“Maybe. It could be.” He spoke to her in Styth. “Are you Paula Mendoza?”
She said nothing. She closed her eyes, stiff with the pain in her chest and side. He lifted her up. “Call the Akellar.”
He took her into a little room on the first floor of the government building, sat her down in a big leather chair, and brought her a mug of hot meat soup. While she was drinking the soup, the Lopka Akellar came into the room. His face was a patchwork of little scars.
“That’s the one,” he said. “Do you remember me, Mendoz’?”
She stared at him, unwilling to speak the other language. He glanced at the man behind him. “Send to the Prima that we have his wife.”
“The Prima.” She put the cup down, startled.
“Saba is the Prima now. Machou tried to block him on the war action.”
She looked in another direction. Ymma left her alone. She moved stiffly around the room. The door was locked and there were no windows. Her side hurt. Aimlessly she paced around the room. She drank the rest of the soup and sat thinking about Bunker and trying idly to reduce to an aphorism the fact that she was always well fed in jail and starved when she was free.
After some time Ymma came back and took her out to the verticals. “If you won’t go willingly, I’m supposed to carry you.”
Her feet hurt. The corridor was crowded with Styths. The overhead lights had been shut off. At the end of the dim busy corridor the outer doors shone pale with sunlight. She stopped, drawn like a moth, and Ymma pushed her. She had not been indoors in months and the closed spaces made her hunch her shoulders.
“We took London last watch.” He led her into the first vertical car. “So’ Bay the same watch as here. If we had more men we could have them all at once.”
“What happened to the Martian Army?”
“Since we won Luna, they have no base. We were flying them around the Sun anyway. The Creep isn’t a bad strategist, you know. Not a bad strategist at all.”
She wrapped her arms around her. The language was exotic in its inflections and order and accents. The car stopped and the doors slid apart. She stayed where she was. Ymma stood watching her from his ruined face, his black eyes like wells. She went out to the dark hall.
Half a dozen men were lined up against the far wall. She went past them into a broad, dim room. The windows were covered in black paper. Saba was sitting on the desk, talking to Ketac.
She stopped, and her hands fisted at her sides. Saba was graying. On his wrist was the iron cuff of his rank. He and Ketac turned to face her; she glanced at his son and stared at Saba, her jaw clenched with anger.
“Go on,” Saba said to Ketac. “We have to hurry this up.”
Ketac paused as he approached her, maybe to say something, changed his mind, and went out. Saba came after him, his hands on his belt, his eyes on her.
“What’s the matter with you? You should be thanking me. You’d be down there being sorted and numbered if we hadn’t gone out of our way to save you.”
“To save me!” She felt swollen with rage. She said, “You have it screwed around a little.” Wheeling, she started for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Down out of your way.”
He caught her arm. “Listen to me, damn you!”
Her breath whined in her throat, and her temper snapped. He had hold of her arm. She clawed at him with her fingernails, first his hand, and when he wrenched her around and flung his arm around her waist she lunged at his face. He picked her up, pinning her hands. He was carrying her somewhere, through a doorway. She struggled around in his grip and sank her teeth into his face. He wrenched free. Skin tore in her teeth.
“Paula—Pauliko—I’ll number you—”
She twisted hard, corkscrewing back and forth, and rammed her arm into his chest. They fell lengthwise onto a bed. Kicking and elbowing him, she fought free at last and lunged away, and his weight landed on top of her.
All her wind rushed out of her. Her head whirled. He was pulling her jacket off. His breath was hot on her face. His heavy odor filled her nose and mouth. He took his hand off her to unbuckle the belt of his leggings and she jerked one arm loose and raked at his bleeding face with her nails. His arm crooked around her throat. She tried to bite his hand and got a mouthful of thick armor-shirt. He pinned her under him again, face down.
“You’ll like it, Paula.” He was panting. “You always liked me best.” He pulled down her pants and shoved himself into her.
She yelled. His whole hot weight buried her. Every time he moved it hurt. She bit her lips, her eyes squeezed shut. Stinking and hot, he groaned in his climax.
He moved away from her, his harsh breathing loud. She turned over onto her back. Her legs and groin were stiff with pain. He was watching her. The deep moon-shaped bite on his jaw bled in a stream. She got her feet under her and attacked him again.
“Hey!” He caught her. They fell off the bed onto the floor, and she landed on top of him. He was wedged between the bed and the long chest of drawers against the wall. Snarling and crying, she scratched his eyes. He heaved himself up and threw her bodily across the room. The wall hit her. Dazed, she pushed herself up on her arms. He bolted out the door and she heard the lock turn over.
She sat on the foot of the bed, her chest heaving. A deep bleeding scratch ran across her belly. Her thighs were smeared with his slime. She cried out and scraped at the greasy skin with her nails, tearing at the only part of him she could reach.
She slept in the bed. When she woke up there was a pile of women’s clothes on the chair. She picked up a long white sleeve and the fabric snagged on her roughened fingertips. The door was still locked. She went into the little washroom connected to the bedroom and took a shower. She dried herself off and went out to the bedroom. Tanuojin was sitting on the bureau, joined at the back to his reflection in the mirror.
“Oh,” she said.
“You’re scrawny as a chicken’s neck,” he said. “I’m surprised he still wanted you.”
His eyes were pale as lamps. She put on the white dress, which hung around her like a sack, and hunted among the other clothes for a belt.
“How is Kasuk?” she asked, bent over the chair.
“My son is dead.”
Her head flew up. Her lips made a round, soundless word. She flung the clothes in her arms aside. “What was it—an honorable sacrifice? Did you kill him in your war?”
“Yes, he died in the war. There was no way to avoid it. Even you have to see that all this came out of the mouth of the past.”
She sat down on the bed. Her fingers laced together in her lap. She thought of Kasuk’s blind adoration of him.
“I need your help,” he said.
Her gaze snapped up to him. “No.” She went past him to the door.
The room beyond was crowded with a tall forest of Styths. When she came in, their talk hushed, their heads turned toward her, round-eyed. She went through them toward the door, dwarfed among them.
“Akellar,” a man said, behind her, “Pert’ is asking to surrender.”
The bedroom door clicked shut. Tanuojin said, “Call the Prima. He’s in
She went out the door. Leno stood in the middle of the hall, a swarm of men around him. “If I have to deal through The Creep—” She brushed past them toward the vertical. The familiar people unnerved her. She felt herself sucked into that world again, that life.
She went down the hall to the rank of verticals. No one came after her or tried to stop her. They were letting her go. The call button on the wall between the double doors of the verticals was blinking on and off and she put her back to the opposite wall to wait. A steady stream of Styths walked by in both directions. She tried not to understand their talk. It was still hard to realize that Kasuk was dead. The war ate him. The vertical doors on the right slid back and a flood of men strode out toward her. She waited for them to pass. One was still shaven. A boy.
