“What about Sybil Jefferson?”
Saba glanced at her. He turned to Tanuojin, his chin thrust out. “See if you can raise the ship.”
“Tell her,” Tanuojin said. “What are you trying to do, Saba—you know if she takes to it she can escape. Do you want her to fly out when we’re in this up to the hairline?”
“Go raise Ybix, stud—leave her to me.” Saba poked him in the chest.
“You know so much about women, big man, I know more about her than you ever will.” Tanuojin headed for the door. In passing he knocked a hanging lamp swinging.
Saba turned on her. “What did he mean by that?”
“How would I know? He’s your friend.”
He charged out toward the sitting room. She followed, shutting the door so they would not wake David if they fought. In the black and white room, the rest of the crew was scattered around. Tanuojin tramped through them to the bedroom on the end and disappeared. Saba kicked at the baggage piled in the middle of the floor.
“Stow this. Bakan. Call the ship.”
Bakan passed Paula into the bedroom. Sril said, “Akellar, we were hoping we could get a leave.” The other men watched him hopefully. There was a knock on the door.
“Room service.”
In the next room, David cried, tearful, “Mama?” She went to answer him. His face was bleary with sleep. He held out his hands to her.
“Mama, I want to go home.”
“I know, David. I have a surprise for you.”
“I’m hungry.” Holding her hand, he went into the front room.
Three shining white hot-carts stood just inside the door. Styths ringed them. A lid clanged to the floor. She smelled the meat and her mouth sprang with water. Saba was in the doorway paying the waiters. Tanuojin came out of the far room and cursed his way through the thick of the other men. Paula crowded in between Sril and Marus. Someone stepped on her foot. She got a spoon, stooped, and reached between legs for a drum of ice cream.
David stood by the couch, rubbing his eyes. Grouchy, he looked around him. “I want to go home.”
“I know.” She sat him down on the couch and fed him a spoonful of chocolate ice cream.
He mouthed it, his face still caught in its fret, and swallowed. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth, and she gave him another bite. At the expression on his face she burst out laughing.
“Here.” She put the spoon into his hand. “Don’t make yourself sick.”
He hacked at the ice cream with the spoon. She stood up. The Styths were scattered around the room eating. She found a plate on the bottom shelf of a cart and forked up the last slice of beef. Saba came over beside her, flipped back another lid, and reached into a fruit salad.
They stood side by side, eating. One bin was half-full of succotash. He ate the beans and she ate the corn. After a while, he said, “Sybil Jefferson is at the Interplanetary Hotel.”
“Akellar.” Sril came around the carts, facing him, and stood at respect. “We’d really like a leave.”
“Just a second.” Saba raised his head, looking around at his crew. “You stay out of trouble. You remember that gate we came through, on the trudgeway? They have those all over this place. They can tell where you are within a five-hundred-yard radius, anywhere.” He ate fruit. “Go on.”
“Thank you, Akellar.” The room emptied of them. The door shut.
Saba was chewing something. “Pine—” he frowned, trying to remember. “Pinefruit?”
“Pineapple.”
“Pineapple.” He speared cubes of the yellow fruit on his claws.
Bakan put his head out the bedroom door. “Akellar, Kobboz has to talk to you.”
Saba went into the bedroom. Paula stuffed a leaf of crisp lettuce into her mouth, ate a radish, and looked in the small bins for dressing. Tanuojin stood next to her.
“I wish he’d take the cork out of his ass.”
Paula swallowed a dripping artichoke heart, slippery as a raw egg. “That was a sharp remark you made, before.”
“Yes. But true.” He chucked her under the chin and went off to his room.
When she had stuffed herself full, Saba was in the shower. She took off David’s chocolate-covered clothes and sent him in with his father. There was a directory in the videone panel; she called the Interplanetary Hotel.
A young man with an intense bushy mustache answered Jefferson’s extension. “Look, it’s two o’clock.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not on your time yet. Is Roland there? I’m Paula Mendoza.”
“Oh. Hold on.”
She stood listening to the rattle of the shower. The suite was quiet. Saba’s clothes hung over the edge of the bed.
“Mendoza.”
She turned back to the screen. Jefferson was putting herself into a garden-print kimono. Her face was barded with fat. “Sybil,” Paula said. “What are you doing here? You look awful.”
“I’m here on Council business, which is probably why. How are you?” Jefferson did up the hooks over her shelf of breast.
“I get along. Who’s our judge in the court?”
“Wu-wei. Do you know him?”
Paula pursed her lips. “Yes. This will be interesting.” She looked around the room, wondering if the place were tapped.
“Are you arguing the Styths’ case?” Jefferson asked.
“No. Tanuojin is. Saba’s lyo.”
“And the adversary is Chi Parine.”
Paula shook her head. “Blank.”
“I guess he’s too recent for you. He’s a Martian. In the past few years he’s been quite a little firebrand. He’s a member of the Sunlight League.”
“My my. What’s their case?”
“I don’t know.” Jefferson took a lace-edged hanky from her pocket and dabbed at her bad eye. “There’s been more show than law in it, so far. Frankly, nobody expected you to answer the subpoena. They were taken rather aback when you did.”
“I think we’ll take them all the way back to the ape,” Paula said. She glanced behind her at the shower. David was laughing. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Fine, Mendoza.”
Paula turned off the videone. The hiss of the shower half-drowned David’s giggles. She had met Wu-wei once, on the Earth; they had talked about music and ritual circumcision. She took off her clothes and went into the shower with Saba and David.
“We’re late.”
“They won’t start without us.” Tanuojin turned over the single long sheet of the hourly. “Where did they get these pictures of us?”
Saba led them down the corridor. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to be late.”
Paula broke into a trot to keep up. The rest of the crew was strung out along the corridor behind them. Painted apple-green, the inside of the court building reminded her of a school where her mother had sent her before she grew big enough to run away. They went through a set of double doors into the courtroom.
Spectators filled the back two-thirds of the room, which was also apple-green. All the heads turned. The racket of conversation hushed. Paula moved in between Saba and Tanuojin, where she would not be noticed. A railing separated the gallery from the Bench. To the right front of the judge’s table was a small crowd of seated people: the adversary. They were all Martians.
The Bench was vacant. Wu-wei wasn’t a man to wait in public. Saba bent to swing open the gate in the railing, and they went in to the left side of the court.
Paula took her coat off. The courtroom was warm even for her. She glanced at the adversary side and met five sets of unfriendly eyes. She recognized Chi Parine from his picture in the hourlies. He was a small man, in early middle age, his hair thinning back from his forehead. His clothes were flamboyant, a green tunic, yellow shoes.
“Why are all these people staring at us?” Bakan asked, behind her.