“Pretty good baby, huh? We’re going to sell her down to Rio—get a fancy price for her.”

“I thought the market was better in Yemen?”

“Stinky says not. Got to sell her to make room.” She put his hand on her belly. “Feel the bulge? Stinky and I are making a boy now—got no time for daughters.”

“Maryam,” Patricia said chidingly, “that’s no way to talk, even in fun.”

“Sorry, Patty. I won’t talk that way about your baby. Aunt Patty is a lady, and groks that I’m not.”

“I grok that you aren’t, too, you little hellion. But if Fatima is for sale, I’ll give you twice your best commercial offer.”

“You’ll have to take it up with Aunt Patty; I’m merely allowed to see her occasionally.”

“And you don’t bulge, so you may want to keep her yourself. Let me see your eyes. Mmm . . . could be.”

“Is. And Mike has grokked it most carefully and tells Stinky he’s made a boy.”

“How can Mike grok that? Impossible. I’m not even sure you’re pregnant.”

“Oh, she is, Jubal,” Patricia confirmed.

Miriam looked at him serenely. “Still the skeptic, Boss. Mike grokked it while Stinky and I were still in Beirut, before we were sure we had caught. So Mike phoned us. And the next day Stinky told the university that we were taking a sabbatical for field work—or his resignation, if they wished. So here we are.”

“Doing what?”

“Working. Working harder than you ever made me work, Boss—my husband is a slave driver.”

“Doing what?”

“They’re writing a Martian dictionary,” Patty told him.

“Martian to English? That must be difficult.”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Miriam looked almost shocked. “That wouldn’t be difficult, that would be impossible. A Martian dictionary in Martian. There’s never been one before; the Martian’s don’t need such things. Uh, my part of it is just clerical; I type what they do. Mike and Stinky—mostly Stinky—worked out a phonetic script for Martian, eighty-one characters. So we had an I.B.M. typer worked over for those characters, using both upper and lower case—Boss darling, I’m ruined as a secretary; I type touch system in Martian now. Will you love me anyhow? When you shout ‘Front!’ and I’m not good for anything? I can still cook . . . and I’m told that I have other talents.”

“I’ll learn to dictate in Martian.”

“You will, before Mike and Stinky get through with you. I grok. Eh, Patty?”

“You speak rightly, my brother.”

They returned to the living room, Caxton joined them and suggested finding a quieter place, away from the giant babble box, led Jubal down a passage and into another living room. “You seem to have most of this floor.”

“All of it,” agreed Ben. “Four suites—the Secretarial; the Presidential, the Royal, and Owner’s Cabin, opened into one and not accessible other than by our own landing flat . . . except through a foyer that is not very healthy without help. You were warned about that?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t need so much room right now . . . but we may: people are trickling in.”

“Ben, how can you hide from the cops as openly as this? The hotel staff alone will give you away.”

“Oh, there are ways. The staff doesn’t come up here. You see, Mike owns this hotel.”

“So much the worse, I would think.”

“So much the better . . . unless our doughty police chief has Mr. Douglas on his payroll, which I doubt. Mike bought it through about four links of dummies—and Douglas doesn’t snoop into why Mike wants a thing done. Douglas doesn’t despise me quite as much since Os Kilgallen took over my column, I think, but nevertheless he doesn’t want to surrender control to me—he does what Mike wants. The hotel is a sound investment; it makes money—but the owner of record is one of our clandestine Ninth-Circlers. So the owner decides he wants this floor for the season and the manager can’t and doesn’t and wouldn’t want to inquire into why, or how many guests of his own the owner has coming or going—he likes his job; Mike is paying him more than he’s worth. It’s a pretty good hide-out, for the time being. Till Mike groks where we will go next.”

“Sounds like Mike had anticipated a need for a hide-out.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did. Almost two weeks ago Mike cleared out the nestlings’ nest—except for Maryam and her baby; Maryam is needed for the job she’s on. Mike sent the parents with children to other cities—places he means to open temples, I think—and when the time came, there were just about a dozen of us to move. No sweat.”