“It was an empty moon,” Maya said. “As for the vehicles in orbit, we will have to deal with those at the appropriate time.”
Again Sax did not appear to notice she had spoken. He stared at the damned ducks, blinking mildly, glancing from time to time at Marina.
Marina said, “It has to be a matter of decapitation, like Nadia and Nirgal and Art said in Dorsa Brevia.”
“We’ll see if we can find the neck,” Vlad said drily.
Maya, getting angrier and angrier at Sax, said, “We should each take one of the major cities, and organize people there into a unified resistance. I want to return to Hellas.”
“Nadia and Art are in South Fossa,” Marina said. “But we’ll need all the First Hundred to join us, for this to work.”
“The first thirty-nine,” Sax said.
“We need Hiroko,” Vlad said, “and we need Hiroko to talk some sense into Coyote.”
“No one can do that,” Marina said. “But we do need Hiroko. I’ll go to Dorsa Brevia and talk to her, and we’ll try to hold the south in check.”
“ ’Coyote’s not the problem,’ Maya said.
Sax jerked out of his reverie, blinked at Vlad. Still not a glance for Maya, even though they were discussing her plan. “Integrated pest management,” he said. “You grow tougher plants among the weeds. And then the tougher plants push them out. I’ll take Burroughs.”
Furious at Sax’s snubbing of her, Maya got up and walked around the little pond. She stopped on the opposite bank, gripped the railing by the path in both hands. She glared at the group across the water, sitting on their benches like retired pensioners chatting about food and the weather and ducks and the last chess match. Damn Sax, damn him! Would he hold Phyllis against her forever, that vile woman—
Suddenly she heard their voices, tiny but clear. There was a curving ceramic wall behind the path, running almost all the way around the pond, and she was almost precisely across the pond from them; apparently the wall functioned as a sort of whispering gallery, she could hear them in perfect miniature, the airy voices a fraction of a second behind their mouths’ little movements.
“Too bad Arkady didn’t survive,” Vlad said. “The Bogdanovists would come around a lot easier.”
“Yes,” said Ursula. “Him and John. And Frank.”
“Frank,” Marina said scornfully. “If he hadn’t killed John none of this would have happened.”“What?” she shouted, without thinking. Across the pond the little figures jerked and looked at her. She detached herself from the railing one hand at a time, and half ran around the pond, stumbling twice.
Maya blinked. The railing was holding her up.
“What do you mean?” she shouted at Marina as she neared them, the words bursting from her without volition.
Vlad and Ursula met her a few steps from the benches. Marina remained seated, looking away sullenly. Vlad had his hands out and Maya tore right through them to get at Marina. “What do you mean saying such foul things?” she shouted, her voice painful in her own throat. “Why? Why? It was Arabs who killed John, everyone knows that!”
Marina grimaced and shook her head, looking down.
“Well?” Maya cried.
“It was a manner of speaking,” Vlad said from behind. “Frank did a lot to undermine John in those years, you know that’s true. Some say he inflamed the Moslem Brotherhood against John, that’s all.”
“Pah!” Maya said. “We have all argued with each other, it means nothing!”
Then she noticed that Sax was looking right at her— finally, now that she was furious— staring at her with a peculiar expression, cold and impossible to read— a glare of accusation, of revenge, of what? She had shouted in Russian and the others had replied in kind, and she didn’t think Sax spoke it. Perhaps he was just curious about what had upset them so. But the antipathy in that steady stare— as if he were confirming what Marina had said— hammering it into her like a nail!
Maya turned and fled.
• • •
She found herself in front of the door to her room with no memory of crossing Sabishii, and threw herself inside as if into her mother’s arms; but in the beautiful spare wooden chamber she drew up short of the bed, shocked by the memory of some other room that had turned from womb to trap on her, in some other moment of shock and fear . . . no answers, no distraction, no escape. . . . Over the little sink she caught sight of her face as if in a framed portrait— haggard, ancient, eyes bright red around the rims, like the eyes of a lizard. A nauseating image. That was it— the time she had caught sight of her stowaway on the Ares, the face seen through an algae jar. Coyote: a shock which had proved not hallucination, but reality.