“White grass? What’s that?” She pointed to the post.
“That’s a bilyobio tree.”
“It’s not really a tree.”
“No. It’s not organic. Nobody knows what they are, they grow all over Styth, everywhere there are Styths. Except the moons. They’re good luck. They say if you live near a bilyobio tree, you’ll live to die of old age.”
“What’s little and brown and has a long tail and pop-eyes?”
“Why don’t you stop asking questions and come over and meet my wives? As long as you’re up. I—” He raised his head. Someone was walking down the hall. “Hup!”
“It’s me, Pop.”
A tall young man appeared in the doorway. Older than Ketac, he was in Saba’s image, slenderly built. Red jewels glittered in the furls of his ears. He said, “I have to talk to you. I didn’t want to do it in front of Mother. There’s been a lot of trouble about this treaty.”
They looked at her, and she turned away from them and went to the window and pretended to be watching out. She guessed this was his prima son, whose name she had forgotten. The young man said, “There’s been a lot of dirty talk, and some fighting and a bomb went off in the Lake market—”
“How did the news get around?” Saba asked.
“I don’t know. We had to close the Peak Farm, there was a threat to bomb it, too.”
Saba let out a string of swearwords. “Who’s behind it?”
“I can’t find out. Nobody, I think—it’s just streetwork, you know—spontaneous.”
“Dakkar,” his father said, “nothing like this is ever spontaneous. Somebody is back of it.”
An edge crept into Dakkar’s voice. “I think I’m looking at him. Sir.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Everybody is saying you sold us out. This treaty—”
“Sir.”
“I’m serious about—”
“Sir.”
Paula frowned at the wall. If the treaty failed, she was finished.
“Yes, sir,” Dakkar said, behind her.
“That’s right,” his father said. “And you don’t close my crystal farm.”
Raising her eyes, she looked around the barren room. The gravity dragged at her, drawing the burden of her pregnancy down, so that she had to stand with her hips thrown forward to support it. She put her hands on the small of her back.
“Yes, sir,” Dakkar was saying stiffly.
“Go find out who’s trying to knock us. You can leave.”
His son left. Saba said, “Paula, let’s go.”
She went after him up the hall. They passed through a formal room, massed with huge furniture. A swing couch hung from the ceiling by chains. She felt too small to be noticed, a mouse in a rat world.
They crossed the yard toward the next house, cat-corner on the wall on the compound. On the eave of its roof, the brown animal sat washing its face with its forepaws.
“What’s that?”
“A kusin.” He still sounded angry. “They’re harmless, except to the dog-mice and snakes.”
“It was in my house.”
“It won’t come back, now that somebody is living there. They don’t like people.” His hand dropped to her shoulder and aimed her at the door into the house ahead of them. “Go in there. I have something to do. Boltiko knows who you are. I’ll see you later.” He walked off across the yard toward the biggest building in the compound, against the wall opposite her little house. She stopped and looked back the way she had come, to see what the house looked like. A white box. She thought of going back there. But she had to face his wives sometime. She went on toward Boltiko’s house.
His prima wife was years older than he was. Her body was lost in rolls of fat. Necklace creases indented the column of her throat. Paula sat uncomfortably in a chair in Boltiko’s kitchen while children dashed in and out screeching and the wife cut bread and cooked meal.
“Were you married in the Earth?” Boltiko asked.
“We aren’t married.”
“Oh.” Boltiko turned and swatted a passing child on the backside. “Didn’t I tell you not to run in the house?” She smacked him again. The little boy scurried out the door, his spread hands protecting his rump. Paula knew he was a boy because his head was shaven; the girls all wore their hair in braids. Boltiko looked Paula over covertly while she stirred the meal.
“Will you be married here?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
Another woman came in, this one very young, tall, and extravagantly beautiful, like an advertisement. The sleeves of her dress were of silver lace.
“Illy,” Boltiko said, “this is Paula.”
“Hello,” Paula said.
Illy stared at her, unfriendly. “Hello,” she said, after a moment. Her voice had the same musical quality as Tanuojin’s. She sank into a chair down the table from Paula.
“Where is he?” she asked Boltiko.
“He went somewhere with Dakkar, into the city.”
“What did he bring you?”
“A timepiece, the same as usual. Quaint.”
“He gave me skin-color. Gold, can you imagine?” Illy turned toward Paula. Her hair was gathered on the crown of her head in an aureole of perfect curls. She was the most beautiful woman Paula had ever seen, Styth or other. “Where did he meet you?”
“On Mars,” Paula said.
“Mars,” Illy said, astonished, and Boltiko said, “Mars,” as disapproving as her reaction to the news that Paula and Saba were not married. Illy said, “I thought you were Earthish.”
“I am. But we met on Mars.” She looked from one black face to the other. “At a very fancy sex park.”
Illy’s lips parted. Boltiko said, “I don’t know what manners are in the Earth, but in my house we don’t use words like that around the children.” She poured something liquid into the meal and set the covered pan on the back of the counter.
“I don’t understand,” Illy said. “What were you doing there? Were you alone?”
“Yes. I was talking to him. Politics.”
“Oh.” Boltiko wiped the already spotless table. “Was that how you got the baby? Talking?”
“That was where. How was the usual way.”
To her surprise, Boltiko laughed. The back door burst open. Saba came in, with his son Dakkar, and behind them Ketac. Paula glanced startled from Ketac to Boltiko; under all that fat, her face was shaped like his. Illy raised one hand delicately over her mouth, veiling herself before the young men. To Boltiko, Saba said, “I’ll eat in the Manhus. Hurry up, I’m starving.” He went out again, trailing his sons, without looking at the other women. Illy lowered her hand.
“I’ll show you the timepiece he gave me,” Boltiko said.
They went down a hall, past rooms full of children and children’s things, to a large dim room. The furniture was packed into it like hoardings under a ceiling painted with an abstract design. The chairs and hanging lamps were shielded in clear plastic bags. The three women made a winding course through the clutter to a corner cabinet. On the shelves were several little clocks. The sandglass Saba had bought on the Earth stood among them.
“Oh,” Illy said. “Isn’t that clever.”
“This cabinet is so pretty,” Boltiko said to Paula. “I had nothing to put here, so I asked Saba to bring me something when he goes on his trips.”
Paula reached for a watch with a clamshell case. She found the spring catch and opened it. Boltiko said, blankly, “Why—it has an inside.”
Paula showed her the open watch. In one half was a picture of a white baby, with wisps of fair hair and a stupid babyish smile, and in the other half a fancy scrolled initial T. Boltiko took it.
“Illy, look.”
The other woman glanced at the watch. “Ugh. What an ugly baby.”
Paula backed away from them. She realized Boltiko had no notion what Saba did on his trips. She went around the room looking at the heavy furniture, protected in its wrap of plastic.