“I’m not treating with you,” Saba said. “I’m treating with her.” His hand jerked toward Jefferson.
“You’re treating with the Council,” Fisher said.
“I wouldn’t lower myself.”
“That’s enough,” Jefferson said.
Fisher snapped up onto his feet. “I will not—”
“Fisher.”
He turned toward her; the strings showed in his neck. “I—”
“Fisher,” Jefferson said, “sit down.”
Meekly Fisher took his place again. The old woman said, “In the interests of progress, suppose we all go and have lunch, and when we come back this afternoon try to talk like people with wits and objectives and not like little boys in a sandpile.”
Fisher was still watching her, and when she stood he stood. Paula went back to her chair for her jacket. Around her the Styths’ chairs growled and the big men got to their feet. Jefferson, busy with her purse and her candy and scarf, her eyes lowered, was giving no opening for conversation. She headed for the door.
“Don’t touch me,” Fisher snarled.
Paula looked up. Tanuojin was moving away from him.
Saba went out the door. The rest of the Styths followed him. Leno and Tanuojin reached the door simultaneously and bristled at each other. After a moment Tanuojin let Saba’s cadet go first. They went down past Paula’s old office to the way out into the park. Paula squeezed between Tanuojin and the wall.
“What did you find out from Fisher?”
His shoulders moved. “Nothing.” He stretched his legs and went ahead of her out the door to the gulley.
When Paula went back into the building, she found Jefferson in her office, her fingers going like hammers over her keyboard. The bare white walls of the office were stained in streaks, like watermarks. The only thing hanging on them was a long calendar behind the desk. Jefferson looked up from her work.
“Oh. Mendoza. I thought you were Michalski and my diet biscuit.” The old woman rolled her chair away from the keyboard shelf. “Sit down. Have you eaten?”
“We just had lunch.”
Paula sat down sideways in a straight chair. She took her jacket off and draped it over the back. Jefferson said, “Where are your companions?”
“Out in the park cooling off. This will never get us any place as long as Fisher is there.”
“Caleb Fisher is no problem.”
“Not to you, maybe. What did he do, murder his mother and bury her in your backyard?”
Jefferson daubed at her bad eye. Her hair was mushroom-white. She looked old. The door opened for Michalski carrying a cup of coffee on a little tray, which he put on Jefferson’s desk. A white plastic heat-folder steamed beside the cup.
“Mendoza,” he said. “You’ve really gotten bad-tempered. There’s a message for you on the board in the waiting room.” He went out. Jefferson was tearing open the heat-folder. A hot biscuit rolled out onto the tray.
“I’m on a diet.” She nodded at the biscuit. “Now they say my heart will have to be replaced. They’re turning me into a robot piece by piece. We won’t get anywhere unless the Styths are reasonable.”
“They’re reasonable,” Paula said. “As long as it profits them.”
“What do they want?”
“Everything. You might as well give it to them, it will make them easier to handle.”
Jefferson chuckled. She broke the biscuit in half and scattered crumbs across the desktop. “You like to talk in code, Mendoza. Rather like a Styth. I don’t entirely accept your proposition that you’re a new kind of creature.” She ate a mouthful of biscuit, burped, and patted her chest. “All this shooting at people does have to stop.”
Paula hung her arm over the back of the chair. “We need a universal truce.”
“The only people we’re having any difficulty with are your clients, dear girl.”
“Right. So we will arrange a universal truce, and let Saba enforce it.”
Jefferson munched her biscuit. Her bad eye was tearing. Slowly her head began to nod. “Ingenious. I like that, Mendoza. Have you discussed it with them?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Certainly Tanuojin knew. He and Saba had been happy to see her off to this meeting; they wanted to talk alone.
“You gave me to think you want something for yourself.”
“I’d like to be recognized.”
“In what form?”
“I’m the only link you have with the Styths. I’ll stay that. Keep Bunker out of Styth, and stop trying to make contacts behind my back.”
“Have some coffee.” Jefferson reached for her cup.
“No, thanks.”
“What about the Styths? Do they recognize you?”
“I’ll need your help.”
“How?”
Paula said, “We’ll get to that.” She looked around the stained walls of the room, thinking of Bunker again. “I want rank. My own means and place to live, free of either of them. The right to have my son inherit from me.” She felt Bunker hiding somewhere, watching.
Michalski came in again, saying, “Jefferson, two-thirty.” He popped out without pausing. Paula stood, picking up her jacket.
“You’re busy, I guess.”
“My dear, you can’t know. Is there anything else?”
“Give me a listening device. Just an ear, not a transmitter. Something I can hide in Saba’s clothes.”
Jefferson opened a drawer in her desk and took out a three-inch plug like a large book plug. She pulled a wire out of the top. “This will stick to any metal surface.” She pushed the wire back into the plug. “Turn to zero to erase and to ten to play.”
“Thanks.” Paula took it. The white band around the plug was marked with numbers. “I’ll see you in half an hour.” The afternoon meeting started at three.
That session was a repeat of the morning’s, except that Saba walked out. Tanuojin followed him, and Leno unfolded his arms and uncrossed his legs and stood.
“Is there some reason we’re here?”
Fisher gave Paula a sullen, furious look. “You whore,” he said, in a low voice. His gray mustache bristled, and he stalked out the door. Leno looked down at her.
“He sounds like Machou.”
Paula followed him into the hall. Fisher was disappearing into the waiting room midway along it. “Merkhiz, you know all the right words.” Michalski had said something about a message. She went down to the waiting room, where Fisher stood among his aides, having his coat put on and his papercase handed to him.
The message board was just inside the threshold on the wall.
Paula: if you ever come back, I’m living in the Nikoles Building, Room 68, Green Wing. An Chu.
She took the slip of paper off the board and put it in her pocket.
The Styths had gone back to the air cars. Just as she joined them, Leno took off in the two-seater, his second-in-command in the passenger seat. The car hovered overhead a moment and swooped off toward the wall of the dome. The sun was setting and the domelight was coming on. Saba leaned against the door of the yellow Dutch car.
“Why did you leave?” she asked him.
“I’m getting a headache.”
“Do you want me to drive?”
Tanuojin came around the car to her. “I’ll drive.”
They got into the car, Tanuojin in the middle seat, and started toward the East Lock. Below them the lights of buildings glowed through the trees. The heat was off and she began to shiver and reached behind the seat for a car blanket. Saba pressed his hands to his face.
