across the dead man’s back. Paula whined in her throat. Tanuojin pulled his lyo up into his arms, Saba’s head against his shoulder, rocking him back and forth. Ybix’s crew was around them, driving the crowd back. She heard Tanuojin’s voice: “Saba—Saba—” Calling to him. It was Machou who held her so tight her arms hurt. Tanuojin’s hand pressed flat over the blood splash in the dead man’s back.
“Saba!”
Saba moved. Paula gathered her breath. Machou’s grip eased on her arms, and she edged away from him. In Tanuojin’s arms, Saba turned his head and groaned.
Paula was trembling from head to foot. She cast a look at the hundreds of people waiting and turned to the Prima. “You said he was dead.”
“He was.” Machou’s voice was suddenly reedy, his gaze unblinking on Tanuojin.
Ketac broke through the ring of
“He wasn’t dead. You were wrong.”
The Prima struck her hand away. “That freak.”
Ketac was lifting Saba cradled in his arms. She went over to Tanuojin and stooped, her hand on his shoulder. “Can you walk? We have to get out of here.” Around them were thousands of people, all watching them. She helped Tanuojin up, one arm wrapped around him, and hurried him after Ketac down the steps.
Saba had been shot through the heart. While Paula was taking his clothes off, in the back room of his office in the Barn, a crowd gathered outside: she could hear their shouts and the tramp of their feet. Ketac came in with a pack of bandages.
“Is he badly hurt?”
“He’ll be all right,” she said. She ripped open the package and unrolled three inches of bandage.
“What happened out there, anyway?” Ketac said. “Who shot him?”
“I don’t know, Ketac. Go away, you’re bothering me.”
“Do you need help?”
She shook her head. Swinging the washbasin out of the wall, she turned on the hot water. Finally Ketac left her. Saba was out cold. She washed the small hole in his chest and the gaping hole in his back, and picked out the black fibers the bullet had carried into the flesh. The wound was scabbing over when she put the bandage on. She covered him with blankets and left him to sleep.
Sril and Bakan were throwing a bone for money on the desk in the front office. The front door was shut. Still she heard the bellow of hundreds of voices in the street beyond and a crackle of something breaking.
“How is he?” the two men said, in unison.
“He’ll heal.” She went to the door, and Sril dashed over to stop her.
“Don’t go out there.”
“What’s going on?” She pulled his hand off the door and unlatched it.
Armed men paraded up and down the arcade between the offices and the street. Most of
“It’s getting worse,” Sril said.
She went to the window in the other wall of the front office. That street was empty. “What’s going on?” A howl outside brought her around, every hair stiff. Bakan was still sitting at the desk. He turned the knobbed bone over in his claws. Sril slapped a credit chip down on the desk.
“Doubles.”
Paula walked the length of the room. “What’s going on out there?”
“Who knows?” Bakan said. “Whatever happened up on the steps last watch, it was strange. People don’t like strange things.”
Something struck the outside of the door. She twitched. Sril said, “Sit down, Mendoz’. There’s nothing to do, even for you.”
She walked around the room. The racket of the crowd, growing louder, sawed on her nerves. Ketac came in through the inside door and shut it behind him.
“Has there been any word from the House?”
Bakan shook his head. The bone rattled on the top of the desk, and Sril yelped; he had won. Paula sat down in the chair by the window.
The mob swelled larger through the watch, packing the street and crowding through the arches of the arcade. Fights broke out here and there. At one bell, Leno came down from the House, his bullet head set forward on his shoulders. The man who had shot Saba had confessed: he was an agent of the Sunlight League. Leno went away, but the mob stayed. Their noise kept Paula awake. She sat at the front desk while Ketac slept in the chair before the window and Sril and Bakan walked aimlessly around the office.
“Why don’t you sleep?” Sril said to her, deep in the low watch.
“I can’t.” Her elbows propped on the desk, she pressed her fingers flat to her cheeks. Outside the mob was chanting something she did not want to hear. “That damned Machou.”
He glanced at Ketac, sprawled across the chair. Bakan was in the next room. Sril sat on the edge of the desk. “You think Machou is driving this?”
“You don’t see him down here stopping it, do you?”
“Because of what Tanuojin did?”
She raised her head. The chant pierced her hearing: “Kill, kill, kill,” growing louder. Sril bent down, his voice at a murmur.
“He brought Saba back again.”
“Don’t talk about what you don’t understand.” What she did not understand. Whenever she thought about what had happened on the porch a strange exultation swelled her, that drove out fear. The mob voice thundered. She went to the door. Sril reached it first and opened it; Ketac, rubbing his eyes, went after him into the arcade.
The mob surged along the street. Clubs waved in their fists. In an archway Sril was surrounded. Bakan rushed past her out the door, saw, and plunged back into the office. Seizing the first chair he came to, he lifted it over his head in both hands and ran down to the edge of the crowd. A steady banging reached her ears. They were breaking down Tanuojin’s door. Bakan held the chair before him with the legs out horizontal and forced his way into the crowd. They yielded, their hands up. A man in the forefront lost his footing and fell and Bakan walked over him. In the arch Sril had his back to the pillar, fighting off people armed with sticks. Bakan reached him. Together they cleared the arch. Other men ran by Paula’s doorway to help them. She saw Ketac down near Tanuojin’s door.
At a dead run, Leno passed her with a dozen of his men streaming along behind him. They formed a line and thrust the mob back into the street. Stones and filth pelted the cordon of men.
Leno roared, “Drive those fuckers back!” Half the line broke rank and rushed into the crowd, scattering the mob ahead of them. Paula yanked the door shut.
In the relative quiet she heard a new sound, a low whimper from another room, and went through the office to the back bedroom. Saba had wakened. He was crying with pain. She sank down on one knee beside the bed, afraid to touch him.
“Saba.”
“My head.” He turned his head from side to side. “My head is killing me.”
The mob yell rose again to a hysterical pitch. The noise made him sob, his head rolling back and forth. She brought him a cup of water but he could not drink. The door in the next room banged open. Tanuojin came into the room. The black sash hung crumpled across his chest. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his hands on his lyo.
Paula went back to the doorway. Tanuojin helped Saba sit and fed him the water from the cup. He said something too softly for her to hear, and Saba nodded. She went into the computer room. On the walls the analog
