“One hundred thousand watches.”
“Ten years,” Paula said.
“Good,” Jefferson said. “That’s a good length.”
“You aren’t serious?” Bunker shot a furious glance at Paula and went the length of the table to Jefferson. “What the hell are you doing? She set this up with him. She’s trading us off.”
“Do you agree to go?” Jefferson asked Paula. She put a mint into her mouth. Paula nodded. The old woman sucked on her candy, her hard blue eyes going to Bunker. “I like it. It’s practical, it might work, and I can sell it to the Council.”
The anarchist circled the table. “You Fascist,” he said to Paula. He went past the Styth and out the door. It slammed behind him.
Paula sat down. Jefferson said, “He’s getting narrow, Richard, in his dotage.” She tipped up the lid of the recorder in the table and pushed buttons. Above her head, Paula met the round black eyes of the Styth, triumphant.
An Chu spread out the skirts of the black dress and folded them carefully in layers of tissue. “Can I write you?”
“I don’t see how you’d post it.”
“Maybe it would be easier for you to write me.”
Paula was packing her books into the pockets of a flannel cloth. She rolled it up and tied the tape. The room was stripped to the walls and floor. She had sold her bed and given away everything else she was leaving behind. She put her flute into the satchel bag with the books.
“Help me,” An Chu said, sitting on the suitcase. While they were buckling the straps there was a knock on the door.
It was Dick Bunker. Paula bent over the suitcase again. “What do you want?”
“Junior, why are you doing this?”
“It’s my treaty.” She closed the satchel. “I can manage it better in Styth than here.” She stood up. The naked room looked smaller, like a cage. An Chu glanced from her to Bunker and lugged the suitcase out. He tipped himself up against the wall.
“You won’t be much use dead, or locked up in a harem, or in a slave market, which is where you’ll be.”
“You certainly know a lot, for somebody who spends all his time talking.”
They faced each other. His eyes were black as a Styth’s. After a moment, he said, “I apologize for losing my temper yesterday.”
“It doesn’t bother me if you get emotional. Do you have something you want to say?”
“The Lunar Army blotted the scan of
“Oh. That’s typical.”
“Will you take a sensor inboard with you?”
She snatched her jacket off the doorknob and thrust her arms into the sleeves. “He’d kill me. I’m not that stupid. Get out of my way.” She grabbed the satchel. He backed up, and she went out the door after An Chu.
YBIX
Watch logs H11, 523—L11, 674
The hatch clanged open over her head. Paula reached up and drew herself through into a long silver tunnel. She bumped into the soft wall. The light was dim as twilight. She floated in the cold air, helpless. The Akellar shot up through the hatch. In mid-air he twisted around head-first like a fish and went the other way along the corridor.
“Come on.”
She followed him, pushing herself along the yielding wall. On one wall was a double-barreled black arrow pointing the way she had come, and on the other a white arrow pointing the way she was going. In the free fall, without gravity to help her, she could hardly move. They passed a round hatchway marked with a black symbol. The corridor veered upward. They came to another tube, twisting away like a soft metallic hose, marked with double red stripes. The Akellar stopped and she bumped into him and knocked him down the corridor.
He came back toward her; he moved so fast she could not see how he did it. “You’ll learn. There’s a kind of a knack, it’s nothing like walking.” He went into the red corridor.
She struggled after him, banging into the walls. The surface was slippery. She began to shiver in the cold. Ahead, Saba had stopped to open a hatch. She flung her arms out, trying to stop, and ran into him again.
“You’ll learn.” He pushed her head-first through the hatch. “Just keep trying.”
The room beyond was oval. Two lines of bulbous monitor screens dimpled the wall below her. She drifted to the side of the room. A handle stuck out of the wall. When she pulled on it she pulled herself into the wall. The Akellar turned over in mid-air. He flicked up a switch below a round screen near the monitors. She saw that he braced himself with the other hand.
“Bridge,” he said.
“Yes, Akellar,” a voice said through the screen. She thought it was Sril’s.
“I’m inboard. What’s our course?”
“Orbiting Luna at thirteen hundred miles, belt plus 2 ellipse, making ninety-three leagues. Our attitude is 0-0 -2. Perimeter clear. The whole crew is inboard.” It was Sril. She put her feet against the soft wall and pulled on the handle.
“Turn it,” Saba said.
She turned herself slowly around by the handle. He said, “What’s the watch?”
“High watch, Akellar,” Sril said.
With one hand she held her body still against the wall. The handle was stiff and took all her strength to open. It clicked.
“Ah.” She pushed herself back from the wall, and a long hatchway opened up before her. The space was covered in heavy white rubber, like a membrane. The Akellar was talking to Sril. She stuck her arm into the pleated rubber. It gave way and fit around her arm. Suddenly it gushed cold water over her hand and wrist. She lunged away, startled.
“That’s a wetroom,” he said. “That’s where you wash.”
Her sleeve was sodden. She turned around, drifting, and he came up to her. They were face to face; she was eye-level with him. She pulled his floating mustaches down.
“Are you cold?”
He went smoothly away past the hatch. In the double row of monitors on the wall, the other Styths floated in other silvery rooms, like fish in tanks. She watched him pull open a door in the wall. He used his foot to brace himself; when he put his hand on the wall to hold the door open, he dug his claws into the fabric. In the compartment in the wall her satchel floated above her suitcase. Straps held them fast. She took the satchel out.
She struggled with the buckles, and he started to help her. “No. I’ll do it.” She held the satchel between her knees. He went off. The half-light bothered her eyes. She opened the satchel and took out her jacket.
“I’ll teach you to speak Styth,” he said. He peeled off his clothes and stuffed them into a hole in the wall.
“I speak it better than you think. I understand everything you say.” To prove it she spoke Styth. He was pulling on a suit of heavy gray overalls; he turned toward her, surprise on his face. She closed the satchel again and tried to take it back to the compartment. It was easier to move herself around by holding on to the satchel than to move the satchel. The speaker in the wall clicked.
“Yes,” Saba said.
“Akellar, there are three Lunar Army hammerheads coming up on our perimeter.”
“I’ll be right there. Call Tanuojin. Saba.”
She maneuvered the satchel into the compartment and strapped it down. Below her suitcase was the box of
