Paula sighed. Sybil seesawed the car back and forth, trying to fit it into a parking space large enough for a bus. At last they got out of the car. They crossed the dark parking lot to the door to the outside ramp. Paula walked along the rail. Gradually the city appeared, spread out below her. All the trees were springing with green leaves, burying the above-ground houses and offices. The lawn below her was spotted with dandelions.
Jefferson said, “Dick thinks you should resign the case.”
Paula swung around toward him. “Oh? Why?”
He gave her an oblique, feline look. Jefferson said, “Some of your techniques are rather original, Mendoza.”
“Pah.”
“The Council is not happy.”
“The Council loves it,” Paula said. On the curved wall of the building was the door to the Committee’s reserved port. She followed the other diplomats into the waiting room, and Jefferson turned the lights on.
“What you really mean is you think I might sell you out,” Paula said to Bunker.
He dropped into a molded plastic chair against the wall, sliding down, sitting on his spine as usual. “That’s exactly what I mean.” He wore a thin shirt, plain dark pants, cloth shoes, nondescript, like a disguise. She braced her shoulders against the clear wall between the waiting room and the dock.
“Take him,” she said. “Go on, you do it.”
Jefferson was watching them from the far side of the room. Bunker put his head back. “Your career with us hasn’t been a raging success, junior. The only other case you’ve even accepted was one where you took a personal interest. Right?”
So he had found out that she had stolen his files. Before she could answer, a light flashed on the wall over her head. They all went out onto the dock platform.
The air wall roared. The big car was sinking down into the cradle of the dock. Paula rubbed her sweating hands on her pants legs. When she touched the railing she got a shock. The Styths poured out of the bus.
The Akellar tramped up the steps. She had forgotten how big he was. Jefferson spoke to him, but he brushed her off. When Bunker approached him the Styth sidled toward him and would have knocked into him if Bunker had stayed where he was. The Akellar reeked; he stood over Paula.
“I told you to come alone.”
“What’s wrong? Did you have trouble?”
“Yes.” He snarled at the other men, crowded onto the platform, and they spilled into the waiting room.
“You’ve made your point,” Bunker said into her ear. He and Jefferson disappeared. The Styths towered around her. Ketac’s wild brush of hair bobbed among the trim heads of the men. Most of the others were strangers to her. There was a brief, fiery argument, which the Akellar resolved by knocking someone down.
Paula opened the door to the ramp. The Akellar shouted his crew into order. Tanuojin came out past her, nearly scalping himself on the top of the door, and made for the railing. The rest followed him. The Akellar took her arm and started off at top speed. She stopped, resisting him, and he turned.
“What’s the matter with you? Look, I’m warning you—”
“Don’t tow me around.”
He opened his hand. His men were packed against the rail. “Look!” They leaned out to stare at New York.
“What happened?” she asked. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
“I had a long talk with General Gordon.”
“Oh.” The spring breeze touched her face. Panicked, she remembered that Gordon knew about the baby. At her pace they went on down the ramp. The other Styths were strung out along the railing, pointing and laughing at what they saw.
“Did you go to surface-Luna?”
He shook his head. Bad-tempered, he shed a harsh rush of his odor. She went ahead of him into the dark parking lot. The hot bright scent had certain connotations for her. The parking lot stretched off into the dark, scattered with air cars, the pavement marked into stalls. The three Committee cars were lined up near the exit. Their drivers leaned against the fender of the big bus, passing a cigarette around.
“We have a house out in the New Haven dome,” she said. “It’s the only place where you could all stay together.” She slid into the back seat of the small car. The Akellar folded himself into the space beside her. If he knew about the baby he would have said something by now. He took her chin in his hand, and she kissed his cool mouth.
The driver said, drawling, “You two want to get going sometime today?”
They pulled apart. Paula touched her mouth. She looked out the window. The driver rolled the door shut and put the plastic divider across the seat between him and them.
“Gordon gave me a whole long sermon on how I ought to behave,” the Akellar said. He was cramped into the narrow seat, his arms and legs folded up to his body. “With a lecture on the side on the sanctity of women.”
The car rolled forward. She said, “He’s an ass.” He leaned forward to watch the driver shift and steer. The car rose off the ground. Below them, the green heads of the trees rolled in the wind. The lake glittered, down toward the south.
“You’re right,” he said. “This isn’t like Mars.”
Above the wood a flock of daws circled and fought. The driver circled over the lake, lined with naked and half-naked bathers. Out the back window she could see the two cars following them. The Styth shaded his eyes from the light.
They left the dome. The stretch of coast between New York and New Haven was heaped with ancient slag. The torrential summer rains had eroded the hills into canyons and cliffs white with the droppings of wild birds. The sun was setting behind them. Sharp against the smoky sky, the ridge ahead poked up its two round humps. She pointed it out to him.
“That’s called the Camel.”
“What’s a camel?”
“A big animal. There’s an old proverb that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” They passed to the south of the Camel and the slag pinnacle just beyond it came into view. “That’s the Needle.” Through the long eye in the spire the sky showed rosy from the setting sun.
“What’s Heaven?”
She sat back. “Forget it.” The sunset streaked the sky with red and orange. “It used to be that the cities were polluted and the air out here was clean. A long time ago.”
A blackbird flapped by them. He said, “How do the birds live here?”
“They adapted. Some of them. Some birds can only live in the domes, some of them go in and out. It’s called the gas-mask effect.” She nodded toward another shape in the gray slag. “That’s the Throne. If you can sit there for twelve hours, you’ll rule the Earth.”
“Oh?”
“The pollution would kill you in six.”
“You people have a strange sense of humor.”
They came to the dome. The Akellar stretched his neck to see all around them while the driver took them through the curved plastic wall. They flew over black earth spiked with green. Night was rolling over them. The domelight came on, blue as a flame in the clear air. A sheer red cliff ran like a barrier along the east. The hillside below them was covered with trees. A clearing opened and the car drifted down toward the two buildings below.
The Committee House was a square two-story wooden block, a replica of a pre-Atomic Federalist house, complete with a broken pediment over the front door and a carved eagle on the bannister. Before all the Styths were out of the cars, Ketac was climbing into the apple tree, and two other men were chasing the cook’s terrified white cat. Paula went into the front hall. The house smelled of cinnamon and ginger.
“This isn’t the Nineveh,” she said to the Akellar. “There’s a cook, but that’s all. You have to look after yourselves.”