Floating Worlds

MARS April 1853

Paula walked down an accordion tunnel from the rocket. Every few yards, there was a sign on the pleated wall reading “Terminal,” with an arrow pointing ahead, like encouragement, since there was nowhere else to go. When she walked out of the mouth of the ramp into the expanse of the waiting room, a tall blond woman stepped forward to meet her.

“Hello, Madame Diplomat.”

“Cam,” Paula said. She switched her bag to her left hand. “How did you know I was coming? I was going to call you when 1 got here.”

Cam Savenia’s handshake was cool and white. “Oh, I have ways. How long has it been?”

“Five years,” Paula said. She was tempted to say, Four and a half years and six months in prison. Cam was much taller than she was. “You came here just to meet me. I’m flattered.”

They started across the waiting room, cutting through the rows of molded plastic benches. The flooring was rippled for traction. Cam said, “This is a pretty important mission. When did you join the Committee?”

“A year ago.”

“I always thought you had too much brain to waste your life sitting under a tree. You’ll go far with them, if you’re as smart as I think you are.”

Paula followed her up an ascending ramp. The other passengers from the rocket went on before them. They passed a videone screen showing times of arrival and departure. In spite of the crowd, the place looked barren. Nobody lived here, they just came and went. The walls were papered with the drawings of schoolchildren: giant birds, and people like monsters in space helmets and uniforms. Cam led her to the rooftop parking lot.

“I’ll take you out to the Nineveh.” She steered Paula down a lane between a wall and a rope. Ahead, a row of air cars waited under a sign that read INTERDOME TRANSPORT.

“Doesn’t your term end this year?” Paula asked.

“Yes. The Senate is impossible. Really small beer. I’m announcing for the Council. I have three party endorsements, how do you like that? Want to write my speeches?”

Paula laughed. “Write your own. Mine were awful.” She slid into the back seat of a cab.

“Oh, no. I know my limits. I can think and I can do, but I can’t express.” Cam leaned across the back of the front seat. “Driver, the Nineveh Club.” Sitting down, she slid the door closed and locked it.

The cab rolled forward, its engine sputtering, and leaped up in a rush that turned Paula’s stomach over. They sailed away across Barsoom. Paula looked out the window. They were entering a stream of traffic, three or four lanes deep and a dozen lanes wide. Below the clutter of cars streamed the puffed heads of the palm trees that lined Cleveland Avenue.

“Do you know what’s ahead of you?” Cam said. “Incidentally, I’ve met this Styth.”

“You have?” Paula swiveled around, her arm on the satchel between them. “When?”

“Yesterday.”

“He’s here already?”

“He’s at the Nineveh. Him and eight bodyguards. Turning the place into a zoo.”

Just beyond the cab window a private air car flew. Inside it, the old woman driving hunched forward over the steering grips, her teeth set. Below them the land was cut into perfect squares of green, each framing a tilted roof, set with the blue jewel shapes of swimming pools.

“He’s at the Nineveh. What’s he like?”

Cam shook her head. “Impossible.” She took a cigarette from her purse and set it into a long black holder.

“Does he speak the Common Speech?”

“Yes. He’s not stupid. I didn’t realize they’re so big.”

They were coming to the lock. The driver swore softly. The traffic was packed around the entrance to the lock, and far ahead a red light flashed. The driver turned his head.

“Be a little while, ladies.”

Cam leaned forward. “Go around by the auxiliary.”

“I’m not supposed—”

The Martian woman flashed a badge under his nose. “My authority.”

“Yes, Senator.” The driver pulled the car straight up, out of the traffic jam, and swung it off to the side, and Cam sat back, smiling. She puffed on her cigarette.

“How old is he?” Paula said.

“I can’t tell. Older than I am.” Cam was thirty-two. “God, they are black, too.”

Paula stiffened. She looked out the window again. They passed through the auxiliary lock in the wall of the dome and went into the dark Martian day. Barsoom was at the edge of a line of craters. They flew above the hollow hills. For miles around them the surface of the Planet was heaped up with red dust, the wastes of the water bears, the native organisms that mined out the minerals and water. There was no wind. They flew above a crater. The dust lay in geometric cones among the steep red walls. She wondered if Cam were here to pitch to her or just to spy. The smoke from the Senator’s cigarette hurt her nose. Now they were flying over the virgin Planet. They crossed a rill like a seam in the red crust. Paula knew Cam was watching her. Ahead, the sunlight glanced off the shining dome of the Nineveh.

“What do you think of the Committee?” Cam asked.

“It’s a job.”

“Sybil Jefferson has the morals of an ax-murderess. As for that rat Bunker—”

“The guts of a burglar,” Paula murmured, looking out the window.

“Right. And to prove it they send a green girl in to take their beating for them.”

“Thanks for the confidence.”

“Damn it, you don’t know what you’re into.”

Paula stared out the window at the dark world. “I learn.”

“These people are animals.”

“You’re so civilized, Cam.”

“You’re damned right.” Cam sucked intently on the last of the cigarette. Her fingernails were shaped to points. “I believe in law and order and authority, right and wrong, little old-fashioned things like honor and responsibility and morality. Why did you bring him to Mars? He’s interested as hell in the dome, I’ll tell you that.” She pushed the butt out of her cigarette holder. “I guess to a primitive, Mars must be mind-swamping.”

Paula cleared her throat. They passed through the wall of the dome, from the subdued natural light to the brilliant green of the Nineveh Club. They flew over an arm of a golf course, a patch of dark trees, another long strip of lawn. She sat up straight, looking forward over the driver’s shoulder. Surrounded by lakes, the hotel stood in a long white wedge among the trees in the distance.

“There’s the river,” Cam was saying. She pointed past Paula’s shoulder. “Every drop of water manufactured in Barsoom.”

The car circled once and lowered toward the front of the hotel. They swooped over a swimming lake, formed into round coves and little inlets framed in trees.

“How long has he been here?” Paula said. Probably Cam had pitched to him, too.

“The Akellar? Since yesterday. His ship is parked in orbit. If he’s taking a look at Mars, I can tell you we’re taking a good look at Ybix. It’s an old Martian Manta destroyer, which proves something, I guess.” Savenia pointed to a flock of yellow birds flying off toward the golf course. “They even sing.” Every feather manufactured in Barsoom.

“What has he been doing?”

Cam gave Paula an oblique look. “You’re single-minded.” The cab was parking. Trim as a bugle boy, a man in a wine-red uniform rushed up to open the door. When Paula slid out to the pavement, he reached for the satchel, and she held it around behind her out of his range.

“Take the luggage to Room 2017,” Cam said. “Pese-pese.”

“Yes, Dr. Savenia.”

Paula let Cam marshal her through the hotel’s main doors. The lobby spread out around her, hushed and elegant. The walls were set with glass boxes, back-lit, displaying hats and jewels. A woman and a man in golf knickers passed her.

“Straight ahead,” Cam said. “You have to register. The Styths don’t do much, except at night. Then they want everything in the place. They beat up a waiter who made the mistake of talking back to them.”

Paula said, “The light here is much brighter than they’re used to.” She went between two rubber plants to the registration desk.

“So they maul people? Why didn’t the Committee send a man?”

“The Styths requested me.” Which meant they weren’t serious about negotiating, a minor obstacle. The desk clerk approached her, his gaze directed over her head, as if he didn’t quite see her.

“May I help you?”

“This is Paula Mendoza,” Cam said, behind her.

“Yes, Miss Mendoza.” The clerk snapped like a soldier to his work. He put a voice box down in front of her. “Your suite is ready. Second floor overlooking the gardens, near our other interplanetary guests.” Paula said her name and the Committee’s name into the flat box. It whirred and a pink card popped up from the top. The clerk said, “Now, if you’ll give us your thumbprint—”

She pressed her thumb against the patch on the card.

“Come on,” Cam said. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

Paula followed her across the lobby, the satchel in her left hand. “Come up to my room. I have a bottle of Black Label.”

“I never pass up an invitation like that.”

They went up a flight of steps. On the second-floor landing, the corridor branched off in three directions. Cam led her off down the middle. Two old people crept toward them, the woman leaning on two canes. She gave Paula a look focused three feet beyond her. Cam took her by the arm again.

“I think you’re—”

A Styth was walking down the corridor. Paula stopped, and Cam bumped into her. The Styth ignored them. He sauntered past, black as a stone in the white plastic Martian world. He disappeared out the door to the stairs, ducking his head to miss the lintel.

Cam said, “They walk like a bunch of women. It’s funny to see all those huge men pussyfooting around.” She strode across the corridor to a door. “Try the lock. It ought to be working by now.”

Paula set her thumb on the white patch on the door, and it slid back into the wall. The lights in the ceiling in the room beyond came up bright as sunlight. She walked into a room as big as the public room in her commune. At one end was a bar with three stools; at the other end a massive brick hearth, set up with logs and a revolving phony fire. She went around the couch to the long draped wall opposite the door and pulled at the curtains until she found an opening and looked out at a broad garden, laid out in curves and squares of hedge.

“Do you like it?” Cam said.

“It’s fantastic,” Paula said. She turned around again. The wall beside the door was an aquarium four feet square. She went toward it, drawn by the flight of red fish.

Cam said comfortably, “You pride yourselves on your poverty.” She opened the door behind the bar. Paula followed her into the next room. Her suitcase lay open on the rack at the foot of the bed. She put down the satchel and stepped out of her shoes. The carpet was deep enough to sleep on.

“Here.” She took out one bottle of the Scotch and gave it to Cam. “Go pour while I take a fast shower.”

“Fine.”

Cam went back to the opulent front room. Paula looked quickly around. The cushioned furniture and draped blue walls offered a dozen hiding places for spy devices. Cam had always been fond of gimmicks. She peeled off her clothes, stiff from travel, and found the washroom.

There was a sheet of fancy paper tucked into the mirror. “For Our Single Guests.” While she was turning in the dryer, she read it. “The Nineveh provides a wide range of excitement and self-discovery for the man or woman with sophisticated tastes.” Call girls, call boys. Press a button and we’ll send up an amputee. She remembered this had been Dick Bunker’s idea.

“Paula?”

“Yes?” She went out to the bedroom.

Cam turned, brisk, saw her, and averted her eyes. She scratched quickly at her upper lip. Naked people made her nervous. “The Akellar is on the videone. Not literally, they’ve disconnected the camera. He wants you to come up there now.” She glanced shyly at Paula’s body.

“I don’t want to do that,” Paula said. She took her long robe out of the suitcase. “Tell him my respects and I’d like to get some rest first.”

“Right-o.” Cam went out. Paula put the robe on and dug around in the suitcase for the belt. She heard Cam’s voice in the next room, rising with temper, and started through the door.

Cam stood over the videone in the far corner by the hearth. Her face was stained pink across the cheekbones. “Now, you listen to me, tough guy—” Paula went up to the videone and shut it off.

The Senator stepped back, her face smooth. They stared at each other a moment. Finally Paula went past her toward the bar.

“Tell me why you’re here, Cam.”

The bottle stood on the countertop, unopened. She circled the bar and squatted to take a glass from the shelf below the cold drawer. The bar was stocked with mixers and soft drinks.

“I don’t think you understand what this confrontation is all about,” Savenia said.

Paula straightened up. She poured Scotch into her glass. “Tell me.”

“The Styths are our enemies, Paula. They can never be anything else. They’re mutants. They’re genetic pollution.”

Paula took a bracing sip of the Scotch and licked her lips. She had heard that phrase before. Cam stalked across the room. “I can help you. I know a little bit about Styths, and about this Styth in particular. You are a sacrificial lamb, baby. Jefferson and Bunker have set you up.” She was a gifted speaker, all fire no matter what she was saying. She marched up to the bar. “He isn’t really human, Paula. Sometimes I don’t think the Committee is human either.”

“Have you ever heard of the Sunlight League?” Paula asked.

Cam’s face twitched. She put her white hands on the bar. “Are you listening to me? Because—” She backed up in a rush, startled, her eyes aimed beyond the bar.

Paula turned around. Her bedroom door was opening. A big Styth walked through it, not a tall man, for a Styth, massively built. He was staring at Cam. He said, “You think you’re a man, I’ll treat you like a man. You have until the light comes back to leave.”

Cam stood straight as a flagpole. She said, with great dignity, “This is my Planet, Akellar.”

Paula set her glass down. “Cam, you made your speech, now go.”

“I’m sorry for you, baby, but you’ll get what you deserve.” She went to the door. Her white face appeared over her shoulder. “You know, breaking and entering is against the law on Mars.”

The Styth took two steps toward her, and Cam went out. The sliding door sighed closed. Paula rested her hands on the edge of the bar. The big man wheeled toward her and looked at her down his long Styth nose. His eyes were round and black, protuberant, eyes for the dark. He said, “When I come into the room, you stand up.”

“I am standing up,” she said. “I’m very short. How did you get in here?”

“I walk through walls.”

“That must be hard work. Would you like a drink?”

He picked up her glass and swirled the dark amber liquor and drank the whole two fingers straight down. “Give me some of this.”

Paula filled up the short glass to the top. The sliding door whisked back into the wall, and Cam Savenia came in again. Three men followed her, identically dressed in gray jackets. One carried a weapon with a trumpet muzzle. Paula started around the bar.

Savenia pointed at the Akellar. “Him.” She touched the wall switch and the ceiling lights burst up, dazzlingly bright. The Akellar reached for the glass of Scotch. The air smelled of hot copper. Paula sniffed, puzzled. The three policemen stopped midway across the room, and the gun disappeared.

“Dr. Savenia, we’ve been told not to interfere with the Styths.”

Paula stopped at the end of the bar, relieved. Cam said, “Do you know who I am?” in a voice that squeaked.

The guards backed to the door. “Yes, sir, Dr. Savenia.”

Paula went around behind them to the light switch and dimmed the lights. The policemen filed quickly out. Cam stood where she was, staring at the Akellar. Paula said, “You must be tired, Cam, after all your labors. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Cam said, “When the Council hears this, there will be hell, I can tell you.” She left. The door slid closed behind her.

Paula laughed. The Styth rubbed his eyes. She put the bar between them again and poured another three fingers of Scotch into his glass. Maybe she could get him drunk.

“Do you think you’re a man?” he said.

“I’m not a Martian. I don’t have to be a man.” The stink of copper was coming from him. She opened the cold drawer. “Do you want some ice?”

“Ice.”

She used the tongs to put two ice cubes into his glass. He fished one lump out with his fingers and put it in his mouth. She made herself another drink. His mustaches hung down past his collarbones, so Cam was right, he was her age, or a little older, thirty-five or forty. The ice crunched between his teeth.

“Do you want to see my credentials?” she said.

“I know who you are. What is this stuff?” He drank his glass empty.

“Scotch whiskey.”

“It’s not bad.”

She poured his glass full again, remembering Kary’s capacity. He ate the other ice cube. She stooped behind the bar, found a bowl in the back, and filled it with ice cubes and put it down on the counter next to him.

“From now on,” he said, “when I send for you, you come.”

“What did Cam tell you about us?”

“Nothing I didn’t already know.” He laid his forearms on the bar. “We know all about the Committee.” He stared at her a moment, eating ice. She busied herself neatening up the bar. The coppery stink was gone. He reached for the bottle and topped off his glass.

“This is Earthish, this drink?”

“Whiskey? Yes. It’s distilled in Scotland.”

“Is that where you live?”

She shook her head. “I grew up in Havana. Now I live in New York. You speak the Common Speech very well.”

His chest swelled; he was proud of that. “I taught myself. Reading engine manuals. Do you speak Styth?”

“Not very well.”

“Say something to me in Styth.”

She did not want him to know she was fluent. Ungrammatically, she said, “I hope you have a good time on Mars.”

“We’d better keep to the Common Speech.” He put his glass down with a thunk. His voice dropped half an octave under the weight of authority. “The Earth is an anarchy.”

“Yes.”

“No government. No laws. No army.”

“That’s right. No taxes, either.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Paula rolled whiskey on her tongue. It was late; she was tired, and she had to call Jefferson. She said, “Well, it won’t be the last time.”

His black eyes glinted. He folded his arms on the bar top. “Aren’t you supposed to be convincing me to trust you?”

“You’d be a fool to trust anybody. You don’t look like a fool to me.”

He stared at her a moment. Finally he slid off the stool and walked across the room. The back of his shirt was dark with sweat. His black hair was pulled down and knotted at the nape of his neck. She put her elbows on the bar. She did not want to talk much in this room before she had taken out any relics of Cam Savenia.

He said, “I can understand Savenia. She’s ambitious. She’s just hauling her own freight. What’s yours? What do you want in this?”

“It’s my job.”

He spun around, his hands on his hips. “Where I come from, women don’t have jobs—they stay home with their families where they belong.” He walked back up to the bar and leaned on it, bending over her. “Savenia says I shouldn’t believe anything the Committee tells me—you’re all thieves and liars.”

“Say flexible. It’s a nicer word.”

“Are you? What do you want? Money?”

She raised her head. “Are you offering me a bribe?”

“Yes.”

“To do what?”

“As you’re told.”

She burst out laughing. “How much did you pay the Nineveh not to interfere with you? I’ll bet it was too much. You should have come to the Committee. We’re good at negotiating bribes.”

He sat down again on the stool and reached for the ice. She caught a whiff of the coppery heat. He said, “You’re saying no?”

“That’s right.”

He mashed an ice cube in his teeth, his eyes on her. Paula smiled broadly at him. He was embarrassed; he pulled on his mustaches, getting his face in order.

“Are you married?”

“No. Anarchists don’t usually get married.”

“But you do breed.”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you have any children?”

She shook her head. He was leaning forward across the bar, attacking. “Why not? What are you waiting for? You’re already past the best age.”

“I’m too busy to have a baby.”

“Too busy doing what?”

“My job. My own life.”

“That’s not much of a substitute.”

She finished her drink and put the glass down. “Well, I like it.” His hands lay flat on the bar. His long fingers were tipped in heavy black claws.

He said, “If somebody tried to bribe me, I wouldn’t laugh,” and the claws flexed.

“Aren’t you glad I’m a pacifist?”

He stood up. She raised her head to follow him. He was over six and a half feet tall. Short, for a Styth. She said pensively, “I guess it wouldn’t matter.”

“You’re damned right it wouldn’t. I’m going. You come up to my place tomorrow. Five o’clock. What do I call you?”

“Paula.”

He was on his way to the door. “Will these—Martians sell me that whiskey?”

“It’s expensive. Don’t let them give you the Martian version, it’s wholly other.”

His big head bobbed once. “My name is Saba.” He sounded as if he were granting her a favor. The door opened for him, and he left.

The small hinged window in the shower was unlocked. He was burly, a tight fit through the window. She turned off the light, locked the bathroom door, and went back to the sitting room to call Jefferson.

The old woman’s face was grooved with irritation. “How long have you been there?”

“I’m sorry, Jefferson, I’ve been busy.” She swung out the stool and sat down in front of the camera. “I’ve met him.”

“You have. What’s he like?”

“Remember that list of ships? Saba is his name. He’s very defensive. I think he’s scared. He seems to have made up his mind that the best protection is to attack first. Cam Savenia is here, by the side.”

“Dr. Savenia? The Senator?”

“She and the Akellar have fallen in love.” She told Sybil how he had broken into her suite.

Jefferson cackled with laughter. “Yes, that’s the trouble with law. What is she doing there?”

“Trying to wreck the meeting. If he talked to her the way he talked to me, I can see why she’s angry.” She scratched her chin. “He tried to bribe me.”

“He did. How much?”

“He never said.”

Jefferson’s mouth screwed up thoughtfully. “Do you get along with him?”

“Better than Cam. He read me the sermon on woman’s place, and the way he told me his name I should use it sparingly. He’s all right. He ate half a drawer of ice the first ten minutes he was here.”

There was a ripple of interference across the screen. Jefferson glanced away. Paula fiddled with the image focus.

“Is he intelligent?”

“He’s no genius. He speaks the language like a don.” Another wave rolled slowly over Sybil’s image. “You know someone is getting onto us.”

“I’m aware of that. I’ll deal with it. You have a scanner, don’t you? You’d better look around your suite.”

“I will.”

In the morning, when she tried to call Cam, the computer told her Savenia had checked out. Paula sent down for breakfast. She carried the electronic scanner all over the suite and uncovered two small listening devices. She put them in her suitcase to take back to the technicians in New York. The page who brought her breakfast hovered around her, pouring her tea, and setting out butter and jelly and kefir.

“If you expect a tip, Charley, you’re hanging around the wrong woman.” Her eggs were sprinkled with paprika. She reached for the fork.

“Dr. Savenia gave me a fifty to make things easier for you.” The page set out a dish of sausage. He stepped back, his hands behind him, smiling. He wore a little round cap at an angle on his fair hair.

“Do you see much of Mr. Black?”

“Mr.—” His blank look went suddenly to a broad grin. “Mr. Black. Yes, ma’am. You mean the Styths. They broke up the club last night, up on the roof—did you hear about that?”

“Which Styths?”

His hand flew out toward her, palm up. “Ten dollars.”

Paula ate a link of sausage. Her stomach was still queasy from the space flight. “Charley, I’ll pass.”

The page stiffened. He tucked his arms behind him again. “Yes, ma’am.” He waited until she was finished and took the table away without a word.

She went up to look at the club on the roof of the hotel. The floor was covered with broken glass, and the piany had sat down, its hind legs broken. Three men in aprons were sweeping up. Paula walked through to the back, where a bald, tired Martian sat eating a roll and drinking coffee.

“Hello,” she said. “Did you see the performance?”

The Martian raised his head. “One of them. Who are you?”

“Paula Mendoza. I’m from the Committee.”

“Forget it.” He took a bite out of the roll. “I don’t want to get involved.”

“Do you work for the hotel?”

The bald man chewed, silent. She said, “Last night a Styth broke into my bedroom and the hotel police didn’t see fit to ask him not to do it again.”

His jaw moved steadily. She stood there while he ate the rest of the roll. He pushed the plate away.

“Sit down.”

She sat in the chair across the table from him. “You said you saw one fight. There was more than one?”

“Three.” He held up three fingers. “The first two were nothing. Some regular person bumped into one of those big black bastards, or said something, you know, just funny, and got decked, I didn’t even call Security for the first.” He shrugged. His eyes were puffy with fatigue. “The late-night fight was the all-black wrecking crew. They had some of the cats with them, you know, the working women, and there was some competition, and—”

“Who? Did you hear any names?”

“The names all sound the same. One of them, he’s got a brush cut—” He ran one hand back and forth over the crown of his head. “He’s the high muck-muck’s son, he says, you know, loud. He was the loser. One with a scar—” he gestured at his cheek, “he was the champ.” The Martian’s pale eyes blinked at her. “One of them broke into your room. You know, honey, you’re in trouble.”

She looked around at the rooftop. A sweeper tipped his dustpan over the trash barrel and broken glass rained down into it. “Do you think your troubles are over?”

“That’s right. Because I’m closing. If Security won’t protect me, I’m going on vacation.” A sweeper brought the coffee pot and filled his cup again. “Give this young lady some coffee.”

“No, thank you,” Paula said. “You said they had some of the whores with them?”

“The braver ones.”

“Who?”

“Try Lilly M’ka. She’ll take anything on.” He stirred his coffee, his head turning. What he saw of his club made his face sag. “I wouldn’t go near one. That’s a mean pack. I’d like to see one matched up against something like a little more, you know, natural armament. A wolfdog. Or a leopard.”

Jolted, she said nothing. She watched him drink his coffee down. When she left, she went down to the sportshop in the lobby and bought a hand torch with an intense beam.

In the afternoon, she met Lilly M’ka in the lounge on the second-floor mezzanine. They sat near the windows. A steady parade of models sauntered through the tables, showing off fur clothes. The whore was dark, almost as dark as Paula, and several years younger, in her early twenties. She said, “Funny you should ask. Dr. Camit Savenia asked me the same question.”

“I’m happy to hear it. How well do you know Cam?”

“Not very. I thought you were interested in the Styths.”

A tall model in mink pants strolled past their table, reversed, posed a moment, and went off. “Did you talk to her much?” Paula said.

“Just once, since the Styths came.”

On the far side of the room the Martian guests applauded in a patter of gloved hands. Paula took the straw out of her soda and licked cream off it. “How long was she here?”

“Two or three days. She’s easy to get to know. She likes an audience.”

“I’ll say.”

Lilly’s eyes were dramatically painted, like a butterfly’s wing. With her dark skin, she was probably not Martian-born. Paula said, “Who’s your client with the Styths?”

“The main one? Saba. The Akellar.”

“Oh, really.”

“He thinks he’s a rocket.”

“Is he any good?”

The whore made a little languid gesture. “Not as good as he thinks he is.”

“Who is?”

Lilly laughed. She put her forearms on the table and leaned forward, her voice softer. “Are you interested in the fact one of them is gone?”

“Gone.” Paula glanced at the clock. It was four-thirty. “What do you mean?”

“A real tall one with yellow eyes. I haven’t seen him since the first night they were here.”

“Yellow eyes.”

“That’s how I remembered. All the others have those big round black eyes.”

Paula stuck her straw back into the soda glass. “I’m interested.”

“I thought so.” Lilly gave her a broad wink and walked away.

Paula went to her room and put on her fancy black dress. She stood at the mirror combing out her kinky red-gold hair. Her chin was pointed, and her eyes tipped up at the outer corners. Cat-faced, Tony had called her. That reminded her of the clubman’s euphemism for the whores: working women. She got the package out of her satchel and unsnapped the lid.

The short jeweled knife inside had come from Persepolis. There was a listening device in the handle, which would tune itself to the first voice it heard after the knife was drawn out of its brocaded sheath. She put it back in its satin bed and took it down the hall to the Styths’ suite.

The man who answered her knock was short, his face broad across the cheekbones. A round of thin gold wire pierced his left nostril. He backed off a step and called, in his own language, “It’s not one of the whores, so it must be the anarchist.” He looked down at the box in her hand. “What is that?” To her he used the Common Speech.

“It’s a present for the Akellar.”

She went into a long room full of Styths. The lights were dimmed and the window drapery pulled. Half a dozen men sprawled in the chairs or stood along the walls, all watching her. They were dressed in identical long gray shirts, leggings, and soft boots. The bar was broken into two pieces, and the rug was stained. She blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the half-light. A young man came toward her, his homely face misshapen with bruises. The inch-long spikes of his mustaches ran straight across his upper lip, and his hair grew in a fur over his skull. He did not look like the Akellar, especially battered.

“What’s that?”

The man with the gold wire in his nose went to a door on the far side of the room and opened it. “In here,” he said to her.

The boy said, “Wait—what if that’s a bomb?” and all the men laughed. She went into the next room.

It was much smaller than the one she had just left, although the blank walls and the absence of furniture made it seem big. The outdoor light was pouring in the windows. The Akellar sat in front of them, so that to face him she had to look into the dazzling light. The only furniture was the desk in front of him and the chair he sat in. She put the package down on the desk.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a present from the Committee,” she said. “Kind of an earnest of our intentions.” With the light behind him she could not see his face. He turned the box over.

“These people have been yapping at me since I got here,” he said. He found the spring catch and opened it. “And they keep jumping my men.” He raised the lid of the box.

His hands paused. Paula moved around the desk to stand by the window, so she could watch his expression. He took the dagger out of the white lining and drew the knife from the sheath.

“What is this?” he said.

“It was made in Damascus for a Seljuk prince. When there were still princes on the Earth.”

He turned it over in his hands, admiring it, and held it so that the emeralds glittered. Abruptly he rammed it back into the sheath, stuck it into the box, and pushed the box away.

“I have nothing for you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Take it back.”

“If you want.”

She made no move to pick it up. He pulled on his mustaches. “I guess you are a woman. A man wouldn’t give me a present without getting something in return.”

“Why not?”

“Because all systems equalize.” He got out of the chair and pulled the curtains closed across the window. A gloom fell. It was dark in Uranus, cold and dark. She was comfortable enough in the light dress but he was sweating.

“If it bothers you so much that I’m a woman, why did you pick me?” she said. “There’s a man in the case.”

“Very little of this was my idea.” He pulled his chair around and sat down. “There is only one thing we have to say to you. Styth will rule everything, sooner or later. We have a saying: ‘One Sun, one law, one Empire.’ We are your natural masters. If you submit to us, we will rule you justly. If you don’t, then you’ll have to suffer the consequences.”

Paula sat down on the floor. “That’s amazing. Did you make that up?” she said, and he flared.

“I don’t make things up. Do you think I’m a child? I know how the Universe works. Are you calling me a liar?”

“No,” she said.

“You are a liar.”

“When have I lied to you?”

He slapped his hand flat on the desk. “The other watch, when I was in your place. You said there’s no government in the Earth.”

“There isn’t. Why don’t you think people can take care of themselves?”

“Because it’s not human nature.”

He was sweating heavily, and the chair was too small for him, pinching him between its round arms. “Nobody does anything he doesn’t have to do. Who takes care of the city, for instance? People don’t see that large—all most people see is the tunnel of their own little lives.”

“The dome is owned by a private company. When you pay for your heat and water, you subscribe to the dome maintenance.”

His round black eyes were unblinking. He made a disbelieving noise in his chest. Picking up the case on the desk, he took the dagger out of it again. “This is a beautiful thing.”

“Yes.”

“What if it was yours, and someone stole it?”

“I’d do what I could.”

“What about credit? Who issues your money? Do you use money?”

“Yes. Those are private companies, too. Like the Committee.”

“You mean anybody can go down there and make any amount of money?”

“Nobody would use money unless they knew it was worth something. Moneying is a very conservative profession. There’s only twenty-four companies on the whole Planet and they have big conventions about the future of credit-mongering and they all wear the same clothes. Very dull.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No. I’m sorry. I was making fun of us.”

He drew the dagger and turned it and laid the flat of the knife against his cheek. They stared at each other awhile. His head turned toward the door.

“Ketac!”

The brush-headed boy came in: his son. The Akellar said to her, “He’ll take you back. I’ll send for you when I want to talk to you again.”

She got to her feet, pulling the skirts of the black dress straight with her hands. In their own language he was telling the young man to escort her back as if her room were a million miles away. She started toward the door, and the big man said, “And when I call, you come. You understand?”

She took hold of her temper, enough not to say anything, and gave him a long look down the room. He flicked the dagger back into its sheath. She went out after his son.

In the corridor, Ketac watched her the whole way back to her room. She avoided meeting his stare. He made her uneasy. At her door, she stopped and pressed her thumb into the key patch and the door slid open.

“Thank you.”

He put his hand on the doorjamb, so that his arm blocked her way. “I want—” He swallowed. With a jerk of his head he indicated the room beyond. “Go in. I go in.”

“No.” She backed into the middle of the corridor. “Get out of my way.”

“I hear—anarkisto—”

“Ketac, get out of my way.”

He moved aside. She went past him into the safety of her suite and pulled the door closed.

“It doesn’t sound promising,” Jefferson said.

“I don’t know. He’s that curious.” Paula touched the frame of the videone. “They’re tearing the place apart.”

“What? Who? The Styths?”

“Not deliberately. They don’t get along with the Martians. Mr. Black here bribed the security, so nobody is putting the arm on them.”

“Are you all right?”

“So far.”

Sybil wiped the corner of her eye with her forefinger. “I have an idea. Two ideas. He’s throwing money around as if he believes in it, maybe we can throw some at him. Not ours, naturally. I’m sending you a book on interplanetary trade relations.”

“I don’t know anything about economics.”

“This is politics, dear girl. Your weapon of choice.”

“I don’t think you know me very well.”

Jefferson cackled. Someone knocked on the door. Paula went to answer it. Outside was the short Styth with the gold wire in his nose. He gave her a heavy object wrapped in a piece of black cloth. “Paulo Mendoz’,” he said. “With the—the compliment of the Matuko Akellar.” He nodded down at her and went away.

Inside the soft black cloth was a clear crystal the size of a peach. When she put it on the screen for Jefferson to see, the old woman grunted. The crystal was cut in perfect octagonal facets and caught light like a diamond.

“Balancing an equation,” Paula said. “I guess he’s keeping the dagger.” She picked up the crystal and measured it in her hand.

“That belongs to the Committee,” Jefferson said swiftly.

“He gave it to me.” The crystal weighed at least a pound.

“We paid for the knife. That thing is worth a fortune.”

Paula wrapped the crystal back up in the black cloth. A thousand dollars an ounce, on the Earth; how much would it cost in Uranus? She began to see a way to use Jefferson’s trade paper.

“What else?”

“Hmmm?”

“You said you had two suggestions.”

“Oh.” Jefferson fingered the flabby skin of her throat. “Bring him to the Earth.”

Paula opened a drawer and put the piece of crystal inside. That would be easy, with his curiosity already hot. “If you want, Sybil.”

She sat on the couch watching the fish zigzag back and forth through the wall aquarium. The big Styth’s arrogance tempted her. He had weaknesses; he could be had. She switched off the lights and went to the bedroom. Just into the darkened room, she caught a whiff of a coppery odor.

Her nerves tingled with warning. She backed up into the front room again. The little pocket torch she had bought was in the bar, and she took it in her left hand and went into the bedroom again.

Halfway across the room to the bed, she was engulfed in the coppery reek. She whirled around. A hand closed on her right wrist. She switched on the hand torch and shot the bright beam straight up into his eyes.

He released her. His arms crossed over his face, he staggered back from her. It was Ketac. She ran around the foot of the bed and turned the torch off. She heard nothing and saw only a flicker of movement in the dark but when she reached the bedside lamp and lit it, he was gone.

The window in the washroom was open. She slammed it shut. There was no way to lock it. She closed the washroom door, moved the bed table over against it, and went to bed.

The following morning, when she took the receiver down from the closet shelf, about two inches of the wire had been run off. She wound it back to play. The device bleeped, to show it was working. The transmitter in the dagger was designed to pick up only voices. She listened to their talk about the Sun, the law and the Empire. Her own voice always sounded strange to her, deeper than she expected.

“Pop,” Ketac said, “Tanuojin is back.”

The Akellar uttered a low, indefinite sound. Keyed to his voice, the device would pick up every vocal noise he made. She plunged her face into a steaming hot towel.

“What’s the matter with you?” a deep, musical voice said.

“I drank too much. There’s some liquor here, like fluid explosive, the Earthish woman told me about it.”

“Naturally. What is she like?”

The Akellar laughed. “She’s this big. She’s mouse-brown, her eyes slant like a snake’s, her hair is like gold wire all on end. She looks as if she has one toe stuck in a charge socket.”

She put on a pair of overalls and took the recorder into the front room. A breakfast cart was standing alone by the couch. The page had abandoned her. She poured hot water into a china teapot with a decal of the hotel on its belly. While the tea was steeping, she buttered toast.

“Did you get to Barsoom?” the Akellar said, and she dropped the butter knife on the floor.

“Yes,” the deep voice said. “It’s impossible to see it on foot. It goes on and on, and even when it’s turned away from the Sun, it’s all lit up, every little corner.”

She ate the toast. Had he walked to Barsoom? She imagined the uproar if he had been caught. But he had not been caught: amazing.

“What about this anarchist? What have you found out?”

“Oh, she comes down with the same story, no government, no army, nothing. I offered her money and she laughed. She’s a liar, like every other nigger in the Universe.”

Paula took the teacup across the room to the windows and pulled the drapes half-open. It was another splendidly sunny day, manufactured in Barsoom. Two men with a cart were pulling up the blue delphinium below her window and installing daffodils, yellow and white.

“Tanuojin,” the Akellar said, “I don’t think this was one of your better ideas.”

“We’re in the wrong place, that’s all.”

Before she could find out the right place, the wire ran out. She reloaded the receiver and put it up on the top shelf of the closet, behind her shoes. The name Tanuojin, like all Styth names, was made up of word particles; it meant “the ninth boy” or “the new boy,” she was unsure. She went down to the lobby.

The headline on the current hourly read: BARSOOM SUPERS REACH CUP PLAY-OFFS. She went across the lobby. In a side room, the small Styth with the nose wire was shooting pool. Two Martian men played dik-dakko at the opposite end of the room, three other game tables between them and the Styth. There was a tiltball machine against the wall. She put her paper down, got out ten cents, and started the machine. The lights came on in the multicolored cube. She pushed the trigger and a ball fell into the top. She used the handles to shake the ball down through the maze.

“Hello,” the Styth said, beside her.

“Hello.”

“I am supposed to watch you. It will make it that much easier if you help.”

She pushed the trigger button. “What’s your name?”

He leaned against the wall. At her eye-level, a chain hung around his throat, inside the wide collarless neck of his shirt: an order medal. He said, “My name is Sril. What is this engine?”

She turned back to the tiltball machine. This time she had drawn two balls. They careened off in opposite directions. She kept the cube moving. The balls reeled through the levels of colored plastic. With two it was easy: she held one in a cul-de-sac while slipping the other past the traps. When the two balls rolled through the gate, lights flashed, a bell jangled: FREE BALL.

“I will try.” Sril pushed her out of the way.

“I’m in the middle of—”

“What do I do? This?” He pushed the button. He was lucky: the machine was random-loaded, and only one ball fell into the maze. He touched the handles. The ball dropped like a stone down the center trap. The machine went dark.

“What happened?” he cried.

“You lost. Try it again. You see the holes, there, you’re supposed to avoid them.”

“No—you do. I watch.”

She fed the machine another dime and pushed the trigger. Five balls rolled into the chute at the top of the maze. She teased them to the last level, hardly moving the cube at all, and then turned one handle too far and lost the middle and the last down a side trap.

Sril groaned in disappointment. Paula said, “That’s good, for me. You play it.”

Another Styth was coming across the room toward them, a big man with a scar on his cheek. In Styth, he said, “You’re supposed to be on watch. Where is the Man?”

“I am on watch,” Sril said. “I’m on squaw-duty.” He turned back to the tiltball machine. “Saba is upstairs.” He reached for the trigger.

Paula stepped back. A ball fell with a ping into the maze. Sril fought it, cursed it, and pleaded it down to the third level, where it dropped through.

“Let me try.” The big man shoved at him. Sril thrust him off. They crowded into each other, swearing and laughing. The steady patter of the dik-dakko ball across the room stopped; a man said, “What’s that stink?” This time, getting three balls, Sril managed to take one successfully through the maze. When he lost the next ball down the central chute, he let out a yell, grabbed the tiltball machine, and tore it off the wall.

A dik-dakko player shouted. Paula dodged a flying tiltball. The machine sagged over onto its side. Steel balls cascaded out of the bin across the floor.

Sril backed off, looking apprehensively around. The other Styth grabbed his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Too late,” Paula said.

A tall white man was moving toward them at top speed, his body at an attacking angle. She wondered nervously if she had broken any Martian law. He walked straight up to her. His gaze raked the Styths.

“Are you all right, Miss Mendoza?”

“I’m fine,” she said, relieved.

The two black men were standing on the far side of the wreckage of the machine. Tiltballs rolled around on the floor, clicking into each other. The Martian turned on the Styths, fierce.

“Which one of you did that?”

Paula stepped back to the wall. That was the wrong approach. The doorway to the lobby was packed with the curious faces of guests.

Sril said, “We do n-nothing. He just falls off.” He still smelled strong.

The manager fisted his hands. “You don’t expect me to believe that.”

“Is something wrong?” said a musical bass voice. A rangy Styth sauntered across the gameroom, his eyes on the Martian. Straw-thin, he towered four or five inches over seven feet. His eyes were light brown. Yellow eyes. The Martian rounded on him.

“Are you their superior officer?”

“That’s right.” Tanuojin slid his long hands under his belt. “What’s wrong?” He nodded to Sril and the other man. They bolted out the door, the guests jumping out of their way.

“Hey!” The hotelman wheeled.

Tanuojin stood over him. For an instant, looking up, the Martian lost his breath. He regained it in a rush. “You must take me for a fool!”

The tall Styth snorted. He walked off, away from the hotelman. The Martian puffed up. His lips curled. He headed for the door to the lobby.

“All right, everybody—” He herded people out of the doorway. “Show’s over. Move along.” He turned back toward the Styth. “You’re a bunch of stinking savages. They ought to run you right out of the Universe.” He left.

Paula stood still. Tanuojin had not noticed her. He strolled across the room to the outside door, where he had come in, and went away. Loose tiltballs rolled around the floor at her feet. The copper smell was fading in the air. Thoughtfully she went out of the gameroom.

Wherever she went, Sril followed her. She walked around the hotel garden, bought photo-cards in the card shop and wrote them out in the lounge and posted them. The Nineveh had its own photo-relay projector, so they would reach the Earth in a few hours. The trade paper arrived from Jefferson in Barsoom and she took it out to the garden to read. The Styth followed her everywhere, looking bored.

Paula read half the paper and skimmed the second half. She went back into the hotel, her Styth shadow close behind. As she passed the restaurant off the lobby, she caught sight of the Akellar, sitting at the bar.

The bar stools on either side of him were conspicuously vacant. She went to the one on his left. In the antiqued mirror behind the bar she saw everybody else in the room watching them. The Akellar put his glass down. He beckoned and the barman hurried toward them. The Styth with the nose wire, Sril, stayed about ten feet away.

Paula said, “Why is he following me around?”

The man behind the bar poured whiskey into his glass. The Akellar gestured to Sril, who left. “You’re here alone, I wouldn’t want something happening to you. Somebody might blame it on me.” His gaze caught on something in the mirror. She looked; he was watching a girl come into the bar. While the girl crossed the room, met other people, took off her coat and sat down, the Styth looked her over inch by inch. The barman turned to Paula.

“Can I get you something, dear?”

If she had been a Martian he would have called her miss. She said, “Do you have ice cream?”

“Sure.”

“A brandy float.”

He sauntered off behind the bar. The Akellar, with nothing else to look at, was watching her. He said, “I haven’t seen that other—that white woman around. Your friend.”

“My friend. You mean Cam Savenia? She left.”

He liked that; he made an approving sound in his chest. “You know her, don’t you?” he said, and stopped, his eyes on the mirror again. Another pretty woman was coming into the bar.

Paula sat back. The barman put a bell-glass of brandy and ice cream in front of her, and she paid him. The Styth ignored her; he was staring at women. She smothered her irritation. She saw a way to use what he was giving away about himself. She took the spoon out of the glass and sipped the creamy brandy. The object of his stare had disappeared out of the room and he turned back to her.

“What’s that you’re drinking?”

She spooned up ice cream and brandy and held it out to him. He put his head back to look at it, suspicious, and finally opened his mouth and let her feed him. She said, “I worked for Cam once. We don’t know each other very well.”

He savored the ice cream. “That’s good. What is it?”

“Ice cream.” She took another sip of the brandy, cooled and sweetened with the melting milky dessert. He turned sideways on the stool, facing her, his elbow on the bar. She said, “I—,” and broke off. She had lost his attention again to a woman leaving the bar.

“I can’t get used to all these women going around with their faces uncovered,” he said. He reached for his glass. Paula spooned up another bite of the ice cream. She started to eat it, but his eyes followed it, and she offered it to him. He ate it eagerly.

“Mars is a strange place,” she said. She swirled the brandy in the glass. “I have these fish in my wall, swimming around. Of course, this being Mars, they’re probably plastic.” She drank the last of the liquor and pushed the glass away across the bar. “Come up and look at them and tell me if they’re plastic.”

Now his eyes were fixed on her, and he smiled. The smile made him look much younger. He said, “Do you have any of that whiskey left?”

“I have another bottle.”

He got up off the bar stool. They went out the door.

The sun was going down. Long hazy light struck across the garden and penetrated in shafts into the room. She pulled the curtains closed and poured them each a glass of whiskey. They sat on the couch opposite the aquarium.

“What is the Earth like?” he asked. “Like this?”

She shook her head. She was sitting in the curved limb of the couch. “The Earth is the original of which Mars is the copy.”

“Then it is like this.”

She put her glass down on the table, untouched. Toeing off her shoes, she folded her legs under her. “No. You’d have to go to the Earth to see the difference. Do Styths kiss?”

“I don’t know. I don’t recognize the word.”

She knelt beside him, facing him, and leaned forward and put her mouth against his. His mouth was unresponsive. She touched his lips with her tongue, her hand on his shoulder, and his arm went around her waist. A rush of his heavy metallic scent surrounded her. He twisted, pushing her down under him on the couch.

“You’re hurting me.” She could not breathe. Her face was smothered against his shoulder. “You’re too heavy.”

He straightened up on his arms. She could scarcely breathe in the dense fragrance he was giving off. When she kissed him again, his skin was warm, almost feverish. They got up and undressed. His body was perfect. Dressed, he simply looked massive. His broad chest swelled into his back, the muscle and bone smoothly shaped down to his long waist. He had an erection. They lay down side by side on the couch. His skin warmed her. While she explored him with her hands and her mouth she tried to get used to his scent. All in silence they joined together. His eyes closed, as if he were doing it alone. She rubbed herself down on his thick stalk, her hand on his hip, intent on the swelling tension in her groin.

The couch was too narrow. They went down to the floor and handled each other, moving around each other almost without speaking. He was so tall she could not kiss his face when he was inside her. The watery light from the aquarium rippled over his chest. She touched him all over, to see what he liked. Her body swelled closed around him. He took her hips in his hands and drove himself into her, gasping.

“Oh, Jesus.”

She sat back, pleased, her legs across him, and gave him the full tumbler of whiskey. His arms stretched out over his head. For a long while they stayed as they were, the man lying on his back on the floor, and Paula beside him, without saying anything. She felt revenged on him for his condescension. The videone buzzed. She ignored it and it buzzed again.

“Aren’t you going to take that?” he said.

“It’s just my boss.”

“What would he do if he knew we were here like this?” His hand slipped over her thigh.

“Not he, she. Sybil Jefferson.”

“How many men have you had?”

“You aren’t a personal friend.”

His fingers pressed and stroked over the inside of her thigh. His claws grazed her. “Which means what?”

“That I won’t answer a personal question.”

“A lot.” Patterns of light from the aquarium lay across his face like a mask. “How did I do?”

“You didn’t talk,” she said, “which I liked.”

He turned his face toward the aquarium. He was cooling off, and she swung her legs across his body and sat beside him. His cock had drawn back inside the sheath of his foreskin. With her fingers she traced the heavy muscles of his chest. He had no hair on his chest. He wasn’t perfect after all. He put his hand on her hand and pressed her palm against him.

“So it’s not personal, this—” He caressed himself with her hand. “Then it’s business? Are you trying to sell me something?”

“Sell you something?”

“I’ve heard an anarchist can sell anything to anybody.”

“What do you want?”

“The only thing you have that interests me is that whiskey.” He folded his arms behind his head. His scent had disappeared.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll send you a case every aphelion for the rest of your life. Courtesy of the Committee.”

His teeth flashed in a white smile. “Are you serious?”

“I’ll make it two cases.”

“Do it.”

She touched his stomach. His skin was velvet black. “Do you believe in god?”

“I believe in Planck’s Constant and the speed of light. Truth at 186,000 miles per second. What else are you going to sell me? A little philosophy?”

“The Council wants to establish permanent embassies with the Empire.”

“We don’t treat with other governments. The only law in the system is Styth, the rest of you are all outlaws. There’s nothing you can offer us except to submit to us.”

“You didn’t listen to me.”

He pushed her hand away from him. “I don’t have to listen to you—you listen to me.”

“I said that was what the Council wants, not what I want.”

Between his round black eyes two short vertical lines appeared. He rolled smoothly onto his feet. “You think you can talk around me.” His clothes were scattered about the room, and he collected them. Paula sat watching the fish. He sat on the couch and pulled his leggings on. Instead of underwear he wore a kind of cup to protect his organs. He hung a medal on a chain around his neck. The marking in the heavy disk was the sign of the fish.

She said, “Actually, what I want is to make you rich.”

He was putting his shirt on. His head emerged through the neck, and he stood up and tugged the shirt down over his body. He sat back down on the couch. She turned her gaze away from him, back to the red stream of fish in the wall.

“How are you going to do that?” he said.

“There’s no trade now between the Middle Planets and your city, is there?”

“No. You have nothing I want.”

“But there is a lot of smuggling.”

“Not much.”

“Whatever you say.” She watched the fish reverse direction, perfectly aligned. “I could get you a report on it. We estimate about forty to fifty thousand dollars’ worth of goods come and go between Matuko and the Earth every Earthish month.”

“That’s exaggerated.”

“Suppose you brought the smuggling inside the law and controlled it yourself, you’d make that money, instead of the smugglers getting it all.”

He said nothing. She turned around to face him. He had his belt in his hands; after a moment he seemed to remember it was there and rose and slung it around his waist.

“You’re brave,” he said, “offering me a bribe.”

“That’s your word.”

“Why would I sell my people for a couple of thousand nigger dollars?”

She leaned on the couch. “We can negotiate you a contract that would guarantee you one million dollars the first year, a caesium year, climbing to ten million a year by the fifth year.”

There was a long silence. She drew with her fingernail in the yellow plush of the couch. He sat down again to put on his boots.

“It’s still a bribe.”

“Whatever you want to call it. Why don’t you go think about it?”

“I don’t have to think about it,” he said, and walked out. In his wake the door slammed shut, rebounded, and bounced off its track. She tried to shut it but it was stuck halfway open. She took a shower, wrapped herself up in her robe, and went out to the front room again. Jefferson had worked him out, sight unseen: his key was money. She turned out the lights, barricaded the bedroom door with chairs, and went to sleep.

Tanuojin’s bassoon voice said, “You mean she seduced you?”

“I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, looking at her—she’s nothing to look at, is she? What do you think they’re trying to do?”

“They’re trying to buy you.”

Paula was washing her hair in the bathroom sink. The soap smelled of egg. The Akellar’s voice came up from the recorder on the floor by her feet. “How long is a caesium year?”

“It’s a lie. She’s lying. Why do you go soft-headed over any woman who sleeps with you?”

“Ah, shut up.”

“Can you keep her out of her room long enough for me to search it?”

Paula rinsed her hair and turned on the dryer in the ceiling. The Akellar said, “I can think of something to do with her. And she doesn’t cost me fifty dollars an hour, either.”

A strange voice said, “Jesus, it’s hot.” “Jesus” was their favorite expletive. They pronounced the J like a hard g.

“You think it’s hot in here, stud, stand out there in the radiation.” That was Sril, the small one with the wire in his nose. His voice grew louder. “Akellar, I see you get along better with that Earthish woman now.” Several men laughed.

“No,” the Akellar said. “She gets along better with me.”

She took the recorder into the sitting room and listened to it while she collected everything she did not want Tanuojin to find: the wires from the recorder, the devices Savenia had left. The men talked about their ship and the Martian food, which they loved.

“How long is a caesium year?”

“Saba, don’t listen to her!”

“I asked you a question.”

Sulky: “Around twelve hundred watches.”

The Akellar and Tanuojin puzzled her. They talked like equals, intimately, not the way the Akellar talked to the other men, but now and then he leaned over Tanuojin, and Tanuojin always yielded. Now the deep, surging voice said, “I called the ship, while you were down there letting that woman make use of you.”

“Ah?”

“Kobboz says they—”

The wire ran out. She loaded the recorder again, packed everything she was removing from the suite into her satchel, and took it down to the lobby.

“My door is broken,” she said to the clerk.

He was bent over the desk doing the anagram in the ten o’clock hourly. He did not look up. “Did it involve a Styth?”

“Unh—”

“We’ll have to move you to another room.” He circled an answer in red ink. “We’re leaving all that damage for the underwriters’ inspector.”

“Never mind.” She put the satchel on the desk. “I want this kept in the vault.”

He took it away. She went into the restaurant to eat her lunch. While she was sitting at a table near the windows eating a minji and drinking coffee, Lilly M’ka came up and took the chair opposite her.

“The one with the yellow eyes is back.”

“I know that,” Paula said.

“Yes, I guess you have your own ways of finding things out.” The whore straightened the ruffles on her halter top. Paula envied her tiny waist. “I hope you don’t plan on taking any more of my clients.”

“Do you have any more like that?” Paula bit into the minji.

“He’s good, isn’t he?”

Paula swallowed a mouthful of bread and sausage and hot sauce. “He has a beautiful body.”

“He’s a very handsome man. Or haven’t you looked that far?”

Over the girl’s shoulder, at the far end of the room, Paula saw the Akellar coming in the door. “You sound as if you’re in love with him.”

“I have a thing for men who pay cash.”

He had seen them; he was coming toward them. Lilly said, “Besides, he—” and Paula jabbed her chin at him, and the whore turned and saw him. She sat back. The Styth stood beside the table, between them, looking from one to the other.

“Hello, Saba,” Lilly said. She got up, taking her shoulderbag off the back of her chair.

“Hello, Lilly.”

“See what I mean?” Lilly said to Paula, and went off across the bar to the door. The Akellar sat down in her place.

“Comparing things?”

Paula drank her milk. “What do we have in common? I thought you were giving up on me.” She pushed her plate out of the way. Lilly was wrong: his features were too coarse to be handsome.

“I may give you another chance,” he said. “After all, you’re just a woman.”

“You broke my door.”

“One of my crew will fix it. Come outside with me. It’s like a hot-box in here.”

She went with him out to the park. She had gotten up well after noon, and the sun was falling toward the horizon, the domelight was coming on. He stayed in the cool and shade of the great deodar trees that lined the golf course. The ground was deep in spongy grass, even where the trees’ cloaking branches kept the light out all day long. Paula lagged behind him. On the far side of the path he stopped to let her catch up. Two Martians in knee-length pants, a man and a woman, were coming toward her. Another man in the hotel’s livery pulled a cart full of golf clubs after them. She paused to let them pass.

“Stunning little negress,” the woman said.

The man had seen the Akellar, standing in the deep shadow on the far side of the path. He hurried the woman on. Paula went up beside the Styth, and the Martians gave her another, harder look.

“They hate us together,” he said. “They don’t like us one at a time but they hate us together.”

The sun had gone down. They went into the cool open ground of the golf course. Paula walked fast and he walked slow. He bent to take her hand.

“Are you married?” she said.

“Four times. Two of them are back with their fathers where I should have left them in the first place.”

Holding his hand made her uncomfortable. They were coming to a bridge and she used the chance to free herself. She went ahead of him across the bridge.

“How many wives are you allowed?”

“As many as I can keep.” He kicked at the ground, tore up a piece of turf, and bent to touch it. “My father had twenty-three wives. He was a greedy son of a bitch.” He pulled apart the bit of turf in his hands. “This isn’t real, is it?”

“Nothing here is real, Akellar.”

There was no wind; the Nineveh dome was too small for wind. The golf course swept off before them, blue-white in the domelight, toward the white three-story block of the hotel. The yellow glow of windows studded it. He said, “We want to go to the Earth.”

“We. Who’s we?”

“I. Ybix. My ship.”

She went off down the smooth lawn, her back to him. “What’s a ybix?”

“It’s a fish.” He caught up with her. His cold fist closed around her hand again. “It’s one of my family emblems.” His fingers were cold. His grasp held her too close to his side; she felt like a child next to his height and bulk.

“What was your ship’s Martian name?”

“Martian? My father built Ybix.”

“I thought your ship was Martian.”

“The hull was Martian-built. Metal is scarce, in Styth. My father captured the original ship off Jupiter and tore out her guts and rebuilt her.” The golf course dipped away. She scrambled down the grassy bank beside him. He said, “Martian ships are fuel-driven. Laser-imploded hydrogen plasmas. My ships are crystal-driven. There isn’t a ship in the Council Fleet that could stay in the same space with Ybix for five minutes.”

She tugged on her hand in his grip. He tightened his hold on her. In the dark sweep of grass, the sand trap in the embankment glinted white and blue. They sat down in the cool sand.

“Why don’t you like me to touch you?”

“Please let go of my hand.”

At last he did. She clasped her fingers over her knees. He said, “You weren’t faking—back in your room. You liked it then.”

“I just don’t favor being dragged around, that’s all.”

He kissed her. She showed him a few more ways to use his tongue and his lips. He began to shed his scent. That reminded her of the night before, which excited her; she enjoyed the smell. They lay back in the sand. She fingered his shirt. It was heavy, some kind of armor.

He said, “Are you going to take me to the Earth?”

“I can try. It would help if it looked as if you were cooperating.”

“By taking your bribe?” He unfastened her blouse down the back. She let him peel her clothes down. His body heat kept her warm. “Are all Earthish women this little?”

She laughed. Unbuckling his belt, she tugged on his shirt. “Take this off.”

“What was your mother like?”

“Flat-chested.” She watched him strip himself. His body was magnificent. “My mother is an architect. She has all the best qualities of an I-beam.” She propped herself up on one elbow.

“What about your father?”

“He was crazy. He collected skulls. And slept in his clothes. I think he was flat-chested too, but I never saw him with his clothes off.”

They kissed again, lying in the sand, their arms around each other. Behind them, down the golf course, there was a long shrill whistle.

He rolled away from her, sitting up, and said an obscenity in his own language. She asked, “What was that?”

“Marus. One of my crew.” He reached for his shirt. “Cover yourself up.” She dressed. Putting two fingers into his mouth he whistled so loud she winced at the pain to her ears. A man she did not know jogged up to them.

“Akellar, there’s a fight in the public room.”

“Shit.” He turned to her. “Stay here.” He ran off, Marus on his heels, down the long dark fairway.

Paula stood up. The two men disappeared in the trees. She went after them at a trot. The light gravity filled her with energy. She stretched her legs, running as fast as she could, and ran herself off-balance and fell rolling. When she sat up, her head seemed to turn around in circles. Maybe that was why the Styths moved so slowly. She walked down through the gardens.

At the end of a row of hedges was the entrance to the Ninus, the club’s blue-sash restaurant. She pushed the door open and went in. The small lobby was massed with people, men in black velvet tunics and women in long white gloves. They were staring down a short flight of steps into the restaurant. She could not see what they were looking at. She went into the narrow lobby. The cushioned red flooring yielded under her feet. Behind the crowd, next to a double door, was a placard on an easel:

Readings from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Ravishavanji’s The War Bride

She went between two fancy-dressed men to look where the crowd was looking.

“So help me, I’ll shoot.”

The people around her murmured in excitement. They were crowded around the head of the stairs. A woman blocked Paula’s way, bare white shoulders above a low white dress. She went by to the carpeted steps.

Three steps led down to the restaurant. The tables near the bar had been shoved up against the wall, the white linen rucked up, and the crystal knocked over. On the far side of the room, a young man, a Martian, was standing on a chair, a gun in his hand.

“Don’t come near me—”

The gun was aimed at the four Styths ranged along the bar to Paula’s left. The Akellar was among them. In his own language, he said, “Somebody has to get behind him and distract him. Sril—”

“Any of you come near me,” the man with the gun cried, “I’ll kill you.” He was very young, no more than twenty, and his face glistened with sweat.

The crowd shifted around Paula. More people were coming down into the lobby to watch. Crowded, she went down the two steps to the level of the restaurant. Plaintive, a woman behind her said, “I can’t see.”

The Styths were moving. Sril went across the restaurant, through the scattered tables, and the others spread out between him and the Akellar like a cordon. The young man on the chair followed them with his gun, pointing it now at one and now at another. He was too frightened to shoot.

“This I have to see,” a man in the crowd murmured. “They’ll hash the poor kid.” Paula licked her lips. She went down the steps into a miasma of coppery Styth temper. The big Styth with the scar on his cheek stood in front of her, his back to her. She passed him, and he jumped.

“Akellar.”

The man with the gun had seen her. He jerked around. His foot slipped on the chair seat and he caught at the back to hold himself still. The gun was shaking, aimed at her. She walked slowly toward him, her eyes fixed on his face. The art was to keep moving. If she stopped to talk it would be hard to start toward him again. “Paula,” the Akellar said, and she waved at him to be quiet.

“Stop right there,” the young man cried.

“I’m from the Committee,” she said. She was only five feet from him. His mouth opened, red and wet, and his eyes shifted past her toward his audience. In the silence she heard someone behind her smother a cough.

“Don’t come any closer—”

“You’ll be a real hero, won’t you, if you shoot an unarmed woman?”

He shifted the gun to one side, to aim past her at the Styths, and she moved to stay in front of it. She reached out her hand for it, her eyes on his face. “Give me the gun,” she said, almost whispering, so that no one else could hear her. “You are interfering in a Committee negotiation, and you’re making me angry.” She took hold of the gun behind the wide bell-shaped muzzle. He pulled back, and she let go.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Oh, yes, you are. If you stay here, the police will be here, with gas and spray and probably dogs.”

She took hold of the weapon again. He was shaking so hard she was afraid the gun would go off by accident. He swallowed, his gaze fixed on hers, and let go of the gun.

With it in her hand, she sighed, relaxing, and felt the quiver in her knees. She looked around them. In the back of the dark restaurant, past Sril, a red sign shone marking the exit. She said, “Come on,” and took him by the arm and led him on a crooked course through the tables.

“Where do you live?” she said. They passed tables left in the middle of the meal and reached the door under the red light.

“Barsoom. I only came for the—” His face was deeply lined, like a wax mask. “You’re really from the Committee?”

“I’ll send you a bill.” She pulled open the door and let him go out ahead of her. The crowd was streaming back into the restaurant. The Akellar watched her over their heads. She went after the young man along the concrete walk toward the front of the hotel. His gun was in her hand. She held it carefully, afraid of setting it off. They went up a flight of steps. At the top was the curved parking apron at the main entrance.

“There. I’ll get you a cab.”

They went along the walk past the lobby. He said, “I could have taken them.”

“Are you crazy? They have inch-long claws. A couple of them weigh over three hundred pounds.”

“That’s why I brought the gun.” He reached for it in her hand. “Let me have it back.”

“No.” She went ahead of him toward the line of cabs parked along the edge of the apron. He followed her, talking.

“I have to have it. It’s my father’s. He’ll kill me if he finds out I took it.”

She stopped beside the cab at the head of the line, and the driver came around to open the door. She said to the boy, “Get in there and I’ll give it to you. Go on. And don’t come back, or you’ll get hurt.”

“I can—”

“Get in there.”

He climbed into the back seat of the cab. She shut the door on him and gave the gun to the driver. “He lives in Barsoom. Make his father pay you.”

The driver held the gun by the barrel. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Give it to his father.” She went into the lobby.

In the dark by the stairs, in the warm dry air, she stood wondering what to do. He had come just to fight a Styth. Bringing a gun he was afraid to shoot. She climbed the stairs. If she were the Akellar she would break off the talks for violations of the safe-conduct, fly away in a righteous huff, and demand all kinds of apologies and sureties before she came back. The door was still jammed halfway open. She went into the dark room. Something moved behind her. Before she could turn, a blow struck her in the head, and she fell.

She woke in the dark, her head ringing, and sat up. After a moment she dragged herself up to her feet. She could have been lying there for hours. Her head boomed like a drum, and she sat down heavily on the arm of the couch and tried to pull her mind together.

“Go get yourself a drink,” the Akellar said, behind her.

She jerked around. He was sitting on the end of the couch; she could just make out his shape.

“Did you hit me?”

“No. You were out when I came.”

It had been Tanuojin, then. She went to the bar and felt out a glass and ice and the bottle of whiskey, without turning on the light. While she was pouring the whiskey, he settled himself on the stool opposite her.

“Whoever it was gave you grace,” he said. “Because I had a chance to cool down. If you’d been awake when I got here, I’d have killed you.”

“Me. Why?”

“Because you made me look bad.”

She gulped down a steadying jolt of the whiskey. Her head pounded, spinning, in an alcoholic rush. She put the glass down. “Well, maybe you are.”

He moved, and she tried to elude him, but he was too fast. His grip fastened in her hair. She whined through her teeth. He pressed her face down toward the counter of the bar. She shut her eyes. With her nose against the counter, he said, “You talk too much. You think you’re so damned smart, but you don’t know about me.” With a wrench that burned her whole scalp, he let her go.

She sagged against the bar, tears streaming down her face; her head was stitched with pain. She wiped her eyes. “I learn fast.”

“Here.” He pushed her glass toward her.

“That makes you feel better?”

“Shall I do it again?”

“No. No.” She drank from the glass; it nearly fell out of her fingers. Her eyes were still watering. Her elbows on the bar, she wiped her hands over her face.

He went to the videone and called his suite. She turned the ceiling lights on half-bright. Sitting down on the couch, she stared at the red fish schooling across the wall.

He said, “I want to go to the Earth.”

“Maybe you’d better leave me alone for a while.”

“I’ll decide what I do.” He sat down on the other end of the couch and put his feet up on the magazine table. “I’ve been thinking about this contract you want for me. The only way you could guarantee that much money is if you’re talking about trading in crystal. Is that what you mean?”

“Get out.”

“Come on. You’re such a tough little bitch, are you sulking about getting your hair pulled?”

The fish performed a mathematical turn. She refused to look at the Styth. “All right. Yes, crystal.”

“You don’t understand what you’re getting me into. There’s an imperial law in Styth against selling crystal off the Planet. I can’t stand against the whole rest of the rAkellaron.”

“We can arrange contracts for them too. They can all get rich.” She put her head back against the couch and shut her eyes.

He grunted. “I don’t know if I want that. But it makes it easier. Except that everybody’s going to ask why we should supply you with crystal so you can fill the Council Fleet with ships that are as good as ours.”

“The Council Fleet has about eight ships. The people you are fighting is the Martian Army.”

“Is there a difference?”

Sril appeared in the doorway, made a salute to his master, and knelt down to look at the foot of the door. He opened a little roll of tools across the floor. The Akellar said, in his own language, “Where is Tanuojin?”

“Back in the trap.”

The Akellar turned back toward Paula. “I can’t promise anything. If you take me to the Earth, I’ll try to arrange this contract.” He put his feet on the floor and rose. “That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“Whatever you say, Akellar.”

“You come down to my place at seven and have dinner with me and we’ll talk about the fine points. There’s somebody you have to meet.” He stepped wide past Sril and out the door.

Paula was holding her breath. She let it out in a little sigh. Sril stood up, lifted the door, and set it down carefully, watching the foot. With one hand he pushed it in and out of the wall. He stooped to put his tools back into the roll.

“Who do I have to meet?” she asked.

He made a vague gesture. “I no—I know not.” When he struggled with the Common Speech his voice was pitched higher than when he spoke his own tongue. He said, “That you did, in the—the feed place—you are brave, Mendoz’.”

“Your boss didn’t think so.”

“He thinked so,” Sril said. “Good leave.” He went.

It was Tanuojin she was supposed to meet. When she went into the Akellar’s bedroom his length was arranged across an oversized inflated chair, his back to the window, and his legs reaching halfway across the room. The Akellar gestured at him.

“That’s my lyo.”

“Hello,” she said, and got no answer. The room was freezing cold. She was glad she had worn her jacket. The other Styth’s yellow eyes stared at her, unfriendly. The balloon chair looked too small for him. The Akellar took her by the arm and maneuvered her to another chair.

She sat down. “I just spent half an hour on the videone with my boss. When do you want to go to the Earth?”

The two men exchanged a quick look, and the Akellar smiled. “We have a rendezvous to make first. Where are you taking us?”

Ketac and another young man brought in a hotel cart full of bottles and glasses. She said, “Anywhere you want. New York is as much of a capital as we have.”

Tanuojin said, “What about the ship?” He wore the same long gray shirt, the boots and leggings and slot-buckled belt as the Akellar. He had no order medal. One of the young men took him a glass of ice-water.

Paula said, “You’ll have to leave the ship parked in orbit around Luna. That’s going to be a kind of a problem. The government of Luna—”

The Akellar’s head flew up. “I thought you didn’t have governments.”

“Not on the Earth. Luna is ruled by a military clique. They’re paranoid about their security.”

The two men looked at each other once again. Ketac brought her a glass full of sparkling cider. He avoided her eyes. Although she was tempted to make some remark to him about their previous meeting, she did not want to embarrass him in front of his father. The cider was cold and delicious and she drank half of it before she put it down.

“What about when we’re in your Planet?” the Akellar said. “What about security there? It must be a pretty damn dangerous place, all you people doing whatever comes into your heads all the time.”

She crossed her legs at the ankles and folded her hands on her stomach. “You’ll be safe as babies, believe me.”

“How can you promise that? You’ve seen what’s happened here. Like that boy in the restaurant.”

“He was a Martian.” Now the two young men were bringing in a cart of steaming food. She said, “The Martians admire force, so do you, naturally you’d get in trouble.”

“But you don’t use force,” Tanuojin said.

“No. We’re very peaceful people.”

Behind the drooping strings of his mustaches his mouth curled into a sneer. “I don’t believe you.”

“If you knew anything about it, you wouldn’t have to rely on faith, would you?”

That made him angry; his off-color eyes glittered. The Akellar was watching him, amused. Ketac brought his father a dish, and he picked through it, eating neatly with his claws. Tanuojin said, “If you won’t use force, you can’t defend yourselves. You’d be slaves. And you would deserve it.”

“We don’t use force, we don’t submit to it, either. It isn’t easy, living on the Earth. Most people can’t do it.” Now Ketac was serving Tanuojin, or trying to serve him, but the tall man ignored the dish offered to him.

He said to her, “If it’s true, then it’s vile.”

“No,” she said. “If it’s true, then you’re wrong, and that’s vile. To you.”

“Are you trying to offend me?”

“I’m just talking.” Ketac brought her the dish. She shook her head at him. She did not want to look stupid trying to eat like a Styth. Tanuojin’s face was rigid with bad temper. Abruptly he got up and walked out of the room.

The Akellar sent the boys away with a gesture. Fishing a spoon out of the cart, he brought her a dish of lamb and sat on the floor beside her chair with another dish. He said, “I knew that would happen. He hates women.”

“I’m glad it’s not personal.”

He laughed. They ate in silence; when she had done, he took her bowl, still half-full, and finished it, and went back to the cart for more. She watched him eat that, amazed at his appetite.

“He isn’t married? Your lyo.”

“No. His wife is dead. Actually I think he hates everybody, except me. But he’s brilliant, he’s read all kinds of books.” He chuckled under his breath. “And he hates to be wrong.”

She watched the big man chew his way through another bowl of the lamb. He had enjoyed setting her against Tanuojin. Finally he put the bowl down and belched and patted his stomach.

“Give me one hundred fifty watches between now and when we come to the Earth.”

She divided in her head. “All right. That’s about six weeks, our time.”

“I promise I won’t shoot anybody in the meanwhile.” He went over to the serving cart for a towel to wash his hands. “Sleep with me,” he said.

“I have to work,” she said to the cart. She followed him and drank the last of the cider from the bottle.

“Do it next watch.”

“I don’t have the time.”

He pushed her away. “Go.”

Her door was open. Heavy synthetic music blared through into the hall. She stopped in the doorway. Sril was cross-legged on the floor, inhaling smoke through a tube from a small bowl on the floor in front of him. Ketac sat on the couch. The air was sweet with opium. Ketac looked asleep; his cheeks fluttered. She took her clothes off in the bathroom and went into the shower.

The Styths’ taste in music was distinct and narrow. When the synthesizer gave way to something more complex, they hunted through the radio and found some hard rock. The music reached her clearly even in the washroom. While she was drying off, the music stopped and a shocked Martian voice said, “What’s going on in here?”

Pulling on her robe, she went to the threshold of the front room. The music blasted on again. The big scarred man was standing in front of the videone, protecting it from the Nineveh’s manager. The Martian’s face was furred with a night’s beard. He looked about him, aghast. Paula wrapped her belt around her waist and tied it. The booming music hurt her ears. Sril and Ketac stooped over the opium heater. The Martian wheeled on Paula.

“I’m holding you responsible for this.” He shook his finger in her face. “You brought them here—”

The scarred man said, in Styth, “Don’t let him turn the music off.”

The manager strode out the door. Paula looked after him down the corridor, worried. Narcotics were illegal on Mars. Sril raised his head. He was hunched over the opium bowl; he held the long tube in his fingers like a paintbrush. “Ketac,” he said, in his own language, “find out what that was all about.”

Ketac was slumped on the floor, his forehead resting on one raised knee. He made no response. Paula knelt beside Sril. The music was so loud she had to shout.

“Sril. You have to get out of here. He’s gone for help.”

Sril laughed. The whites of his eyes were stained with red. “He needs help.”

“You don’t know them. He’ll bring a security team—”

Ketac lifted his head. His eyes were only half-open. His mouth hung slack. “You think we can’t take their whole army—”

She shook her head. “I can’t understand Styth in this racket.”

Sril said, “We fight two Martians each. Guns too.” He held up two fingers. “Maybe three.” With effort he added another finger.

“I’m sure you can. That only makes it worse, don’t you see?” She took his hands, trying to make him pay attention to her. “Sril, they’ll throw us all in jail.”

“We can fight anybody,” Ketac said. “Anybody.”

Sril straightened up. “Yes, but we shouldn’t make trouble for her. Come on. Bakan—”

Beneath the thunder of the music there was a pounding on the door. “Open up in there! This is Security!”

Paula looked around for some place to hide them. Ketac started to his feet and sat down hard. Sril bent to help him.

“Open this door!”

“In here.” She pointed to the bedroom door.

Bakan and Sril lifted Ketac up by the arms and hauled him away. She went around the couch to turn off the videone. The bedroom door shut, and the front door crashed open. The Martian hotelman and three policemen in gray bugle-boy uniforms charged in a wedge into the room. Paula went between them and the bedroom. Three bell-shaped pistols veered toward her.

“Where are they?”

She looked up at him. “Who?”

The red furred face of the hotelman puffed up fat with rage. “You have twelve hours to get yourself and those animals—those—” He was shouting in her face. She blinked.

“Mr. Lanahan, this is opium!”

The Martian’s windy voice rose to a shriek. “You’ll get thirty years in prison for this, if it takes me that long to put you there.”

“What is this?” The Akellar came in the broken door behind them.

Lanahan swung around. The Styth walked into their midst. The three guns swiveled from Paula to the bigger target. He ignored them. To Lanahan he said, “You’re bothering her. Leave her alone.”

The Martian said, stiff, “I don’t exactly think you—”

“Put your hands up!” a policeman cried.

The Akellar got Lanahan by the wrist and swung him around between him and the gunman, one hand on his collar and one on his arm. Paula stood where she was. She glanced at the bedroom door. The police backed up, their guns pointed at their chief’s belly.

“Mr. Lanahan—”

“Do as he says—” Lanahan stood up on his toes, his arm twisted up behind him.

“Out,” the Akellar said.

The police backed out the door. The Styth lifted Lanahan in big steps toward the threshold. He said, “Don’t talk back, nigger, it’s painful, see? See?” Lanahan screeched. The Akellar thrust him out the door. Paula went up beside the Styth to look out to the corridor. Lanahan sagged down on his knees, cradling his hand to his chest. He sobbed, his face gray with pain. The policemen stood around him. The Akellar lifted the door back onto its tracks and slammed it shut.

Sril came up to them. “I’m glad you’re here. Ketac has fallen out in her bed.” Bakan stood in the bedroom doorway.

“Go back to the trap. We’d better leave. I was getting a little tired of this Planet anyway.”

Paula went into her bedroom. Ketac lay sprawled on his face on her bed. The Akellar came after her.

“You can’t free slaves, you see? They just forget who they are and make trouble.” He sat on the edge of the bed and shook his son. “Wake up, crumb.”

“They aren’t slaves. We don’t keep slaves.”

Ketac was limp as rope. If he was awake, he gave no evidence. The Akellar said, “They talk like slaves. They work like slaves. The difference is when they get old and sick you don’t take care of them.” He heaved his son up across his shoulders.

She followed him out to the front room. Ketac’s head and arms hung down his father’s back. She gathered up the opium heater and the straw and piled them into the crook of the big man’s arm. “You have a diplomatic license and I don’t.”

“Will you be safe here?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t leave you here if you’re going to have trouble.”

She raised her head, smarting. “How did I ever get along without you?”

He started to say something. Instead he left, angling his child’s long legs through the door.

The cruise ship’s corridor was just wide enough for one person. Paula held her suitcase awkwardly before her, reading the numbers on the brown sliding doors on either side. At 113, she knocked.

“Who is it?” Bunker called, inside, and she pushed the door back and went in.

Two stacks of beds filled the little stateroom. Bunker sat on the end of the near lower shelf, his shirt off. A medic in a white coat was pasting sensors to his chest. Paula threw her bags on the upper bed. The phony gravity held her feet down to the floor as if she had glue on her shoes. She looked curiously at Bunker.

“How was it?”

The medic said, “Breathe in, Browne.”

Bunker inhaled. She wondered if he ever told his real name to strangers. “Interesting. I’ve never been in a deep-space ship before.” The medic made notes in a notepad.

“Are you Paula Mendoza?”

“Yes.”

“I’m supposed to give you a physical.”

Paula sat down on the lower bed opposite Bunker. She took off her jacket, unsnapped the pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper, which she gave to Bunker. She said, “You look pale.”

“He’s anemic,” the medic said. “Free fall and rich atmosphere.”

“You were in free fall on Ybix? What was it like?”

Bunker was reading the rough draft of the agreement. “This is solid check. Mendoza, I don’t know how you did it.” He folded up the paper and gave it back to her.

“He’s getting what he wants.”

“He’s getting what he thinks he wants. We get what we need.”

Paula looked around the room. There were no ports. The walls were covered in textured beige plastic. It was smaller than the bath at the Nineveh. The medic put his computer on the bed and gave Bunker a towel to wash the sensor paste off his chest. Paula pulled her shirt off over her head. She turned her back to the medic.

“Did you get to know any of the crew?”

“All the ones inboard.” Bunker put on his shirt. He stood and pulled a ring in the beige wall, and a panel opened out. The medic held something cold against her back. Bunker said, “Some of them are real compulsives.”

“Is he honest?” She glanced over her shoulder at the medic.

“Yes. Breathe in.”

She breathed deep. Bunker took a small film can from the shelf in the wall. Paula reached for it. The medic thumped her back. The end of a strip of film stuck out of the can. She pulled out half a roll of pictures. The first several frames were exteriors of a kite-shaped spaceship. On its metal back was painted a black three-pointed star.

The door rattled under a rapid knock. “Who is it?” Bunker said, and Jefferson came in, squeezing sideways through the door.

“Well, Richard, you look fit.”

Paula held up photographs of a spherical room. “What’s this?”

“The bridge.”

“They let you go all over the ship? Hello, Jefferson.”

Jefferson slid between the medic and Bunker and sat down on the bed beside Paula. The medic’s fingers pressed gently under Paula’s jaw. He felt along her shoulder.

“You’re tense, relax.”

Jefferson unbuttoned the front of her suit. The frilly blouse underneath made her breast look a yard wide. “Mendoza was run out of the Nineveh Club,” she told Bunker. “After only five days.”

“The food was awful,” Paula said.

Bunker said, “Mendoza, for six days I’ve had nothing to eat but chalk buttons and water.”

She looked at film of a winding tubular corridor. Jefferson said, “I gained five pounds sitting in a hotel room waiting for Mendoza’s infrequent calls. I think we all suffered appropriately.”

Paula gave her the film and the draft of the treaty. The medic was writing in his notebook. She turned to Bunker.

“You went all over Ybix? What’s it like?”

“A Mylar wormhole. And all over isn’t very far.”

The old woman covered her right eye with her hand. She held the single typed page of the agreement out to read it. “My. What’s this scrawl here?”

“That’s his signature.”

Jefferson’s head wagged. “Fair, for a first draft. In five days.”

The medic stabbed Paula’s finger with a metal clip. He picked up the blood in a long glass straw. She said, “It doesn’t mean much. He talks for his own city, and that’s all. There was another man down there, Tanuojin—”

Bunker lay down on his back along the narrow bed. His shirt was unbuttoned. His bony chest looked hard as a carapace. “I heard all about him. Ybix’s second officer. They call him The Creep. Not exactly the most popular man with the crew. Is he the Akellar’s brother?”

“His lyo. It’s a sworn friendship. Remember, Kary said something about it.”

“And is he an Akellar himself?”

“I think so.”

The medic straightened. “That’s all, Mendoza.” He sealed up his computer. “He’s anemic.” He turned to the door. “And she’s pregnant.” He went out. Paula stared stupidly at the dark panel shutting in the wall.

Bunker and Jefferson burst out laughing. Paula said, “No,” and they roared.

Jefferson said, “Paula, you’ll have to apply for a bonus for hazardous duty.” Bunker howled. He gasped for breath; tears ran down his face.

Paula put her hands up to her cheeks. Jefferson said, chuckling, “I’m sorry, Mendoza, but it’s terribly funny. Here, have a mint.”

Bunker wiped his eyes. “So that’s how you did it.”

She bared her teeth at him. “You take over. I’d like to see you handle him, rat.”

“I wouldn’t get pregnant.” He smirked at her, and Jefferson burbled again with laughter. He propped himself up on his elbows. “I’ve always wished I could, actually. Give it to me, Mendoza, if you don’t want it.”

Paula leaned against the wall. She put her hand on her stomach. “What would you do with a baby?”

“I’d be very loving. The perfect parent.”

She grunted.

“Then when he got to a nice size, I’d cook him and eat him.”

Jefferson said, “You did get pregnant at the Nineveh.”

Paula’s stomach fluttered. She counted days on her fingers. It was only ninety-six hours. The medic couldn’t be sure. “That bastard. He didn’t even warn me.”

Jefferson patted her shoulder. “I’m glad I’m not young. You can have the bottom bunk.” She climbed onto the deck above Bunker’s head.

“You should have warned him,” Bunker said. He folded his arms behind his head. “But you were so busy taking advantage of the poor dumb chump—”

“Shut up,” Paula said, between her teeth.