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CHAPTER 5

Flowers blossomed everywhere. The streets were full of people taking an oddly somber holiday. Old folks sat quiet on front stoops and boxes while the younger men and women wandered around, not separated into bantering packs of male and female but all intermixed and all serious. A few children ran about, splashing in the puddles, but even they were wary and kept close by their parents. Clark hurried along, hoping no one would speak to him in Outlander. Twice he passed police squadrons marching down the street through hostile crowds. As he came up 67th Street to the Words of Love, Clark heard a distant rumbling. The crowds grew so dense that he had to walk in the middle of the roadway. There was a disturbance somewhere ahead. People shouted.

The disturbance came closer. Fists waved in the air. The shouts turned to chanting. Youngsters in red headbands raced through the crowd distributing leaflets. Somebody passed one to Clark.

He could not read the words, but he recognized one of Fuego's pictures, uniformed police dragging someone along the sidewalk by his fettered wrists. A second photograph showed a woman weeping over the same body. The kid had died in jail.

Everywhere the leaflets passed, the chant was taken up. Red shirts and kerchiefs were appearing in the crowd. Groups of kids ran out of the houses with stones and metal barricades to block off traffic. Drums and gongs, pots and pans and broken bits of walls and plumbing were carted out and passed around. Radios in people's hands and windows blared full volume. Funeral music overrode the din.

Paula ran out of the Words of Love to meet him and pass around sacs of funeral red dye. She handed him a scarlet jacket, saying, "Put that on. We're going downtown for the ceremony."

"Won't we be targets in these?" he asked, obeying.

"I don't think they'd do it. Besides, the area is pretty well covered. We have people on all the rooftops," she assured him. "Comb your hair, too. You'll be up front with the parents." He noticed a wig stuffed into her pocket.

Inside the cafe, the three surviving toughs sat with the mother of the dead one, all glassy-eyed from sedatives. Three other mothers and a couple of fathers paced. Fuego and Luz were busy ushering everybody else out. People ran around exchanging messages, guessing at the crowd's size and spreading rumors about what the police had planned.

A paint-spattered Muer land cruiser turned up in the street. The six parents got in. Fuego operated the steering wheel while dozens of people pushed it to the city's capital. Luz, Clark and Paula followed.

When they passed the Merced Security building, Paula whispered, "We wired the administrative offices last night. If anything happens, Commissioner DiFiore's suite will go to smithers."

"Won't there be workers and prisoners inside?"

"They'll evacuate if trouble starts. And the cells aren't in that part of the building."

In the great open square between the Security building, the city hall and the Bank of Merced, people stood tightly packed in the streets and greens. Some perched on cans, boxes, overlands and one another's shoulders. Others hung from windows and clung to the statues and cornices of the buildings. The painted car was pushed up to the city hall's steps by shrieking women who were to be part of the chorus in the Nightbird magic ceremony.

The outline of the bird had been marked off with feathers and shiny obsidian stones at the foot of the steps. Scarlet-robed men and women stood around inside it, adjusting bone bracelets and anklets, looping strings of teeth and clay beads around their arms and tying various kinds of rattles to their wrists. The crowd surrounded them.

An old man blew a bone whistle. The others moved out of the bird. The men's chorus danced slowly around the outline, moving sideways, left foot over right, step and pause, left over right. Behind them, the women chanted.

The old man touched a lighted stick to a heap of incense at each wingtip, releasing a puff of fragrant smoke, and began the bird dance. He strutted back and forth, head jutting down and up in time to the women's chanting. At the ends of the wings he arched his back and flapped his arms, elbows raised above his shoulders, so that when he jumped he seemed to fly.

Police hovercraft circled the crowd. The tops of people's heads could be seen moving on the rooftops and once or twice a black-clad figure darted out from behind a statue or railing, took aim and dropped back.

The old man ended his dance and began to speak. At the end of each sentence the chorus shouted his words. The crowd was silent. Clark looked around for someone to translate, but Luz and Fuego had vanished.

Looking up at the windows in the city hall behind him, he saw the barrels of old-fashioned Sagradas leveled at the Nightbird chorus. He tapped Paula's shoulder. She looked and nodded.

Clay bowls full of burning incense passed among the crowd. People began shouting the dead man's name. A window beside the bronze door behind them opened. A dozen police troopers, carrying smaller Sagradas, dropped onto the portico. They stood at the top of the stairs, four facing each direction. At the same time, a mounted squadron came out of the Bank of Merced's side entrance and took up a position opposite, on the other side of the square.

The war of contradictory instructions began. None were translated into Eyimalian, except the foot police's, "Disperse. Go home. Persons who refuse to disperse are rioting. This is your final warning. Go home."

A band of thugs were jostling their way from somewhere in the middle of the crowd to the steps. Some people tried to block them. Others lifted up the old people and children and tried to convince the crowd to pass them overhead to the outside. These two were the factions trying to start a fight. The peacekeeping factions passed more and more bowls of incense through the crowd. They grabbed the people being passed overhead and set them firmly on the ground. Clusters of students from the Pravela Mission College sang pacific hymns, clapping hands and swaying in time.

The police at the top of the steps began to move down. They stepped quickly, faces expressionless, pushing everyone aside and giving a deft kick to the ankles if they met resistance. Some of the people they struck kept quiet, others yelled deliberately loud.

As the police approached the Nightbird, the chorus darted forward to pick up the feathers and stones that demarcated it. They stood holding the markers at chest level with both hands, elbows interlinked. At a signal the police officers kicked them in the backs of the knees and the line swayed, but there were twenty-eight in the choruses and only twelve officers, so they were never all kicked at the same time. Devotees of the Outlander religious faction interceded almost at once, taking blows aimed at the chorus and then retiring.

People were shouting and jostling, fleeing or crowding round, so many kicks went off the mark. Clark saw an old woman get a boot in the chest. He ran forward and pushed the attacker's leg upward, but the cop was expert and set Clark sprawling with an elbow in the jaw. Human history in microcosm, Clark thought. The thugs had reached them by now and allied with the religious Outlanders. Police boots made a steady rattle on the stairs as fresh troops raced out to help the advance guard.

About half the children and old people were at the back of the crowd by now, near the Bank and the horses. The charge began slowly, perhaps in deference to them. Their screams roused the Pravelany Mission students to sudden fury. Soon the horses were galloping in full panic with the long strides of low-gravity animals that took them barely over people's heads, and the riders were fighting for their lives. Clark watched in astonishment. They almost fly, he thought. Paula had occasionally ridden horses, so she was able to grab onto a bridle and swing a beast's head down to dismount the cop who rode it, but then no one could control the horse and she had to let go. A thickset Outlander lad in a greasy hide coat caught hold of its neck and managed to climb up. Once there he could not stop it, but eventually he rode the frightened animal out of the square.

More police ran out of the bank, some bandaged. They had come down from the roof where the Armies of Daybreak, later reported in the Resheborian press to be about a hundred strong, were fighting to disarm the big guns mounted by the Civil and Industrial Peace Administration, a Viyato gang so unpopular that the regular police refused to aid them and deserted the field of battle, the Bank's roof garden. One of the guns had been pushed over the edge of the slotted granite wall that sheltered the garden and now dangled by a few cables above a group of youngsters trying to catch one of the wounded horses. It was to hang there nearly a week.

The Sagradas on the second floor of the capitol suddenly discharged, smashing the Bank's windows and leaving blackened gouges on the plastic sills and decorations. Responsibility for the damage was never to be fixed. The Viyato local guard accused the Dagrov army, who returned the compliment.

The police had the crowd pinned between the Bank and the city hall. Those who fell were trampled underfoot. People were pushed into the flailing hooves of dying horses, others crushed against the Bank's walls as men and women fought to get in. Squadrons of police trapped inside the building fired on the crowd or left their posts and ran. When the lobby was filled, those inside fought to keep the rest from entering. Troops poured out of the Security building, crossed the half-empty square and surrounded the Bank.

Somewhere behind the lines reason prevailed, and instead of massacaring the crowd, soldiers fired cannisters of stupefying gas in through the windows. When most of the people inside had passed out, they let off a few more to be safe at the cost of killing those with a low tolerance. Then they went in and selected their prisoners. It was midnight and the square empty when the two hundred Tactical Security Officers led eighty-five chained civilians out of the building.

Clark was still groggy from the tranquilizer when the troops left the Bank. A man was shouting at him in Outlander. Clark seized him by the the collar, yelling, "What is it!" in Eyimalian.

The man thrust a Puro into Clark's hands. "Surround the troops. Rescue mission."

Clark pocketed the weapon.

Men and women were arming the mob. For the first time, Clark genuinely feared for his life, but he saw the necessity for immediate action. If the prisoners reached the Security building, they were probably as good as dead. Looking through the holes in a windowpane opaqued by heat blasts, he saw that most of the troops had been dismissed, leaving a small detail to act as the firing squad.

On a shouted command, the mob ran out of the building, firing into the air. The prisoners cheered and shuffled back in their chains to meet them. The captors fled. Clark returned to the Words of Love feeling rather proud of himself.

Paula, Luz and Fuego waited inside among a litter of scarlet rags, papers, smashed glass, food and spilt drinks. One of the plate windows had been struck by a Sagrada and now bowed outward. Bits of chairs lay in a heap near the bar. As soon as they saw Clark, Luz and Fuego stood.

"You're safe," Fuego observed. "We'll go tell Greyesar."

"Who?" Clark asked, sitting.

"Sevit's cousin," Paula said. "Everybody calls him that. It's as good as his name."

"Greyesar. That's a mythical person, isn't it?"

"Yes. The dream king. He deals drugs."

"What kind?"

"I don't know. Whatever the Uchides need, I guess. He works for the family. Where have you been? We were worried. Greyesar was looking for you. Did you get caught in the bank?"

Clark nodded. He felt too sleepy even to look at Paula. "The Security office is still there," he managed.

"We decided not to. There were people inside all day. We can set it off any time. They're sure to retaliate for what happened today. We can retaliate then." She got up and began nudging bits of litter into a heap with her feet. When Clark told her about the rescue operation, she clapped him on the back but said nothing.

He went to their room and slept until Paula came in to shake him, saying, "Come on. They're here." As he came down to the cafe, she was admitting two men.

The first was very much an Uchide. Though taller by far than Sevit, he was not lanky and he did not hesitate to look down at Clark's face or stare into Paula's eyes, both violations of Eyimalian etiquette. His face was long, his chin sharp, and his cheekbones jutted out fiercely. He wore a long grey vest, unbuttoned at the bottom, that billowed slightly behind him, tight-fitting pants and high leather boots. His hair was thick, jet-black except for a white streak above the right eye, and it reached to his shoulders.

Looking at him, Clark felt a sudden pang of recognition. The visitor bore more than a cousin's resemblance to Sevit. Greyesar was an enlarged picture of the lost man, with his poise and confidence, his motions constrained by the half-imagined horde depending on his judgment. Later, Clark decided that the man was a degenerate image of Sevit, arrogant, without Sevit's compassion or intelligence. The second Eyimalian was taller, thinner, younger and very nervous.

The first man carried an envelope. He tossed it on the cafe table. "Hello, Paula. I've got what you need," he said in Eyimalian. His companion stared at her.

"Good. Sit down, all of you. This is Clarkwell Brockhurst."

Clark touched the older man's palm, saying, "You must be Greyesar."

The younger apparently did not expect to be greeted. He sat down and began drumming his fingers on his knee.

Greyesar nodded. "Right. Now, we've got all the field equipment for you and I can have you on Paffir Haretz in six days."

"Paffir Haretz," Clark repeated. He'd have to read up on sampling techniques to investigate the use of Ecclesiam purpuream first-hand.

Greyesar sat down opposite Paula, resting his arms on the table so that his hands were in the middle of it and kept everyone's attention when he gestured. He spoke to her. "I have been conferring with Adelaide and the family for the past four days. She is convinced, and she has convinced me, that Sevit is alive. She has received an offer to sell him for three million casheeks."

Paula shook back her hair and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. She looked dusty. "Well, that certainly is a stiff price," she said.

"The Uchide refuse to pay," Greyesar said. "They will not allow themselves to be convinced."

"What evidence does she have?" Clark asked. Unless someone interrupted him, Greyesar might go on with these sudden revelations for hours. None of them would be able to stand it.

"She has a holo of him. Nothing elaborate--he faces front, eyes closed. Looks up on cue, recites a few ore market prices and the date, closes his eyes."

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CONTINUE.....................

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INDEX