The bus stopped in Yekka’s city gate, and she and Sril got off with the other passengers in the public section. The little open platform outside the docking tube was loud with their footsteps and voices and the people come to meet them. She unfastened the veil and pushed her hood back. Most of the people around her were farmers who had taken their produce to sell in Vribulo and Matuko. They went off, carrying their baskets. She went to the edge of the platform, blinking in the unexpected bright light.
The gate stood in a green field. The grass was knee-high, like a meadow, and the air rang with the thin voices of insects. The men and women who had just left the bus were walking away along a narrow path. The bubble was so big she could not make out the far ends; she had a sudden feeling of being released into its vast space. Sril came up behind her and shouted, and on the path leading to the gate two men broke into a run toward them.
One was Marus. The other was a boy, a neophyte, his shaggy hair unclubbed, who gave Paula a strange, piercing look. Sril handed Marus her satchel, and the third watch helmsman passed it on to the young man.
“This is Kasuk, Mendoz’. The Akellar’s son.”
“Hello,” Paula said.
“Hello.” The boy stared over her head, avoiding her eyes. Sril went back into the closed part of the gate, to take the bus back to Matuko, and Marus and Tanuojin’s son led her off into a pathway that crunched under her feet.
The city seemed wild, without people. The meadows were fields, cut into long furrows and planted with green. Insects soared from leaf to leaf. They passed through an orchard of little trees. The naked branches were thin and knobbed like arthritic fingers.
“Pala trees,” Marus said to her. “More pala trees in Yekka than people.”
“What are those insects?”
“Krines. You should hear them during the hot time, they really shout.” They were coming to a bridge, humped over a stream, and he took her arm. “Be careful. It’s slippery.” There was no rail.
The green city curled around her, bright as an afternoon. She wished she had brought David. Kasuk was watching her. When she saw him, he jerked his gaze away. They went through a high white wall into a compound yard. The low white buildings on either side were trimmed with red under the eaves and around the windows and doors. Marus took her into the house on her right and along a narrow dark hallway to a room in the back.
Saba and Tanuojin were bent over a long table on the far side, under a window. Their backs were to her. Marus left. She went across the room to the table, whose slanted surface was papered with sheets of clear plastic held fast by clips. Each of the pages was a line drawing of a spaceship. The two men ignored her. She stood on her toes, her arms on the edge of the table, to see the sketches.
“Here.” Tanuojin thrust a folded paper at her. “What is this?”
Her heart quickened. She opened out the paper in her hands. “This must be a first. It’s a subpoena to the Universal Court.” At the head of the clear computer stock was the Court’s wing-and-balance insignia.
“What does that nigger treaty say we have to do about it?”
She was reading through it, delighted. The list of charges ran half the page: two counts of grand piracy, one count of theft, one count of harassment, six counts of refusing a directive, three counts of contempt of authority. She said, “I don’t think they expect you to do anything, or they wouldn’t have thrown in all these bogus charges.”
“Forget it,” Saba said. He straightened, his arms braced on the drafting table on either side of the sketch, and bent and gave her a fast kiss on the forehead. “That was almost before the treaty, anyway.”
Tanuojin came around him and took the paper from her. “This is a lie.” He sounded outraged. He shook the subpoena under her nose. “It’s a biased, prejudiced frame-up. The whole print job is a fraud.”
Paula looked away from him. The walls were chambered with bookracks. Charts and black and white recognition posters of spaceships hung above them. Saba stuck his pen in his hair.
“I like the scoopnose better.”
“That damned Machou. How did he get this?” Tanuojin read through the subpoena again. “They blew up their own ship and they’re hanging it on me. And what’s this theft charge? We should have stolen everything they had. What’s contempt of authority?”
“Do you remember telling General Gordon he was ignorant and superstitious?” Paula said.
“He is.”
“Contempt of authority.” She tapped the paper. “That’s a sieve, those charges. You can’t be held for that, it’s only a crime on Luna.”
“So the damned treaty only works one way, you see? They keep us in line, but they do whatever they please.”
Saba tore the top sheet of his drawing off the pad. “Forget it. Report the kill, maybe the fleet will vote you your fifth stripe.” He bent over the sketchpad. “They can’t do anything to us.”
“Call you nasty names,” she said. “Stop payments on your contracts.”
Tanuojin went to the window. Paula watched him through the corner of her eye. Through the window came the rhythmic ringing strokes of an ax, or maybe a hammer.
“How was the bus ride?” Saba asked.
“Not bad.”
Tanuojin said, “Where is this nickel-dime court?”
“In Crosby’s Planet. The man-made planet at Venus’s aft lagrangian.”
He put his hands on the red window frame, his eyes aimed out toward the sound of the hammer. Beside her, Saba said, “What did you have in mind?”
“I’d like to shove the thing down Machou’s throat.” He turned. “Come on.”
They followed him out to the hall. Paula skipped every few strides to keep up with them. Saba said, “Are you thinking of going down there?”
“Why not?” Tanuojin opened a door, and they went out to the yard. “You said yourself we could use another reconnaissance. Here they are sending us an invitation. And that’s deeper than we’ve ever been, that’s as far down as they go.”
They walked across to another white building. At the far end of the yard, his son was striking at something on the ground with great full strokes of a sledgehammer. Paula went after the two men into the house. They turned a corner and led her into a room stacked around with boxes. Against the wall, under a window, was a bed covered with a gray blanket, the only piece of furniture there.
“Look at this place,” Saba said to her. He flung his hand out at the piles of crates. “Do you know how long he’s been living here? It looks as if he’s still moving in. Even you unpacked your clothes. He’s lived in this room since he entered the rAkellaron.”
Tanuojin sprawled across the bed. Saba went around the small, barren room. He took a bottle of his Scotch out of the box at the foot of the bed and pulled the stopper out.
“He used to fire it up,” Tanuojin said. “Now he just drinks it.” He twisted around to shout out the window. “Kasuk!”
The hammer stopped. His son’s shaggy head appeared in the open square of the window. Tanuojin said, “Stop for a while. You’re driving me crazy.”
“I’m almost done.”
“Stop for a while.”
Kasuk slung the hammer over his shoulder and went away. Paula sat down on a box. The walls of the room were bare. He had lived here more than five years without making one personal impression on the place.
“Tell me about this court,” Saba said.
“It’s very simple. There’s one judge, drawn by lot out of a pool of three hundred, most of whom for one reason or another are anarchists.”
“Why?” Tanuojin said.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Most of the people in the pool are so anarchistic they don’t even call themselves anarchists. Sybil Jefferson is a judge of the court.”
He was staring at her, his yellow eyes unblinking. His hard look put her nerves on end. He said, “Let me touch her.”
Saba turned, on the opposite side of the little room, and Paula backed up a few feet. “Touch me?”
