Ketac raced around the bend past her. He pulled Marus off Sril’s back. Paula started forward and shrank back again. Tanuojin was coming. He cut through the tangle of men like a knife, the other men giving way to him, all but Ketac. The young man wheeled to meet him. Tanuojin hit him shoulder first and knocked him down the corridor.
Ketac bounced off the wall. Dazed, he swung around, and Tanuojin went at him again. Paula pushed away from the wall. Abruptly Saba raced in between his son and his lyo.
Tanuojin backed off. Paula was behind him; she saw his raised hands, the fingers spread, and the hooks arched. He and Saba faced each other a moment. Saba lunged forward and Tanuojin flinched back away from him. She moved, giving them room. They paused again, face to face. Saba feinted, and Tanuojin yielded to him again, his arms up to protect himself.
“This is my ship,” Saba said.
“Please,” Tanuojin said, so low she could hardly hear him.
“This is my ship.”
Tanuojin’s back was still to her. The other men were watching, their faces rapt. Slowly Tanuojin dropped his hands, leaving himself open. He closed his yellow eyes. Saba lifted his head.
“Get out of here.” He gestured to his crew, and the men turned and flew away. Paula floated quiet in the tunnel, watching. Saba put his hand out, and Tanuojin took it and they embraced. Tanuojin put his head down against Saba’s shoulder. Paula went away up the tunnel.
She had taught Ketac the rules of Go, but she could not teach him the art. They played in the Tank, on a grid floating between them, with little magnets. He always tried to control the entire board, winding up with nothing.
“Tanuojin is an Akellar, isn’t he?” she said.
The young man’s head bobbed. “He was Melleno’s pitman. You met Melleno, didn’t you? In Saturn-Keda.”
“Yes. What’s a pitman?”
“He’s the man who does an Akellar’s work for him in the House when he’s not there. The rAkellaron House, in Vribulo. The pitman goes around and talks about the laws and makes deals. Like that. Tanuojin was that for Melleno. Then when Melleno built Yekka, he made Tanuojin its Akellar.”
She shook a handful of magnets, watching him play a white one onto the grid. Sril and Bakan were throwing darts at the end of the Tank. In eighteen watches they would reach Uranus. She played, and Ketac ignored her move and put a white magnet down in another corner. He refused to defend himself. But he never actually lost: he had developed a technique for avoiding that. Now he glanced at the other men and lowered his voice to keep them from hearing what he said.
“I could whip Tanuojin. If—”
“If you could only get your face off the floor.”
“He can’t fight. He’s a coward. Everybody knows that. Didn’t he come after you?”
Sril called, “You’re talking about the only known saint in the Styth Fleet, boy. Be reverent.” He sailed a dart through the air toward the target.
Paula set another pebble on the grid and gathered up six of Ketac’s stones. His neck swelled.
“Hey!”
“I keep telling you—”
“You can’t do that.” He sucked in his breath, glaring at the board. He struck it with his fist and knocked it flying, bringing the game to its usual end. A magnet tapped her in the mouth and rebounded.
“Hey, boy,” Sril said. He and Bakan glided down the room toward Ketac. “You’re out of hand again, boy, you know what the Man said about that.”
Ketac rolled over backward and made for the hatch. Sril and Bakan plunged through the litter of pebbles after him. She gave them room. Ketac sprayed a warning scent at them.
“Stay away from me—”
The two men were maneuvering him between them. Sril’s face was wide with his grin. Ketac charged for the hatch and they chased him out. In the corridor a high yelp of pain sounded. Paula went around the Tank gathering up the magnets. Saba had told her that they would break the air filters if they got into the screens. Sril came in again, beaming.
“Don’t believe Ketac. Whatever The Creep is or isn’t, he can fight like a red snake when he has to.” Sril went to the wall, where the darts stuck up in a clump like feathers. “Come here. I’ll teach you to hit.”
MATUKO
Saba’s Akellarat.
The White Season
She woke up surrounded by Styth children. She lifted her head, and they burst into giggles and disappeared out the door. A small lamp burned on the table beside the bed, giving off a gentle warmth. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and slid off. The drop to the floor jarred her. She looked around at a huge room. The bed was eight feet long and so high off the floor she doubted she could climb back up without help.
The room was dim and except for the little lamp’s heat it was cold. She took the lamp and went off to explore. A sliding door covered a rack in the wall full of her clothes, all neatly hung on arms and hooks attached to the wall at arm’s length above her head. Her shoes were on a shelf completely out of reach. Her flute was on the floor next to her valise and the big suitcase. She had slept a long time, while all this was going on around her. She could remember being in Ybix orbiting Uranus; she could remember being in Ybicsa and starting down to the Planet, but nothing more.
Outside this room was a short hall. She crossed it to another room, bare of furniture. When she went in, a brown furry animal raced to the window, jumped to the sill, and dove out. She put the lamp up on the sill of the window and tried to pull herself up to see out but even when she stood on tiptoe she could see no more than the wall of a building across the way. She went back to the room where she had wakened and dragged a chair across the hall to stand on.
Kneeling on the seat of the big chair, she looked out the window to a wide, open yard, ringed around with white one-story houses. A few feet away from her stood a strange kind of post, silvery gray, with several short stumps like branches coming out of the top. At its foot the small brown animal crouched. Its long tail twitched and one ear swiveled to listen to her. The window swung open wide at her touch. She leaned out, looking up, and saw Matuko.
The city closed over her head three or more miles away, veined with crooked streets. It was dark, like an Earthish middle twilight, almost colorless, brown and dark brown and gray. Above her, nearly hidden behind the roof, she could see part of the black ribbon of a lake. Streaks of white lay here and there. In the dull brown it looked like frost on a wintery field.
Children giggled again. She looked about in time to see half a dozen round heads sticking out past the corner of the house. They shrieked and hid. The brown animal raced away. It paused halfway along the wall of the house to turn a pop-eyed monstrous face to her and ran on.
Somewhere inside the house a door slammed. “Paula?”
“I’m in here.” She turned around. Saba came in from the hall.
“What are you doing, running around like this?” He picked her up and put her on her feet on the floor. “You should stay in bed until you get used to the gravity.” He patted her belly. She had to look up at him again. He fit this vast room, the huge furniture. She turned back to the window, uneasy.
“What’s that white stuff?”
He looked out where she was pointing. “That’s grass.”