She sat down on the couch and made herself think about what she would do. There seemed very little choice. The League probably thought they could pull off their plot without enlarging it into a war, and Tanuojin thought he could contain everything in a counterplot. There was too much involved, too many rearrangements, too many people. The coup would spread like bursting atoms. It would stop only when it had brought everything else in the system into a balance with itself. She went down the hall to the library, where the videone was, and called the Committee office in New York.
Jefferson took a long time to answer; or Paula imagined that she did. Paula stood over the cabinet banging her fingers on the screen. The red and white holding pattern on the videone screen split apart to show her Jefferson’s face, tinged green.
“Yes, Mendoza. I—”
“I can’t chat,” Paula said. “The Sunlight League is mounting a coup against the Committee and the Styths. Saba and Tanuojin know about it and intend to use it to wipe you out and grab the Earth.”
Jefferson’s eyes popped round as a Styth’s. “The League. Who?” She leaned forward into the screen, and the green color increased in her cheeks: she looked dead. “Fisher and Savenia?”
“I don’t know anything more,” Paula said. “I’m going up to talk to them—they can help you if they want to.”
“Mendoza, wait.”
She went out to the hall and up the stairs. The house was quiet enough that she could hear the whisper of the upstairs hall curtains billowing over the open windows. The bed in her room was empty. She went back around the corner to Tanuojin’s room.
They were both there, Tanuojin before the closet putting his shirt on, and Saba lying on his back across the bed. She threw the tape plug at him. “You have one hell of a gall talking about honor.” She slammed the door.
Saba caught the tape. He sat up on the bed. Tanuojin was staring at her with an intent look on his face. She turned on his weakness: Saba. “You pirate. You’re no better than your father. You’re a cheap, sleazy politician, just like Machou.”
“Don’t listen to her.” Tanuojin reached his lyo in one long stride. Saba put the tape into his ear.
“Has she told anybody else?”
Paula looked beyond him at Tanuojin. “If this is all you can do with your mind, you should do it for money in a carnival.”
His heat flared. He pulled back one arm to hit her, and Saba caught him. There was a knock on the door. Paula backed away from the bed. Her head was pounding as if she were feverish.
“What is it?” Saba shouted.
Sril answered him through the door. “Akellar, that fat old woman is on the box downstairs.”
“Jefferson,” Paula said. “Who I told. Talking about choices. What are you going to do?”
Saba still sat on the bed; he looked back over his shoulder at Tanuojin, and she saw in their faces that their minds were set. She started toward the door.
“You can do it without me.”
Saba grabbed her arm. “They’ll kill you.” He pulled her around bodily and pushed her toward Tanuojin. “Send her back to the ship.”
“Akellar,” Sril called.
“I’m coming!” He thrust her into Tanuojin’s grasp and went out the door.
Tanuojin twisted her arm up behind her back and hoisted her over to the unmade bed. “I brought something for you all the way from Yekka, in case this happened.” He let go of her, and she took her throbbing wrist in the other hand. He swung a straight chair down in front of her. In his other hand was a plastic hand-yoke.
“Tanuojin, don’t do it. You’ll lose everything. You can’t manage a war.”
He pulled her arms through the slats in the back of the chair. “I’m not doing anything. It’s nigger eating nigger, just like in the books.” He snapped the yoke onto her wrists.
“Ouch.” The inside edges of the yoke were knife-sharp. The tight fit pinched her.
“Bleed.” He went out. The door shut. She heard the key turn in the lock.
She put her head against the back of the chair before her. In the hall, Sril called some question. Her wrists throbbed in the yoke. She straightened, lifted the chair up on her forearms, and carried it over to the window.
From here she could see the backyard, the barn, and the meadow. The Dutch car was parked beneath the window. The bonnet was tilted up, and Leno bent over the engine. Kasuk walked across the meadow. Her wrists were numb. There was a springtab in the side of the yoke. Her fingers would not reach it, and when she pressed it against the wall, the knife edges of the yoke slit her skin. She cocked her arms up and bit the tab, without result.
Saba spoke in the hall. She turned toward the sound of his voice. No one came in. She took the chair once around the room. The sunlight streamed in the window and stretched across the floor. Leno was still working in the car’s engine. The yoke cut into her wrists. If she broke the back of the chair she could at least free herself of that. She laid the chair down on its side, one end against the bedframe, put her foot on the middle slat, and kicked it out.
Her numbed arms pulsed, swelling up fat, and she sat down a moment to get her breath. A man laughed in the hall outside her door. She stood up again, holding her arms out carefully to balance the yoke. Below the window, Leno slammed the bonnet down on the car. Grease covered his hands. The cook’s white cat was trotting across the meadow toward the trees. A daw flew at it, shrieking, and the cat broke into a gallop. The bird harassed it into the trees.
The door opened behind her. Tanuojin circled the foot of the bed toward her. He kicked the broken chair aside.
“You could get out of anything.”
She stood with her back to the window. The late sun hit his chest. He said, “Saba has Jefferson half-convinced you misunderstood us. I want you to tell her you did.”
She shook her head. “It’s a mistake.”
“It isn’t a mistake. Listen to me. You call yourself an anarchist.” His hand shot toward her into the sunlight, palm up, his claws like hooks. “Then when you come to the crunch you get stuck on some damn rule about being peaceful. This is where we take it all. Are you going to let some idiot weakness about a little bloodshed keep you out of it?”
“What do you know?”
He shouted at her, “I know I need you and you’re letting me down.”
“For my own reasons.” Her fists were clenched. Her wrists hurt. Her whole body shivered with anger. “I’m doing what I want, not what you want, not anybody else—”
“Because you’re a coward.”
“Who is a coward? Why do you do everything you do, your whole life, everything—because you’re afraid—Hit me.” She watched his hand cock back. “Go on, big man, show it off. You’re down on your knees to that Empire, and I’m not, so you have to beat me down to your level.”
She was watching his hand, expecting him to hit her, and to her surprise he lowered it. He said, “One last time, Paula. Join us.”
She turned back to the window and looked out. Her arms hurt. She felt his presence like a pressure against her. Finally he went off around the bed toward the door. Halfway there he stopped.
“You’ll beg me to take you back, Paula. When this is over.”
She ignored him, and he left. She went once more around the little room. Everything was over, her whole life for nothing. He might revenge himself on David. Saba would protect his son. Dark was coming. The colors faded out of the room. Her eyes strained in an ashen darkness. The Styths’ world. She had to get away, she could not live with them any more. The floor rippled under her feet. A wave of heat struck her and carried her into the wall.
A sheet of light blasted her eyes. She dragged herself back to consciousness. She was lying face down on a burning floor. Flames crept toward her along the seams of the floor. Her lip was burned when it had touched the wood.