The paddy wagons toppled over at once, sides denting loudly, tires whirling helplessly at the air. The APC opened up with its water cannon, as three robots tugged and mauled and punched at it with ruthless mechanical stupidity. Finally they levered it over, toppling it stupidly onto the exposed arm of the third robot, which tried to back away, screeching and buckling. The cannon fountained aimlessly, a furious white plume, four stories high.
The rebels were all over the cops. The streets gleamed with water, sloshed under charging feet. Headlong melee, mind- less and angry, like a bed of giant ants.
Laura watched in absolute amazement. She could not be- lieve that it had come to this. One of the best-organized cities in the world, and men were beating the shit out of each other in the streets with sticks.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," said Hotchkiss. "We're better armed, but our morale's blown.... The air support will tell, though."
The copters were firing tangle-rounds at the melee's edges- without much success. Too crowded, too chaotic and slip- pery. Laura flinched as a skidding dock robot knocked three cops headlong.
Renewed .pounding came from the door. Someone had jammed the ceramic edge of a machete through and was saw- ing vigorously at the tangle-tape. They turned to face it-and saw, beyond it, over the waterfront, one of the loading cranes.
The skeletal arm was spinning on its axis, gathering speed with ponderous grace. At the end of its cables was a cargo fridge container, rising high above the docks with centrifugal force.
Suddenly the crane let loose. The heavy cargo box, half the size of a house, spun free and arched dizzily through space. It flew almost gently, arcing and tumbling, like a softball tossed underhand.
Its flight ended suddenly. It slammed, with cybernetic precision, into a black police chopper hovering over the waterfront. There was an explosive burst as the fridge car ruptured, with gaseous jets of frost and the bright cartwheeling of hundreds of cardboard boxes. The chopper snapped, buckled, and splashed dramatically into dirty seawater. It lay sprawled amid the floating boxes like a dragonfly crushed by a car grill.
"Mrs. Srivijaya's Frozen Fish Sticks," little Derveet mur- mured, at Laura's elbow. She'd recognized the cargo.
The crane slithered downward, its claws clanking for an- other grab.
"How did they do that?" Hotchkiss demanded.
"It a very smart machine," said Mr. Suvendra.
"I'm getting old," Hotchkiss said sadly. "Where do they control that damned thing?"
"Inside the godown," Mr. Suvendra said. "There are consoles-"
"Fine." Hotchkiss grabbed Mr. Suvendra's skinny wrist.
"You take me there. Lu! Aw! We're moving!"
"No," Mr. Suvendra said.
Suvendra grabbed her husband's other arm. Suddenly they were tugging at him like a rag doll. "We don't do violence!"
she said.
"You what?" Hotchkiss said.
"We don't fight," Suvendra said passionately. "We don't like you! We don't like your government! We don't fight!
Arrest us!"
"That bloody crane is going to kill our pilots"
"Then you stop fighting! Send them away!" Suvendra lifted her voice, shrilly. "Everyone, sit!"
The Rizome crew froze wherever they stood and sat in place, as one person. Mr. Suvendra sat too, though he still dangled by one arm from Hotchkiss's huge, freckled paw.
"You fucking politicals," Hotchkiss said in amazed con- tempt. "I don't believe this. I'm ordering you, as citizens-"
"We're not your citizens," Suvendra said flatly. "We don't obey your illegal martial-law regime, either. Arrest us!"
"I bloody well will arrest you, the lot of you! Hell, you're as bad as they are. "
Suvendra nodded, taking a deep breath. "We are nonviolent.
But we are your Government's enemies, Colonel, believe it!"
Hotchkiss looked at Laura. "You too, eh?"
Laura glared up at him, angry to see him single her out from her people. "I can't help you," she told him. "I'm a globalist, and you're an arm of the State."
"Oh bloody Christ, you're a sorry bunch of milk-and-water sons-of-bitches," Hotchkiss said mournfully. He looked them over, making a decision. "You," he told Laura. He pounced on her, handcuffing her arms behind her back.
"He's stealing Laura!" Suvendra yelled, scandalized. "Get in his way!"
Hotchkiss levered Laura to her feet. She didn't want to go, but stumbled up quickly as agonizing pain hit her shoulder sockets. The Rizome crew crowded around him, waving their arms, shouting. Hotchkiss yelled something wordless, kicked
Ali in the kneecap, then pulled his tangle-pistol. Ali, and Mr.
Suvendra, and Bima went down, clawing at swarming blobs of tape. The others ran.
The rebels were breaking through again. A gap showed at the top of the door. Hotchkiss shouted at Officer Lu, who snatched a black knobby cylinder from his belt and tossed it through.
Two seconds passed. There was a cataclysmic flash from behind the door, a horrific bang, and the door jumped open, gushing smoke. "Go!" Hotchkiss yelled.
The upper stairwell was littered with rebels, deafened, blinded, howling. One was still on his feet, slashing frenziedly at empty air with a ceramic sword and screaming, "Martyr!
Martyr!" Lu knocked him flat with a burst of jelly-rounds.
Then they marched in, firing with their tangle-pistols into the heaving crowd.
Aw tossed another flash-grenade onto the landing below.
Another cataclysmic wham. "Okay," Hotchkiss said from behind Laura. "You wanna play Gandhi, you'll do it with two broken arms. March!'-' He shoved her forward through the door.
"I protest!" Laura shouted, dancing to avoid arms and legs.
Hotchkiss jerked her backward against his chest. "Look,
Yankee," he said with chilling sincerity. "You're a cute little blonde who looks real nice on telly. But if you muck about with me, I'll blow your brains out-and say the rebels did it.
Where are the goddamn controls?"
"Ground floor," Laura gasped. "In the back-glassed in. "
"Okay, we're moving. Go! Go!" Vicious racket as Lu opened up with the gun again. In the enclosed stairwell the hellish noise of it spiked right into her head. Laura felt a sudden burst of sweat drench her from head to foot. Hotchkiss yanked her along, his hand wedged under her armpit. He was crashing down two, three steps at a time, half carrying her. A
big man, unbelievably strong-like being dragged by a gorilla.
The throat-catching sting of smoke. Great bubbling spatters on the cheerful pastel walls: purple dye, or smeared blood.
Rebels down whimpering, some screaming, hands cupped over eyes or ears. Rebels glued to the stair railings, black-faced and gasping in the grip of tangle-tape. She stumbled on the sprawled legs of a boy, unconscious or dead, his face punched open by a jelly-bullet, blood streaming from a ruined eye... .
Then they were down on the first floor, and out the stair- well door. Distant sunlight poured through the smashed-out front of the godown, where the cops and rebels were still in pitched battle, the rebels getting the better of it. Inside the cavernous godown the A-L.P. were frenziedly rallying, machete-slicing tape from some of their tangle-victims, drag- ging captured, handcuffed cops behind a wall of crates.... They looked up in surprise, thirty sweat-drenched, blood-smeared, angry men, backlit by the street.
For a moment they all stood in frozen tableau. "Where's the control room?" Hotchkiss whispered.
"I lied," Laura hissed at him. "It's on the second floor."
"You fucking cow," Hotchkiss marveled.
The A-L.P. were edging forward. Some wore stolen police helmets and almost all had riot shields. One of them suddenly fired a tangle-round, which narrowly missed Officer Aw and writhed on the floor like a molten, spastic tumbleweed.