“Damn him, he’s totally irresponsible,” Tanuojin said. “When I need him he goes off to an orgy.”
“Let him alone,” Paula said. She veered across the low-ceilinged street to read the markings on the corner building. Above the address, a plaque set into the wall read
WARNING: This building protected by Sentry Security—guard your home—hire a Sentry
They turned the corner. The street was empty of people. It was lined with people’s homes, what in Crosby’s Planet they called a dormitory area. Every few feet down the gray walls on either side was a door or a window, alternating, identical, except for the changing numbers.
“
At the top of the stair was a gate, beside the gate an enclosed booth for the guards. Tanuojin passed their identification in through the little revolving door in the window. The guards were staring at him. Paula hung back by the grillwork of the gate. Tanuojin would not let her carry the little plastic card Saba had made up for her on the ship’s computer. The gate clicked, and they moved into the street beyond. They went down a trunk street, empty like all the others, reading the numbers of the doors, and crossed a white line into a sector darkened for the artificial night. The only light came from the display windows of shops in either wall, where pale-skinned mannequins showed off clothes of feathers, of green plants, and metal.
“He’s a whore,” Tanuojin said. “He’ll lie down for anybody.”
“Maybe he enjoys it.”
“You won’t be so broad-minded when he catches you with his wife.”
She swerved over to the side of the street. In the wall white letters marked the office of the Committee for the Revolution. The door was locked.
“Don’t tell him about that,” she said. Bunker was nowhere in sight.
“Then keep sweet with me. What are we supposed to do, wait outside?”
“No. Give me that card.”
He gave her his fleet card and she used it to shim the lock. She reached for the latch. His hand caught her wrist. Startled, she looked up at his face, and he flung her off into the street and dodged back.
A muffled crack sounded. The door shook. Waist-high in the middle panel a ragged hole appeared. Paula rolled over to her hands and knees. Tanuojin launched himself shoulder-first at the door and through it into the office.
The door slammed against the wall with a splintering crack. A Martian voice cried, “Watch out!” The inside ceiling lights came on bright as sunlight. Paula got up, breathing a coppery stench that made her heart gallop. Shots like sticks breaking crackled inside the office. A bloody man staggered across the threshold and fell on his face in the street. He had a gun in his hand, and she stooped and took it. His shredded Martian tunic was dark with blood. Suddenly his body flew backward feet-first into the office. She whirled.
“Come in here,” Tanuojin said. “Turn these lights down.”
She went into the waiting room of the Committee office. Under a glaring ceiling, three other men lay on the tawny carpet. Tanuojin’s hands and the forearms of his sleeves shone with blood. She found the light switch and turned off all the lights but one.
“There’s one more,” Tanuojin said, shutting the door. “Down the hall. He has your friend Bunker, but he’ll probably shoot at me first. Are you all right?”
She nodded. Bent double, she went from one Martian to the next; they were all dead, all their eyes were open wide. When Tanuojin faced her, she saw a ragged hole in his shirt over his chest.
“You were hit.”
“I’m fixing it.” He went to the door behind the desk and opened it.
She watched him go into the corridor beyond. She knew what would happen. Three shots banged out from the end of the hall. Tanuojin went toward the gun, his hands at his sides. Paula went into the hallway behind him. The Martian crouched in the doorway at the end of the hall let out a screech and shot once more, and the Styth reached him.
Behind him, on the floor, Dick Bunker lay tied up like a market hen. Paula brushed by Tanuojin, who let the Martian drop.
“Richard.” She knelt by the bound man. “I didn’t think you fell into things like this.”
She picked out the knot with her fingers and teeth. Tanuojin said, behind her, “Is he hurt?” His voice was thick, as if with pain. Still on one knee, she twisted to face him. The door beside her was open and the light spilled out, glittering on the side of his face. His cheek was laid open down to the white bone. The wound was healing so fast she could see the meat growing. There was no blood.
“No.” she said. She glanced at Bunker. “He’s sound.”
Bunker was untangling himself from the rope. His eyes never left Tanuojin. The stink of blood was heavy over the fading coppery taint. Tanuojin’s face had healed to a thin gray scar. His eye above it looked swollen and he pawed at it with his hand. He was splattered with blood. None of it was his.
“We have to get out of here,” she said. “You can’t walk around the streets like that, there must be a washroom.”
They found a washroom at the end of the hall. The ceiling lights came up.
“He’s going with us,” Tanuojin said. Just inside the door, Paula stopped to dim the lights. Bunker walked in a circle around the blind end of the washroom, his hands in his hip pockets.
“Where?”
“To Uranus,” Tanuojin said. He unbuckled his belt and stripped off his shirt and gave them to Paula. Leaning on his arms on the washbasin, he slumped a moment, his head hanging. She realized he was tired. She turned his shirt inside out, to hide the blood. Bunker was watching from the dim back of the room.
“I’m not going to Uranus.”
“You’re her friend.” The water pounded into the basin. Tanuojin scrubbed his hands. “Otherwise I’d kill you.”
“Tell us about General Gordon,” Paula said to Bunker.
The water ran pink down the drain. Tanuojin said, “I don’t care what he says. He knows about me. I won’t let him go.”
Paula looked across his bent back at the other anarchist. Their eyes met. Tanuojin put on his shirt and she handed him his belt.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“Yes.” He got Bunker by the shoulder again and steered him out the door.
They went down to the rail bus. There was a train in the platform; they went through it until they found an almost empty car. The lights glared on and off. At the far end of the car, a man sat staring at his hourly, ignoring the Styth twenty feet away. Tanuojin yawned.
Beyond Tanuojin, Bunker raised his head. “General Gordon,” he said, staring across the car. “After you shot up Luna, he was kicked down and jailed. Where he seems to have jellied.” He was using Styth, which he spoke badly. “A writer disguised as a priest got to him and encouraged him to, unh, confess. The priest recorded the whole thing on a pocket tape, which he managed to smuggle out of Luna.”
Tanuojin transferred his grip from Bunker’s shoulder to his wrist. Bunker jumped, and his mouth shut. His glance licked at Paula.
“Keep talking,” Tanuojin said.
Bunker looked away down the car. “Anyhow, the priest converted back to a writer, and sold the tape to a publisher in London, who decided it was entirely too ripe for the masses and sold it back to Luna—General Marak— for three and a half million dollars in virgin iron. General Gordon caught a buzz. The writer overdosed. The publisher’s air car crashed outside the dome, and the pollution killed him.”
Tanuojin thumbed down his mustaches. The bright lights made him squint. Paula leaned forward to see Bunker. “But Marak has the tape.”
“Apparently there are copies. I’ve never seen one, I don’t know anybody who has.”
Paula glanced at the man at the far end of the car. Now he was watching them from behind his hourly. Tanuojin said, “Now that interests me,” and yawned again.
