Floating Worlds

CROSBY’S PLANET Maye—Juine 1857

Saba announced he would take six of his crew down to Crosby’s Planet. The crew drew lots. Then the high-ranking losers fought the low-ranking winners in the corridors and the Tank and the galley, until the four men of Saba’s watch and Marus and Kany from Tanuojin’s watch wound up with the red tickets, strictly in order of their rank.

“Why hold a lottery at all?” Paula asked, when they were on the space bus.

“Because then nobody can say I keep pets.”

Beneath the window, the cone-shaped mechanical Planet rolled its pitted surface into the sunlight. Its silver skin was a solar battery, gleaning energy for the interior. Saba moved around on the seat beside her, David on his lap. She knew the bench was too narrow for him. The gravity bound her down. She wondered how David felt.

The men behind her were arguing loudly about the conical Planet ahead of them. Sril insisted a gunshot would pierce the skin. Paula sat back, her hands in her lap. She had heard that a solid missile would dissolve in the Planet’s fields long before it reached the surface. They were the only passengers on the bus. David stared open-mouthed out the window. She glanced over her shoulder at Tanuojin, two benches back and across the aisle. He sat with his arms folded, a book tape in his ear, his eyes on the floor. She turned straight again. She was sick with anticipation; Crosby’s Planet was the first terrestrial Planet she had seen in nearly four years.

“Mama!” He stood up in Saba’s lap, pointing out the window. Saba dropped him down again.

“Sit still for once. You have the manners of a white anarchist.” Paula laughed.

The mouth of the entry port opened round and dark before them, marked with red lights like a wreath. The interior lights in the bus came on. Paula set the edge of her hand on the window to shade the glass. The entry port was a shaft running down the Planet’s axis. On the curved metallic walls, a red arrow flashed. Although she could see nothing she pressed her forehead against the sour-smelling plastic-window. The bus slowed, turned, and ran into a slip against the wall.

“Please remain seated until the spacecraft is anchored.”

Paula took David by the hand. His crew moved up around them. The driver opened the hatch. They filed out through an inflated tunnel. At the far end they came into a brilliantly lit white room.

Saba flinched from the light. David wheeled and hid his face against Paula’s body. The other men stopped around her.

“Jesus, it’s like a furnace.”

A phalanx of people approached them, small, light-skinned people. Licking their smiles. They introduced themselves to Saba: a welcoming party from the Politburo of Crosby’s Planet. Hands pumped. Tanuojin went up beside his lyo, and everybody began talking insincerely in the Common Speech. They were in a cell along the edge of a vast white terminal. Paula went up to the rope that cordoned them off from the rest of the place. A crowd was gathering to stare at the Styths.

“What are they? Are they real?”

“That one must be almost eight feet high.”

David clung to her, his arms around her thighs. She blinked. It was warm here, and she unbuttoned the front of her coat. The people pressing up against the rope were pale and dark and brown, all short, like her. None of them even noticed her, their eyes on the Styths, the freaks. Their weight on the rope knocked over one of the standards.

“Mendoz’,” Sril said.

She let him take her back in among the crew. Someone murmured, “Here, little boy,” and Kany picked David up. They started off through the terminal. A string of policemen escorted them. In the midst of the Styths, Paula went along unnoticed. They took a moving stair down one level, to the Styths’ raucous amusement.

“You must be Paula Mendoza.”

A toothy man smiled at her, walking along beside her. Sril barged in between them. Before she could speak he had forced the white man away out of sight. She frowned up at the little gunner.

“I’m just doing my job,” he said, injured. “Don’t blow your rack at me.”

Paula clenched her teeth. She could hear an important voice up at the head of the herd, telling Saba how the Planet had been built. Past the men around her she caught glimpses of the lighted display windows of shops. The air smelled like wintergreen.

They came to a moving sidewalk, and the police were shoving back the crowds for them. People already massed the fast track of the sidewalk. With the Styths Paula stepped up from the curb onto the slow belt. The traveling band carried her along above the covered street, swarming with traffic. She looked up over her head. The white ceiling was pocked with lights and air vents and the speakers of the public address system. Tanuojin was behind her. He pushed her, and she went across the middle track to the fast one, passed Saba who was still in the middle, and dropped down beside him. Tanuojin had come along behind her. David was asleep in Saba’s arms.

The dark man who had met them made a dapper bow at her with his head. “Welcome to Crosby’s Planet, Mrs. Mendoza.” He had a robotic perfection of voice and mannerism.

“What did you call me?” she said.

“My wife is an anarchist,” Saba said. He took her by the shoulder, his favorite handle. “All thorns and no bloom.”

The robot released a peal of genuine-sounding laughter, as if Saba had made some witticism. Ahead, the moving sidewalk passed through a narrow gateway. On either side, in glass booths, men in uniforms stood facing them. The robot took a billfold from his neat black tunic and flipped it open to show a badge. They went through the gate without even stopping.

“What is that?” Tanuojin said. He looked back.

“A checkpoint,” she said.

“You mean they even tell these people where they can travel?”

“It isn’t that bad. It’s all done by statistics.”

Tanuojin laughed in a flash of shark-teeth. She wondered what he thought was funny. He said, “You know, I’m beginning to think we lead a very quiet life in Styth.”

They crossed a large open plaza, studded with trees in planters. The leaves were pale yellow. On the far side was the building where the Universal Court was held. The dapper man said, “We’ve arranged for you to stay at the Palestine Hotel, just around the corner—you’ll probably never have to leave this sector.” His voice was edged with warning. The moving sidewalk carried them past the plaza and they got off.

Inside the glass doors of the Palestine, a swarm of little men in red and gold jackets surrounded them. Saba passed out liberal amounts of money and signed many papers. Paula walked around the hotel lobby. The tile floor was inlaid with a stylized map of the Levantine Coast, the ancient cities marked in stars. A gold dromon sailed in the rippled sea.

They crowded into one car of the vertical train. Paula heard someone’s head strike the ceiling, and Marus swore, behind her. The car took them down six levels, very fast.

Tanuojin said, “I hope there’s some other way out of this place.”

“Stairs,” Saba said. “At either end of the hall.”

The robot had come with them. In the Common Speech, he said, “While you’re here, Akellar, consider our office at your disposal.” He gave Saba a plastic card. “We have copiers, a deaf-room, workrooms, taping rooms, guaranteed phones—” He led them out of the vertical and across a short corridor. “There are two other suites on this floor, but they open on the other side of the stack.” He opened the door before them with a little flourish. “I’m sure your privacy will be undisturbed.”

Paula went into the room beyond. The air smelled of freshener. The Styths poured noisily after her. David gave a sleepy wail. The big room was shaped like a half-moon, decorated all in black and white and clear acrylic. The mirror over the couch was curved to fit the wall. The men around her were reflected all along the wall, made taller and denser by the concave mirror. She went across to a door and opened it.

In the room beyond the lights came up very bright. There were two twin beds against the far wall of the room. She went back to the half-moon sitting room and opened the next door. This was a narrow kitchen. The tap leaked. She tried the third door off the sitting room and found the master bedroom.

Three hanging lamps like lanterns shone on when she crossed the threshold. The wide bed was covered in a tufted spread. She kicked her shoes off. The mirrors on two of the walls made the room seem even bigger than it was. A buzz sounded behind her. She pulled out a drawer in the wall and found a videone.

A pale face mouthed at her from the screen. She turned the volume up.

“—Messages here for you, if you’d like me to send them down.”

“Messages. From who?”

Tanuojin crowded her out of the way. “What’s this?”

She wandered off across the room. The light drenched her, the warmth, the richness of the carpet under her feet, the softness, as if the dark cold of Styth had dried her to a husk. David came in, yawning.

“Mama, I’m hungry.”

She looked through a side door into a dark bathroom. There were already footprints on the thick pale carpet. Her son pulled on her skirt.

“Mama!”

Tanuojin crossed the room toward her. “Who is Sybil Jefferson?” His face was bland.

Paula grunted at him. “You know damned well. Did she call? I wonder what she’s doing here.”

Saba walked in the doorway from the sitting room. His shirt was stained dark with sweat. “I’m hungry. Get us something to eat. And make them turn the heat down.”

Paula went over to the videone. When she pushed the top button, the screen lit up, off-white. She said into the phone, “Room service.”

“Yes. That is number 833. I’ll connect you.” The screen switched to an advertisement for hairsuds.

Sril was standing just behind her. “Mendoz’. Do they have women here?”

“You mean like the Nineveh? No.”

He made a face. The advertisement cut away to a rolling menu: roast beef, red pork, pilaf and mikambu and salmon mousse. She ordered it all.

“And a couple of gallons of chocolate ice cream.” The kitchen clerk was typing the whole order onto a computer terminal. “And a case of champagne.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the clerk said. “Real ice cream?”

“Yes. Where can he get laid?”

The clerk’s fingers never broke rhythm. “MH-111-1-15-77-3. Ask for Elsie.” He rolled the bill out of the machine. “Six roast beef, six ham, six—”

“Don’t read it, send it. Room 1017. Thank you.” She called the front desk and had them turn the air conditioning down to 50 degrees.

Saba and Tanuojin stood at the foot of the bed talking. David was asleep again on the floor. She dragged him out of the way of the men. Sril went out, repeating rapid-fire the address the kitchen clerk had given him. She hoped Elsie was cosmopolitan. She went up beside Saba.

“What about Sybil Jefferson?”

Saba glanced at her. He turned to Tanuojin, his chin thrust out. “See if you can raise the ship.”

“Tell her,” Tanuojin said. “What are you trying to do, Saba—you know if she takes to it she can escape. Do you want her to fly out when we’re in this up to the hairline?”

“Go raise Ybix, stud—leave her to me.” Saba poked him in the chest.

“You know so much about women, big man, I know more about her than you ever will.” Tanuojin headed for the door. In passing he knocked a hanging lamp swinging.

Saba turned on her. “What did he mean by that?”

“How would I know? He’s your friend.”

He charged out toward the sitting room. She followed, shutting the door so they would not wake David if they fought. In the black and white room, the rest of the crew was scattered around. Tanuojin tramped through them to the bedroom on the end and disappeared. Saba kicked at the baggage piled in the middle of the floor.

“Stow this. Bakan. Call the ship.”

Bakan passed Paula into the bedroom. Sril said, “Akellar, we were hoping we could get a leave.” The other men watched him hopefully. There was a knock on the door.

“Room service.”

In the next room, David cried, tearful, “Mama?” She went to answer him. His face was bleary with sleep. He held out his hands to her.

“Mama, I want to go home.”

“I know, David. I have a surprise for you.”

“I’m hungry.” Holding her hand, he went into the front room.

Three shining white hot-carts stood just inside the door. Styths ringed them. A lid clanged to the floor. She smelled the meat and her mouth sprang with water. Saba was in the doorway paying the waiters. Tanuojin came out of the far room and cursed his way through the thick of the other men. Paula crowded in between Sril and Marus. Someone stepped on her foot. She got a spoon, stooped, and reached between legs for a drum of ice cream.

David stood by the couch, rubbing his eyes. Grouchy, he looked around him. “I want to go home.”

“I know.” She sat him down on the couch and fed him a spoonful of chocolate ice cream.

He mouthed it, his face still caught in its fret, and swallowed. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth, and she gave him another bite. At the expression on his face she burst out laughing.

“Here.” She put the spoon into his hand. “Don’t make yourself sick.”

He hacked at the ice cream with the spoon. She stood up. The Styths were scattered around the room eating. She found a plate on the bottom shelf of a cart and forked up the last slice of beef. Saba came over beside her, flipped back another lid, and reached into a fruit salad.

They stood side by side, eating. One bin was half-full of succotash. He ate the beans and she ate the corn. After a while, he said, “Sybil Jefferson is at the Interplanetary Hotel.”

“Akellar.” Sril came around the carts, facing him, and stood at respect. “We’d really like a leave.”

“Just a second.” Saba raised his head, looking around at his crew. “You stay out of trouble. You remember that gate we came through, on the trudgeway? They have those all over this place. They can tell where you are within a five-hundred-yard radius, anywhere.” He ate fruit. “Go on.”

“Thank you, Akellar.” The room emptied of them. The door shut.

Saba was chewing something. “Pine—” he frowned, trying to remember. “Pinefruit?”

“Pineapple.”

“Pineapple.” He speared cubes of the yellow fruit on his claws.

Bakan put his head out the bedroom door. “Akellar, Kobboz has to talk to you.”

Saba went into the bedroom. Paula stuffed a leaf of crisp lettuce into her mouth, ate a radish, and looked in the small bins for dressing. Tanuojin stood next to her.

“I wish he’d take the cork out of his ass.”

Paula swallowed a dripping artichoke heart, slippery as a raw egg. “That was a sharp remark you made, before.”

“Yes. But true.” He chucked her under the chin and went off to his room.

When she had stuffed herself full, Saba was in the shower. She took off David’s chocolate-covered clothes and sent him in with his father. There was a directory in the videone panel; she called the Interplanetary Hotel.

A young man with an intense bushy mustache answered Jefferson’s extension. “Look, it’s two o’clock.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not on your time yet. Is Roland there? I’m Paula Mendoza.”

“Oh. Hold on.”

She stood listening to the rattle of the shower. The suite was quiet. Saba’s clothes hung over the edge of the bed.

“Mendoza.”

She turned back to the screen. Jefferson was putting herself into a garden-print kimono. Her face was barded with fat. “Sybil,” Paula said. “What are you doing here? You look awful.”

“I’m here on Council business, which is probably why. How are you?” Jefferson did up the hooks over her shelf of breast.

“I get along. Who’s our judge in the court?”

“Wu-wei. Do you know him?”

Paula pursed her lips. “Yes. This will be interesting.” She looked around the room, wondering if the place were tapped.

“Are you arguing the Styths’ case?” Jefferson asked.

“No. Tanuojin is. Saba’s lyo.”

“And the adversary is Chi Parine.”

Paula shook her head. “Blank.”

“I guess he’s too recent for you. He’s a Martian. In the past few years he’s been quite a little firebrand. He’s a member of the Sunlight League.”

“My my. What’s their case?”

“I don’t know.” Jefferson took a lace-edged hanky from her pocket and dabbed at her bad eye. “There’s been more show than law in it, so far. Frankly, nobody expected you to answer the subpoena. They were taken rather aback when you did.”

“I think we’ll take them all the way back to the ape,” Paula said. She glanced behind her at the shower. David was laughing. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Fine, Mendoza.”

Paula turned off the videone. The hiss of the shower half-drowned David’s giggles. She had met Wu-wei once, on the Earth; they had talked about music and ritual circumcision. She took off her clothes and went into the shower with Saba and David.

“We’re late.”

“They won’t start without us.” Tanuojin turned over the single long sheet of the hourly. “Where did they get these pictures of us?”

Saba led them down the corridor. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to be late.”

Paula broke into a trot to keep up. The rest of the crew was strung out along the corridor behind them. Painted apple-green, the inside of the court building reminded her of a school where her mother had sent her before she grew big enough to run away. They went through a set of double doors into the courtroom.

Spectators filled the back two-thirds of the room, which was also apple-green. All the heads turned. The racket of conversation hushed. Paula moved in between Saba and Tanuojin, where she would not be noticed. A railing separated the gallery from the Bench. To the right front of the judge’s table was a small crowd of seated people: the adversary. They were all Martians.

The Bench was vacant. Wu-wei wasn’t a man to wait in public. Saba bent to swing open the gate in the railing, and they went in to the left side of the court.

Paula took her coat off. The courtroom was warm even for her. She glanced at the adversary side and met five sets of unfriendly eyes. She recognized Chi Parine from his picture in the hourlies. He was a small man, in early middle age, his hair thinning back from his forehead. His clothes were flamboyant, a green tunic, yellow shoes.

“Why are all these people staring at us?” Bakan asked, behind her.

Saba pointed at the wall, and the five Styths lined up along it. Tanuojin sat down carefully in a straight chair. It was much too small for him. Saba half-sat on the railing.

A woman in a short dress came out the door behind the judge’s table. She knocked with her knuckles on the tabletop.

“Please rise for the Bench.”

Paula was still on her feet. Behind her, the gallery got noisily up, and the Martians stood, but Saba and Tanuojin stayed as they were. Wu-wei came in. He took his seat behind the table. Folding his hands in front of him, he aimed his yellow epicene face at Tanuojin. The audience slapped down into their chairs, and the Martians all sat but one.

Wu-wei said, “I assume you gentlemen are registering a protest of some kind. Would you care to express it now?” His velvet tenor voice reminded her of Pedasen.

Tanuojin sprawled long as a whip across the chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an Akellar of the Styth Empire. I only stand up for an Akellar who outranks me.”

“No,” Wu-wei said. He opened his paper file. “You’re just bad-mannered.” He turned to the bailiff. “Read the case.”

The woman who had announced him stood and read off the charges and the names of the people involved. She managed to mispronounce both the Styth names and the name of the ship. Paula went over beside Tanuojin’s chair and sat on her heels. She glanced at Chi Parine, who was watching her narrowly. To Tanuojin, she said, “Ask them for bigger chairs.” Surprised, she sniffed at the metal taint in the air. “Tanuojin. You’re afraid.”

He twisted to look back at Saba. Slumping forward again, he whacked her in the side with his elbow. “Get away from me.”

Parine was up on his feet, his chest thrown out. He reminded her of Machou, displaying in the hall of the Akopra. “Your Excellency, I want to protest the defenser’s churlish behavior. This is a civilized proceeding. If these—” he waved at the Styths—“people don’t intend to abide by our laws, they shouldn’t have come here.”

Several spectators clapped. Wu-wei banged his knuckles on the table.

“I think I’ve already noted that the defenser is being defiant and hostile. Perhaps as he comes to know us, he’ll take to us a little more. I understand you have some bills, Parine.”

“Indeed we do, Your Excellency.” Parine strutted up to the Bench. “We are bringing a bill to disqualify Paula Mendoza from the defense.”

Paula went back to the railing and sat on it, beside Saba. The spectators murmured. They sounded eager. Saba looked around at them.

“That’s an unusual bill,” Wu-wei said.

“Your Excellency, this is an unusual case. The charges have been brought against these two men.” Parine gestured toward the Styths. “They have chosen, wisely or not as time will tell, to argue in their own defense. Miss Mendoza works for the Committee for the Revolution. The laws of the court require that third parties to a case declare their interest before the case opens. The Committee has declared no interest in this case—”

Tanuojin was unfolding himself out of the chair. He rose up to his full height, and Parine faltered, distracted. He wheeled back toward the Bench.

“The Committee hasn’t declared any interest. Therefore Miss Mendoza has no right in the case.”

Wu-wei was writing on his worksheet. Paula stared at Tanuojin’s back. His shirt was sticking to him. She expected him to come over to the rail, to talk it over, but he watched Parine. The little lawyer put his hands on his hips, his arms sticking out, and swaggered back toward his chair.

“Defenser, do you have an argument?” Wu-wei said.

“I don’t need an argument.” Tanuojin walked along the midline between their side of the room and Parine’s. “He needs the arguments. He hasn’t proved she still works for the Committee.”

Parine bellied up to him. “She’s never resigned. The first person she called in Crosby’s Planet was Sybil Jefferson.”

Paula muttered, under her breath. So their suite was tapped.

“Ask her if she works for the Committee.”

“The Committee is accustomed to operate sub rosa—”

Wu-wei tapped his knuckles on the table. “Parine, I’ll ask her myself.”

Sulky, Parine said, “Request permission to withdraw the bill.”

Wu-wei nodded and bent to mark his worksheet. Tanuojin sauntered across his side of the court. He slid his hands under his belt. He was warming to it. Parine turned to the Bench again.

“Your Excellency, we have another bill—”

Tanuojin went to his chair and put one foot up on it. Parine was arguing to set a time limit on the trial. With many fine gestures he laid out a dozen reasons for his bill. At the height of his discourse, Tanuojin leaned on his chair and broke it.

The people sitting in the gallery behind Paula gasped. Wu-wei threw his head back, and Parine wheeled. Tanuojin said, in the silence, “Bring me something I can sit on.”

Parine’s face flushed bright red. “Your Excellency—”

Wu-wei said, “Parine, this is my courtroom. The bailiff will supply the defenser with a suitable chair. Two suitable chairs.” He looked at Tanuojin. His soft, ageless face was expressionless. “I’ll call a recess until fourteen while we arrange the furniture.” He rapped on the table. “Akellar, come here, please.”

Saba slid off the railing. He took Paula’s hand. “Let’s go—I’m hungry.”

Tanuojin got her by the other arm. “No, leave her with me, I need her.”

Saba’s jaw clenched. Without a word he vaulted the rail and went down the aisle toward the door, brushing aside the people in his way. Sril, Bakan, and Trega followed him. Paula watched him go.

“I think the Man is jealous,” Tanuojin said, under his breath.

Paula glanced up at him. She went toward the Bench, passing Chi Parine, who was putting away notebooks in a papercase. When her back was to him, Parine said, soft, “Where do you hide the puppet strings?”

She pretended not to hear him. Wu-wei was smoothing his worksheet down with the flat of his hand. Tanuojin came over beside her, facing the judge.

“You wanted me?”

“No,” Wu-wei said. “But I have you, by the jug-luck.” He looked at Paula. “I’m an easy man, as long as I’m amused. I don’t mind slack manners but I won’t stand violence. If that happens again, I will pack and leave, and none of us will get what we came here for.” He got up and went out the side door.

Paula snorted. She turned to go. Tanuojin said, “The she-man thinks you’re the master mind.”

“They don’t seem to respect your intelligence.”

The last of the spectators were leaving out the door. Marus and Kany came up on Paula’s free side. They walked along the green corridor. She skipped a stride to keep up with them. The long hall streamed with people.

“What do you think of Parine?” Tanuojin asked.

“He’ll probably sharpen up.”

They went out the doors and across the plaza. Her heels clacked on the pavement. She was still unused to the gravity and walking was a chore. She looked around the broad plaza for Saba. A man loped along a few feet away, a camera up to his face. She jerked her head straight.

When they returned to the courtroom, there were two oversized padded armchairs on their side of the rail. Saba and Tanuojin did not stand for Wu-wei’s entrance, and the audience booed them. Parine argued an obscure point of evidence supporting his bill for a time limit to the trial. His four assistants sat in a line along the rail, two young men, two young women, their legs crossed right over left. Halfway through the lecture, the redheaded woman on the end of the line rearranged her legs left over right, and the others copied her, one after the other.

Parine said, “Because whatever euphemisms the radical fringe might employ, the friction between Mars and the Styth Empire amounts to a war. To stretch out this trial as long as the defense cares to would make this courtroom another battlefield of that war, which is surely not the court’s or our intention.” When he sat down several people scattered through the gallery clapped with vigor.

“Defenser?” Wu-wei said.

“Just a moment.” Tanuojin swung around toward Paula, who was leaning against the railing behind the two Styths. “What is he talking about?”

He spoke the Common Speech, and he did not lower his voice. Paula folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. I think he’s just shoveling dirt.”

Tanuojin straightened around in his chair. “I don’t care,” he said to Wu-wei. “Make it as short as you like. You’d make it even shorter if that little niggerman wouldn’t use six times the words he needs.”

Parine’s pale Martian cheeks went ruddy. The crowd erupted into boos and catcalls and stamped their feet on the floor. Saba turned to look them over, his face pensive. Paula gave a little shake of her head. Tanuojin was determined to make everybody hate him. Wu-wei nodded at the bailiff, who rang a handbell until the people in the gallery quieted and sat down.

Wu-wei raised his silky voice. “The trial will also run a good deal shorter if the gallery will not take the defenser’s baits. I accept the bill.”

Parine locked his hands behind his back. He fixed Tanuojin with an icy look. “We will now introduce a bill for a declaration of evidence.”

Paula straightened, unfolding her arms. The Martian lawyer paraded around his side of the court, his eyes on Tanuojin. “In the interests of the time limit, we are offering to submit an outline of our case, provided defenser is as forthcoming, and reduce the points of controversy.”

Tanuojin got out of his chair. He put his back to Parine and bent, his hands on the arms of Paula’s chair, to talk into her ear. “What is this?” Now he was speaking Styth.

“It’s usually done the other way,” she said. “The defenser offers to limit the case to one or two points of controversy.” She tapped her fingers on her knees. “Don’t accept it. Make them talk about it, maybe we can find something out.”

He glanced at Parine. Straightening, he flexed his long hands at his sides, unsheathing his claws. He sauntered around their side of the courtroom. Everybody was watching him, even Wu-wei, his hands folded neatly before him.

“If you want,” Tanuojin said. “There were two ships killed at Luna, that watch. I ordered the shooting from Ybix, and the rest of the charges are false. That ought to limit the points of controversy.”

Parine sat down in his chair. He plucked at the knees of his doe-gray trousers. “You’re in advance of yourself, aren’t you? The question isn’t one of issues yet, just procedure.”

“Oh.” Tanuojin circled past the Bench. “I’ll try not to confuse the case with the facts. How do I know we need your evidence declared?”

Parine turned his head away, insouciant. The young redheaded woman stood up before her chair. She spoke to the Bench. “We are not offering evidence itself, but an outline of our case. Of course, if the defenser is so willing to admit to the crimes as charged—”

“Object,” Paula said. “That isn’t what he said.”

Tanuojin shook his head at her. He walked slowly down the midline of the room, patrolling his boundary. He swayed to keep from hitting the white china lamp hanging from the ceiling, and the crowd murmured. Saba frowned.

“I don’t need your case,” Tanuojin said. “I know my evidence.” His bassoon voice was softer than before, as if he were uncertain.

Wu-wei said, “The defenser is obviously not familiar with the procedure. I’ll ask the adversary to restate his bill.”

The redheaded woman started toward the Bench. “Your Excellency, our evidence is exclusively documentary. If the defenser’s case is compatible, we can dispose of the adversary presentment in a matter of hours.”

Tanuojin strolled up between her and the judge’s table. Still talking, she backed away from him, and he took a step toward her. The redheaded woman braced herself. “Bench, tell this man not to chase me around.”

Paula put her hand over her mouth. Tanuojin walked away from the Martian woman, veering around the lamp. His back to the Bench, he said, “I don’t need his case. I know what happened at Luna. If he says something else happened, he’s lying. I don’t have to know the substance of a lie.”

Wu-wei knocked on the table. “Decline Parine’s bill of declaration.” He looked irritated.

Another of Parine’s staff bobbed out of his chair. His voice was high-pitched with indignation. “Bench, we object to the defenser’s behavior. Defenser is resorting to the coarsest tactics, including physical intimidation.” His voice quivered. “We’d like the Bench to state that he will use contempt procedures to control behavior in this courtroom.”

Saba leaned toward her across the arm of his chair. “I thought you said they’d have General Gordon.”

She shrugged one shoulder, her gaze on Parine, who was inspecting his own trim little hands. “That’s what I thought.”

Wu-wei was watching them. His face was smoothly expressionless again. Tanuojin went off on another tour of their half of the courtroom. Wu-wei said, “I have my doubts about the contempt citation, as I’m sure you know, but if the defenser agrees to it, I’ll consider the use.”

Tanuojin came up behind his chair and leaned on the back. “Against me only, or them too?”

“Against the offense as well,” the little judge said.

Parine bounced onto his feet. “We’re people of principle, sir, we don’t—”

Tanuojin said, “I’ve never met but one nigger with principles, and her principle is she has no principles.”

The audience roared. A voice in the back called, “Throw the black bastard out.” Marus and Kany left the wall and came up along the rail, between their chief and the crowd.

“I can assure you, Tanuojin,” Wu-wei said, “I am a man of no principles whatsoever.” The corners of his mouth tipped up in a V of a smile.

Parine had gone back to consult with the redheaded woman and another aide. He returned to the Bench. “Your Excellency, we have a bill of—”

Wu-wei leaned forward. “Parine, it’s almost seventeen hours. Before we get involved in another of these choreographs of yours, I’ll recess until nine tomorrow, so you won’t be rushed for time.” He knocked on the table. The rest of the courtroom, all but Tanuojin, heaved to its feet, and the judge went out through the back door into his office.

Paula rubbed her hands together, glad to be finished for the day. Parine’s staff was putting away papers. Tanuojin stood frowning at the floor.

A voice screamed from the back of the court: “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”

Paula went to the gate in the railing. A dozen spectators were crowded along it, yelling at Tanuojin. When she went through the gate, a fat woman turned on her. “You, too.” And raised her purse and struck her.

Marus went sideways into the fat woman, who fell hard, screeching. “He attacked me!” Three men in dark gray uniforms hustled her away. Paula turned her back. The police cleared out the courtroom.

Saba came through the railing. “You’re supposed to be watching her, too,” he said to Marus.

Paula went off down the aisle toward the doors. Saba and Tanuojin ranged up alongside her. The Styths came after her. Marus said to both of them, “I’m sorry, Akellar, I didn’t think—”

“Don’t try,” Tanuojin said. He went ahead of them all out the door.

Saba and Tanuojin started to argue on the way back to the hotel. Paula dropped behind them to stay out of their way. The other Styths trailed her. In the lobby, crossing the map in the floor, the two men kept still, but when she and Saba and Tanuojin were alone in the vertical car Saba swung around, his eyes flattened, and said, “You’re supposed to be a lawyer. You’re handling this like a hack.”

“Could you do it?”

“Better than you.” Saba crowded against her, pushing her toward the other man. “Tell him.” She stared straight ahead, uncomfortable in the heat of their tempers.

The vertical door opened and they went into the black and white sitting room of their suite. David ran to meet them. Saba snarled at Tanuojin, and the little boy veered away from him. His smile wilted.

“This snappy little stud lawyer is making fools out of us because of you.”

Paula led David by the hand into the big bedroom. His hands were grimy; he said something about a green yard where he had played in water. Sril had taken him to the park. Saba tramped in behind her.

“What are you fighting about?” she said to Saba.

“He’s botching the case.” The big Styth dropped flat across the bed. “This place makes me feel crazy. Trapped.”

She had spilled something on the front of her dress at lunch. She scraped at it with her fingernail. “It’s all the people.”

“What’s that whore’s address?”

“One-one-one something. Ask Sril.” She crooked her arm up behind her to unhook the back of the dress. “I think he’s doing well. He doesn’t know the court, he has to see how much the Bench will let him get away with.” She pulled the dress down over her hips, shivering in the cold, and turned to the closet for her robe. Saba was still lying on the bed, staring at her body. She turned her back to him. In the mirror she watched him roll up to his feet and stride out of the room.

She called Sybil Jefferson, to find out about General Gordon. Jefferson looked sleepy. Paula said, “What, did I get you up again?” and the fat woman shook her head.

“I haven’t been to bed yet.”

“Oh.” Paula wondered what her business was with the Council. “I’ll keep it short. Where is General Gordon?”

“Dead,” Jefferson said. “A heart attack. Electrically inspired.”

“Hunh. When was this?”

“Just a few months ago. The information isn’t in general release. I don’t really know much about it, dear girl, why don’t you ask Wylie?”

Paula grunted. That was Richard Bunker. “Where is he—on the Earth?”

“No—he’s here. You know he has an interest in you and the Styths.”

“How can I get in touch with him?”

“Don’t try. I’ll have him call you. Is that all?”

“That’s all.” Paula turned off the videone.

She took a shower. Without General Gordon, Parine had no case. They had misjudged the Styths. It would be instructing to see how long it took the Martians to adjust their prejudices. While she was standing in the hot mist of the shower washing her hair, David climbed into the stall with her. She washed him and dried them both off with a white towel. The child’s body was round and sweet. She hugged him, and he put his arms around her neck.

In the bedroom, Tanuojin stood at the videone, talking to someone on the screen. She put on her robe and got David into his shorts, but he refused to wear a shirt. Tanuojin shut off the videone.

“That was your friend Bunker. He’s meeting us at the Committee office at twenty-one hours. He says this place is wired.”

“Probably.” She found clean clothes. “You’ve met him, haven’t you? You know who he is.”

“Yes. The man who sent that listening device inboard Ybix at Luna and started this.” He paced around the room, his hands under his belt. David was struggling with the latch of the door. Tanuojin said, “Your friends are as bad as you are.”

“Don’t call them my friends. When anarchists are friends it means they fuck each other.”

“You’re the only people in the Universe who could make ‘friend’ into an obscenity.”

Her arms roughened in the cold. She put on her clothes, shivering. David finally realized he had to turn the door latch; he darted out to the next room.

“Where did Saba go?” Tanuojin said.

“To the whorehouse.”

“Damn him.”

She put on a sweater and a jacket. In the mirror his image paced across the room, swerving to miss the lamps. His long hollow face was gnawed with bad temper. She reached for her comb.

“I’m not doing that bad. In the court,” he said.

“You’re doing fine.”

“Who’s listening in on us? Parine? Do you think he speaks Styth? Somebody there must.”

He never stopped moving; his restless pacing took him around the room. She felt the burden of the Planet around them, the pressure of its millions and millions of lives. She kept her eyes on her own face in the mirror and combed out her bush of brass hair.

“Damn him, he’s totally irresponsible,” Tanuojin said. “When I need him he goes off to an orgy.”

“Let him alone,” Paula said. She veered across the low-ceilinged street to read the markings on the corner building. Above the address, a plaque set into the wall read

WARNING: This building protected by Sentry Security—guard your home—hire a Sentry

They turned the corner. The street was empty of people. It was lined with people’s homes, what in Crosby’s Planet they called a dormitory area. Every few feet down the gray walls on either side was a door or a window, alternating, identical, except for the changing numbers.

“Let him alone,” Tanuojin said, sneering. “If I let him alone, do you know what he’d do? Do you know what he was like when I met him?” They went up a moving stairway. Through the gap between the step and the rail, she looked down into another stairway, on the next level below.

At the top of the stair was a gate, beside the gate an enclosed booth for the guards. Tanuojin passed their identification in through the little revolving door in the window. The guards were staring at him. Paula hung back by the grillwork of the gate. Tanuojin would not let her carry the little plastic card Saba had made up for her on the ship’s computer. The gate clicked, and they moved into the street beyond. They went down a trunk street, empty like all the others, reading the numbers of the doors, and crossed a white line into a sector darkened for the artificial night. The only light came from the display windows of shops in either wall, where pale-skinned mannequins showed off clothes of feathers, of green plants, and metal.

“He’s a whore,” Tanuojin said. “He’ll lie down for anybody.”

“Maybe he enjoys it.”

“You won’t be so broad-minded when he catches you with his wife.”

She swerved over to the side of the street. In the wall white letters marked the office of the Committee for the Revolution. The door was locked.

“Don’t tell him about that,” she said. Bunker was nowhere in sight.

“Then keep sweet with me. What are we supposed to do, wait outside?”

“No. Give me that card.”

He gave her his fleet card and she used it to shim the lock. She reached for the latch. His hand caught her wrist. Startled, she looked up at his face, and he flung her off into the street and dodged back.

A muffled crack sounded. The door shook. Waist-high in the middle panel a ragged hole appeared. Paula rolled over to her hands and knees. Tanuojin launched himself shoulder-first at the door and through it into the office.

The door slammed against the wall with a splintering crack. A Martian voice cried, “Watch out!” The inside ceiling lights came on bright as sunlight. Paula got up, breathing a coppery stench that made her heart gallop. Shots like sticks breaking crackled inside the office. A bloody man staggered across the threshold and fell on his face in the street. He had a gun in his hand, and she stooped and took it. His shredded Martian tunic was dark with blood. Suddenly his body flew backward feet-first into the office. She whirled.

“Come in here,” Tanuojin said. “Turn these lights down.”

She went into the waiting room of the Committee office. Under a glaring ceiling, three other men lay on the tawny carpet. Tanuojin’s hands and the forearms of his sleeves shone with blood. She found the light switch and turned off all the lights but one.

“There’s one more,” Tanuojin said, shutting the door. “Down the hall. He has your friend Bunker, but he’ll probably shoot at me first. Are you all right?”

She nodded. Bent double, she went from one Martian to the next; they were all dead, all their eyes were open wide. When Tanuojin faced her, she saw a ragged hole in his shirt over his chest.

“You were hit.”

“I’m fixing it.” He went to the door behind the desk and opened it.

She watched him go into the corridor beyond. She knew what would happen. Three shots banged out from the end of the hall. Tanuojin went toward the gun, his hands at his sides. Paula went into the hallway behind him. The Martian crouched in the doorway at the end of the hall let out a screech and shot once more, and the Styth reached him.

Behind him, on the floor, Dick Bunker lay tied up like a market hen. Paula brushed by Tanuojin, who let the Martian drop.

“Richard.” She knelt by the bound man. “I didn’t think you fell into things like this.”

She picked out the knot with her fingers and teeth. Tanuojin said, behind her, “Is he hurt?” His voice was thick, as if with pain. Still on one knee, she twisted to face him. The door beside her was open and the light spilled out, glittering on the side of his face. His cheek was laid open down to the white bone. The wound was healing so fast she could see the meat growing. There was no blood.

“No.” she said. She glanced at Bunker. “He’s sound.”

Bunker was untangling himself from the rope. His eyes never left Tanuojin. The stink of blood was heavy over the fading coppery taint. Tanuojin’s face had healed to a thin gray scar. His eye above it looked swollen and he pawed at it with his hand. He was splattered with blood. None of it was his.

“We have to get out of here,” she said. “You can’t walk around the streets like that, there must be a washroom.”

They found a washroom at the end of the hall. The ceiling lights came up.

“He’s going with us,” Tanuojin said. Just inside the door, Paula stopped to dim the lights. Bunker walked in a circle around the blind end of the washroom, his hands in his hip pockets.

“Where?”

“To Uranus,” Tanuojin said. He unbuckled his belt and stripped off his shirt and gave them to Paula. Leaning on his arms on the washbasin, he slumped a moment, his head hanging. She realized he was tired. She turned his shirt inside out, to hide the blood. Bunker was watching from the dim back of the room.

“I’m not going to Uranus.”

“You’re her friend.” The water pounded into the basin. Tanuojin scrubbed his hands. “Otherwise I’d kill you.”

“Tell us about General Gordon,” Paula said to Bunker.

The water ran pink down the drain. Tanuojin said, “I don’t care what he says. He knows about me. I won’t let him go.”

Paula looked across his bent back at the other anarchist. Their eyes met. Tanuojin put on his shirt and she handed him his belt.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Yes.” He got Bunker by the shoulder again and steered him out the door.

They went down to the rail bus. There was a train in the platform; they went through it until they found an almost empty car. The lights glared on and off. At the far end of the car, a man sat staring at his hourly, ignoring the Styth twenty feet away. Tanuojin yawned.

Beyond Tanuojin, Bunker raised his head. “General Gordon,” he said, staring across the car. “After you shot up Luna, he was kicked down and jailed. Where he seems to have jellied.” He was using Styth, which he spoke badly. “A writer disguised as a priest got to him and encouraged him to, unh, confess. The priest recorded the whole thing on a pocket tape, which he managed to smuggle out of Luna.”

Tanuojin transferred his grip from Bunker’s shoulder to his wrist. Bunker jumped, and his mouth shut. His glance licked at Paula.

“Keep talking,” Tanuojin said.

Bunker looked away down the car. “Anyhow, the priest converted back to a writer, and sold the tape to a publisher in London, who decided it was entirely too ripe for the masses and sold it back to Luna—General Marak—for three and a half million dollars in virgin iron. General Gordon caught a buzz. The writer overdosed. The publisher’s air car crashed outside the dome, and the pollution killed him.”

Tanuojin thumbed down his mustaches. The bright lights made him squint. Paula leaned forward to see Bunker. “But Marak has the tape.”

“Apparently there are copies. I’ve never seen one, I don’t know anybody who has.”

Paula glanced at the man at the far end of the car. Now he was watching them from behind his hourly. Tanuojin said, “Now that interests me,” and yawned again.

“I don’t know anything more,” Bunker said. He slid down slumped on the bench, his wrist caught in the Styth’s grasp. “This is the first time I’ve heard that Gordon said anything about the Ybix incident. The bomb was his version of the ’49 coup. And the things he knew about people still in power. Not the least being Cam Savenia.”

The bus lurched around a curve. Paula looked up at the ceiling. The glaring lights hurt her eyes. “Maybe we can find a copy of the tape.” The checkpoint was coming, and the bus slowed.

“That might take time,” the Styth said. He let go of Bunker and fingered his fleet card and Paula’s out of his left sleeve. The lights flickered. Bunker sat relaxed on the bench, his eyes down, showing no interest in escape.

The bus stopped. The police came into the car and walked toward them: a young man and an old one. “Badges?” Tanuojin gave them the cards. The two men handed them back and forth between them. When the young man gave them back to Tanuojin, he saluted.

“Master commander. Hope you enjoy your stay here.” He turned to Bunker. “Badge.”

The anarchist rose, taking a folder from his hip pocket, and held it out. Paula said, “That badge is forged.”

Tanuojin shot to his feet. The old man snatched the folder from Bunker, and the young one drew his gun. The old man ran the badge through a pocket scanner.

“It is a forgery!”

“Hold it,” Tanuojin said. “He’s mine.”

The young man’s gun jabbed at Bunker. “Spreadeagle. You’re under arrest. You’re responsible for everything you say or do henceforth.” His partner took out his gun and aimed it at Tanuojin.

“You stay out of this, Commander.”

Bunker moved down the car and put his hands on the wall. Tanuojin said, “I’m warning you—” Paula pulled on his sleeve.

“Be careful.”

He struck her arm away. One policeman was groping down Bunker’s sides. The old man pointed the bell-shaped muzzle of his gun at Tanuojin’s stomach. “You keep out of this, or I’ll be forced to shoot.”

The young man turned around, his nose wrinkling. “What’s that smell?”

Tanuojin took a step toward Bunker. Paula got in his way. “If they shoot you,” she said, under her breath, “everybody on Crosby’s Planet will know about you.”

His face gleamed with sweat. He stood rigid while the policemen took Bunker out of the car.

“Don’t worry,” Paula said. “He won’t say anything. Who would believe him?”

His look made her flinch. He sat down beside her on the bench. All the way back to the hotel, he said nothing to her at all.

Saba was not there when they reached the hotel. He had not come back when they left the next morning for the courtroom. Tanuojin cursed him all the way there. Paula bought an hourly from a stand just outside the court building. The Ybix—Luna Case was still in the right top headline. They went into the courtroom. Tanuojin sat down in his chair, scowling.

“Do you know where he is?” Paula asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he safe?”

“Yes.”

She took the hourly out of her pocket and unfolded it. There was no sense worrying about Saba. Below the story about the Styths was a headline in lighter print. The Council had voted to send a peacekeeping force to Venus 14, to settle the civil war there. Maybe that was why Jefferson was in Crosby’s Planet. Meddling Roland. She looked over the top edge of the hourly at Chi Parine’s aides, sitting in their row opposite her. Now the little lawyer himself came out of Wu-wei’s office, behind the courtroom, and took his place on the adversary side. He wore a yellow vest, bright as a daffodil.

Wu-wei came in, and everybody stood but Tanuojin. The audience howled until the bailiff rang for order. Chi Parine advanced swaggering toward the Bench.

“Your Excellency, there is a very serious charge being made against one party of this court.”

Paula straightened her face. She put the hourly into the pocket of her jacket. Wu-wei glanced at Tanuojin and said, “Parine, I hope you aren’t about to use my time and space for a hyde-park.”

“Your Excellency, this is entirely relevant.” Parine gestured with an outstretched hand, and an aide hurried forward with two sheets of paper. He gave one to the Bench and brought the other across the room to Paula. Parine said, “I am giving you a record of a heinous crime. A horrible crime. Of which the defenser is certainly not ignorant.”

The paper was a list of four names, addresses, ages, and causes of death. Parine spoke with relish. His voice boomed through the room.

“These four men were murdered last night. They were slaughtered, brutally and efficiently, at the office of the Committee for the Revolution.” The rapt crowd murmured. “They were slashed to pieces, as if by the claws of a powerful animal.” The crowd gave up its breath in a sensuous gasp.

“Bench,” Paula said, “would you mind requiring the adversary to show how all this is relevant?”

Wu-wei smoothed down the worksheet on the table before him with the flat of his hand. “I’ll accept that request. Parine?”

Parine stalked toward Tanuojin, who sat moveless in his chair, his head propped up on his fist. “The guards passed at least one Styth into that sector and out again, at times bracketing the time of the murder. Are you willing to surrender that man for questioning?”

“If you like,” Tanuojin said. His voice was mild. “It was me.”

The audience fell silent. Parine’s forehead creased into a frown. Tanuojin unfolded himself out of the chair. “I’m an Akellar of the Empire. I don’t savage people in alleyways.”

Wu-wei’s lips were curved into a pensive bow. His gaze went to Tanuojin’s hands. Parine said, “I don’t believe it was you. Your—colleague isn’t here. Why not? Because he’s recovering?”

Paula leaned forward in her chair. “Parine, do you have any actual evidence of any of this?”

“Your Excellency.” Parine rushed forward toward the Bench. “These four men were murdered in a manner that only a Styth could employ. One of the defense panel is missing, obviously another casualty. Since it happened at the Committee office, and these people are so well connected with the anarchists, we have no hard evidence—”

Tanuojin said, “If there really is a connection between what happened there and here, it’s between those four niggers and this one.” He waved his hand at Parine.

Parine said, “Your Excellency—” and the Bench shook his head at him.

“No, Parine. No more argument. Obviously I am the only one of us who doesn’t know what happened at the Committee office. Since neither of you wants to enlighten me, I can’t rule on your motion.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “I’m finding you both in contempt. I’ll charge you each half a day for wasting my time and trying my patience.”

Tanuojin’s head snapped up. “I resent being called a liar.”

“I resent being lied to.”

Parine hurried forward. His flushed face clashed with his yellow vest. “Your Excellency, I consider this a grounds for protesting the conduct of the entire trial.”

“Your prerogative, Mr. Parine.” The little judge banged on the table. “I’ll break for lunch. Until fourteen o’clock. Don’t bother to sit, Tanuojin.” He walked out the little door in the wall behind his table.

Parine said, “I’ve never seen such bias in a court of this rank.” Among his staff, papercases snapped closed in a series of reports like gunshots. Tanuojin’s eyes closed. He put his head back, his hands at his sides, tired.

“I see a few of the raiding party are missing,” Parine said.

“Yes,” Tanuojin said, “but now we have General Gordon, white boy, and General Marak and Cam Savenia and you are going to wish we didn’t.”

Paula went around the table to the door to the judge’s office and knocked.

“Come in,” Wu-wei called.

She turned the latch. Wu-wei was standing at the desk on the far side of the small half-round room. He said, “Oh. Mendoza. Come in.”

She crossed the room. On the wall behind him were three or four Japanese woodcuts of women bathing and combing their hair. The little yellow judge sat down behind his desk.

“I’ll warn you, Mendoza, the past two days’ experience has not inclined me toward your people.”

“Don’t blame us for the ambush at the Committee office.” She nodded at the woodcuts. “Those are beautiful. Are they originals?” The black and white studies were of the style called “the floating world,” delighting in the ordinary.

“Yes,” he said. “ ‘Ambush’ is rather a suggestive word.”

She looked from the prints to the smooth face of the judge. “Yes, ambush. Dick Bunker is in jail on a charge of forgery in that sector. He’ll tell you what happened.” She went back out to the courtroom.

Tanuojin had gone. She stopped, surprised: Saba was sitting in the chair his lyo had been using. She crossed to the other of the big armchairs.

“Where were you? Not at prayers.”

“You two didn’t seem to need me.” He looked around the courtroom. Even in recess the audience still packed the gallery chairs. They sat eating lunches they had brought, a hundred faces moving around mouthfuls of food. Saba said, “Is he hotted up at me?”

“He’s yours, not mine. I don’t know what he thinks.”

“What has happened? Are you still going through the maneuvers with this cockspur lawyer?”

“Yes, here. The big events are all outside the courtroom.” She told him about the fight at the Committee office and General Gordon’s confession. “So we are acting as if we have the tape. To see how that makes Parine jump.”

“A fight. Was he hurt?”

“Momentarily.” She nodded past him toward the big doors at the back of the courtroom. “Here he comes.”

Tanuojin walked down the aisle, his men at his back, ignoring the hisses and insults of the crowd on either side. He swung the gate open, gave Saba a brief angry look, and came over to Paula, in the other armchair.

“Get up.”

She stayed in place as long as she dared, about fifteen seconds, and gave up the chair to him. Saba was looking off in another direction. While she brought a straight chair from the wall to the space between the armchairs, Parine led his staff down the aisle, his chest puffed round under the sunlight-yellow vest, the heavy raised heels of his shoes tap-tapping on the floor. The bailiff stood up.

“Please rise for the Bench.”

Paula stood. Everybody else but the Styths got up in a clatter of feet and chairs. Abruptly, Saba straightened onto his feet. He tapped Tanuojin on the shoulder.

“Get up. I outrank you.”

Tanuojin threw him a look white with temper. He put his feet under him and stood. A mutter ran through the audience, swelling to a roar of comment, and a few people clapped. Wu-wei sat down behind his table. Parine went forward, bristling.

“Your Excellency, this is rank theatrics—”

Paula sat. She glanced at Saba, who was smiling. Wu-wei said mildly, “First you complain when they don’t stand, now you complain when they do. Bailiff, read the case.”

The bailiff read the case. Paula could hear the nervous click of Tanuojin’s claws on the arm of his chair. Saba murmured, “It’s damned hot in here.”

“I know,” Tanuojin said. “They’ve turned the heat up.”

Among Parine’s staff, a young man stood, a paper in his hand. “Bench, in view of some recent developments, we’d like a twenty-four-hour extension.”

The crowd groaned. Tanuojin leaned forward. His shirt clung to his back. “So you can change your lie?”

The Martian gave him a harried glance and turned back to the Bench. “Your Excellency—” Parine brushed by him, headed for Tanuojin.

“We have three twenty-four-hour extensions on demand, by right.” He glared at the Styth, still in his chair. “Learn the law, black boy.”

“Don’t push me,” Tanuojin said. He got up, his head turning toward Wu-wei. “They waived their right to extensions when they set a limit to the time.”

“Maybe by your backwater laws,” Parine said. His face was red as a kettle. “But here—”

Tanuojin jerked around to face him. Parine’s voice clogged up. They stared at each other an instant. Saba barged in between them. He got Parine by the arm and swung him around. Paula took her fingers out of her mouth. Parine in a flashy show of strength flung off Saba’s grip.

“Your Excellency—”

Saba put his broad back between the lawyer and the judge. “Are you going to let him drain our time?”

“I’ll keep the time, Akellar,” Wu-wei said. “I’ll grant Parine’s extension and extend the case. Akellar?” He looked past Saba at Tanuojin.

The tall Styth got up out of his chair. He was hot; his face shone with sweat. “Do whatever you want. Keep us here until we cook.” He strode toward the rail.

“Tanuojin,” Wu-wei said. “If you walk out I’ll find you in contempt.”

At the railing, Tanuojin wheeled around to face him, but his furious gaze went to Saba. He spun and marched out of the courtroom. His men trailed him. The crowd booed him thunderously. The bailiff rang her bell, trying to quiet them.

Wu-wei said, “We’ll stand in recess until ten tomorrow.”

Parine was watching him expectantly. The little judge closed his workbook, and the Martian leaped forward.

“Your Excellency, may I remind Your Excellency of the contempt charge—”

Wu-wei’s round yellow face turned up. “I’m not finding him in contempt, Parine, I see no reason to do something that won’t work.” He stood, gathering his notes, and left.

Parine glared at the judge’s back. He and Paula exchanged a barbed look. Saba took her arm. They went down the aisle, through the crowd. A small woman hovered before them, her gray hair decorated with blue plastic birds. “Thank you,” she said to Saba.

He smiled at her. Paula looked at the packed rapt faces of the crowd. Unnoticed, she followed him out to the corridor. In the tail of her eye, something moved toward him, a hand, a gun—when she turned, her nerves shivering, it was only a camera.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said. Crosby’s Planet seemed to be fraying Tanuojin’s nerves even worse than hers.

“Watch me,” Saba said. He went off across the plaza.

Hedges shielded the broad meadow of the park from the streets all around it. The plastic grass was flushed with artificial sunlight. She walked across the lawn, past the fountain. Two boys were throwing a ball back and forth. A brown and white dog ran between them, barking. David was climbing around in the fountain, fully clothed. She watched him scramble up the water spout. His shirt bellied out, full of water. His black skin shone.

“Mendoz’!”

Sril was sitting under a tree. She plopped down next to him on her stomach. Crumpled papers surrounded him, smeared with mustard and minji sauce. She gathered them up.

“I see you’re keeping fed.” She found an ice-cream stick and skewered the wrappers to the ground. The spongy plastic turf tore reluctantly.

“I have to eat. Every time I go off watch, Tanuojin comes out with something else for me to do.”

“Go on. I’ll take care of David.”

He rolled up to his feet, still crouched, his eyes on her face. “Thanks, Mendoz’. Can you loan me some money?”

She gave him the money in her pocket. “Thanks.” He went off at a trot.

She sat on the ground, pulling at the grass. As long as she did not look up, she could pretend she was alone. The park was insulated and the sound of the nearby streets and traffic did not reach her. She put her chin on her hands, thinking with longing of Matuko’s cold twilight and the lake shore.

“Mama.”

David was shaking her. She had fallen asleep. She sat up. He was soaking wet; his shoes squelched. She kissed him.

“Are you having a good time? You know, you can take your clothes off by yourself any time you take the notion.”

“I like being wet.” He held his sodden shirt out from his stomach with both hands. “I climbed all the way up. And look.” He pointed down at the ground and turned in a circle, demonstrating his shadow. “Watch.” He jumped, watching the shadow. He smiled at her. “It’s black, like me.”

She took hold of his chin. His eyes were not round or black: dark brown, they tipped at the corners. But he looked like Saba, with Saba’s flared jaw and wide indulgent mouth. She stood up.

“Let’s go get an ice cream.”

They started across the sunlit grass of the park. In the middle, near the fountain, stood a little ice-cream cart. David ran ahead of her toward it. A dog loped past Paula after him. The child stopped, and the dog veered toward him. The little boy screamed.

“Mama!”

Paula burst into a run. The dog reached him one step ahead of her and knocked him flying onto the grass. Wheeling, the big dog snapped at him. She grabbed David in both hands and hoisted him up.

The dog snarled at her; its broad head narrowed like a wedge. It jumped for the child in her arms. She flung out her hand to ward it off and its teeth sliced her forearm. David was screaming. The dog began to bark at her, crouching over its flattened forelegs, and jumped at her again. She dodged it while it wheeled, and ran toward the nearest tree. The dog caught her skirt in its teeth and held on.

David’s arms around her neck were throttling her. She pulled at his hand, trying to catch her breath. The park people stood watching, as if at a show. The dog dragged her one step forward, and she yielded an instant. It let go, ready to spring at the little boy screaming in her arms, and she ran to the tree three steps away.

“David—climb into the branches—”

He clung to her, his breath catching in sobs. The dog prowled around her. She boosted her son up to her shoulder, and he climbed into the tree above her. She put her back to the trunk and faced the dog. Her arm hurt to the shoulder. She could not gather her strength. The dog circled under the trees, its gaze fixed on the little boy above it; the light caught glowing in its eyes, pale as amber. She moved to stay between it and David. From the far side of the park there was a long shrill whistle. The dog ran away over the grass.

“David. Come down.”

“No—”

“Come down. It’s gone.” She could not lift her arm. She had to take him somewhere safe before she collapsed. On the path nearby the mass of watching people loosened and began to flow away along the walks, losing interest. David was lowering himself out of the tree. He dropped to meet his shadow on the phony grass. His face was smeared with tears; his nose was running.

“Mama—”

She took his hand. “Hurry.” As fast as she could move she led him up the green slope to the gate.

In the crowded street beyond, she stopped, confused, her lungs working for breath. David pulled her on and she followed him. Her head began to pound. The streetlights hurt her eyes. When they reached the moving stair she stumbled.

“Mama, are you sick?”

The moving stair carried them down into the pit of the Planet. Someone behind her jostled her and her knees gave in and she caught herself against the rail sliding by. She was going to fall. Her feet were a mile below her.

“David—”

The street flew upward toward her, the steps sliding away into the floor, and she held her breath and walked forward onto the solid ground. “David.” She sat down on the floor in the street, her back to a wall. “Where is the hotel? Do you know?”

Promptly he reached his arm out and pointed. He tugged on her hand. “Come on—it’s not far.”

“Go find Papa.” She shut her eyes. She felt herself tumbling over headlong although she had not moved. “Go find Daddy. Find Daddy.” Her eyes opened, swimming. David was gone. A passage of hundreds of legs scissored past her along the street. The floor was warm. She could not get up. The warmth was blood. Someone passing kicked her. She doubled her legs up to her chest. Another hard blow struck her.

“Paula.”

She was lifted up into the safety of his arms.

“So help me, if I’d reached her five minutes later they’d have trampled her. These people stop for nothing.”

She took the warm cup in both hands and sipped tea. On her forearm the scab of the healed wound was peeling away. David scrambled onto the couch beside her and leaned on her. Saba came out of the kitchen with a bottle of champagne in one hand.

Over his shoulder, he said, “If I were any smarter I’d take Ybix and go home.”

Tanuojin filled the kitchen doorway. He was eating a sugar-nut. The rest of the crew was out hunting the dog. Paula gave her cup to David. When he had gone into the next room, she said, “That was no accident. Somebody waited until Sril was gone and set that dog on us and called it off after David was safe. It must have been trained. It didn’t attack me at all, just David.”

Saba drank deeply from the bottle. “You wanted to see which way Parine would jump.” He turned toward his lyo, in the kitchen doorway. “I suppose you’re against going after him, now?”

“Saba, that’s what they want, to force the judge to jettison the case.”

“At least then we could get out of this place,” Saba said. He tramped into the bedroom.

That night the police came to the hotel saying they had gotten an anonymous warning the Styths’ rooms were bombed, and made them clear the suite for nearly an hour while a squad of bomb experts went through the place. Paula sat in a booth in the back of the hotel bar, David asleep on her lap, while Saba drank whiskey and Tanuojin drank water.

“I haven’t gotten a full sleep since I’ve been here,” Tanuojin said, on her right.

Saba yawned. He lifted his glass, half-full of Scotch. “This place is strange. Besides all the people and the cameras and all that. It’s haunted or something, the whole Planet.” Paula leaned on him, her head on his shoulder, and shut her eyes.

“Parine thinks it is,” Tanuojin said. “That’s what they’re hunting for now, downstairs, General Gordon’s ghost.”

Paula opened her eyes again. She had not thought before that the bomb threat was anything other than a nuisance. Saba said, “I guess he believes we have that tape.”

The waiter came up silently and took their empty glasses and put down new ones, filled. David whimpered in his sleep. Paula closed her eyes.

“Do these things ever start on time?”

“I think it’s against the law,” Saba said.

Paula sat down in the straight chair. On the far side of the courtroom, Chi Parine and his assistants were talking in a knot. Today the little Martian lawyer wore a black suit, a brilliant red jacquard vest, red and black high-heeled boots.

“Please rise for the Bench.”

The spectators massed behind the railing stopped their roar of conversation. Everybody got up. Wu-wei came out of the little door in the back and sat, and they all sat. The case was read.

“Your Excellency,” Parine said. He strode forward, puffed up. He reminded her again of Machou. “Due to considerations of interplanetary security, the government of Luna is withdrawing the charges—”

His lips went on moving, but the crowd buried his voice in a bellow. Tanuojin leaped up onto his feet. The bailiff’s bell clanged steadily through the thunder of voices. Paula glanced at Saba.

“All this for nothing,” she said.

“Not quite.”

Wu-wei’s smooth face was smiling. He patted at the air with his hands, and the crowd began to quiet down. The bell stopped ringing.

“Yes, Parine,” the judge said. “You’re withdrawing which charges?”

Parine said, “All of them, Your Excellency. I want to point out that we’re doing this only because the case was leading into very sensitive security matters.”

Tanuojin put his hands on his belt. “You mean you can’t deal with Styths in this court.”

Wu-wei laid his forearms flat on the table. His eyes shifted from Parine to the Styth.

Parine said shortly, “What we’re saying is that due to considerations of—”

“There’s no universal law in your Universal Court if you can’t handle Styths.” Tanuojin swung around to face Wu-wei. “We are part of the same Universe.”

“Indeed we are,” Wu-wei said. “What has happened here, in and outside my courtroom, has helped me understand the incident at Luna very well.”

“We’re talking from different premises,” Tanuojin said.

“Maybe. But at the moment you are standing in my premises.” The judge smiled at his antique pun. “I have a verdict, which I will give in a moment.”

Tanuojin whirled around toward Paula. “How can he give a verdict if they’ve withdrawn the charges?”

“Your Excellency—” Parine bounded toward the Bench, tipped forward on his high-heeled boots. “Your Excellency, I protest this rash decision to render a verdict without any evidence.”

“I have evidence,” Wu-wei said. “I’m not blind, and I’m not incapable of reasoning, or I wouldn’t be here in the first place. The Ybix incident was part of a whole field. This trial has been another aspect of the same field. This isn’t the place to comment on people who aggravate the natural tensions between races and individuals for their personal ends, however grandiose, and I won’t do that. The Ybix incident was a practical exercise. General Gordon made a misjudgment, to which he was helped by a variety of people not even on trial here and for which he has suffered. Certainly neither of the two ships destroyed at Luna would have been shot down if not for Ybix’s presence, but Ybix had been there for nearly 240 hours without a problem, and therefore I conclude that without General Gordon’s miscalculation, the incident would not have occurred. I am holding Ybix responsible for one ship and General Gordon for the other. The eight men who died in the ships cannot be brought to life again by any piety or wit in this courtroom. They were soldiers and carried guns, and men who use force must accept it will be used against them. As for the rest of the charges, Mr. Parine of Mars ought to remember when he makes up cases that simple is best. Since Luna brought the case here and then withdrew it, Luna will pay the court charges.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “As for Ybix, the trial ought to be punishment enough. Are there comments?”

Paula was watching Tanuojin’s face. His mouth shut tight, the corners hidden under his mustaches. Wu-wei nodded to him.

“There’s a difference between law and justice, you know, which it might profit you to discover. This court is ended.” He got up and left the room.

Saba put his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself up onto his feet. “He’s an anarchist. What did you expect?”

Tanuojin was staring at the judge’s door, his hands on his hips, and his elbows cocked out. He said several coarse words in Styth and made for the rail. The Martians were putting away their papers. Chi Parine had his back to Paula. She followed the Styths out. Behind their backs, she finally allowed herself to smile.

The Interplanetary Hotel, where Sybil Jefferson was staying, was plainer and smaller than the Palestine. People sat reading in the chairs scattered around the lobby, in among the banana plants and the racks of hourlies and candy. The Styths sauntering into the hotel cut short all talk and turned every head in the room. Paula kept a tight grip on David’s hand. Whenever he saw a dog, he wanted to kill it, provided Saba was there. They went through an air door into a curving hallway.

“I don’t understand why we’re coming here,” Tanuojin said.

“She did us a favor,” Saba said. The walls of the hallway were painted with stylized jungle plants and flowers. David lagged, and Paula stopped to let him look. The two men went on around the curve.

David cried, “What’s that?” He rushed to the wall, reaching for a monkey coyly painted among the leaves.

“It’s a monkey. Something like a kusin.”

Saba came back around the curve, picked David up, and hauled her off by one arm down the hallway. “I told you not to bring him.” She turned her arm out of his grasp. They went into a bright room opening off the inside curve.

Tanuojin stood on the far side of a pair of bright yellow couches, squinting in the glaring light. Saba put David on his feet. Jefferson crossed to meet Paula. She wore a tomato-red tunic and red pants; she looked like a fireplug. “Mendoza,” she said, “don’t scold, I’m having the lights turned down. Hello, Akellar.” She folded over at the waist, eye to eye with David, and her voice rose to a falsetto. “Well, hello! I know who you are.”

David blinked at her, his mouth open. Saba said, “He doesn’t speak the Common Speech.” The child edged toward him, reaching for his father’s hand. Paula looked beyond Jefferson at the three people sitting on the couches. Abruptly the lights dimmed to a half-glow.

David had Saba firmly by the hand. The big man told him Sybil’s name. “This is the woman your mother worked for, before she came to me.”

“Here,” Sybil said. “I’ll bet I can do something you can’t do.”

Paula, behind her, could not see what Sybil did, but David shrieked with laughter. “Mama, look!” Jefferson straightened, turning her head. Her right eye was white and blind as an egg. David let go of his father and gripped Jefferson’s arm.

“Do it again!”

Jefferson chuckled. Paula said, “Sybil, you are gross.”

“Come meet my guests.” Sybil crooked her arm through Paula’s. She smelled like milk. “We were just talking about the Akellar’s extraordinary grasp of law.”

“For a Styth,” Tanuojin said.

All three strangers were members of the Council, a man and a woman from Luna and a man from Venus. Paula began to see Jefferson’s purpose in bringing the Styths here. She shook a series of hands and introduced the Council members to Saba, using all of his titles she could remember. Jefferson brought them each a tall fizzing glass.

“Where did you study law, Miss Mendoza?” asked the Council-woman from Luna.

Paula shook her head. “Nowhere. I did a flash reading on the way here.” She watched David, who was following Jefferson around. “Yekka is the lawyer.”

“It was quite a display, too,” said the man from Venus, hearty. “Chi Parine is no amateur.”

Tanuojin never even looked in his direction. “I have a good memory,” he said to the empty air.

Saba held his glass out to Paula. “It was a piece of theater. Bring me another of these.”

“Yes, too bad you were playing to the wrong audience.” She gave him her glass and went around the couch to the table against the wall where Jefferson had gotten the drinks. On a table covered with a white cloth were several rows of plastic bottles. She fished ice-balls out of a bucket. Jefferson came up to her side and took a package of biscuits from the back of the table.

“Thank you for coming, Mendoza.”

“Thank Saba.”

“Your son is his image.” Jefferson poured salted biscuits into a hotel dish and went off across the room. Tanuojin was still refusing the attentions of the Venusian and the Lunar woman. Jefferson stood talking to Saba and eating biscuits. The half-light buried the edges of the room in shadows. Paula filled two glasses with ice and whiskey and took them across the room and gave one to Saba.

“Have a cookie,” Jefferson said.

“Where is David?” She looked around the room for him.

“Leave him alone,” Saba said. “Ever since that thing with the dog you’ve been all over him.” He fished an ice-ball out of his glass and ate it.

“You’ve got fourteen others.”

The third Council member, the man from Luna, took the last of Jefferson’s biscuits. “Does he play chess?” He nodded over his shoulder toward Tanuojin. Elaborately unimpressed, he looked up, up at Saba. “What’s an Akellar?”

Jefferson turned to Paula. “What dog?”

Paula sipped her whiskey, her eyes on Tanuojin. “Nothing.” Thin as a withy, the tall Styth leaned against the wall, thumbing his mustaches flat. The Venusian’s hearty voice boomed.

“Actually, strangely enough, the best schools in the system are on the Earth.”

“Why is that strange?” Tanuojin said. Jefferson raised her head, her pale eyes sharp.

“The anarchists have no respect for education,” the hearty man said.

“Maybe that’s why their schools are so good,” Tanuojin said.

The Venusian fished cigarettes out of the pocket of his tunic. His hands busy, he said, “Is that some kind of joke?”

Tanuojin was facing him, but his white eyes glanced toward Jefferson. He slid his hands under his belt. “The anarchists have respect for nothing. They’ll do anything they have to do to keep the rest of you dancing in their act.”

Saba said, in Styth, “Why don’t you shut up?”

Tanuojin straightened away from the wall. “You know why we’re here—she’s trading on—”

“Just shut up when you’re in her place drinking with her and eating with her.”

“I’m not—”

“I am.”

Tanuojin slouched against the wall, sulky, his head to one side. Next to Paula, Sybil Jefferson looked from Styth to Styth, keen as a fox. Paula realized she understood them: she spoke Styth. The Venusian’s match clicked into a little burst of flame.

“It’s a riddle,” Saba said to the Venusian. “Unfortunately riddles don’t translate very well from one language to another. What is that?”

“Cigarettes,” the Venusian said. He held out the package. “Have one?”

Saba went over to the couch and the Venusian showed him how to smoke. He maneuvered the cigarette in his claws, fascinating the Lunar woman, who was slightly drunk. Paula looked for David.

Beside her, Jefferson said, “They couldn’t have done better if they’d been coached.”

Tanuojin was over at the bar, his back to the room. Paula said, “That won’t work too often, Sybil.”

“Just once,” Jefferson said.

“Where’s Mitchell Wylie?”

“He left the Planet. Apparently for security reasons.” Jefferson moved around to put her back to Tanuojin, ten feet away. “What happened?” Tanuojin was watching them. Paula kept herself from a shrug, a movement of the hand, anything that might signal him.

“The obvious. Parine tried to ambush us. Dick tripped, for once.”

“What else?”

Paula raised her eyes again, over the fat woman’s shoulder. Saba caught her glance and held his glass out. She stooped to catch David as he passed her.

“Here. Take this to Papa.” She gave him the glass in her hand.

“What else happened?” Jefferson said, when Paula straightened.

“I just told you, Sybil.”

“Why, suddenly, is Richard oracularly vague on the subject of Tanuojin?”

Relieved, Paula smiled at her. That settled her suspicions. “Ask him,” she said, and went off to make herself two more drinks.

In the morning, on the way to the entry port to leave for home, she bought an hourly. The Council had reconsidered the question of Venus 14 and withdrawn the order to send a peacekeeping force in to settle the chronic civil war in the giant dome. Paula folded the hourly and put it in her jacket pocket. At the entry port, eighteen or twenty people were marching up and down with ribbon banners, calling the Styths names. A vitriolic anti-Styth pamphlet she took from one of them had been printed by the Sunlight League, and wore their emblem in the upper right-hand corner of the cover: a radiant star.