“Have you been on your ship all this time?”
“My ship and a couple of others.” He was still half-dressed. Sitting up, he peeled off his leggings and his shirt. Paula lay on her side, glutted from the hard sex. The blanket was wet; she threw it back over the foot of the bed. He lay down beside her.
“Did you miss me?” He slid his hands over her. His knee pressed between her thighs. “You didn’t go with anybody else, did you?”
She wondered why that mattered to him. His lust reassured her. As long as he wanted her, she could deal with him. Above his collarbones smooth hollows formed. She touched him, remembering him.
“I thought you’d like to go to Manhattan tomorrow. That’s an ancient city, under the ocean—the same people who built it built the first Styth cities.”
“What’s the ocean?”
“You’ll see.”
“And why should I want to see something those people made? They were monsters.”
“They were your ancestors.”
His hair had come half-unknotted, and he pulled it loose. Wavy from being bound up, it hung over his shoulders down nearly to his waist. He said, “Not really. They were the medium, perhaps, but it was Uranus who made Styth. Uranus and the Sun.”
She played with his hair. He lay on his back, his eyes half-shut, while she fondled him. The Committee would drop her as soon as they could do without her. She had to keep him her property. Bending, she licked his breastbone, and he draped one arm around her shoulders.
Across a smashed inlaid floor, fluted columns stood up into the dark. Deep inside the ruin, something rained down slowly from a great height. Paula climbed over a block of stone down into the vast room. The Akellar came in behind her.
“Look at this place.” He leaped across the broken stone of the steps down to the floor. “It’s bigger than the rAkellaron House.” He was speaking Styth.
Tanuojin came after him. Their voices echoed in the pitch of the ceiling, invisibly far above them in the dark. “There are hundreds of these buildings. Who could have lived here?”
“She says the Moon-people.”
“She’s lying. They never built anything like this.”
Paula put her hand out to the wall, covered with scale and dry moss. She had thought of telling him about the baby; she knew she should tell him, since it was his baby, but she was afraid of what he might do. Kill her. She imagined him scooping the baby out of her belly with his hands. At her touch the patina over the wall crumbled. There were letters under it carved into the brown marble.
hn Jaco
Some kind of incantation. She climbed up a pile of square stones to the door and went back to the street.
The two men followed her, talking. Ketac raced down the middle of the street toward them. “Pop! How big is that one? Fifteen hundred feet? What ruined them? Was there a war?” He rushed across the street to the foot of a towering wreck of a building. Paula stood with her hands in her pockets, watching the Styths. Tanuojin at the foot of the tower was so small she could not make out his face. She walked up the street away from them.
When they reached New Haven again, the Federalist house was empty. It was long after dark. A turkey was browning in the oven, but even the cook was gone. The Akellar swore. He went out to the backyard and whistled and got no answer. Paula opened the cold box. Ketac walked into the kitchen and she took out a beer for each of them.
“Where are they?” The back door banged open. The Akellar walked in. On his heels Tanuojin hit his head on the ceiling lamp and let out a gross obscenity.
“Where’s my crew?” the Akellar snarled at her.
“I don’t know. I’ve been with you, remember? Ask him.”
The cook was coming in the back door. He was a small man, tree-dark; under his arm he carried two gallon sacks of milk and a package of sweet potatoes. He said, “Thought I’d make a sweet potato pie,” and went to the cold box to put the milk away.
“Where’s my crew?”
“Halstead’s, I think.” The cook stooped to look through the oven window at the turkey.
Paula said, “That’s a roadhouse. Sweets, how did they get there? All the cars are here.”
“Walked.” The cook took the sweet potatoes to the sink to wash them. His white cat trotted in and leaped onto the counter.
“What’s a roadhouse?” the Akellar said. “Where are they?”
“It’s a bar,” Paula said. “Come on—we can go pick them up.”
“Come on.” The Akellar pushed her ahead of him toward the door.
She went out the back door into the dark. The wind blew in a low moan over the meadow. She climbed into the driver’s seat of the big bus. The cab was colder than the outdoors. The Akellar slid into the passenger seat. She thumbed the starter button. The engine growled sluggishly and she reached down under the seat for the choke.
Halstead’s was toward the southwest. She took the car up to 150 feet, watching the compass on the dashboard. “If you see a sign, tell me. I’ve never driven to this place before.”
She flew down the hill, over the woods, toward the long barrier hill in the east. The trees thinned. The fields below were planted in strips of corn and marijuana. They flew over the farmhouse and barn.
“This place is much more beautiful than Mars.”
“That’s because everything is alive.”
“There.” He pointed. “Is that a sign?” On the roof of a cattle barn ahead were white letters. She swerved to fly over.
“Let me fly back,” he said.
She slid out of the car. “Don’t you like the way I drive?”
“Not particularly.”
She went across the parking lot to the head of the stairs. “You don’t want your crew to see a woman driving you around.” The stairs were steep. She held on to the rail. He came after her down into the warm lamplight.
“I don’t want you to get used to it.”
At the foot of the stairs they went into the short end of an L-shaped room with a plank floor. There were people crowded around the open hearth in the middle and in the booths along the walls. The Styths were scattered at random among them. Paula went into the long part of the room to the bar. Behind it, a man with black wooly whiskers stood talking to two of the Styths.
“Hup!” the Akellar said, loud, behind her.
All around the room, the Styths bounded to their feet. The anarchists, turning their heads, stayed in their chairs.
“What are you doing here?” the Akellar said, in Styth. “Line up at the stairs. Who said you could come over here?”
Paula turned to the barman. “How much did they drink?” The Styths hurried to the stairs. The Akellar was cursing them individually and in mass.
The barman scratched busily in his whiskers. “Military discipline.” He took a piece of paper from his apron. “You owe me eighteen dollars and thirty-six cents.”
The Akellar crowded her off to one side. He dropped a plastic disk on the bar. “I’ve got a rating at the Luna Credit Bank.” He sidestepped into her again, shoving her away, and leaned over the man with the whiskers. “Well? What are you waiting for, a tip?”
The barman took the credit disk off the bar. He tossed it up high and caught it. “It’s on the arm, captain.” He
