He pushed at her with one hand, feeble. She held him, her weight on him, kissing him deep against his will until he rolled weakly over onto his stomach. She straightened. He lay face down on the bed.
“You bitch, Paula.”
“You do talk. What if your body had been dead? You were set to take mine. You’d have killed me.”
He turned his face to the wall. She opened the door and left him alone.
MATUKO
The Krita Festival
“Why did you wear that coat?” Illy said. “That color makes you look like a little old woman.”
Paula glared at her across the covered chair. “If you claw at me, I’ll get out and walk.”
Illy smirked. She wore pink and orange paint on her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were like black moons. “You can’t. You don’t have the right clothes on.”
“I can do anything I damn well please.”
The chair swayed and tipped to one side. Paula grabbed the frame. Jingling with little silver bells, Boltiko threw back the curtain and squeezed into the front bench of the chair, next to Paula. When she sat, the whole box sagged.
“I wouldn’t go out looking like that,” Illy said. “Not for help if I were dying.”
Boltiko squirmed herself comfortable on the seat. She looked down at Paula and patted her knee. The bells on her sleeve rang.
“Where shall we go first?” Illy said. “To the kundra to have our fortunes read?”
The chair swung up into the air. Wedged between Boltiko and the side of the box, Paula rocked with it, surrounded by the clamor of bells. Everybody in Matuko wore bells during the Krita Festival. The chair-slaves bore them along. The curtains were drawn closed and she could not see where they were going. She reached out to draw the curtain back, and Boltiko slapped her hand down.
“Don’t you do that when we aren’t covered.”
Paula sat back.
“Oh, what a miserable watch I had, last watch,” Boltiko said. “I didn’t sleep above thirty minutes.” She knocked on the side of the chair with her knuckles, and their speed increased to a brisk trot.
Illy giggled. “I could tell you a couple of remedies for that.” She smiled at Paula.
“Sometimes I think if it weren’t for the children,” Boltiko said, “I’d go somewhere and die. And then see who would miss me.”
The chair sped down a slope. Outside the muffling curtains, bells rang, and music sounded, among laughter and voices. Illy was staring at Paula.
“Tell her how awful she looks in that coat, Tiko.”
Paula leaned forward, reaching for the curtain. “Put this thing down.” Boltiko struck at her fingers, but the slaves heard her and the chair stopped.
“Oh, Paula,” Illy called. “Just come to the kundra’s—”
Paula jumped down out of the chair to the street. The slaves lifted it again. She heard, above the two arguing voices of the wives, the sharp bang of Boltiko’s fist on the box. The chair swept off, swaying, its curved roof streaming ribbons in its wake.
She was in the street near the lake market. The passing crowd pressed by her on either side. Ahead, in the market, gaudy tents replaced the merchants’ stalls. She wandered through the little carnival, going from tent to tent. Some sold pala-cakes or liquor, and others offered entertainments. She stopped behind a wall of Styth backs to watch a girl in a demure long dress dance on a platform to the music of a ulugong. Inside, Paula supposed, she took it off. In the open front of the next tent, surrounded by the upturned faces of children, a red bird climbed up a rope and rang the bell at the top.
A huge paper-and-paste mask swayed toward her, held up on a long stick above the heads of the crowd, the face painted white and the leering open mouth blood-red. There were other masks up and down the street, and prizes later for the best. The false faces symbolized the Moon-people, the first colonists of Uranus, who according to the legends had been driven out or massacred by the hero Krita. The bells were part of that myth, too: Krita’s bell had brought the colonists to their deaths. She walked along among the crowd, enjoying the circus feeling. The colonists had abandoned Uranus when the Three Planets Empire broke up, not because of Krita’s bell and knife, but the Styths would never believe that. It was part of their lives, their faith. Although Saba was of another house entirely from the ancient hero, one of his titles was Kritona. She stopped at a stall to buy a pala-cake and went on, looking for David.
“Hold these.” David took the white grass garlands off over his head and stuffed them into her arms. Ducking under the rope, he trotted down the street to the starting line of the race. The people around her were eating pala-cakes and making bets. Paula stuck her frozen hands in her sleeves. David grinned at her from the starting line. He was missing three front teeth and his smile was like a tunnel through his face. Something brushed down her back.
“Paula. What are you doing here?”
It was Ketac. She looked up at him behind her. A broad braided ribbon hung around his neck.
“What’s that?”
“I won it throwing knives.”
The crowd roared and surged forward against the rope. A dozen boys raced down the street toward her. David was leading; David had won. The people around her raised their arms and shook their bells, rattle-rattle like little tin leaves, and cheered.
“Aren’t you glad he won?” Ketac said.
“It seems to me you’re all winning everything.”
“That’s because we’re the best family in Matuko.”
David jogged up to her, hardly out of breath. Another garland hung around his neck. The people around him leaned out to touch him. They thought it good luck to touch a winner. Paula held out the wreaths, and solemnly he decorated himself in his awards.
Ketac pulled on the peak of her hood. “You should stay in the chair. You’ll get lost.”
“How can I get lost? Somebody always finds me.”
They went off toward the crowd. David strutted around, collared in grass, calling to his friends in a new deep voice. Paula ran her hand over his smooth head. They went down toward the lake. A little parade of the paper masks passed them, held up on poles.
Ketac left them. David wandered off into the crowd. Paula went slowly down the hillside street. She looked up at the lake, in the roof of the bubble. They were racing boats there; most of the race involved fighting from one boat to the next to knock the oarsmen into the water. She watched one boat roll over, presenting its long white belly to the air. Heads bobbed around it.
Pedasen was part of a small crowd watching a stick-puppet show near the White Market. She went up beside him and took his hand, and he startled. She smiled at him. The puppets declaimed in falsetto voices from the cut-out stage. The eunuch stroked her palm with his fingertips. When the play ended they walked away toward the lake.
“You ought to be in the covered chair,” he said.
“Illy teases me. I don’t know how Saba bears her, she’s that nagging.”
He swung their linked hands back and forth. “You’re more like her child. Or her little sister.” Through the tail of his eye he glanced at her. “You could always give her up.”
David ran up to her, streaming his white grass garlands. Pedasen moved away from her. His fingers slid out of her grasp. Her son bounced around her.
“Mama, buy me a poppet. Buy me a pala-cake.” He towed her along by the hand through the White Market. The Martian merchants had joined with whole hearts in the spirit of Krita, raising all their prices 10 per cent.