“Do you want to do that?” Saba said.
“She already knows enough about me to get me killed.”
“Touch me how?” she said.
“Come here.” Saba sat down on the bed’s foot, his hands out. She faced them both, wary.
“What are you going to do?”
“Do you have something to hide?” Tanuojin said. “I won’t hurt you.”
Saba got her by the skirt and drew her over against his knees. “Don’t be afraid.” He put his arm around her waist. She had no way to escape. Tanuojin sat up and took her by the wrists.
“Look over my shoulder.”
She stared into his face, her arms stiff in his grasp. Saba held her uncomfortably tight. Tanuojin said, “Look over my shoulder, damn you, you’re distracting me.” She turned her head, aiming her eyes past him, at the blank white wall. Her arms were warm. She felt a warmth and a pleasant lassitude climbing through the muscles of her arms, across her shoulders, and into her back. Her neck felt hot. He let her go; Saba let her go.
“She had the Committee send that paper to Machou,” Tanuojin said. He lay down on his elbows again. “She’s been meeting somebody from the Committee behind your back.”
She went cold down to her heels. “How did you know that?”
“I know everything you know.”
Saba gripped her shoulder. Her mind refused to work. She stared stupidly at Tanuojin, who had read her mind. He said, “I told you she was a spy.”
“How often has she met him?” Saba asked. His hand clutched her painfully hard.
“Only once. She’ll do it again.”
She said, “If you know—everything, you know I told him not to come back.”
Tanuojin’s yellow eyes gave her a flickering glance. He said, “Lock her up.”
“She’s useless if she’s locked up.” Saba’s free hand landed on her other shoulder. He stood up, holding her fast.
“Then kill her.”
“She wouldn’t be much good then, either, would she?” He held her between them, his hands so tight she bit her lower lip, resisting the pain. “She’s not like us. She doesn’t know better. You can’t expect her to change all at once.”
“You have to do something with her, she’s dangerous.”
“Is it true? Did she tell him not to come back?”
Reluctantly Tanuojin said, “Yes, she did. But just to keep out of trouble.”
Saba pushed her away toward the door. “She’ll learn.”
“She works on the worst things in you,” Tanuojin said. “All your vices.”
“We can’t all be pure and holy like you. Throw that paper away.” He steered Paula out to the hall.
“What is that—how did he do that?” She looked up at him while they walked. “Did he read my mind? What did he do?”
His hand slipped off her shoulder. They went along the corridor at his speed. She jogged beside him. “He has a gift—he healed you, that time, remember? It’s a gift he has, an influence.”
They turned a corner and he stopped and opened a door. Paula went ahead of him into a room like Tanuojin’s. This one was flooded with signs that Saba lived here. His dirty clothes lay piled on the floor and three empty whiskey bottles ranged along the window sill. At the foot of the long narrow bed was her valise.
“Whom did you meet from the Committee?”
She turned by the bed. He was taking his belt off. Her skin crept with alarm. “What are you doing?”
“You have to learn,” he said. He held her by the back of the neck and whipped her half a dozen times with the doubled belt. Through the layers of her coat and dress and overalls she hardly felt the blows. He put his belt back on. She stood with her back to him, her jaw clenched. She hated him so much she could have wept.
He sat down on the bed, watching her. “I think there’s hope for you,” he said. “When you can still get that angry.”
“Do I have to sleep here?”
“Yes.”
“There isn’t enough room.”
“Everybody here thinks you’re my wife. It would look strange.”
She knelt on the bed and pushed the liquor bottles out of the way so she could see out the window. Green and unpeopled, Yekka stretched away from her, hazy with distance. She could revenge herself on him. She knew all his weaknesses. She folded her arms on the broad sill of the window. She could not risk the indulgence. She depended on him; he was her weakness. The wafting breeze smelled of dry grass. She put her head down on her arms.
They slept together in the bed, side by side, not touching. When she woke up, she was alone. The hammer clanged and clanged in the courtyard outside the window. She put on a pair of overalls and the long green dress Boltiko had made for her. Two bells rang.
She went out through the hall. Marus, Kany, and the rest of Tanuojin’s watch were gathered beside the door to read a paper posted on the wall.
“Mendoz’.” Kany grabbed her arm and hauled her into their midst. “What’s this about another trip to the Middle Planets?”
She pried up his fingers, releasing herself. “You gentlemen have been touring the galaxy lately.”
“Now, Mendoz’.” They crowded around her, bumping into her, pulling her hair and breathing down her neck. “You can tell us.” She maneuvered through them and went out the door to the yard. In the doorway the crew moaned and hissed at her.
At the opposite end of the yard, Kasuk was swinging the hammer hard, his body twisting from the heels with each stroke. His hair flew. She went up behind him to see what he was doing. The hammer was pounding at the base of a little bilyobio tree. Every time he hit it the short stump threw off a cloud of silvery dust. She liked the bilyobio trees; she felt as if he were hurting it. Her nose began to itch and she sneezed.
Kasuk wheeled around. “Oh. I didn’t see you.”
“What are you doing?”
He gestured at the half-destroyed stump. His eyes slid away from her. “My father—the bilyobios disturb him.” He picked up the hammer again and hit the stump a terrific whack that broke it off at the base.
“Where are they?”
“Gemini? They’re down by the Akopra.” He kept his back to her. She went around in front of him, irritated, and he turned away.
“What do you have against me, anyway?”
He pulled at his shaggy hair. “I’m not supposed—my father—my father says you’ll corrupt me.” Shyly he looked at her.
She let out a peal of laughter. He straightened, leaning on the hammer. His eyes were black, like an ordinary Styth’s. She said, “I’ll do my best. Where is the Akopra?”
“Just across Koup Bridge. It isn’t built yet.” He swung the hammer up over his shoulder and led her toward the gate in the wall. Dust streamed out of his clothes. In the gateway, he stood pointing across the fields. “There’s Koup Bridge, on the curve. The market used to be there but he moved it so he could put the Akopra there.” Just beyond the humped bridge, half a mile from her, was a circle laid out on the ground in scaffolding.
“Maybe someone should go with you,” he said.
“No, thank you.” She started away down the path.
The whole of the bubble was laid out in long narrow fields, what the Styths called cold-farms to distinguish them from the hot-farms where they made crystal. She passed an old woman coming the other way with a basket on her back. She wondered how much Tanuojin knew, and how he would use it, and when. Before, she had disliked him; now she was frightened of him. She stepped out of the path to let a flock of chickens pass, herded by a little boy with a stick.
At first the Koup Bridge seemed to be on the perpendicular wall before her, but as she walked the ground flattened out, and she saw the bridge and the round wall beyond it not from above in Egyptian perspective but
