It was also an explosive situation. All around him, those who were not simply standing and staring as he was were dropping to their knees in prayer. Many were walking backward, gazing up, transfixed. Someone had started shouting.
"The day has come!"
Others took up the cry.
"The day has come!"
"The day has come!"
Carlisle was very much aware that word would soon be spreading across the city about the vision above the Garden as people saw it from their windows and started to call friends. It was possible that literally millions of people would soon be converging on the area. Just a few blocks downtown, the burned and blackened buildings that had been torched in the recent bread riot stood as testimony to a crowd's madness. He opened a channel on the tracy.
"This is Carlisle. I'm on Eighth Avenue, outside the building. Do you know what's going on out here?"
"This is opcon. What is going on out there, Lieutenant?"
"There's a hundred-foot-high hologram on the top of the building."
"The Four Horsemen, right?"
"That's right. The goddamn Horsemen. Why wasn't I told about any of this?"
The tracy was now working perfectly. The opcon operator on the small screen shrugged.
"Don't ask me, Lieutenant. I just work here. Maybe someone didn't think it was your territory."
"But who sanctioned this damned thing? It could start a riot."
"I don't know, Lieutenant. I heard the deacons approved it."
"Can you patch me through to Captain Parnell?"
The operator shook his head. "I can't, Lieutenant. He went into the auditorium just before the end of the show. He's still off the air."
"Goddamn it."
"I 'm sorry, Lieutenant."
Carlisle knew that he was helpless. He spotted a sergeant with a squad of uniforms. The sergeant's name tag read 'Muncie', and he looked as if a conversation with a lieutenant of detectives was the very last thing he wanted. Carlisle didn't give a damn. He had had enough of closed-minded departmentalization. He glanced pointedly at the huge hologram images. "This could easily come unhinged."
"Tell me about it, but we've got orders from the brass to let it happen."
"And you're just following orders?"
"You said it, Lieutenant, not me. Get me some new orders and I'll move them out of here and get the traffic running. Until then, I'm not offering up my ass for sacrifice."
Carlisle sighed. "I hear you."
In fact, the crowd, although growing increasingly dense, was surprisingly orderly. The chanting and screaming only came in brief bursts, and comparatively few were still on their knees. The majority simply stood, heads tilted back, gazing up at the giant Horsemen. The first ones out had moved up onto the block-long stone steps of the big post office building across the street and were using them as granite bleachers. He could see blue pinpoints of light from the Elvi's globes. War's mount reared, and its rider stabbed down at the mass of people with his spear. There was the murmur of thousands of voices. Carlisle spotted a gang of street kids moving through the growing throng like sharks through a school of tuna. They were almost certainly making a preliminary pass before the first purse- or chain-snatching runs of fast larceny. The calm would not last long.
"But what the hell, it's not my problem."
Unfortunately, he couldn't quite believe himself. Sometime-it seemed like centuries ago – he had sworn an oath to protect the public. It had not said anything about all deals being off if the public put itself willfully at risk or his superiors acted like morons. He couldn't just walk away. He looked around for someone who might be a little more help than Sergeant Muncie. It was then that he spotted the deacons.
There were eight of them, coming out of the Garden at a fast walk. They all wore bulky, dark-blue, three-quarter-length raincoats and porkpie hats. Carlisle knew those raincoats. Their cut sufficiently loose to hide automatic weapons and lightweight body armor. Something was absolutely wrong. They looked like a deacon hit team – and what in the name of merciful heaven was a hit team doing in this already lunatic situation?
They turned sharp right and followed the curve of the building around into Thirty-third Street. He decided to follow them. They seemed to be heading for the gates where cars and trucks had access to the inside of the Garden.
Speedboat
He knew that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere. He pushed through a set of double doors and found himself in an approach lane to an underground loading bay. There was a black and heavily armored stretch limousine parked under a light. It might have been a Mercedes when it started out, but the extensive customizing made identification difficult. There was a cowcatcher on the front, and the windshield and windows were just slits surrounded by steel plate. The ceramic eggbox panels covering the sides and top could stop anything short of a rocket attack. Whoever owned the car took his or her personal safety very seriously.
It was not the car, however, that made him duck back into the doorway. It was the five armed men who stood around it. At first he thought that they were cops, but then he saw the pale-blue trim on their uniforms. They were Garden security. Speedboat did not know too much about private rentacops. He didn't have a great deal of contact with them down on the Lower East Side. In theory, he should have been able to stroll up to them with his backstage pass prominently displayed and ask directions. The pass was legit, and it had worked perfectly well on the guards who had let him through the security screens into the backstage area and who had explained how to find the guy he had to contact. Though the explanation had turned out to be garbled, it had been freely and civilly given.
Theory and practice were, unfortunately, two different things. Speedboat fished out the pass from one of his deep pockets and stuck it on the front of his parka, but he hesitated before walking out into plain sight. What kept him there in the doorway, peering furtively at the car and its escort, were the machine pistols that they held at high port. These guys were serious. In a culture where shooting first and asking questions afterward was far too common, an individual with a uniform and a machine pistol required a good deal of consideration and respect.
He had all but finished considering and was about to pull out his pass and walk boldly up to the armed security men when the five of them stiffened. He quickly changed his mind and stayed put. Something was about to happen. There were voices in the darkness beyond the pool of light around the car. Figures came into the light. There were four of them, backed up by even more armed Madison Square Garden security. On the outside, there was a mountain of a man dressed like a western gunfighter, complete with Stetson and fancy suit, and an almost-as-large black man in a scarlet sweatsuit. They flanked a flashy blonde with a gold leather evening coat tossed over her shoulders and a small man wearing a rhinestone suit, dark glasses, and a towel draped around his neck. Disconnected cables trailed from his pants leg. Speedboat froze. It was Alien Proverb himself.
The cowboy opened the door of the limo, and first the blonde and then Proverb got into the back. The cowboy slammed the door. There was a brief conversation with security personnel, and then he and the black man climbed into the front. The long car was started, and it accelerated quickly up the tunnel. The Garden security and the unnoticed Speedboat watched it go. Speedboat was a little bemused; he rarely came close to celebs.
Once again he readied himself to seek directions from the security men, but once again he shrank back into the shelter of the doorway. There was a commotion beyond the lights – shouts and running feet. Another group of men also brandishing guns ran into the space where the armored limo had just been. Speedboat's eyes widened. There was no mistaking the blue raincoats and dark suits. They were dekes. They yelled something indistinguishable at the security men and started up the tunnel at a run. Speedboat did not hesitate. He jerked back through the doors behind him and fled.