She sprinted into the cover of the trees. Another bullet followed her, whining like a hornet. She stopped beside a tree. Her ears strained to hear. The wood was full of sounds. The brush crackled behind her. Leaves rustled. The wind rose in a low call that lifted the hackles of her neck. In spite of the cool, she was sweating.
She went on, trying to keep silent. Twice she saw lights moving in the trees ahead of her. An air car droned above her. The wind made the branches dance. She went around the edge of a meadow. On the far side, four little deer grazed, their tails busy. Through the trees she saw a building burning like a torch, crackling, sending up a thick roll of smoke. The bright yellow light spilled into the wood so that pebbles and ferns and bits of twig threw shadows ten feet long. She circled a great pit, still smoking, where an underground building had been blown up.
She heard more gunshots. The woods ended. She trotted across the south end of the campus. The place looked different in the dark. The air hummed with cars. Three or four searchlights swung back and forth over the uneven ground. She went into the shadow of the turret of a university building. Voices sounded, coming toward her. Several people passed by, arguing. She ran across the campus into the mouth of the gulley where the Committee office was.
The smoke around the building made her eyes itch. On the hillside to the north, a mob of people was gathered. She heard the rattle of a gun. The door to the building was open.
The waiting room was jammed with rubble. The back wall ended halfway up to the ceiling. The place had been bombed. She stopped in the smashed doorway. The floor of the hall was covered with broken glass. She went down through the darkness toward Jefferson’s office. An overturned desk blocked the way. She crossed the slippery spill of papers beyond it. Jefferson’s door was unlocked. She opened it slowly inward.
The room was dark. A little light came from the window. She touched the inside wall, hunting for a light switch, and the wall crumbled away under her fingers. She went toward the window and tripped on a piece of the shattered desk.
Something clicked behind her. A thread of bright light shot past her, shining on the edge of the ruined videone. Dick Bunker said, “Junior, I knew you’d come here, sooner or later.”
She turned one hand up against the light. He was sitting on the floor behind the door. She saw him only for an instant; he switched off the torch and the dark covered them.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The Martians are rescuing the Earth from the Styths. As you can see, the Committee is considered Styth. You aren’t alone, are you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you, Paula, you aren’t that stupid.”
She sank down on her hams, her feet under her, her arms around her knees. He would know where to find a car and how to smuggle Kasuk and Junna out of the dome. She rubbed her nose, itching from the smoke.
“How did the League find out we knew about the coup?” she asked.
“Jefferson told them.”
“Jesus. Why?”
“To bring them on before they were ready.” His voice speeded up into a snarl. “I was hoping they’d account for the Styths, but that fool Savenia can’t do anything well.”
She caught the glint of light on his hand torch. She was beginning to make out his shape in the dark. She groped over the floor around her, over shards of split plastic, the shell of the videone screen, and sat cautiously down on the litter.
“Where’s Jefferson now?”
“I don’t know. The Central Committee had a meeting. What we always do in times of crisis, talk. It lasted five minutes, we voted the strike notice in three and disbanded the Committee in two.”
“Strike,” she said. “You’ve called a general strike?”
“What else are we supposed to do? There are three thousand Martians in New York and New Haven alone. It’s too late to talk them out of it.”
She pursed her lips. Bunker moved, the trash grating under him. He said, “Mr. Black escaped.”
“Yes. Both of them.”
He grunted. “She can’t do anything right.”
“I have Tanuojin’s two sons with me. I have to get them out of the dome. Will you help me?”
“I hate the Styths.”
“Don’t be so emotional.”
“Find your own way home.”
“I’m not going. I’ve had enough of the master race.” Now she could see him passing the torch from hand to hand. His sweater was ripped at the elbow and his white shirt showed through.
“Then why help them at all?”
“One of them is honest.”
A dull explosion sounded outside the building and something fell off the wall. The floor heaved under her. She flung one hand out, startled. She had to get out of here.
“Do you think a strike will work?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing will ever be the same again, that’s sure. You have your revolution, junior.”
“Help me get Tanuojin’s sons off the Planet.”
“Why should I? They’re no better than the Martians. Why help a pack of Fascists?”
“The debt owed to common humanity.”
He squinted at her in the darkness. “What?”
“Insurance.”
“You are baroque.”
Another bomb rumbled in a long explosion, farther away than the first, and the window behind her rattled. She said, “Put Tanuojin in your debt. You may need that someday.”
“For what?”
“Don’t be obtuse. You know what he can do. The more he does, the more he’s capable of. Who knows what his limits are? I need an air car.”
“The Committee cars are all in the entry port. The League holds that, and the locks.”
“The Manhattan boat.”
“What?”
“Why not? The tourist boat to the underwater dome.” She shivered. The broken window breathed cold air down her back. “They love water.”
“Maybe. I can…I have a key to the lower lock.” He opened the door. “Come on, junior.”
She followed him out to the corridor. He walked with a limp. The hall reeked of char. “They’re down at the southern end of the dome, in the park, near the wall.” Carefully she picked a way over the rubble blocking the hall. “Can you whistle?”
“Yes.”
She taught him Ybix’s recognition code. “Remember, everything you tell them, Tanuojin will find out.” She stumbled on the pile of papers and nearly fell. Bunker let her go first down the hallway past the overturned desk. She put one hand on the wall for balance.
“Go right,” he said.
Innocent, she went in through a door, and he slammed it shut on her. She whirled. Her shin collided with a chunk of plastic, and she fell. The lock clicked in the door. She slammed against it.
“Dick!”
Silence. She shook the latch. The room was totally dark. She stepped on trash. Stooping, she ran her hands over the littered floor. Books, and a bookcase, and a jumble of wires half-melted into a clump. The meeting room. She brought an image of it into her mind. There were no windows and only the one door. In the table, somewhere, was a switch to unlock the door. On her hands and knees she crawled into the depths of the room and found the tabletop, lying on the floor, its broken legs under it.
Another bomb exploded, so close the building trembled. She felt carefully along the underside of the table’s edge. Maybe Kasuk would develop a vicious streak and take Bunker along with them to Ybix. Hunting for the switch, she occupied her mind with the various things the Styths would do to him for doing this to her. She found a switch and pressed it. A light flashed on in the ceiling and exploded. The wrong switch. While she was searching for the right one the door burst open. A blinding torchlight glared in her face.