"What the hell is going on down there? Why doesn't somebody tell us? Why's there no voice-over?"
Longstreet was happier when he had something to explain. "What we're seeing here is the direct feed to the network. The voice-over isn't put on until the raw input is processed."
He did not add that this footage would be processed straight into the garbage. The censors would never let anything so inflammatory reach the domestic screens.
The guests fell silent as they watched the deteriorating situation on the monitor screens. Cynthia was near the back of the crowd, helping herself to more champagne than was strictly good for her. The man in the cowled coat came up beside her.
"Am I right in thinking that you're Cynthia Kline?"
Cynthia looked up in surprise and not a little alarm. "That's right. That's me."
For the first time she had the chance to get a good look at the face beneath the cowl. There was something almost biblical about the deep-set eyes and hollow cheeks. He had the look of a genuine ascetic, a rare animal in that day and age.
He smiled slightly. "I've been asked to give you something."
"You have?"
Cynthia felt extremely uncomfortable. The man in the cowled coat glanced pointedly at where Longstreet was once again on the phone, trying to get additional information about the disturbance that was boiling up on the streets outside. She could only assume that the strange man was making a deliberate show of checking that they were not being observed. When he seemed satisfied, he took a small plastic pouch from his sleeve. She assumed that it contained some kind of software diskette.
"Please take this quickly."
Cynthia looked at it as if it were a venomous insect, but took it anyway. Refusing to touch the thing would not save her from whatever was going to happen next.
The cowled coat made a slight bow. "You will treat this as wholly confidential."
He quickly moved away, mixing in with the knot of people gathered around Longstreet. His timing was impeccable. Long-street was just hanging up the phone.
"They're going to send the STG in to clear the streets."
The president of Good Shepherd Inc. grunted. "It's the only way to deal with this rabble."
Carlisle
The woman's arms were windmilling, clawing at anything that came within reach as she stumbled along blindly. Tears were streaming down her face, and she was sobbing a revolving litany about how the Seventh Seal was broken and everyone was going to die. All around, there were hundreds like her taking simultaneous leave of their senses. The Four Horsemen towered above them all as if they really were presiding over the fall of civilization. Carlisle himself was not too far from believing that the end of the world had come. He tried to push backward, but the crush would not let him. The woman lurched straight into him and grabbed him round the neck. Her eyes did not even focus. Carlisle ducked out of her clutching embrace but, in so doing, momentarily lost his footing. He was starting to get frightened. He was in the middle of an escalating, milling panic, and if he was knocked to the ground, his badge or gun or all of his training would not do him the slightest bit of good. He could be trampled just like anyone else. He took advantage of a brief eddy in the crowd to get his breath and bearings. His tracy was flashing. He touched the receive button.
Parnell appeared on the tiny screen. "Where are you?"
"I'm on Eighth, in the middle of a hundred thousand maniacs."
"Get out of there. Right now. The deacons have ordered in the STG. Unrestricted pacification. They're going to clear the streets the hard way."
The Special Tactical Group was the last resort when it came to urban disorder. Based on the British and French models, it was an independent, paramilitary force under the direct control of the deacons. They used it like a blunt instrument. Once they were let loose in a situation, there was no stopping them. They went at their target with a single-minded, mad-dog brutality.
"The STG? Has everybody gone nuts?"
"Quite possibly."
"The deacons had a crack at Proverb, but they missed him."
"We know. They had a couple of tries, but he beat them. They picked up the car in the forties, but he'd already switched vehicles. But listen, Harry, you don't have time to talk. Get the hell away from there. The STG is coming. It's going to turn into a massacre and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it."
"Okay, I'm going. Which direction will they be coming from?"
"Straight down Eighth from the north. They're grouping at the U-Tran terminal. The Herods will come through first laying gas."
"They're using gunships? You were serious about a massacre."
"Just get out of there."
He signed off. Carlisle tried to push his way down the avenue, but right at that moment a surge of people decided to go in the opposite direction, and he was carried backward.
Mansard
Charlie Mansard was on the roof when the STG arrived. He was not aware of them at first. He was standing in the very center of the complex of laser projectors, staring up at the sky and admiring his creation. It was impossible to see the image from that angle, but he was quite content to just gaze up at the pillars of light seemingly going straight to infinity. It was like being inside some radiant cathedral, a cathedral that he had designed and created himself, the biggest skywalker ever staged. He laughed out loud in pure delight.
"It's alive!"
He felt like Victor Frankenstein as the lightning energized his monster. In his case, though, the lightning itself was his monster.
"God, it's beautiful!"
The first he knew about the trouble on the street below was when a Herod gunship cut clear through the image, disrupting the columns of mist with its rotors and producing a temporary hole though Famine and Pestilence. Mansard had heard some noise and shouting down on the street, but he had not paid any attention to it. Crowds were like that. The helicopter, on the other hand, was a direct affront.
He turned angrily in the direction of Jimmy Gadd. "What the hell was that?"
Gadd was over on the other side the roof, running the control board. "It's an STG chopper, chief. There's two more coming down Eighth Avenue. I think there's trouble in the crowd."
Mansard quickly picked his way through the snaking complex of cables to the parapet. Gadd was right. There were two more choppers coming slowly down the street. They were the urban combat model, the kind with the ultra-short rotors that could operate down between the buildings. Below them, on the ground, a dozen or more armored personnel carriers were rolling forward with blazing searchlights mounted on their front turrets. The choppers kept pace with the armor until they were opposite the old New Yorker Hotel, then suddenly accelerated and swung up and over the crowd outside the Garden. A second chopper cut through the image of the Horsemen, punching a hole through Death.
Mansard cursed after it. "What do you think you're doing?"
He got a firm grip on his fear of heights and peered down at the crowd. They were milling in chaotic confusion. What had spooked them? Surely not his Horsemen? The first line of armor had halted at Thirty-fourth Street and was disgorging dark, disciplined squads of men.
Gadd had come up beside him. "This looks like it's going to turn ugly."
"Is there anything we can do?"
Gadd sighed. "Not much. Not unless…" Mansard looked at him suspiciously. "Unless what?"
"Unless we kill the image. It might minimize the confusion." Mansard was outraged. "Take down my Four Horsemen?"