Paula hugged her tight, her face against the other woman’s coarse black hair. Her throat thickened. She could say nothing. An Chu babbled in her ear, “We’ve been looking for you—Willie thought he saw you once—” An Chu held her tight, one arm around her shoulders, one around her waist. “Where are you living?”
Paula stepped back. “In the…” She nodded toward the south of the dome. She cast a look around them, to be sure they went unwatched.
“In the open?” An Chu took her hands. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m starving.”
“Come with me.”
Paula followed her down the long side of the building, but An Chu did not go through the door. She hooked her arm through Paula’s arm. “The hourlies say you’re dead.” She squeezed Paula’s arm against her, smiling wide. “The Dragon Lady of the Styths. I took the hourlies around to everybody I knew and told them who you really are.” They passed the end of the building and went into the open. The evening was warm. Mosquitoes buzzed around her face. High overhead, the red lights of an air car flashed off and on. An Chu glanced up casually and walked Paula in a circle.
“Aren’t you living there?” Paula asked.
“Yes—we all are, Willie and Jennie and I. Jennie’s the only one who’s official. You can’t have an apartment unless you have a job-card. You don’t get a job-card unless you work. With everybody on strike, that’s hard. Jennie works in the dome-maintenance crew. We decided she could, since it’s for our sake as much as the Martians’.” She looked up into the sky. “He’s gone. Hurry.” Stooping, she pulled up a round piece of the turf. Paula climbed into the hole in the ground.
She slid feet-first along a steep lightless tunnel, smelling of clay. The curved wall was slippery under her hand and a protruding root lashed her face. At the bottom of the slide she came to rest against a plastic wall. An Chu came after her. She reached over Paula’s shoulder and tapped on the wall. It slid open. Paula climbed through into a long room hollowed out of the dirt beside the wall of an underground building.
“Who are you?”
She stood, facing a strange man, fair-faced, with long yellow hair. An Chu crawled after her into the narrow room. “She’s Paula Mendoza. I told you we’d find her.”
The only furniture in the room were two cots against the outer wall and a big old breakfront cupboard opposite. An Chu opened the wing-doors and took out a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese.
“Here.” She gave them to Paula. “This is Willie Luhan. He’s my friend, mine and Jennie’s.”
Paula sat down on the cot and sank her teeth into the cheese. Her stomach clenched with yearning. An Chu said to the yellow-haired man, “She’s been living in the open. She can stay with us.”
“It’s fine with me,” Willie Luhan said.
“I’m not alone.” Paula tore off a piece of the bread and stuffed it into her mouth.
“Who’s with you?” An Chu asked. She brushed back a strand of her black hair. It was much longer than Paula remembered.
“Dick Bunker. He was on the Committee.”
“We don’t know him.”
“I know him.”
An Chu pressed her fingers to her cheeks, her gaze turning to her friend. The man scowled. “Nobody comes in here unless we know him. That’s our rule. We have to do it that way, you see.”
Paula wiped her mouth on her arm. The taste of the cheese lingered on her tongue. “Then I’ll stay out there with him.”
The two people before her looked at each other again. Willie licked his lips. His wide face was troubled. An Chu nodded to Paula.
“Bring him.”
“I have to get to Vancouva,” Bunker said. “Isn’t there any way at all?”
“I’m sorry.” The woman spoke with a Martian accent. “Unless you have travel papers from the dome secretary, I’m not authorized to sell you tickets. If you’ll just—”
Only her head and shoulders showed above the back of her chair. Paula slid through the door behind her. There were three or four other people in the office waiting room, on the far side of the partition, and she dropped to her hands and knees to keep from being seen.
“But my wife is there,” Bunker cried. “I have to get there. Can’t you see that?” He gestured dramatically with both hands. “I have to!”
“Well,” the woman said nervously, “I can’t do anything about that, I’m sorry.”
Bunker launched into his passionate lie. Her eyes followed the wide movements of his hands. Paula sneaked up behind her and lifted a card-folder out of the shoulder bag hanging on the woman’s chair.
In the corridor outside the travel office, Martian soldiers stood talking, rifles on their shoulders. Paula went past them, her head down. She wore An Chu’s clothes, even An Chu’s shoes, which pinched her feet. A lunch cart rolled toward her, and a soldier called out to the man pushing it to stop. The Martians gathered around the cart. There was an hourly stand against the wall between Paula and them. She took the card-folder out of her pocket and thumbed a dime from the coin slot. She bought an hourly. The Martians were buying hot rolls and minjis from the cart; the pusher clicked change from the machine on his belt. She dropped the hourly and stooped among the Martians to pick it up, and thieved two handfuls of rolls off the bottom shelf of the cart.
Outside, the loudspeaker on the corner of the building was playing high-spirited marching music. She walked along the side of the building, past the line of people waiting to get into the travel office. Bunker had waited nearly two hours for three minutes of diversion. The ground was scattered with discarded hourlies. She threw away the one in her hand.
Bunker caught up with her at the end of the walk. From habit they went along twenty or thirty paces apart, not talking. An air car buzzed overhead; on its side was the blue star of the government. They went down through the waste land toward the Nikoles Building.
An Chu lit the candle. The ends of the narrow room stayed in deep shadow. The little door that led to the underground building was open, a square cut in the wall, through which Paula could see the pipes and canisters of the garbage-eater under Jennie Morrison’s kitchen sink. The flat beyond was one small room, only a little larger than the secret room. The square of plastic that covered the door between them hung on the wall over it, and An Chu pulled it down and fastened it in place. Bunker pulled the stolen job-card out of the plastic folder.
“You got one,” An Chu said. “How?”
“Stole it,” Paula said. “The Martians are too easy.” She took the hot rolls out of her jacket and put them on the sway-backed cot.
“Do you have a magnifying glass?” Bunker asked. He sat on the head of the cot and peeled the plastic wrap off a hot roll. Paula ate a ham minji.
An Chu gave Bunker a pocket magnifier from the cupboard. She pushed the wing-door shut, sat on the bed, and took a roll out of its wrapping. “Meat. Wonderful.”
The folder lay open on the cot, its plastic windows full of other cards. While she ate the minji, Paula took eaach one out and looked it over. Bunker held the magnifier up to his eye and the job-card into the light.
“The green cards are for women, the white cards for men?”
“Green for civilian women, white for civilian men, blue for soldiers, red for Martian topshots.” An Chu sat on the bed beside Paula. Paula found a pocket in the back of the folder and took out three dollars. It was worthless; all the paper money was worthless.
A sharp knock banged on the door to the kitchen. Kneeling, An Chu unfastened the square cover from the wall and leaned it up against the foot of the cupboard. Jennie Morrison crawled into the secret room. Paula hardly knew her. She wore a bright green dress with her job-card pinned to her collar like a badge.