“I’m supposed to read the book to you,” Tanuojin said, behind her. His crew had gone. He cuffed her. “Didn’t I tell you to stop doing that?”
“Frankly, I don’t remember that you did.”
“Tell him I gave you the book.” He walked away across the hall toward the far doorway. When she did not follow he threw her a hard look, and she trotted after him.
“You took Vesta,” she said, in the corridor.
“It was a damned stupid move. The Martians went back again as soon as we left.” He pushed her ahead of him into the room where Saba slept when he was here. “You stay here.”
“All the time?” She looked up at his face, arm’s length above hers.
“You can go anywhere you want, I don’t care. I don’t see how he has a right to call you loose. At least you didn’t do it with a man.”
She went over to the narrow bed and climbed up to sit on it. She was sweating under her heavy clothes; this was the warmest she had ever been in Styth. Tanuojin leaned against the side of the door, his long dished profile toward her. One mustache lay over his shoulder. He said, “While you’re here, you can do something with me.”
“Oh.” The skin quivered over her shoulders. “What?”
He came into the room and shut the door. “I’ll show you.”
“Who have you done it with? Anybody else but us?”
“Just you and him. Who else is there?”
She lay on her side on the bed, between Tanuojin and the wall. The light from the ground outside shone up through the window behind her onto the ceiling. There was a krine in the room somewhere, the Yekkit insect, sawing out its violin screech. “Is it different with him than me?”
He rolled onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. “What do you think? You’re entirely different people. Your memory is older than his. You know things in different ways than he does.” He was sleepy; his eyes half-closed.
She wondered how long they had shared the same body: an hour, perhaps two hours. The krine was coming closer. Now she could see it on the floor, a thumb-sized transparent worm with wings.
“What do you do?” she said. “What does it feel like?”
“I don’t do anything. It feels like what you feel like. That doesn’t help, does it? So why don’t you stop asking questions?”
“I don’t understand why you’re so kinked about it.”
“I’m tired of being treated like a freak.”
She propped her head on her fist. Through the neck of his shirt she could see his collarbones. The krine’s voice stopped.
“You know the treaty is ending soon,” she said.
Tanuojin’s eyes opened, shell-white. His eyes had gotten several shades paler since she had first met him. He said, “We talked about that on the way back from Vesta. You should have asked that man from the Committee what they’re going to do.”
“I’d rather talk to Jefferson. You know what he said to me—Bunker?”
“Yes.” His thin lips split into an unpleasant smile. “They think you’re double-dealing with them. Nobody trusts you, Paula. Except that slave. And you got him killed.”
Her nerves jumped. She held back the hot remark seething in her throat. His smile broadened with malice. She thought, He knows everything I think, and opened her fist.
“The Committee needs a counter to the Martians. This time, given the right conditions, we could arrange something with them that would make the Vesta raid look like crude piracy.”
He shut his eyes. The smile still curled his mouth. “What conditions? That Saba becomes the Prima?”
“Well, yes.”
“He won’t do it. We talked about it, as I said. He doesn’t think he can whip Machou, and he won’t try without a good reason.”
“This is a good reason! The two of you could—”
“The three of us could get in a lot of trouble. The last time you talked us into one of your maneuvers, I nearly died.”
“Because it worked.”
Almost under the bed the krine started to shrill. Tanuojin sat up. “That damned fly.” He held out one hand, palm flat. “We don’t want the same things, Paula. I use you, and you use me.” The krine leaped onto his hand. He threw it out the window. “But we want different things.”
“All I want is what’s possible.”
Monstrously tall, he straightened up onto his feet, stretching. “We’ll see what’s possible.” He went out. She folded her arms behind her head, satisfied. They had already talked about the treaty, even about the advantages of making Saba the Prima; it would breed in their minds. She yawned, pleasantly sleepy.
“Rasputin was a false prophet,” Tanuojin said. They had come to the gate out of his compound.
“He was a genuine blood-stauncher,” she said. “And he was very hard to kill.”
“I’m not a mystic. He tried to predict the future.”
“When was that? That isn’t so.”
“He did predict that he wouldn’t be able to save the Tsarevich the next time he was in danger. Didn’t he?” The Styth turned the key absently in his hand; he was going to the powerhouse at the end of the city. Paula frowned up at him. She wondered if he had taken his knowledge of Rasputin out of her head.
“He wasn’t necessarily referring to the Ekaterinberg massacre. Maybe it was practical—the Tsarevich was sickening and the next time Rasputin wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding.”
“Where are you going? I don’t like not knowing where you are.”
“To the White Market. For a present for David.”
Without a farewell he turned and walked off along the narrow pathway. His follower Marus went after him. Paula started across the city toward the White Market.
The ringing tuneless insect yell of the krines rose from every patch of grass. The warmth and the brilliant light made her high-spirited. She reached the stream and followed it down through an orchard. The pala trees were pruned into symmetrical fans, like Jewish candlesticks. Babies hung in sling-cradles from the lower branches while their mothers went up and down the rows picking fruit.
The stream branched into a dozen narrow fingers trickling through the dense grass. She crossed a marshy meadow toward the place where the ground broke off in a long ledge and the many branches of the stream roared off in waterfalls and ran on toward the distant lake. Taking off her shoes she waded across two fingers of the stream. A green fish bit her heel. She sat down on the far bank and put her shoes on.
In spite of the harvest, the White Market was busy as usual. Ten or a dozen Styths were crowded around the window of the illusion shop, looking in—they thought it impolite to go into a store if they were not buying anything. Their eagerness for Martian things put her off. She wanted to protect them from the Martians who would steal whatever they could, stencil images of Capricornus on an undershirt if it would sell. She was trying to work out a treaty in her mind to ally the Empire with the anarchy, since the anarchists would accept the Styths without trying to change them. Sometimes she felt the same urge to protect Tanuojin and his dangerous gifts; she used that to remind herself that many of her impulses were stupid.
She went into the toy shop. In among the board games and dart sets she found a long black rocket, put it down on the floor, and pushed the trigger in the base. With an explosive crack the rocket shot up into the air and disappeared behind the next rack of toys. A Martian shopkeeper hurried up to her.