Finally she got up and put on clothes: a long dress. All the Martians would give her was dresses.
“All right, I’m coming.” She picked at her hair with her fingers.
They went down to Cam’s vast office. Sleek as an otter, Cam herself sat behind her desk, smoking a cigarette in a plastic holder. General Hanse was talking to a group of his own people. Paula walked down the room. There was a tall statue opposite her, a young man made of stone; a six-foot acrylic poster hung on the wall beside it. She looked slowly around the room, startled. On the wall on her side of the room was an illuminated initial from Kells. Rodgers touched her arm, and she sat down in the chair he indicated.
Dick Bunker was coming in the door. She yipped, delighted: he was wearing a uniform. Three of Hanse’s khaki soldiers followed him down the far side of the room.
“Paula,” Cam said. Rodgers tapped her shoulder again. She went up to the desk. There was a little gold cherub beside the ashtray; it looked old. Probably it had been converted into a cigarette lighter. Cam leaned back in her swivel chair. She was smiling, her mouth red with paint. General Hanse beside her looked rumpled. She held out a medal on a chain.
“What does this mean?”
Paula lifted it by the chain. It was the medal of the order of the Supernova; on the back in Styth characters was Sril’s name and the word Matuko and a saying: “
“Did it come in the mail?” she asked. She put it down on Cam’s desk.
“What does it mean?”
“Somebody considers you responsible for the death of a Styth. It means they’ll take vengeance.” She looked from Cam to the fat general. “Which of you got it?”
Hanse wheeled toward Cam, leading with his jutting chin. “Satisfied, Dr. Savenia? You brought us all here just for an audience for this.”
Cam smirked at him. They started to argue, and Paula backed away from the desk. Bunker was standing in front of the marble statue. She went across the room to him.
“Look at this,” he said. “She’s looting the Earth.”
The statue was almost six and a half feet tall. Its smile and magnificent body reminded her of Kasuk. She turned back to the other anarchist.
“Why are you wearing that cowboy outfit?”
He moved one shoulder to indicate Hanse and Savenia. “She tried to detach me, so he drafted me into the Army. I’m a major, which is one higher than that plastic captain you came in with. What did that medal mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“A message to you, maybe.”
“Maybe.” Hanse was coming toward them, his face oiled with sweat. Clearly he had lost his argument with Cam. Paula moved away.
“Are you getting along all right?” Hanse said. His little eyes gleamed. “Rodgers is treating you well?”
“Very well,” she said. “A perfect gentleman, Captain Rodgers. The flower of Martian manhood.”
“I’m going to Luna for a few days. We’ve had a tempting offer from some friends of yours.” He was watching her intently, unblinking. The creases of his face were marked in talcum powder. “The Styths have two flag officers of mine they’re willing to exchange for you.”
“You’re going to do it?”
“I need those officers. You’re outstaying your usefulness. As much as I enjoy our conversations.”
She turned her face away from him. That was what the medal had meant. Her hand rested on the desk and she beat her fingers on it. She would go back to Styth with nothing, at their mercy, like a slave. Sold like a slave. Hanse stood, his uniform jacket bulging over the pad of his stomach.
“If everything on Luna goes as I expect it will, I won’t be seeing you again—we’ll exchange off Ceres in an Earthish month. I’d like to feel we parted friends.” He put his hand out to her.
Paula bounded out of her chair. She felt too large for her body, a scream coming up from the gut, a bursting rage. “Get out.” She looked around for something to throw. Hanse, scrambling, was already at the door, calling for Rodgers. She threw the ashtray at him. He went out fast and the door slammed.
She was not ready for Rodgers; she barricaded her door with the desk. They spent two hours taking the door off the hinges. She went three or four times around the room, which she knew now inch by inch. When Rodgers came in she was sitting on the bed, resigned. He hauled her down to the little room and tied her up to the wall so she could neither sit nor stand straight and left her. The worst was waiting for him to come back.
Slumped against the wall on her throbbing legs, she thought with alarm of the exchange Hanse was planning. The Styths wanted her back because of what she knew about the Middle Planets. Hanse certainly realized that. He would never send her to them in any condition to serve them. Her half-bent knees gave way and she fell, hit the rope that fastened her arms to the wall, and jerked them almost out of her shoulders. Grimly she pushed herself back up to a crouch. This was all Hanse’s idea, so she would complain and he could rescue her from Rodgers and make her trust him. She closed her eyes.
The first thing she saw in Cam’s office was the large painting by Jacques-Louis David of Marat, dead in his bath. The oil hung directly over Cam’s desk. Paula stopped near a chair to the side of the room, looking around, while other people filed into the room. On the paneled wall beside her a dragon-robe was spread out like a pair of scarlet wings, feathered in gold thread. The room was cluttered. Pictures hung thick as scale from the walls. Here and there among the living people statues stood. Paula sat down in the chair behind her. Surrounded by soldiers, she rubbed her fingers nervously together, her eyes on the painting of the dead revolutionary above the desk.
The wall below it split open. Cam came out of her private lift. Two trim young men followed her. The soldiers in the room straightened rigidly to attention. Cam was neat as a mannequin. Her hair gleamed. An aide held her chair for her. She spoke to him, sitting down, and he laughed at what she said.
“At ease, gentlemen.”
In unison they relaxed. Paula looked curiously around at their scrubbed, shaven faces. In their midst Bunker stood with his jacket unbuttoned, his cheek blurred with beard. Cam folded her hands together.
“He defiled the uniform, putting you into it.”
Behind Paula, Rodgers muttered, “In she goes.”
“Are you drunk?” Cam said to Bunker.
He shuffled his feet. “Slightly.” He glanced up at the clay-colored corpse on the wall above her. “Not enough.”
“You’re a disgusting little man.”
“Thank you. I was hoping you’d appreciate my modest efforts.”
“Cut his balls off,” Paula said. “Make him walk the plank.”
Cam swung back and forth in her chair. “It makes me sick to see him in a Martian uniform.”
“Shall I take it off?” He pulled one arm out of the sleeve.
“You’re out of uniform,” Cam said, “for which you’ll spend the next five days in solitary.”
Paula cheered. She clapped her hands together three or four times, the only sound in the crowded room. Cam threw her a hard look. “Do you want to join him?”
“Then we wouldn’t be in solitary,” Bunker said. He shrugged into his jacket.
“Complete solitary,” Cam said. “In the closet. No food, no water, no lights. No liquor.” She sat back, smiling. Bunker said nothing. Alert, Paula settled deep into her chair, watching him, thinking about what he had just done. Cam’s gaze swung toward her. “Why aren’t you cheering, baby?”
“I hope you got me down here for some purpose,” Paula said. “Other than making an ass of yourself, which is less entertaining than it used to be.”
“Rodgers, the same for her. Five days.”
Rodgers was standing behind Paula. He said sharply, “Doctor, you’re going to put them together?”
“That’s what I said. Put them both in the closet. Maybe they’ll tear each other to pieces.”
“That’s immoral. General Hanse—”
“Joe isn’t here,” Cam said. She took a sheet of clear paper from her desk and held it out to one of her aides,
