“Did I wake you up?” She wiped her eyes on her hand. Her throat was sore.
“Where were you?” He climbed over the foot of the bed toward her. The old white bedshirt he wore had been Saba’s: it was filthy. “What happened? Where you hurt? Why were you crying?”
She shook her head. “I’m all right.” His hands were scraped and swollen from fighting. She took his wrist, cold to her touch.
“Why were you crying?”
She shook her head again. Taking his hand in both hers she kissed his palm. “They killed Pedasen.” She began to weep again. He tugged on his hand and she freed him.
“Who killed him? Who?”
“Dakkar.” She rubbed her eyes dry.
“Why are you crying? He was just a slave.”
Her eyes felt bathed with salt. She wiped her face on her sleeve. In the end, Dakkar had believed her, but by then the eunuch was dying.
“He was a slave,” David said. “He didn’t mean anything.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she said. “Go back to bed.”
He sat on the foot of the bed, watching her soberly with his strange long eyes. His hair was sprouting like bristles over his head. She said, “Don’t you care? He lived here. He loved you since you were a baby.”
His gaze flinched away from her. Suddenly busy, he picked at the cover with his fingers. He had no claws yet; he still used the flats of his fingers. He muttered, “My father wouldn’t care,” watching his hands.
“Go back to bed, David.”
Whenever she slept with Illy, she dreamt that Saba walked in on them. One watch she woke with a start and smelled a hot metal reek and saw him standing at the foot of the bed.
“Get up and put your clothes on,” he said.
Illy was still asleep, her arm around Paula’s waist. Paula shook her hard, to wake her. Saba grabbed the bedcover in both hands and yanked it flying away.
“I said get up!”
Paula scurried off the bed and gathered her clothes. Illy raised her head. “Saba!” She sat upright, thrusting out her hand toward him. “Saba, wait.”
He unbuckled his belt. Paula was pulling on her dress. Her clumsy fingers jammed the slide closing. Illy cried, “No—Saba, listen to me. It isn’t what you think.”
“Go over to your house and wait,” he said to Paula. He doubled the belt up in his hand.
She went out through the sitting room to the door. Behind her the belt cracked and Illy screamed in pain. She burst into a run out the door and across the yard. A man waved to her from the Manhus steps: Sril. She went into her house through the kitchen. The kusin was drinking from the hose. At her sudden entrance it darted under the table.
David was asleep. She stood on the threshold of his room watching him. She could not bear to lose him. The boy slept on his stomach, the cover bunched in his right fist. The back door slammed.
She went down to the kitchen again. Saba was half-sitting on the table, his arms crossed over his chest. The kusin had gone.
“That’s a low point, even for you. How could you do that to me? I thought you cared about me.”
She shut the door into the hall, so that David would not waken. Saba had his temper back. He watched her cross the kitchen and draw a cup of water to loosen her throat. The kusin had left the window over the hose slightly open. She shut it hard.
“What did you do to Illy?”
He came up behind her. “She did it to pay me back, didn’t she? For chasing around.”
She put the cup down on the counter. Pedasen’s frightened face appeared in her memory. Illy’s frightened voice. He slouched against the counter beside her, his elbow bracing him up.
“Why are you so white, Paula? You think I’m going to whip you too, don’t you?”
“No,” she said, evenly.
“How long have you been debauching my wife?”
She turned on him, ready to blast him, and the hall door sighed. She and Saba in unison turned toward David, coming into the kitchen. The long shirt hung rumpled to his knees.
“Papa!” He leaped up into Saba’s arms. “When did you get back? Will you take me to Ybix? Will you take me for a ride in Ybicsa? Pedasen died. I whipped Itak and made him eat mud.” Saba boosted him up in the crook of his arm.
“Say good-bye to your mother.”
She gripped the edge of the counter in both hands. Her heart began to thud. David twisted around in Saba’s arms. “Good-bye. Where is she going?”
“To Yekka. She’ll be back before you miss her.”
She looked away, relieved. David said, “Can I go too?”
“I thought you wanted to ride in Ybicsa?”
“Yes!”
With David riding on his arm, the big Styth went to the door. Paula said, “What if I refuse?”
“Don’t make it harder for me, Paula.” He shouted out to the yard for Sril. She stared at his back. She could refuse. But she did not want to be around him. David squirmed out of his arms and came down the room to Paula.
“Will you call me on the screen? Just to me and nobody else?”
She nodded. Sril stood in the doorway. Saba gestured at her. “Take her to Yekka.”
The trip was stormy. She was sick all the way from Matuko to Vribulo, the midway stop. Drenched with sweat, she sat in the compartment drinking tea. Sril gave her a towel and she mopped her face. The bus swayed and lurched along in its course.
“Thank you,” she said. “I feel awful.”
“You’ll never make a Styth, Mendoz’.”
She emptied her cup of the sweet tea. The bench was slippery. She had to hold the grip in the wall to keep from landing on the floor. But she felt better, her stomach steadier than before. Sril stretched his feet across the aisle to the opposite bench, his arms spread out across the back of their seat.
“How did your mission go?” she said. She put the cup into the clamp on the wall.
“Perfect. We took about four hundred slaves. Everybody on the Asteroid who didn’t die.”
“Terrific,” she said, glum. The only Asteroid he could mean was Vesta; Ceres, the only other of the minor Planets so densely populated, was on the far side of the Sun.
“The Man took Ybicsa down over the base and pulled off every attack-craft they had, and Ybix went in and blew up the satellites. I hit three out of three shots. Of course The Creep put me in the green window, I couldn’t miss.”
She leaned against the wall of the compartment. Illy’s scream sounded in her memory. But it was Pedasen she longed for. The bus lurched and she jumped. Sril put his arm around her, holding her fast, and she moved over against his side.
“Did you and the Old Man fight?” he said. His hand grazed her side. She shut her eyes. Gently he stroked her side and her shoulder. “It looks odd, he comes back and an hour later you’re going.” His palm curved over her breast.
“Sril,” she said. “Switch off.”
His hand left her. The bus lurched along toward Yekka.
YEKKA
Yekka was bright as an Earthish afternoon: the pala fruit was ripening. The whole city rang with the sizzling music of insects. Kasuk, Tanuojin’s elder son, met her at the city gate, and Sril got back on the bus to go home. Kasuk took her across the green city to the Akellarit compound. Remembering he was shy, she made no effort to talk to him. He looked nothing like his father. A heavyset young man, with broad plain features, he walked slightly stooped, his eyes on the ground. In the compound yard, she looked first for the bilyobio tree that grew near Tanuojin’s window. It was sprouting again.
Tanuojin was in the public room of the main building, giving orders to a row of his men. The walls, like much of the compound, were half-paneled, glossy dark on the bottom and flat white on top. The ceiling was held up on square dark pillars. Paula stopped to look at a postboard near the door. Under a permanent heading for his Akopra, which he called the Black Company, was a list of times and dances. They were doing Capricornus in a few watches. She began to be pleased she had come, even without David; she liked Yekka.