“Mendoza,” Jefferson called. “Are you coming?”
Sybil had shooed off the picture men and voice men from the hourlies. With the Styths she was going down the ramp. Paula followed them.
Jefferson pattered along beside Saba. “You see, Akellar, you’re celebrated men.”
Paula went to the rail, searching the ground below them for the woman she had just seen. Tanuojin walked beside her, Sybil Jefferson just beyond. Paula reached across him to pluck at Jefferson’s sleeve.
“Jefferson, I saw Cam Savenia just now. What’s going on?”
“Savenia.” Saba stopped where he was. Leno was going on several feet ahead of them, gawking at the city, and did not seem to be listening. Jefferson kept on walking.
“Was it Cam?” Paula said.
“Possibly,” the old woman said. “The Council wanted to send her as an observer, but we talked them out of it.”
Tanuojin walked in between her and Paula, and his hand dropped onto Paula’s shoulder. “Who did they send?” he asked. Paula pulled his hand away.
“Caleb Fisher,” Jefferson said.
They were coming to the foot of the ramp. Saba walked on Jefferson’s far side. Tanuojin grasped Paula’s wrist, his touch cold as metal. She knew who Caleb Fisher was: a Council member for Mars, once a minister, she thought a defense minister. She said, “Is he a member of the Sunlight League?”
“Ask him.” Jefferson’s lips curled into a stiff smile, but her blue eyes looked angry. “Since you’re so full of snappy questions.”
They went into the parking lot. Tanuojin and Saba circled off into the dark behind a row of cars and stood talking. Jefferson sorted out the rest of the Styths among three Committee buses. Paula leaned against the door of a yellow three-seater car with the Committee emblem on the roof. Kasuk came over to her.
“Is this where you lived before?”
“Yes.” She watched Leno’s men line up at the steps to the biggest bus.
“It’s beautiful.”
“So is Styth,” she said.
“But in another way.”
Jefferson came around the rear end of the three-seater. “Mendoza, we were trying to ease them gently into the notion of the observer.”
“You could have warned me,” Paula said. ’I’d have known how to act.” She touched the arm of the young man beside her. “Jefferson, this is Yekka’s prima son, Kasuk.”
“Hello,” he said. He put his hand out to Jefferson, changed his mind, and drew it back. Jefferson had already reached to shake it. She lowered her hand, but Kasuk, with a Styth’s sense of protocol, stuck his out to her again. Finally they connected, Jefferson looking much amused. Kasuk stood head and shoulders over her. He said, in a false voice, “We are all—”
A shout cut him off. Paula slid past him. At the bus Sril faced Leno’s towering second-in-command. He pushed the Merkhizit, and the taller man shouted, “You little worm,” and jumped on him.
Kasuk took a step toward them. Paula caught his sleeve. Sril and the Merkhizit tumbled over the paved ground, and the other men roared. They rushed out of the bus to watch. Bakan leaped out the door. Midway between the fight and Paula, Junna stood fixed in his tracks. From two directions, Saba and Tanuojin and Leno ran up and scattered the men away.
Jefferson said, “Did I err in the programming?”
“You did,” Paula said.
In the midst of the Styths, Saba had Sril by the arm. The small man’s face was bleeding. He shouted, “You should have heard what he said about Ybix, and after we saved them, too.”
Leno turned away. “I’ll never hear the end of that.”
Tanuojin glared at him. “Your crew’s got a big mouth.”
Kasuk moved again, and Paula tightened her grip on his sleeve. The bus swayed back and forth. Saba was herding the crews of the two ships up the steps. His fists on his hips, Leno thrust his blunt head forward at Tanuojin.
“Don’t get me angry, Yekka. I’ll cut you into twenty pieces.”
“I don’t think you can count that high.”
Kasuk laughed. Saba came out of the bus and burst between the two men, driving them apart. “Let’s get out of here.”
Jefferson said. “What was that all about?”
Behind Saba, Tanuojin shot a vicious look at Leno. The Merkhiz Akellar sneered at him. “Nigger eyes.” Tanuojin turned his back. Paula let go of his son’s shirt.
To Jefferson, she said, “Two pegs trying to fit into the same small hole. Where is R.B.?”
“Sitting under the bodhi tree.”
Saba came up to them. “I’m sorry,” he told Jefferson. “It won’t happen again.”
“Is it safe to divide them by family?” Jefferson said.
Paula pulled open the door to the yellow car. “You drive,” she said to Saba, and scrambled across the row of seats to the far side.
“When do we meet this Fisher?” Saba asked.
Paula was staring out the window. They had just left the dome behind them for the thick yellow smoke of the open air. The homing beam blinked blue and red on the dashboard in front of Saba.
In the seat beyond him, Jefferson said, “There’s a meeting Friday morning. Tomorrow.”
“Are you sure it was Dr. Savenia you saw?” the Styth asked, in his language.
Paula shrugged. “She was pretty far away, and her back was to me.”
“I’m not sitting down with anybody from the Sunlight League.”
The air outside was so dense it turned the window into a mirror. She twisted around in the seat to face him. “Why? And why do you automatically assume Sybil doesn’t speak Styth? And that this car isn’t wired? She does. It is.”
He glanced at Jefferson. The old woman picked up her handbag, popped it open, and rummaged in it. Paula said, in the Common Speech, “I don’t suppose you’ve given us separate rooms?”
“There isn’t enough space.” Jefferson fed herself a mint. “Unless you’d take the closet. With the queens and skeletons?”
“I could be bounded in a nutshell. But I think I’d like a window. Where’s the meeting?”
“At our New York office. I was looking forward to seeing your child again.”
“The last time we brought him it was a disaster.”
“Such a charming little boy. He reminded me of you.”
“He isn’t little any more.” They were talking past Saba, and she could not see much of Jefferson at all. She crooked one leg under her. Surrounded by the opaque yellow mist, the car seemed to hang still in the air. Saba reached forward under the steering grips and turned down the heat.
“Children do grow up,” Jefferson said. “After all, it’s been ten years since you left. Ten years would change anybody.” The old woman sucked her candy, her soft white cheek hollowed. “Is he a Styth or an anarchist?”
Paula’s hand rose to her face. Sybil was no longer talking about David. “Neither.”
“In between?”
“Neither.” She glanced at Saba’s profile. “He doesn’t listen to anybody but himself.”
“That’s reasonable,” Jefferson said. She ripped the paper away from the roll of mints. “Have a sweet?”
“No, thanks.”
“Akellar?”
Saba’s gaze slid toward Paula. “Sure,” he said. He reached for a candy.
Caleb Fisher was short and slight, his sparse hair combed across his dome of waxy head. His mustache hid his upper lip. To Paula’s surprise, all three Styths shook hands with him. Afterward Fisher looked as if he wanted to wipe his fingers off. They sat around the long table in the Committee meeting room, with Jefferson at the end and Michalski in the corner taking notes. Dick Bunker was not there. Paula had not seen him since their arrival on the Planet. She knew he was watching.