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.”They walked along a wide graded path.On either side of it were dogwood trees.She could not make out his expression.“You’re very smooth.”“You suspect everything I do.”“Everything you do is suspect.”“No—you’re just a suspicious bitch.” They went across the dark grass to the Committee office.Jefferson and Bunker were in the meeting room.The woman sat at the table, eating candy, while the man sat in a chair by the wall and argued with her.Paula went into the room, taking her jacket off.She turned to Michalski, who had followed them in.“Can you dim the lights down?”“Sure.”Jefferson said, “You’re improving, Mendoza, you’re only an hour and ten minutes late.Good evening, Akellar.”He turned a chair around, its back to the table, and put one knee on it.The ceiling lights dimmed to half-strength.The Akellar looked up.Paula went off to the end of the room, past Bunker, who was watching the big Styth.They had only met once before, at the entry port.Jefferson was explaining how the transcribing equipment in the table worked.“Is it on now?” the Akellar asked.“No,” Jefferson said.“Then turn it on, because I have an offer to make you.”Paula swung around, and Bunker took his hands out of his pockets.The big man faced the three anarchists.He rocked his weight forward; he looked cramped in the room, his head and shoulders confined under the low ceiling.He said, “I don’t pretend I understand you people, but I know what you want.I’m willing to sign a truce with the Interplanetary Council, and I’ll sell licenses to trade in Matuko and sell Matuko crystal to the rock-worlds.I want that money, in metal, iron if you can get it, and I want my rights with her and her baby.”Paula went up to the table.Her mouth was dry.Jefferson said, “How much money?”“It comes to twenty-six million dollars over five years,” Paula said.Bunker kicked at the floor.“What rights with her?”“She goes with me,” the Styth said.“Now.”“To Uranus?”Paula sat down.Jefferson’s mouth was pursed, her thin gray eyebrows arced like bows.The Akellar rocked back and forth on his knee on the chair, staring at Bunker.“It’s my baby.”Jefferson said, “How long a truce?”“One hundred thousand watches.”“Ten years,” Paula said.“Good,” Jefferson said.“That’s a good length.”“You aren’t serious?” Bunker shot a furious glance at Paula and went the length of the table to Jefferson.“What the hell are you doing? She set this up with him.She’s trading us off.”“Do you agree to go?” Jefferson asked Paula.She put a mint into her mouth.Paula nodded.The old woman sucked on her candy, her hard blue eyes going to Bunker.“I like it.It’s practical, it might work, and I can sell it to the Council.”The anarchist circled the table.“You Fascist,” he said to Paula.He went past the Styth and out the door.It slammed behind him.Paula sat down.Jefferson said, “He’s getting narrow, Richard, in his dotage.” She tipped up the lid of the recorder in the table and pushed buttons.Above her head, Paula met the round black eyes of the Styth, triumphant.An Chu spread out the skirts of the black dress and folded them carefully in layers of tissue.“Can I write you?”“I don’t see how you’d post it.”“Maybe it would be easier for you to write me.”Paula was packing her books into the pockets of a flannel cloth.She rolled it up and tied the tape.The room was stripped to the walls and floor.She had sold her bed and given away everything else she was leaving behind.She put her flute into the satchel bag with the books.“Help me,” An Chu said, sitting on the suitcase.While they were buckling the straps there was a knock on the door.It was Dick Bunker.Paula bent over the suitcase again.“What do you want?”“Junior, why are you doing this?”“It’s my treaty.” She closed the satchel.“I can manage it better in Styth than here.” She stood up.The naked room looked smaller, like a cage.An Chu glanced from her to Bunker and lugged the suitcase out.He tipped himself up against the wall.“You won’t be much use dead, or locked up in a harem, or in a slave market, which is where you’ll be.”“You certainly know a lot, for somebody who spends all his time talking.”They faced each other.His eyes were black as a Styth’s.After a moment, he said, “I apologize for losing my temper yesterday.”“It doesn’t bother me if you get emotional.Do you have something you want to say?”“The Lunar Army blotted the scan of Ybix.”“Oh.That’s typical.”“Will you take a sensor inboard with you?”She snatched her jacket off the doorknob and thrust her arms into the sleeves.“He’d kill me.I’m not that stupid.Get out of my way.” She grabbed the satchel.He backed up, and she went out the door after An Chu.YBIX.Watch logs H11, 523—L11, 674The hatch clanged open over her head.Paula reached up and drew herself through into a long silver tunnel.She bumped into the soft wall.The light was dim as twilight.She floated in the cold air, helpless.The Akellar shot up through the hatch.In mid-air he twisted around head-first like a fish and went the other way along the corridor.“Come on.”She followed him, pushing herself along the yielding wall.On one wall was a double-barreled black arrow pointing the way she had come, and on the other a white arrow pointing the way she was going.In the free fall, without gravity to help her, she could hardly move.They passed a round hatchway marked with a black symbol.The corridor veered upward.They came to another tube, twisting away like a soft metallic hose, marked with double red stripes.The Akellar stopped and she bumped into him and knocked him down the corridor.He came back toward her; he moved so fast she could not see how he did it.“You’ll learn.There’s a kind of a knack, it’s nothing like walking.” He went into the red corridor.She struggled after him, banging into the walls.The surface was slippery.She began to shiver in the cold.Ahead, Saba had stopped to open a hatch
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