a good reason.”
“This is a good reason! The two of you could—”
“The three of us could get in a lot of trouble. The last time you talked us into one of your maneuvers, I nearly died.”
“Because it worked.”
Almost under the bed the krine started to shrill. Tanuojin sat up. “That damned fly.” He held out one hand, palm flat. “We don’t want the same things, Paula. I use you, and you use me.” The krine leaped onto his hand. He threw it out the window. “But we want different things.”
“All I want is what’s possible.”
Monstrously tall, he straightened up onto his feet, stretching. “We’ll see what’s possible.” He went out. She folded her arms behind her head, satisfied. They had already talked about the treaty, even about the advantages of making Saba the Prima; it would breed in their minds. She yawned, pleasantly sleepy.
“Rasputin was a false prophet,” Tanuojin said. They had come to the gate out of his compound.
“He was a genuine blood-stauncher,” she said. “And he was very hard to kill.”
“I’m not a mystic. He tried to predict the future.”
“When was that? That isn’t so.”
“He did predict that he wouldn’t be able to save the Tsarevich the next time he was in danger. Didn’t he?” The Styth turned the key absently in his hand; he was going to the powerhouse at the end of the city. Paula frowned up at him. She wondered if he had taken his knowledge of Rasputin out of her head.
“He wasn’t necessarily referring to the Ekaterinberg massacre. Maybe it was practical—the Tsarevich was sickening and the next time Rasputin wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding.”
“Where are you going? I don’t like not knowing where you are.”
“To the White Market. For a present for David.”
Without a farewell he turned and walked off along the narrow pathway. His follower Marus went after him. Paula started across the city toward the White Market.
The ringing tuneless insect yell of the krines rose from every patch of grass. The warmth and the brilliant light made her high-spirited. She reached the stream and followed it down through an orchard. The pala trees were pruned into symmetrical fans, like Jewish candlesticks. Babies hung in sling-cradles from the lower branches while their mothers went up and down the rows picking fruit.
The stream branched into a dozen narrow fingers trickling through the dense grass. She crossed a marshy meadow toward the place where the ground broke off in a long ledge and the many branches of the stream roared off in waterfalls and ran on toward the distant lake. Taking off her shoes she waded across two fingers of the stream. A green fish bit her heel. She sat down on the far bank and put her shoes on.
In spite of the harvest, the White Market was busy as usual. Ten or a dozen Styths were crowded around the window of the illusion shop, looking in—they thought it impolite to go into a store if they were not buying anything. Their eagerness for Martian things put her off. She wanted to protect them from the Martians who would steal whatever they could, stencil images of Capricornus on an undershirt if it would sell. She was trying to work out a treaty in her mind to ally the Empire with the anarchy, since the anarchists would accept the Styths without trying to change them. Sometimes she felt the same urge to protect Tanuojin and his dangerous gifts; she used that to remind herself that many of her impulses were stupid.
She went into the toy shop. In among the board games and dart sets she found a long black rocket, put it down on the floor, and pushed the trigger in the base. With an explosive crack the rocket shot up into the air and disappeared behind the next rack of toys. A Martian shopkeeper hurried up to her.
“I’m just seeing if it works,” she said.
“It works. Everything works.” He smiled at her, his hands together. “Aren’t you the wife of the Matuko Akellar?”
“No. I’m not. I’m Paula Mendoza.” She went down the aisle to get the rocket.
“That’s what I meant,” the Martian said, coming after her.
“Then say what you mean.”
The rocket was sticking nose-first into the floor. She pulled it out and straightened its needle-snout. The Martian hovered behind her as she crossed the shop to the counter.
“Mrs. Mendoza, I wonder if you’d consent to talk to—to listen to—That’s fifty-five dollars.”
She paid him. His soft fingertips tapped over the keys of the computer terminal. “If you’d listen—”
“I’m listening with both ears. You haven’t said anything yet.”
He pulled the lid down over the terminal keyboard. “We have a complaint. About the Akellar.”
“Tanuojin?”
“Yes. Maybe, if you’d hear us out, you could help us.”
She snorted, disbelieving. “Well, I’ll listen. What is it?”
“Come with me.”
He took her three doors away to a little Martian lunchroom, covered with an awning against an imaginary sun. The shopkeeper made her sit at a round table and rushed off.
He came back with a small platoon of other men—all the traders were men; they clustered around the table, all eyes fixed on her. She was drinking a hot mixture of milk and pala fruit. She moved the glass away.
“They are selling slaves in the native bazaar,” said the toyman.
“How long have you been here? Half the people in Styth are slaves. Complain about something I can change.”
“These people are Martians.”
“Oh.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. Sril had said they had taken over four hundred prisoners from Vesta, which was a Martian colony. “Oh. I see.”
“Naturally we abhor any kind of slavery.”
The white Martian faces made a circle around her. She said, “Yes, I’m sure. Now, it was almost nine years ago I wrote your contract, but it seems to me there was a clause in it about your staying out of the native market.”
“These people are suffering horribly!”
“Well, I’ll do what I can, which will certainly cost you a lot of money. Are you ready for that?”
The pale faces changed. The toyman, sitting opposite her, glanced at the men on his right and left. He leaned toward her. “This isn’t a money issue. This is a question of common human decency.”
“To Tanuojin it will be strictly a money issue.”
One of the other men muttered, “That black bastard.”
“How much?” the toyman said.
“I can’t say. Depending on the condition of the slaves. Yekka is a bad market for slaves, they’re a luxury here.” She took the rocket she had bought and went out of the lunchroom.
The local market was on the far side of the bubble. She went there in the next middle watch. The Martians from Vesta were caged on either side of the central lane of the market. There were thirteen old people and five children, all under two years. None of the Styths in the market was showing much interest except an old woman who was trying to coax the terrified children up to the bars to give them sweets. Paula went back toward the far end of the bubble.
A high fence surrounded the city powerhouse, near the tail of the city. Tanuojin’s man Marus was at the gate, and he let her in. The block-shaped windowless powerhouse hummed. When she went in through the door, the hum increased to a steady roar. From the outside the building was only one story, but she came in to a ledge around a pit eighty feet deep. The two engines in it were round and smooth, like silos, and gave off the even thunderous roar. Far below her, a man walked around the nearer barrel into sight, saw her, and went back. She found the ladder down into the pit.
Behind the engines, Tanuojin was standing over a little desk, and another man was sitting behind it writing on the treated surface with a stylus that had a long cord coming out of the butt end. The noise was so intense it was like hearing nothing. Paula looked up at the engines towering above them.
The men did not try to talk over the noise. They wrote messages to each other on a little workboard. Tanuojin scribbled something and gave it to the man at the desk, who nodded. He took a slotted computer key out
