“That isn’t true!”
He flew out of the couch toward her, his fist raised. She swiped his hand aside. “Don’t you touch me, you little brat—” He was not small; he was already nearly her height. “All you can do is fight.”
“I hate you. And you aren’t my mother.” He raced down the hallway. The back door slammed.
She took her notebook to the kitchen, where it was warm. Too jittery to work, she sat at the table drawing on the scarred white top with her stylus.
“Paula?” Saba shouted, in the front of the house.
She raised her head. He came heavy-footed down the hall and tramped across the kitchen to the far side of the table from her. “What’s the matter with you? Why did you tell him I’m going to sell him?”
David lingered in the doorway behind him. She laid her hands flat on the table. “The shining knight to the rescue.”
“Look.” Saba gestured toward the boy behind him. “The other boys tease him. Maybe he should live with Boltiko.”
“No.” She rushed up onto her feet. “No.”
“You dirty nigger kundra,” David said.
Saba let out a half-spoken oath. He got the boy by the arm, whirled him around, and spanked him. David squawked. Paula’s wobbling legs put her down hard on the bench. Saba dropped him, and David threw a furious glance at him and bolted.
“That was edifying,” Paula said. Her throat was tight.
“I hope so. That’s what you’re supposed to do, not threaten to sell him.” He sat on the end of the bench and reached for her notebook. “He has to learn to fight sometime. Look how small he is. He’ll never get anything without fighting for it.”
“He says—” She cleared her throat. “I’m not his real mother.”
He laughed. The notebook was open before him; the pages were covered with the cursive script of the Middle Planets, which he could not read. He tapped the lone Styth symbol on the page: the major Sa she used short for his name. “What’s this?”
“Notes. For a new treaty with the Committee.”
“What makes you think I’ll want a new treaty?” He looked her curiously in the face. “You can’t take Vida with you, if you go back to live in the Earth.”
“Item,” she said. “You need money. As usual. Item. The quickest way to get money is to go to the Middle Planets. Therefore. You’ll get a new treaty.”
“Item.” Saba shut the notebook. “If you go back to the Earth, you’ll be just little Paula Mendoza again, but here, you do what nobody else can.” He leaned on his elbows over the table, his black eyes at her. “Stop scaring Vida. If he didn’t love you, you wouldn’t matter to him.” He went out the hall to the front door.
YBIX
Watch logs L19, 271—M19, 469
Sril played the ulugong with his eyes shut, beating out the round mellow notes with the heels of his hands. Paula turned around. Some of the pornographic posters on the walls of the Tank had been there since her first voyage. One woman, life-sized, her legs spread wide, had been chewed by darts into gaping holes that finally made her modest.
“Mendoz’,” Sril said. “Go get your music-stick.”
“I left it in Matuko.”
“Damn. Why?”
She made no answer. David had demanded the flute, to keep safe until she came back. The Go set was in the cabinet under the hatch, and she took the grid out of its clamps and the box of pebbles out of the cubbyhole. She looked around for someone to play with.
“Kasuk. Play Go with me.”
Tanuojin’s son was just coming in the hatch. “What?”
“Play Go with me.”
“I don’t know how.” He scrambled across the Tank toward her, still awkward in the free fall. She dodged fluently out of his way.
“I’ll teach you.”
“It had better not take effort.” He watched her put the grid before her in the air and shake the pebble box of stones. “I don’t believe in effort.”
She taught him the game. Sril’s soft bell-like music played in her ears. Already she missed her flute. Bakan and Marus came into the Tank and threw darts. They had only reached cruising speed during the high watch, five hours before, and the crew were still settling into their routines.
“Where is Ebelos?” she asked Kasuk.
“Off our bow. You can see her from the window in the Beak.”
Ebelos was Leno’s ship. Machou had insisted the Merkhiz Akellar go with them to the Earth for the new treaty conference. Tanuojin had tried to argue around it. Paula suspected Dick Bunker’s influence in Machou’s sudden interest in the Middle Planets; the Committee was trying to get around her. She set a pebble on the board. Kasuk played slowly, thoughtful, his eyes on the board. Shorter than Tanuojin, heavyset, he seemed painfully shy.
“Kak.” His brother Junna dove through the hatch. His hair was growing out. Sometime during the mission he would be clubbed. “Gemini says—”
Kasuk’s head turned, and the rest of his body followed, rolling straight. “Pop said you shouldn’t come in here.”
“Gemini says you’re supposed to memorize the interact codes and get on the spark to Ebelos and confirm,” Junna said.
Kasuk looked at her. “I have to go.”
“I heard him.”
The young man doubled over and swooped away to the hatch. To Junna he said, “He told you not to come in here,” and went out without waiting for a reply. Paula herded the pebbles into the box. His eyes on the posters, Junna loitered in the middle of the Tank.
Sril said, “What’s wrong? Isn’t Diddums-widdums allowed to look at cunts?” The other men laughed. Junna’s eyes flashed. He swung around toward them, rope-thin, gawky, and caught a faceful of jeers.
“You’d better leave fast, Diddums, before those cracks attack.”
She put the Go game away and went out. All down the corridor she could hear them teasing Junna and his furious replies.
Without her flute, she had nothing to fill the hours when her friends were on watch. She sat in the Beak, trying to make out the planets among the stars. Saba knew hundreds of the stars by name. The red flame of the Sun burned near the edge of the window. Ebelos, Leno’s ship, was long and hump-backed. She flew below Ybix, sometimes above her, just close enough for Paula to read the markings on her hull. She wrote a letter to David, to send when they reached the Earth, and she daydreamed.
When she went to the library in the high watch she found Tanuojin in there with Kasuk. In the hatchway, she said, “Do you mind if I come in?”
“No.” Tanuojin had a workboard on his knee and was writing on it and did not look up. She went past them into the back of the room. The books were all kept in niches, their tails out. She went along reading the titles written on the butt ends of the tapes.
Behind her, Tanuojin said, “So if a body absorbs energy—” his stylus scraped on the worksheet, “its mass is increased by the amount of energy, E, divided by light squared, at the rate…” He scribbled. She found an old book of legends and took it out.
“Are you listening to me?” Tanuojin said sharply.
She turned. Kasuk mumbled something. He lowered his eyes; he had been looking at her. Tanuojin knocked the workboard aside.
“Why do I waste my time on you? You’ll never amount to a half-pitch.”
She started toward the hatch. Kasuk beat her through it. The workboard floated toward her, and she caught it.
“Damned stupid brat,” Tanuojin said.
“He’s very good at Go.”