it must be the anarchist.” He looked down at the box in her hand. “What is that?” To her he used the Common Speech.
“It’s a present for the Akellar.”
She went into a long room full of Styths. The lights were dimmed and the window drapery pulled. Half a dozen men sprawled in the chairs or stood along the walls, all watching her. They were dressed in identical long gray shirts, leggings, and soft boots. The bar was broken into two pieces, and the rug was stained. She blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the half-light. A young man came toward her, his homely face misshapen with bruises. The inch-long spikes of his mustaches ran straight across his upper lip, and his hair grew in a fur over his skull. He did not look like the Akellar, especially battered.