false voice, “We are all—”
A shout cut him off. Paula slid past him. At the bus Sril faced Leno’s towering second-in-command. He pushed the Merkhizit, and the taller man shouted, “You little worm,” and jumped on him.
Kasuk took a step toward them. Paula caught his sleeve. Sril and the Merkhizit tumbled over the paved ground, and the other men roared. They rushed out of the bus to watch. Bakan leaped out the door. Midway between the fight and Paula, Junna stood fixed in his tracks. From two directions, Saba and Tanuojin and Leno ran up and scattered the men away.
Jefferson said, “Did I err in the programming?”
“You did,” Paula said.
In the midst of the Styths, Saba had Sril by the arm. The small man’s face was bleeding. He shouted, “You should have heard what he said about
Leno turned away. “I’ll never hear the end of that.”
Tanuojin glared at him. “Your crew’s got a big mouth.”
Kasuk moved again, and Paula tightened her grip on his sleeve. The bus swayed back and forth. Saba was herding the crews of the two ships up the steps. His fists on his hips, Leno thrust his blunt head forward at Tanuojin.
“Don’t get me angry, Yekka. I’ll cut you into twenty pieces.”
“I don’t think you can count that high.”
Kasuk laughed. Saba came out of the bus and burst between the two men, driving them apart. “Let’s get out of here.”
Jefferson said. “What was that all about?”
Behind Saba, Tanuojin shot a vicious look at Leno. The Merkhiz Akellar sneered at him. “Nigger eyes.” Tanuojin turned his back. Paula let go of his son’s shirt.
To Jefferson, she said, “Two pegs trying to fit into the same small hole. Where is R.B.?”
“Sitting under the bodhi tree.”
Saba came up to them. “I’m sorry,” he told Jefferson. “It won’t happen again.”
“Is it safe to divide them by family?” Jefferson said.
Paula pulled open the door to the yellow car. “You drive,” she said to Saba, and scrambled across the row of seats to the far side.
“When do we meet this Fisher?” Saba asked.
Paula was staring out the window. They had just left the dome behind them for the thick yellow smoke of the open air. The homing beam blinked blue and red on the dashboard in front of Saba.
In the seat beyond him, Jefferson said, “There’s a meeting Friday morning. Tomorrow.”
“Are you sure it was Dr. Savenia you saw?” the Styth asked, in his language.
Paula shrugged. “She was pretty far away, and her back was to me.”
“I’m not sitting down with anybody from the Sunlight League.”
The air outside was so dense it turned the window into a mirror. She twisted around in the seat to face him. “Why? And why do you automatically assume Sybil doesn’t speak Styth? And that this car isn’t wired? She does. It is.”
He glanced at Jefferson. The old woman picked up her handbag, popped it open, and rummaged in it. Paula said, in the Common Speech, “I don’t suppose you’ve given us separate rooms?”
“There isn’t enough space.” Jefferson fed herself a mint. “Unless you’d take the closet. With the queens and skeletons?”
“I could be bounded in a nutshell. But I think I’d like a window. Where’s the meeting?”
“At our New York office. I was looking forward to seeing your child again.”
“The last time we brought him it was a disaster.”
“Such a charming little boy. He reminded me of you.”
“He isn’t little any more.” They were talking past Saba, and she could not see much of Jefferson at all. She crooked one leg under her. Surrounded by the opaque yellow mist, the car seemed to hang still in the air. Saba reached forward under the steering grips and turned down the heat.
“Children do grow up,” Jefferson said. “After all, it’s been ten years since you left. Ten years would change anybody.” The old woman sucked her candy, her soft white cheek hollowed. “Is he a Styth or an anarchist?”
Paula’s hand rose to her face. Sybil was no longer talking about David. “Neither.”
“In between?”
“Neither.” She glanced at Saba’s profile. “He doesn’t listen to anybody but himself.”
“That’s reasonable,” Jefferson said. She ripped the paper away from the roll of mints. “Have a sweet?”
“No, thanks.”
“Akellar?”
Saba’s gaze slid toward Paula. “Sure,” he said. He reached for a candy.
Caleb Fisher was short and slight, his sparse hair combed across his dome of waxy head. His mustache hid his upper lip. To Paula’s surprise, all three Styths shook hands with him. Afterward Fisher looked as if he wanted to wipe his fingers off. They sat around the long table in the Committee meeting room, with Jefferson at the end and Michalski in the corner taking notes. Dick Bunker was not there. Paula had not seen him since their arrival on the Planet. She knew he was watching.
Jefferson said, “We’ve been very satisfied with the Mendoza Treaty. It’s worth noting that there wasn’t a single violation of the truce in the whole ten years, not by either side.”
Fisher’s little gray toothbrush mustache quivered. Paula watched him through the tail of her eye. In a salesman’s voice, Jefferson was recounting all the virtues of the Mendoza Treaty. Paula guessed Jefferson had been caught out on a thin branch, to have Fisher forced on her. Paula was willing to let them make her out the hero. Now Fisher was leaning across the table.
“Miss Jefferson, I have to insert one small comment.”
Paula raised her head. “I thought you were an observer.”
“I am.”
“Then observe, and keep the comment in back.”
In the big chair on her right, Saba put his hand out to quiet her. Fisher’s mustache jerked up like a curtain from his little teeth. “This negotiation is in the interests of the Council. I am here for the Council.” He straightened up, looking at Saba. “Maybe there have been no technical violations of the truce, but the past ten years, the years of this much-acclaimed Mendoza Treaty, have been the bloodiest between the Styths and the Middle Planets in centuries. Only fifteen months ago there was an awful raid against a Martian colony in the Asteroids—civilians, women and children—carried off into an unspeakable life of slavery.”
“I have no treaty with the Martians,” Saba said.
“We have a right to insist on minimum standards of human decency.”
Paula shoved her chair back and walked away across the room. There were no windows; book racks like honeycombs covered the walls. At the closet door, she tried the latch. It was locked. Saba said, “What’s your minimum standard for murder?” His voice had a short-tempered edge. In the next chair Tanuojin sat picking at his claws, his eyes on his hands. Around the corner of the table from Jefferson, Leno looked bored: their observer. He could barely speak the Common Speech.
Fisher said, “I beg your pardon.”
“I’m talking about the Sunlight League,” Saba said.
“The Sunlight League?”
“Sure.” Saba’s hand struck the table. “It’s too bad we didn’t bring some pieces of the man you sent to murder me.”
“We are not responsible for the actions of private citizens.”
The air smelled bitter. Behind the Styths, Paula watched Tanuojin’s long hands flex. Jefferson was scratching her throat, her pale eyes on Fisher.
The Martian said, starchy, “We will not accept a new treaty that does not settle the issue of slavery. That’s absolutely fundamental.”
