The concert volume was adjusted. The volume went up. The levels went down. The multimillion-dollar sound system had been broadcasting voice messages like a high-school public-address horn; now it sounded as clear and rich as the sound system in a well-equipped Pontiac. Every word spoken by Dowzall was like he was talking to you in your own living room.
“Thank you, all of you, for what you have done. I am gratified that you have shown such enthusiasm and eagerness. Thanks to my special guests. We have most of J the New Jersey government sitting, right here. Please welcome them!”
Cheers. How cool that politicians were watching a rock and roll show.
“Hey, who’s minding the store, anyway?” Dowzall asked. If anybody understood the pilfered quip they didn’t think it was funny—except for Bruits Sprigstern, who laughed into his microphone like Ed McMahon. Dowzall laughed with Bruits, then addressed the people. “And thanks for welcoming me back—you people are the best!”
Twenty thousand fans still didn’t have any clue what he was talking about, but they knew he was being flattering. They cheered.
“I said, New Jersey is the best!”
“Yeah!” the crowd responded.
“Let’s make it official!”
“Yeah!”
Dowzall handed the mike back to Sprigstern and, of all things, a horse was led onstage, with a gleaming silver breastplate and silver blinders and wild peacock feathers standing from its mane guard.
“We’re gonna raise the flag,” Sprigstern shouted. “You helped us do it. I knew you’d come through for me. The people from New Jersey are the best people in the world! Way to go. New Jersey Colony!”
Bruits’s infectious enthusiasm got the crowd chanting, “New Jersey, New Jersey,” and most of them were wondering what this was all about, but most of them were too embarrassed to turn to ask the people around them; everybody else, after all, seemed to understand what was going.
A wheeled set of stairs was positioned alongside the horse, and Dowzall stepped up and gingerly swung one leg over the back of the horse. The handler gave him the ceremonial reins—keeping a set of reins for himself—and a stagehand gave Dowzall a gleaming chrome helmet. He held it under one arm, waved to the crowd, then put the helmet over his head. It was custom made for him by an armor maker he had met at the Annual Newark Renaissance Festival. Across the nose bridge was an evil-looking gash of an opening, fitted with darkened glass. When his head was fully inside the helmet, the top of his head pressed together a pair of contacts, and a rhythmic bar of light began to travel back and forth across the eyepiece. Annoying from the inside, and probably not authentic, Dowzall knew, and yet it made him look quite intimidating and frightening. He had been very afraid of the Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica television show and they had the same back-and-forth eye thingy.
The stagehand put his chrome lance into his hand.
Now all he had to do was stand there, while the official transfer of power happened.
Bruits Sprigstern and the band was jamming on “God Save the Queen,” filled with so many extraneous guitar fills and saxophone improvisations that it was unrecognizable.
All eyes turned to the opposite side of the stage, where the capitol building flagpoles stood. They were empty, and the concrete circle was surrounded by a stony-faced ring of state troopers.
“Under normal circumstances, we should be seeing the Stars and Stripes flying there, alongside the flag of the state of New Jersey,” reported the mousy blonde woman. “Both are conspicuously absent today.”
Two state troopers in dress uniform, walking in a stiff, military gait, entered the ring of guards and ceremonially unfolded a banner between them. They attached it to the flag line. The Sprigstern band had now completely lost the tune and was simply jamming messily, but they raised it to a fever pitch as the flag was raised.
The crowd cheered. Most of them were too far away to notice anything was wrong—they could see a brownish banner with stuff in the middle. Those who could see the flag thought maybe it was just a new design—the plows on the shield were gone, replaced with a more colorful red, white and blue square. Maybe that’s what this was all about—a redesigned state flag.
“It’s the New Jersey flag, all right,” the blonde reported. “But now there’s a Union Jack in the middle.”
Colonial Governor Oscar Dowzall held a press conference, right there, on the capitol steps, as the concert was dismantled. “I have the full support of almost every senior member of the former state government I intend to retain these skilled people in their positions—although there may be small adjustments to accommodate British law.”
“What of Governor Hermani and Lieutenant Governor Ortega?” asked one of the reporters, playing it cool. None of them were sure how to handle this.
“I have no idea where they are at the moment,” Dowzall replied without hesitation. It was true. He didn’t know. “They, along with New Jersey State Senator Mercer, declined to be a part of the colony of New Jersey. As far as I am concerned, that makes them traitors in this land. They’d best get back into U.S. territory. My authority does not extend into Maryland, for example.”
“What about New York?”
“What about it?” Dowzall said, wrinkling his nose.
“New York was a former colony, was it not?”
Dowzall seemed to be considering this fact for the first time. “I suppose it was.”
“Does this mean the British Empire will attempt to retake New York?”
Dowzall was amused. “New Jersey has so much to offer. Ayounde has rich resources and even Newfoundland must have something to offer—but New York? Why would Her Majesty even want it back?”
Chapter 16
By evening, the mobs filled Times Square, ire rising. The people of New York had been one-upped by New Jersey. It had never happened before, and the citizens of the Big Apple weren’t enjoying the experience. Riot police were quietly dispersing the people in small groups and keeping new arrivals from joining in the demonstration. They were in a race against time—whittle down the mob before the mob worked itself up enough to take action.
“I know how they feel,” Remo Williams said.
“You’re not from New York,” pointed out Mark Howard.
“But I’m mad enough to start breaking things.”
Remo wasn’t looking at Mark Howard. He was looking at Harold W. Smith.
“You shall not engage in foolish vandalism against the Emperor,” Chiun chastised Remo.
“If I engage in vandalism it will be violent and destructive and widespread,” Remo said. “But not foolish.”
“All vandalism is foolish.”
“Are you laying the blame on me for the action in New Jersey, Remo?” Smith’s cup was brimming with his own bitter brew this evening.
“What do you think? We had an agreement. You broke it, Smitty.”
“Remo!” Chiun snapped. “Take care how you speak to Smith the Generous.”
“I broke no part of our agreement, Remo,” Smith answered, daring Remo to contradict him.
Remo did. “You signed a piece of paper that promised that I got to have some say in prioritizing what I did. You remember that, old man?”
“Remo, do not be insulting,” Chiun warned.
“I remember. I haven’t violated one letter of that agreement.”