“You must be Paula Mendoza.”
A toothy man smiled at her, walking along beside her. Sril barged in between them. Before she could speak he had forced the white man away out of sight. She frowned up at the little gunner.
“I’m just doing my job,” he said, injured. “Don’t blow your rack at me.”
Paula clenched her teeth. She could hear an important voice up at the head of the herd, telling Saba how the Planet had been built. Past the men around her she caught glimpses of the lighted display windows of shops. The air smelled like wintergreen.
They came to a moving sidewalk, and the police were shoving back the crowds for them. People already massed the fast track of the sidewalk. With the Styths Paula stepped up from the curb onto the slow belt. The traveling band carried her along above the covered street, swarming with traffic. She looked up over her head. The white ceiling was pocked with lights and air vents and the speakers of the public address system. Tanuojin was behind her. He pushed her, and she went across the middle track to the fast one, passed Saba who was still in the middle, and dropped down beside him. Tanuojin had come along behind her. David was asleep in Saba’s arms.
The dark man who had met them made a dapper bow at her with his head. “Welcome to Crosby’s Planet, Mrs. Mendoza.” He had a robotic perfection of voice and mannerism.
“What did you call me?” she said.
“My wife is an anarchist,” Saba said. He took her by the shoulder, his favorite handle. “All thorns and no bloom.”
The robot released a peal of genuine-sounding laughter, as if Saba had made some witticism. Ahead, the moving sidewalk passed through a narrow gateway. On either side, in glass booths, men in uniforms stood facing them. The robot took a billfold from his neat black tunic and flipped it open to show a badge. They went through the gate without even stopping.
“What is that?” Tanuojin said. He looked back.
“A checkpoint,” she said.
“You mean they even tell these people where they can travel?”
“It isn’t that bad. It’s all done by statistics.”
Tanuojin laughed in a flash of shark-teeth. She wondered what he thought was funny. He said, “You know, I’m beginning to think we lead a very quiet life in Styth.”
They crossed a large open plaza, studded with trees in planters. The leaves were pale yellow. On the far side was the building where the Universal Court was held. The dapper man said, “We’ve arranged for you to stay at the Palestine Hotel, just around the corner—you’ll probably never have to leave this sector.” His voice was edged with warning. The moving sidewalk carried them past the plaza and they got off.
Inside the glass doors of the Palestine, a swarm of little men in red and gold jackets surrounded them. Saba passed out liberal amounts of money and signed many papers. Paula walked around the hotel lobby. The tile floor was inlaid with a stylized map of the Levantine Coast, the ancient cities marked in stars. A gold dromon sailed in the rippled sea.
They crowded into one car of the vertical train. Paula heard someone’s head strike the ceiling, and Marus swore, behind her. The car took them down six levels, very fast.
Tanuojin said, “I hope there’s some other way out of this place.”
“Stairs,” Saba said. “At either end of the hall.”
The robot had come with them. In the Common Speech, he said, “While you’re here, Akellar, consider our office at your disposal.” He gave Saba a plastic card. “We have copiers, a deaf-room, workrooms, taping rooms, guaranteed phones—” He led them out of the vertical and across a short corridor. “There are two other suites on this floor, but they open on the other side of the stack.” He opened the door before them with a little flourish. “I’m sure your privacy will be undisturbed.”
Paula went into the room beyond. The air smelled of freshener. The Styths poured noisily after her. David gave a sleepy wail. The big room was shaped like a half-moon, decorated all in black and white and clear acrylic. The mirror over the couch was curved to fit the wall. The men around her were reflected all along the wall, made taller and denser by the concave mirror. She went across to a door and opened it.
In the room beyond the lights came up very bright. There were two twin beds against the far wall of the room. She went back to the half-moon sitting room and opened the next door. This was a narrow kitchen. The tap leaked. She tried the third door off the sitting room and found the master bedroom.
Three hanging lamps like lanterns shone on when she crossed the threshold. The wide bed was covered in a tufted spread. She kicked her shoes off. The mirrors on two of the walls made the room seem even bigger than it was. A buzz sounded behind her. She pulled out a drawer in the wall and found a videone.
A pale face mouthed at her from the screen. She turned the volume up.
“—Messages here for you, if you’d like me to send them down.”
“Messages. From who?”
Tanuojin crowded her out of the way. “What’s this?”
She wandered off across the room. The light drenched her, the warmth, the richness of the carpet under her feet, the softness, as if the dark cold of Styth had dried her to a husk. David came in, yawning.
“Mama, I’m hungry.”
She looked through a side door into a dark bathroom. There were already footprints on the thick pale carpet. Her son pulled on her skirt.
“Mama!”
Tanuojin crossed the room toward her. “Who is Sybil Jefferson?” His face was bland.
Paula grunted at him. “You know damned well. Did she call? I wonder what she’s doing here.”
Saba walked in the doorway from the sitting room. His shirt was stained dark with sweat. “I’m hungry. Get us something to eat. And make them turn the heat down.”
Paula went over to the videone. When she pushed the top button, the screen lit up, off-white. She said into the phone, “Room service.”
“Yes. That is number 833. I’ll connect you.” The screen switched to an advertisement for hairsuds.
Sril was standing just behind her. “Mendoz’. Do they have women here?”
“You mean like the Nineveh? No.”
He made a face. The advertisement cut away to a rolling menu: roast beef, red pork, pilaf and mikambu and salmon mousse. She ordered it all.
“And a couple of gallons of chocolate ice cream.” The kitchen clerk was typing the whole order onto a computer terminal. “And a case of champagne.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the clerk said. “Real ice cream?”
“Yes. Where can he get laid?”
The clerk’s fingers never broke rhythm. “MH-111-1-15-77-3. Ask for Elsie.” He rolled the bill out of the machine. “Six roast beef, six ham, six—”
“Don’t read it, send it. Room 1017. Thank you.” She called the front desk and had them turn the air conditioning down to 50 degrees.
Saba and Tanuojin stood at the foot of the bed talking. David was asleep again on the floor. She dragged him out of the way of the men. Sril went out, repeating rapid-fire the address the kitchen clerk had given him. She hoped Elsie was cosmopolitan. She went up beside Saba.
“What about Sybil Jefferson?”
Saba glanced at her. He turned to Tanuojin, his chin thrust out. “See if you can raise the ship.”
“Tell her,” Tanuojin said. “What are you trying to do, Saba—you know if she takes to it she can escape. Do you want her to fly out when we’re in this up to the hairline?”
“Go raise Ybix, stud—leave her to me.” Saba poked him in the chest.
“You know so much about women, big man, I know more about her than you ever will.” Tanuojin headed for the door. In passing he knocked a hanging lamp swinging.
Saba turned on her. “What did he mean by that?”
“How would I know? He’s your friend.”
He charged out toward the sitting room. She followed, shutting the door so they would not wake David if they fought. In the black and white room, the rest of the crew wa
s scattered around. Tanuojin tramped through them to the bedroom on the end and disappeared. Saba kicked at the baggage piled in the middle of the floor.
“Stow this. Bakan. Call the ship.”
Bakan passed Paula into the bedroom. Sril said, “Akellar, we were hoping we could get a leave.” The other men watched him hopefully. There was a knock on the door.
“Room service.”
In the next room, David cried, tearful, “Mama?” She went to answer him. His face was bleary with sleep. He held out his hands to her.
“Mama, I want to go home.”
“I know, David. I have a surprise for you.”
“I’m hungry.” Holding her hand, he went into the front room.
Three shining white hot-carts stood just inside the door. Styths ringed them. A lid clanged to the floor. She smelled the meat and her mouth sprang with water. Saba was in the doorway paying the waiters. Tanuojin came out of the far room and cursed his way through the thick of the other men. Paula crowded in between Sril and Marus. Someone stepped on her foot. She got a spoon, stooped, and reached between legs for a drum of ice cream.
David stood by the couch, rubbing his eyes. Grouchy, he looked around him. “I want to go home.”
“I know.” She sat him down on the couch and fed him a spoonful of chocolate ice cream.
He mouthed it, his face still caught in its fret, and swallowed. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth, and she gave him another bite. At the expression on his face she burst out laughing.
“Here.” She put the spoon into his hand. “Don’t make yourself sick.”
He hacked at the ice cream with the spoon. She stood up. The Styths were scattered around the room eating. She found a plate on the bottom shelf of a cart and forked up the last slice of beef. Saba came over beside her, flipped back another lid, and reached into a fruit salad.
They stood side by side, eating. One bin was half-full of succotash. He ate the beans and she ate the corn. After a while, he said, “Sybil Jefferson is at the Interplanetary Hotel.”
“Akellar.” Sril came around the carts, facing him, and stood at respect. “We’d really like a leave.”
“Just a second.” Saba raised his head, looking around at his crew. “You stay out of trouble. You remember that gate we came through, on the trudgeway? They have those all over this place. They can tell where you are within a five-hundred-yard radius, anywhere.” He ate fruit. “Go on.”
“Thank you, Akellar.” The room emptied of them. The door shut.
Saba was chewing something. “Pine—” he frowned, trying to remember. “Pinefruit?”
“Pineapple.”
“Pineapple.” He speared cubes of the yellow fruit on his claws.
Bakan put his head out the bedroom door. “Akellar, Kobboz has to talk to you.”
Saba went into the bedroom. Paula stuffed a leaf of crisp lettuce into her mouth, ate a radish, and looked in the small bins for dressing. Tanuojin stood next to her.
“I wish he’d take the cork out of his ass.”
Paula swallowed a dripping artichoke heart, slippery as a raw egg. “That was a sharp remark you made, before.”
“Yes. But true.” He chucked her under the chin and went off to his room.
When she had stuffed herself full, Saba was in the shower. She took off David’s chocolate-covered clothes and sent him in with his father. There was a directory in the videone panel; she called the Interplanetary Hotel.
A young man with an intense bushy mustache answered Jefferson’s extension. “Look, it’s two o’clock.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not on your time yet. Is Roland there? I’m Paula Mendoza.”
“Oh. Hold on.”
She stood listening to the rattle of the shower. The suite was quiet. Saba’s clothes hung over the edge of the bed.
“Mendoza.”
She turned back to the screen. Jefferson was putting herself into a garden-print kimono. Her face was barded with fat. “Sybil,” Paula said. “What are you doing here? You look awful.”
“I’m here on Council business, which is probably why. How are you?” Jefferson did up the hooks over her shelf of breast.
“I get along. Who’s our judge in the court?”
“Wu-wei. Do you know him?”
Paula pursed her lips. “Yes. This will be interesting.” She looked around the room, wondering if the place were tapped.
“Are you arguing the Styths’ case?” Jefferson asked.
“No. Tanuojin is. Saba’s lyo.”
“And the adversary is Chi Parine.”
Paula shook her head. “Blank.”
“I guess he’s too recent for you. He’s a Martian. In the past few years he’s been quite a little firebrand. He’s a member of the Sunlight League.”
“My my. What’s their case?”
“I don’t know.” Jefferson took a lace-edged hanky from her pocket and dabbed at her bad eye. “There’s been more show than law in it, so far. Frankly, nobody expected you to answer the subpoena. They were taken rather aback when you did.”
“I think we’ll take them all the way back to the ape,” Paula said. She glanced behind her at the shower. David was laughing. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Fine, Mendoza.”
Paula turned off the videone. The hiss of the shower half-drowned David’s giggles. She had met Wu-wei once, on the Earth; they had talked about music and ritual circumcision. She took off her clothes and went into the shower with Saba and David.
“We’re late.”
“They won’t start without us.” Tanuojin turned over the single long sheet of the hourly. “Where did they get these pictures of us?”
Saba led them down the corridor. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to be late.”
Paula broke into a trot to keep up. The rest of the crew was strung out along the corridor behind them. Painted apple-green, the inside of the court building reminded her of a school where her mother had sent her before she grew big enough to run away. They went through a set of double doors into the courtroom.
Spectators filled the back two-thirds of the room, which was also apple-green. All the heads turned. The racket of conversation hushed. Paula moved in between Saba and Tanuojin, where she would not be noticed. A railing separated the gallery from the Bench. To the right front of the judge’s table was a small crowd of seated people: the adversary. They were all Martians.
The Bench was vacant. Wu-wei wasn’t a man to wait in public. Saba bent to swing open the gate in the railing, and they went in to the left side of the court.
Paula took her coat off. The courtroom was warm even for her. She glanced at the adversary side and met five sets of unfriendly eyes. She recognized Chi Parine from his picture in the hourlies. He was a small man, in early middle age, his hair thinning back from his forehead. His clothes were flamboyant, a green tunic, yellow shoes.
“Why are all these people staring at us?” Bakan asked, behind her.
Saba pointed at the wall, and the five Styths lined up along it. Tanuojin sat down carefully in a straight chair. It was much too small for him. Saba half-sat on the railing.
A woman in a short dress came out the door behind the judge’s table. She knocked with her knuckles on the tabletop.
“Please rise for the Bench.”
Paula was still on her feet. Behind her, the gallery got noisily up, and the Martians stood, but Saba and Tanuojin stayed as they were. Wu-wei came in. He took his seat behind the table. Folding his hands in front of him, he aimed his yellow epicene face at Tanuojin. The audience slapped down into their chairs, and the Martians all sat but one.
Wu-wei said, “I assume you gentlemen are registering a protest of some kind. Would you care to express it now?” His velvet tenor voice reminded her of Pedasen.
Tanuojin sprawled long as a whip across the chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an Akellar of the Styth Empire. I only stand up for an Akellar who outranks me.�
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“No,” Wu-wei said. He opened his paper file. “You’re just bad-mannered.” He turned to the bailiff. “Read the case.”
The woman who had announced him stood and read off the charges and the names of the people involved. She managed to mispronounce both the Styth names and the name of the ship. Paula went over beside Tanuojin’s chair and sat on her heels. She glanced at Chi Parine, who was watching her narrowly. To Tanuojin, she said, “Ask them for bigger chairs.” Surprised, she sniffed at the metal taint in the air. “Tanuojin. You’re afraid.”
He twisted to look back at Saba. Slumping forward again, he whacked her in the side with his elbow. “Get away from me.”
Parine was up on his feet, his chest thrown out. He reminded her of Machou, displaying in the hall of the Akopra. “Your Excellency, I want to protest the defenser’s churlish behavior. This is a civilized proceeding. If these—” he waved at the Styths—“people don’t intend to abide by our laws, they shouldn’t have come here.”
Several spectators clapped. Wu-wei banged his knuckles on the table.
“I think I’ve already noted that the defenser is being defiant and hostile. Perhaps as he comes to know us, he’ll take to us a little more. I understand you have some bills, Parine.”
“Indeed we do, Your Excellency.” Parine strutted up to the Bench. “We are bringing a bill to disqualify Paula Mendoza from the defense.”
Paula went back to the railing and sat on it, beside Saba. The spectators murmured. They sounded eager. Saba looked around at them.
“That’s an unusual bill,” Wu-wei said.
“Your Excellency, this is an unusual case. The charges have been brought against these two men.” Parine gestured toward the Styths. “They have chosen, wisely or not as time will tell, to argue in their own defense. Miss Mendoza works for the Committee for the Revolution. The laws of the court require that third parties to a case declare their interest before the case opens. The Committee has declared no interest in this case—”
Tanuojin was unfolding himself out of the chair. He rose up to his full height, and Parine faltered, distracted. He wheeled back toward the Bench.
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