“Seven hundred dollars,” Overwood said.
Bunker pulled a chair around to the end of the table between them. He took a wallet out of his hip pocket and sat down. A waiter brought them a pitcher of beer and glasses. Bunker counted out money into a stack before him: fourteen fifty-dollar bills. The fifteenth he gave to her. “Sign that.”
It was an expense chit. She signed it.
“How long will this take?” Bunker said.
“Maybe four months.” Overwood put the money in one pocket and the message in another. “Maybe less. That’s a long way away, that.” The waiter poured the bright beer. “What’s the Committee’s interest in Styth?”
Paula reached for a glass. “Who supplies you with crystal?”
Overwood smiled at her. “Now, now.”
Bunker pushed the money over to him. “We want information. The Committee’s favorite food. We need good sources of information, first-generation, on the politics of the rAkellaron.”
“That’s funny.” Overwood laughed; his bushy eyebrows went up and down. The laughter rumbled on steadily, like a motor. “That’s very funny. I’ve been told they’ll buy information about the Earth.”
Paula put her elbows on the table. “I’ll send you a price list.”
“What have you told them?” Bunker asked.
“All they’re interested in is military stuff.”
“They don’t know much about the Earth,” Paula said.
“Our interests are a little broader,” Bunker said.
“I can’t help you.” Overwood nodded at her. “I don’t know anything about Styths. Ask her, she stepped on me twice today, trying to fake it. Venusian glass, maybe, or chess, or smuggling, but Styths—” He spread his hands.
“Do you buy the crystal directly from them?” Bunker said.
Overwood shrugged elaborately, smiling, his eyebrows arched. “I can’t talk about that.”
“We’ll pay.”
“Sorry.”
Paula watched Bunker’s face. There were deep creases marking the corners of his mouth, but otherwise he looked bored. She lifted her glass. The tiltballs bells rang like a carousel. Lights flashed.
“If I hear anything,” Overwood said, “I’ll let you know.”
“Call me.” Paula wrote down her name and extension number for him. With Bunker she left the bar.
They went to the end of the street, where the ground pitched off sheer to the desert below, and stood in the shadows of the trees. From this height she could see the even furrows of the cropfields on the desert below. Two circles of lights burned on the dark flat land. Bunker was looking back down the street toward Overwood’s shop.
“Come on.” He went at a swinging walk across the street. Paula followed.
“Where are you going?”
He led her down the alley between Overwood’s shop and the astrologer’s. When she came up beside him he was trying to open the back window.
“Do you have a knife?”
“No. I’ll go keep Overwood busy.” She went down the alley to the street again.
Even from here she heard the jangle of the tiltball bells in the bar. Two women walked unsteadily out of the bar and went off down the hill, their arms around each other. Paula strolled back to the doorway of the bar. The domelight drove her shadow to a puddle around her feet.
Overwood was standing up beside his booth, paying the waiter. She crossed the crowded room toward him. “Overwood.”
He looked up, his hands full of money. She went around beside him. “I want to talk to you.”
“Oh? Where’s the other fellow?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Let me buy you a beer.”
Overwood let her buy him a beer, two beers, and a third. She impressed him with the necessity of dealing with her and not Bunker, even though Bunker had the money, asked him if anybody in Saturn-Keda could read the Common Speech, and finally talked him into going out with her to show her the fastest way down the hillside. He took her to the end of the street, right past his shop, and pointed out three different trails, white as thread down the slope, among the aloes and manzanita.
“You’d better be careful. If you fall and hurt yourself, you could lie there all night.” He beamed at her. “To say nothing of the coyotes.”
“I like dogs.” Over his shoulder she saw Bunker coming down the alley by his shop.
He let out a rumbling laugh. “You wouldn’t like a coyote.”
She was looking out across the vast dome. The bracelets of lights on the desert floor held her gaze. “What are they doing down there?” She pointed. Each of the circles seemed to be made of a dozen little fires.
“Trance circles,” he said. “They sit around and chant and watch the fires and throw themselves into trances. Kids, bums, people like that.”
“Why don’t they just take drugs?”
“That’s too easy.”
“Well,” she said, “maybe I’ll try it. Thanks.” She started down the nearest of the paths he had shown her.
The hill was steep. She was inching across a narrows, her clothes snagged on the brush, when Bunker caught up with her.
“What did you find?”
“Nothing,” he said.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. He was watching his feet on the thin trail. The hillside was studded with spiky plants. Ahead the trail widened, tame.
“Nothing at all? I don’t believe you.”
“He’s smart. Nothing’s written down.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Frankly, junior, I don’t give a damn.”
“Why do you call me that?”
Beside her, his hands in his pockets, he smiled at her. “You don’t like it, do you?”
“No.”
“Junior,” he said, “you have a lot to learn.” He went off ahead of her down the trail. Burning, she stood still and let him walk up a good lead before she started off again.
Paula took the midnight train to New York. Walking up the aisle of the car, she saw Bunker sitting next to the window on a forward bench. After a moment she put her bag on the rack over his head and sat down opposite him. He had a book plug in his ear; he ignored her. She stretched her legs out before her. The train was almost empty. The lights flashed on and off, and the bench under her jerked forward. She braced herself. The train bounded forward, stopped cold, and started up again. They rolled off into the dark.
The windowless walls of the car were covered with graffiti. Gaining speed, the train swayed from side to side. She rocked with it, sleepy. Los Angeles was two and a half hours from New York; it would be nearly dawn when she reached her home. On the bench across from her, Bunker sat with the tape purring in his ear. He was spare and lean, even his kinky hair close to his head. He could have been forty, or fifty, or her age. She knew he was older than she was.
“The Styths don’t know much about us, either,” she said.
“Not if they want to know about our military.”
The train sailed wide around a curve. She flung her arm across the back of the seat. He was staring at the wall. Obviously he would say no more than he had to. She aimed her eyes at the figure-covered wall.
Her flute was gone. She kept it under her bed. Nothing else in her disordered room had been touched, so she knew as if he had signed his name who had taken it. She went next door to An Chu’s room.
“Shaky John has crooked my flute again.”
An Chu looked up. “Are you sure it was him?”
“I will be.” She tipped up the lid to the other woman’s sewing box. An Chu kept her sequins and sparkles in little plastine bags. Paula shook one empty.
“You shouldn’t accuse people when you aren’t sure.”
“Hunh.” She took the little bag and went across the common room to the kitchen.