The two anarchists laughed. “Good-night.”
They walked back to the hotel, and she unpacked her bag. Bunker was right. If the Council aborted the case, they’d have to go home again, but she wanted to stay awhile to talk to Kary. She hung up the long white dress, which wrinkled easily. There were two beds, covered in the same dark red as the slippery carpet. On the wall above them was a woven hanging, Turkoman, or Uzbek. A sweet spicy odor made her sniff. She went across the sitting room to the kitchen.
Bunker stood by the counter cutting peaches into a big stew pot. She went in behind him and took a beer out of the cold drawer. Neither of them spoke. She swallowed a cold mouthful of the beer. The sun was going down, and the kitchen lights were coming on in the ceiling. She turned the dial on the wall to brighten the light. Bunker put the lid on the stew pot. He ran the spoon and knives through the washer spray and wiped off the counter.
“You’re certainly tidy,” she said.
“I don’t like to leave tracks,” he said.
The pot buzzed. He turned it off and ladled the flavorsome stew into bowls and handed one to her.
They went into the living room. Sitting on the floor, she blew across the top of the stew to cool it. Bunker crossed to the couch.
“I take it the Styths live in families.”
She ate a sweet stewed peach. “Big families. They’re polygynous.” She thought with sympathy of Kary, family man, alone in an anarchist world. “This is pretty good chicken.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
“Maybe you missed your real art. When you went into burglary.”
He went to the massive antique videone behind the door and dialed through the range of the local radio. At last he settled on progressive music. She spooned up the last juices in her bowl. He flopped down on the couch, cradled his bowl in his lap, and began to eat.
“Actually burglary is only a hobby. How well do you know Cam Savenia?”
“I traveled with her for eight weeks. That was a long time ago.”
“She’s ambitious.”
Paula lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “She’s a Martian. And a woman.”
“I’ve never noticed women are more ambitious than men.” His spoon clicked on his bowl.
“I meant being a woman on Mars she has a lot to make up for,” Paula said.
The videone buzzed. Paula leaped to her feet, dropping the empty bowl. She reached the cabinet one step ahead of Bunker, got between him and the controls, and flipped the switch from radio to intercom. The camera swung on a flexible arm. She yanked it down to her level. The face on the screen belonged to the desk clerk.
“I have a message coming through for you from Crosby’s Planet.”
“Jefferson,” Bunker said.
A flicker rolled across the screen. Paula rapped her fingers on the cabinet. The message was in block letters; it appeared slowly on the yellow ground, at first too dim to read, and she reached for the adjustment knob and Bunker caught her hand. Slowly the print darkened.
Jefferson to Bunker. Council voted 270–265 to continue the case.
Zed.
Paula screeched. She backed away from the videone and spun in a circle. Bunker said, “Five votes. Nobody handles the Fascists like Roland.”
“Do you think she had to negotiate the vote?”
“Any time it’s that close, she doesn’t leave it to their goodwill.”
He switched the videone back to the music. Paula sat down on the floor again. “What did you call her? Roland.”
“Madame Roland,” he said. “Always meddling.” Rolling to his feet, he went into the kitchen. She heard the hiss of the washer.
Paula took a shower. While she was drying herself off, Bunker came into the bathroom doorway. “What’s this?” He had the propaganda leaflet in his hand.
“Overwood gave it to me. It’s supposed to be by the Sunlight League.” She shook the damp towel and hung it up on the back of the door. “Some of it’s true.” She glanced at herself in the mirror. Little drops of water glistened in her puffed coppery hair. She went out to the bedroom.
“The bed on the left is mine,” he called.
She pulled back the red cover on the right bed and climbed in. Limp, her eyes shut, she stretched out, and the fluid mud-filled mattress gave softly beneath her. Bunker came in, reading the pamphlet.
“Listen to this.
“What’s the Pre-Contention Period?” Paula asked.
“I guess the Three Planets Empire.”
The mud bed gave in waves beneath her whenever she moved. Bunker lay down on the other bed. She had to admire his ability but she refused to like him. She yawned, drowsy.
Kary unstopped the bottle of wine. The armchair was too small for him, and he hitched himself awkwardly up straight in it again, his legs braced on the floor. He drank once, looked around, and drank again. “Nice trap you have here.”
“Thank you. The Lenin Hotel thanks you. Do you mind speaking Styth? I need the practice.” Paula sat down sideways on a straight chair in the sunlight. “What does ‘
“Ybix.” He put the bottle down on the arm of the chair, keeping fast hold of it. “That’s a fish. In the lakes in some places in Uranus.” Without letting go of the bottle, he formed a square of his thumbs and forefingers. “Kind of that-shaped. A little fish, but it bites.” The bright sunlight behind her was making him squint. She got up and pulled her chair into the shade.
“What is ‘
“That’s a spell-caster. A witch.”
“A man?” ‘A’ was a masculine ending.
Kary shook his head. “All witches are women.”
“How did you get here? After the fight in Vribulo.”
“Shipped out. Some friends of mine were running a load of crystal down to meet somebody in the Trojan Asteroids. A couple of us kept on going down toward the Sun. Just to see, you know. Got in trouble in Mars, because in fucking Mars being the wrong fucking color is a fucking crime—”
He stopped to drink, and she watched the level of the liquor fall in the bottle. He wiped his mouth on his hand.
“So when I got out of prison they said
“You haven’t had any trouble here?”
“Not me. You won’t catch me picking trouble with an anarchist. They always get you in the end.”
Bunker was coming in, with more wine. They worked with Kary the rest of the morning. He drank three bottles of red wine and ate some of Bunker’s stew, taught them a children’s song, and told them his life story. He had been on the Earth at least twenty-five years; he remembered the riots of the thirties, water rationing, and Noah Mataki, who had been on the Committee until 1829.
Kary told them that the Styths had been born of the wives of the first Uranian colonists—Moon-people, he called them, “because they left the Planet and went up to the moons to live, when the strange babies were born. But they sent the Styths into the crystal farms and made them slaves, and if a Styth fought back, the Moon-people caught him and chained him, hand to hand and foot to foot, and threw him into the farm to starve, in the dark and the cold. That’s why the Prima wears a cuff, to remind us where we came from.”
He drank another bottle of wine. In the middle of a long sad monologue on the beauties of Vribulo, he fell off the armchair. Bunker took his shoulders and Paula his feet, and they dragged him in and put him to sleep in her bed,
