“Propaganda. It’s the first time any Styth has mastered an Asteroid. But the Martians took it back again. Psychological warfare, it’s all worthless. Usually the result’s just the opposite of what you expect.”
She laced her fingers together behind her back. “How much are the Martians paying you for those slaves?”
“I told you to stay out of that,” he said. “Get out.”
VRIBULO
The crews of the Styth Fleet overflowed the plain of the House. They stood on the steps and in the street, blocks of men in long gray shirts, arranged by height, standing rigidly at respect. Paula was shivering with cold. She stood with Ybix’s crew beside the front doors to the House. She pulled her coat tighter around her.
Saba and Tanuojin stood square as brackets twenty feet in front of her. Beyond them, Machou was reading in a roaring voice from a long citation.
“Salute!”
The thousands of identical figures swung up their fists. “Styth! Styth! Styth!” She folded her arms. Their singlemindedness bewildered her. Machou came up to Saba. He hung a black sash around Saba’s neck and over his left shoulder.
“If you keep doing this, Matuko, we’ll have to invent a new rank for you.” He and Saba shook hands.
“Thank you, Prima.”
Machou draped the flag over Tanuojin’s shoulder. They stared past each other, they did not shake hands. The fleet shouted the salute again. Their commanders dismissed them. Machou and the rAkellaron came up to surround Saba and Tanuojin, congratulating them. Ybix’s crew broke their ranks. Paula stayed where she was, beside the high metal-bound door. All this for six feet of black cloth.
Marus laid his hand flat between her shoulders, and she went obediently across the plain toward Saba and Tanuojin. The spectators rushed over the steps, crowding around the new heroes. Small among them, she was jostled off her feet. Marus thrust one arm out straight to fend off the mob. She walked under his armpit, closed in by huge people, seeing nothing but their backs. Marus led her to Saba.
He stood talking to Machou, with Tanuojin a few feet away. The crowd surged around them, and hands thrust out toward them. Saba shook one hand after another, paying no attention, his eyes on Machou. She hung back from the Prima. Someone stepped on her foot, and an elbow worked her away from Saba.
Marus pushed her. She went into the shelter between Saba and Tanuojin.
“What are you doing?” Tanuojin said.
“I’m being stepped on.”
Marus spoke to him, and he moved off a few steps, stooping to hear, his hand covering one ear to keep the racket out. Saba turned around. A broad hand reached toward him at her eye-level, and he shook it briefly. To Paula, he said, “Are you going to act decent from now on?” Three more hands appeared out of the crowd. He twisted toward Machou, pumping arms. In the roar he had to shout to be heard. “Anarchists, you know, they have the morals of—”
A hand shot past her toward him, a white-skinned hand full of a small black gun. The clamor drowned everything. She heard no shots. She grabbed the arm by the wrist. Someone screamed. The gun arm yanked back and pulled her after it into the mob. She clung tight, left her feet, was dragged into the thick of people suddenly running or trying to run. The body attached to the arm struck her. Its white face screamed at her, a red mouth hedged with teeth, the sound lost in the howl of the mob packed around them. Marus heaved the Martian gunman up away from her. She lost her grip and fell. Through the running legs she saw Saba lying on his stomach on the pavement.
Machou stooped over him. “He’s dead!”
A screech went up around her. She scrambled toward Saba. They would trample him. The mob trapped her in their midst, shoving back and forth. Tanuojin brushed past her. She struggled after him, and at the edge of the crowd someone caught her and held her by the arms.
Tanuojin knelt; he bent over Saba, and his lips moved in Saba’s name. Blood stained the broad black sash across the dead man’s back. Paula whined in her throat. Tanuojin pulled his lyo up into his arms, Saba’s head against his shoulder, rocking him back and forth. Ybix’s crew was around them, driving the crowd back. She heard Tanuojin’s voice: “Saba—Saba—” Calling to him. It was Machou who held her so tight her arms hurt. Tanuojin’s hand pressed flat over the blood splash in the dead man’s back.
“Saba!”
Saba moved. Paula gathered her breath. Machou’s grip eased on her arms, and she edged away from him. In Tanuojin’s arms, Saba turned his head and groaned.
Paula was trembling from head to foot. She cast a look at the hundreds of people waiting and turned to the Prima. “You said he was dead.”
“He was.” Machou’s voice was suddenly reedy, his gaze unblinking on Tanuojin.
Ketac broke through the ring of Ybix’s crew and knelt beside his father. Tanuojin slumped down on the blood-splattered pavement. His skin was gray around the eyes. Exhausted, he was helpless. She fisted her hand in Machou’s shirt sleeve and wrenched his attention around to her.
“He wasn’t dead. You were wrong.”
The Prima struck her hand away. “That freak.”
Ketac was lifting Saba cradled in his arms. She went over to Tanuojin and stooped, her hand on his shoulder. “Can you walk? We have to get out of here.” Around them were thousands of people, all watching them. She helped Tanuojin up, one arm wrapped around him, and hurried him after Ketac down the steps.
Saba had been shot through the heart. While Paula was taking his clothes off, in the back room of his office in the Barn, a crowd gathered outside: she could hear their shouts and the tramp of their feet. Ketac came in with a pack of bandages.
“Is he badly hurt?”
“He’ll be all right,” she said. She ripped open the package and unrolled three inches of bandage.
“What happened out there, anyway?” Ketac said. “Who shot him?”
“I don’t know, Ketac. Go away, you’re bothering me.”
“Do you need help?”
She shook her head. Swinging the washbasin out of the wall, she turned on the hot water. Finally Ketac left her. Saba was out cold. She washed the small hole in his chest and the gaping hole in his back, and picked out the black fibers the bullet had carried into the flesh. The wound was scabbing over when she put the bandage on. She covered him with blankets and left him to sleep.
Sril and Bakan were throwing a bone for money on the desk in the front office. The front door was shut. Still she heard the bellow of hundreds of voices in the street beyond and a crackle of something breaking.
“How is he?” the two men said, in unison.
“He’ll heal.” She went to the door, and Sril dashed over to stop her.
“Don’t go out there.”
“What’s going on?” She pulled his hand off the door and unlatched it.
Armed men paraded up and down the arcade between the offices and the street. Most of Ybix’s crew was massed around this office and the last one in the row, Tanuojin’s. In the street facing them people swarmed thick along the foot of the rAkellaron House steps. Many of them carried sticks and handfuls of street shards. More men joined this mob with every moment. Their voices rose in a throaty roar; she could not make out the words.
“It’s getting worse,” Sril said.
She went to the window in the other wall of the front office. That street was empty. “What’s going on?” A howl outside brought her around, every hair stiff. Bakan was still sitting at the desk. He turned the knobbed bone over in his claws. Sril slapped a credit chip down on the desk.
“Doubles.”
Paula walked the length of the room. “What’s going on out there?”