“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.”
