Paula was watching Tanuojin’s face. His mouth shut tight, the corners hidden under his mustaches. Wu-wei nodded to him.
“There’s a difference between law and justice, you know, which it might profit you to discover. This court is ended.” He got up and left the room.
Saba put his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself up onto his feet. “He’s an anarchist. What did you expect?”
Tanuojin was staring at the judge’s door, his hands on his hips, and his elbows cocked out. He said several coarse words in Styth and made for the rail. The Martians were putting away their papers. Chi Parine had his back to Paula. She followed the Styths out. Behind their backs, she finally allowed herself to smile.
The Interplanetary Hotel, where Sybil Jefferson was staying, was plainer and smaller than the Palestine. People sat reading in the chairs scattered around the lobby, in among the banana plants and the racks of hourlies and candy. The Styths sauntering into the hotel cut short all talk and turned every head in the room. Paula kept a tight grip on David’s hand. Whenever he saw a dog, he wanted to kill it, provided Saba was there. They went through an air door into a curving hallway.
“I don’t understand why we’re coming here,” Tanuojin said.
“She did us a favor,” Saba said. The walls of the hallway were painted with stylized jungle plants and flowers. David lagged, and Paula stopped to let him look. The two men went on around the curve.
David cried, “What’s that?” He rushed to the wall, reaching for a monkey coyly painted among the leaves.
“It’s a monkey. Something like a kusin.”
Saba came back around the curve, picked David up, and hauled her off by one arm down the hallway. “I told you not to bring him.” She turned her arm out of his grasp. They went into a bright room opening off the inside curve.
Tanuojin stood on the far side of a pair of bright yellow couches, squinting in the glaring light. Saba put David on his feet. Jefferson crossed to meet Paula. She wore a tomato-red tunic and red pants; she looked like a fireplug. “Mendoza,” she said, “don’t scold, I’m having the lights turned down. Hello, Akellar.” She folded over at the waist, eye to eye with David, and her voice rose to a falsetto. “Well, hello! I know who you are.”
David blinked at her, his mouth open. Saba said, “He doesn’t speak the Common Speech.” The child edged toward him, reaching for his father’s hand. Paula looked beyond Jefferson at the three people sitting on the couches. Abruptly the lights dimmed to a half-glow.
David had Saba firmly by the hand. The big man told him Sybil’s name. “This is the woman your mother worked for, before she came to me.”
“Here,” Sybil said. “I’ll bet I can do something you can’t do.”
Paula, behind her, could not see what Sybil did, but David shrieked with laughter. “Mama, look!” Jefferson straightened, turning her head. Her right eye was white and blind as an egg. David let go of his father and gripped Jefferson’s arm.
“Do it again!”
Jefferson chuckled. Paula said, “Sybil, you are gross.”
“Come meet my guests.” Sybil crooked her arm through Paula’s. She smelled like milk. “We were just talking about the Akellar’s extraordinary grasp of law.”
“For a Styth,” Tanuojin said.
All three strangers were members of the Council, a man and a woman from Luna and a man from Venus. Paula began to see Jefferson’s purpose in bringing the Styths here. She shook a series of hands and introduced the Council members to Saba, using all of his titles she could remember. Jefferson brought them each a tall fizzing glass.
“Where did you study law, Miss Mendoza?” asked the Council-woman from Luna.
Paula shook her head. “Nowhere. I did a flash reading on the way here.” She watched David, who was following Jefferson around. “Yekka is the lawyer.”
“It was quite a display, too,” said the man from Venus, hearty. “Chi Parine is no amateur.”
Tanuojin never even looked in his direction. “I have a good memory,” he said to the empty air.
Saba held his glass out to Paula. “It was a piece of theater. Bring me another of these.”
“Yes, too bad you were playing to the wrong audience.” She gave him her glass and went around the couch to the table against the wall where Jefferson had gotten the drinks. On a table covered with a white cloth were several rows of plastic bottles. She fished ice-balls out of a bucket. Jefferson came up to her side and took a package of biscuits from the back of the table.
“Thank you for coming, Mendoza.”
“Thank Saba.”
“Your son is his image.” Jefferson poured salted biscuits into a hotel dish and went off across the room. Tanuojin was still refusing the attentions of the Venusian and the Lunar woman. Jefferson stood talking to Saba and eating biscuits. The half-light buried the edges of the room in shadows. Paula filled two glasses with ice and whiskey and took them across the room and gave one to Saba.
“Have a cookie,” Jefferson said.
“Where is David?” She looked around the room for him.
“Leave him alone,” Saba said. “Ever since that thing with the dog you’ve been all over him.” He fished an ice-ball out of his glass and ate it.
“You’ve got fourteen others.”
The third Council member, the man from Luna, took the last of Jefferson’s biscuits. “Does he play chess?” He nodded over his shoulder toward Tanuojin. Elaborately unimpressed, he looked up, up at Saba. “What’s an Akellar?”
Jefferson turned to Paula. “What dog?”
Paula sipped her whiskey, her eyes on Tanuojin. “Nothing.” Thin as a withy, the tall Styth leaned against the wall, thumbing his mustaches flat. The Venusian’s hearty voice boomed.
“Actually, strangely enough, the best schools in the system are on the Earth.”
“Why is that strange?” Tanuojin said. Jefferson raised her head, her pale eyes sharp.
“The anarchists have no respect for education,” the hearty man said.
“Maybe that’s why their schools are so good,” Tanuojin said.
The Venusian fished cigarettes out of the pocket of his tunic. His hands busy, he said, “Is that some kind of joke?”
Tanuojin was facing him, but his white eyes glanced toward Jefferson. He slid his hands under his belt. “The anarchists have respect for nothing. They’ll do anything they have to do to keep the rest of you dancing in their act.”
Saba said, in Styth, “Why don’t you shut up?”
Tanuojin straightened away from the wall. “You know why we’re here—she’s trading on—”
“Just shut up when you’re in her place drinking with her and eating with her.”
“I’m not—”
“I am.”
Tanuojin slouched against the wall, sulky, his head to one side. Next to Paula, Sybil Jefferson looked from Styth to Styth, keen as a fox. Paula realized she understood them: she spoke Styth. The Venusian’s match clicked into a little burst of flame.
“It’s a riddle,” Saba said to the Venusian. “Unfortunately riddles don’t translate very well from one language to another. What is that?”
“Cigarettes,” the Venusian said. He held out the package. “Have one?”
Saba went over to the couch and the Venusian showed him how to smoke. He maneuvered the cigarette in his claws, fascinating the Lunar woman, who was slightly drunk. Paula looked for David.