“Where is David?”
“Where did you go to eat?” Illy said. “Did he buy you anything?”
Boltiko said, “The baby is asleep. He was so sick before, I walked him up and down all last watch, but he’s better now.”
Paula sipped the sweet tea. Boltiko worried over every cranky cry. “We ate at Colorado’s. What was wrong with him—his stomach again?”
“Colorado’s,” Illy said, blank. “What’s that?”
“A dock,” Boltiko said. “You should have made him take you somewhere nice, Paula.”
The tea was gone. Paula sat back, her hands on her warm belly. “I liked it. All the women were painted up; I felt like a mouse. I guess they’re whores, aren’t they? Saba had some trouble with the Prima—Tanuojin was in a fight in the pit.”
“I hope Saba didn’t get involved?”
“What was wrong with David?”
Boltiko sat down in a chair across the table from Paula. “His tum-tum. Poor baby.”
“Little glutton.”
“Who fought Tanuojin?” Illy said. “Did he win?”
“Oh, yes. It was Ymma, the Lopka Akellar.” Paula watched Boltiko sip from a cup, dainty as a nun. “You don’t like Tanuojin?”
“That man will ruin Saba,” the prima wife said.
“I don’t know him,” Illy said. “My brother hates him.” Her brother was the Merkhiz Akellar, the Prima Cadet, whose cadet was Saba.
“Do you like him?” Boltiko asked Paula.
“No.”
“I knew him—before Saba’s father died, sleep deep, when we lived in Vribulo, Tanuojin practically lived with us. After Melleno fired him.” Boltiko took her cup across the kitchen to fill from the jug on the counter. “He’s low- born, he’s ambitious, and he is evil. I can feel it.”
“How do you know he’s low-born? If nobody knows who his parents were.”
“With those nigger-eyes,” Illy said, “he’s slave-bred. Tiko, me too.”
Boltiko brought the hot jug and filled each of their cups. “He is no slave. He’s deviant. He should have been destroyed at birth. That’s the law.” She sank into her chair. “Instead, some soft-hearted woman protected him. She suffered. Everybody who ever helped him has suffered. Melleno gave him work and a respectable position and he seduced his daughter. Yekaka took him in and he betrayed him to Melleno.”
“Seduced his daughter,” Paula said. “Whose daughter?”
Illy gulped her tea. “Melleno’s. When he was the Prima, and Tanuojin worked for him. Here. I’ll show you how to tell your future.” She turned her empty cup over on the table.
Paula leaned toward the prima wife. “Tiko, you’ve known him longer than I have, but I can’t see Tanuojin seducing anybody.”
“He drugged her.” Illy lifted the cup. A wet ring showed on the tabletop. “See? It’s unbroken, that means my love is true. If it’s broken, that means lovers.”
“He drugged her,” Paula said to Boltiko. The story fascinated her. And Tanuojin would have been much younger, just clubbed, a creepy adolescent.
Boltiko’s round shoulders rolled in a shrug, her eyes watched Illy’s cup, her mouth was pursed. “She was very young, Diamo. Why would a girl like that, sweetly bred, defy her father for a man like Tanuojin?”
“Diamo.” It was a pretty name. I-love-you, it meant. Which seemed a possible answer.
“Drink your tea,” Illy said. “We’ll tell your future.”
In the lake shore market place, the people of Matuko were pressing thick around the open stall selling illusion helmets. Paula went through the mob, David slung on her hip. A roar of laughter went up. Like a flag a pair of white lace underpants waved above the crowd at the end of a long black arm. Paula glanced around her. Sril was waiting in a line to buy Martian cloth. In another direction, she saw three more people she knew coming out of a shop, packages in their arms. She would have to risk being spied on. Going down a lane between two shops, she went through a back door and into a room filled to the rafters with crates.
“Hello, junior.”
A window in the far wall half-lit the narrow open space between the rows of boxes. She went sideways, into the dark. “You’re taking a chance. You’re lucky you gave that message to the right slave.”
He shut the door behind her and switched on a light. “Not exactly. I understand he’s your property.” He crossed the room to pull a shade across the window. Paula sat down on a crate, putting David on the floor at her feet. Bunker looked thin. Neatly he settled himself across from her on a heap of quilted padding.
“Just the same,” she said, “don’t come here. I can get in touch with you if there’s anything I need.”
“How are you getting along?” He folded his arms over his chest. His gaze went to the little boy on the floor. David passed a bit of rope from his right to his left hand. His head was covered with a thin fuzz of hair; in a few days he would be shaved again. He raised his head, looking for Paula, and beamed at her.
“I just can’t connect that with you, junior,” Bunker said.
She laughed. “Look at his eyes.” The crate under her was hard, and she shifted to a pile of packing foam. “What do you want?”
“There’s a difficulty with the Council over the treaty.”
“Why? Saba is keeping the truce.”
“We have trouble convincing people that what isn’t happening is good for them.”
She looked around the crowded storeroom. The sides of the boxes were stenciled with the word BARSOOM and a long number. She flicked at a bit of packing foam on the skirt over her knee. “In one hundred fifty watches they are taking
“He confides that much in you? Poor chump.”
“He doesn’t confide anything. Is that all you want to know?”
Bunker scratched his chin. His black eyes glinted. “There’s the incident at Luna.”
“Pah. That was your fault.”
“Let me finish. That little exercise ushered General Gordon into the permanent rose garden. Luna is now suffering under General Marak, whose itch is money, not god. The Council says if the treaty works, we should be able to bring Matuko to answer for two ships and eight crewmen and a government.”
“Two ships,” she said.
“
David had taken hold of her skirt and was dragging himself up onto his feet. She watched him, remembering what had happened at Luna. “What did you have in mind?”
“The Council says if the Styths are dedicated to peace and law, they’ll be willing to put the case before the Universal Court.”
She put her hand down, and David took it, wobbling on his widespread legs. “Well, maybe they will.”
Bunker’s folded arms unlocked. He put his hands in the pockets of his heavy jacket. “Are you serious? Can you get them there?”
“Can Crosby’s Planet handle a visitation? Send them a subpoena.” She watched her son lower himself down to the floor again. “Not to Saba. He wasn’t even inboard during the shooting. Send it to Tanuojin.” She smiled at David, delighted by a new thought. “Send it by way of Machou.” David let go of her hand and landed with a thump on the floor.
“Will it work?”
“Maybe.” She stood up, stooped, and lifted the little boy up into her arms. “If it doesn’t I’ll try something else. How is Jefferson?”
“Fat Roland is getting old.” He shook his head. “We’ll be in trouble when she leaves the Committee.”
“You’re always in trouble. Send the subpoena.” She went out to the lane between the shops.
She sat on the hard shore of the lake playing her flute. Behind her were the tenements where the fishermen
