Gone from the room, gone from the Palace if they could arrange it—and assuredly gone from the list of President Delcorio's supporters.
That bothered Tyl less than the look of those who remained. They glared at the City Prefect with the expression of gorgeously attired fish viewing an injured one of their number . . . an equal moments before, a certain victim now. The eyes of Dowell's aides were hungry as they slid over Berne.
Eunice Delcorio's voice had carved a moment of silence from the atmosphere of the Consistory Room. The colonel of the Executive Guard filled the pause with,"It's quite impossible to defend the Palace from numbers like that.We can't even think of—"
"Yeah, we could hold it," Tyl broke in.
He'd forgotten his face shield was locked down until he saw everyone start away from him as if he were something slime-covered that had just crawled through a window. With the shield in place, the loudspeaker built into his helmet cut in automatically so they weren't going to ignore him if he raised his voice.
He didn't want to be ignored,but he flipped up the shield to be less threatening now that he had the group's attention.
"You've got what, two companies?" he went on, waving his left index finger toward the glittering colonel. All right, they weren't the Slammers; but they had assault rifles and they weren't exactly facing combat infantry either.
"We've got a hundred men," he said. "Curst good ones, and the troops the UDB's got here in the Palace know how to handle—"
Tyl had nodded in the direction of Lieutenant Desoix, but it was Borodin, the battery commander, who interrupted, "I have no men in the Palace."
"Huh?" said the Slammers officer.
"What?" Desoix said. "We have the off-duty c—"
"I'm worried about relieving the crews with the, ah—" Borodin began.
He looked over at the President. The mercenary commander couldn't whisper the explanation, not now. "The conditions in the streets are such that I wasn't sure we'd be able to relieve the gun crews normally, so I ordered the reserve crews to billet at the guns so that we could be sure that there'd be a full watch alert if the enemy tries to take advantage of . . . events."
"Events!" snarled John Delcorio.
The door behind him rattled sharply when a missile struck it. The vitril held as it was supposed to do.
"John, they aren't after me," Berne cried with more than personal concern in his voice. He was right, after all, everybody else here must know that, since it was so obvious to Tyl Koopman in his first day on-planet. "You mustn't—"
"If you hadn't failed, none of this would be happening," Eunice said, her scorn honed by years of personal hatred that found its outlet now in the midst of general catastrophe.
She turned to her husband, the ends of her black hair emphasizing the motion. "Why are you delaying? They want this criminal, and that will give us the time we need to deal with the filth properly with the additional troops."
Vividness made Eunice Delcorio a beautiful woman, but the way her lips rolled over the word "properly" sent a chill down the spine of everyone who watched her.
Berne made a break for the door to the hall.
Tyl's mind had been planning the defense of the Palace of Government.Squads of the local troops in each wing to fire as soon as rioters pried or blasted off a flood shutter to gain entrance. Platoons of mercenaries poised to react as fire brigades, responding to each assault with enough violence to smother it in the bodies of those who'd made the attempt. Grenadiers on the roof; they'd very quickly clear the immediate area of the Palace of everything except bodies and the moaning wounded.
Easy enough, but they were answers to questions that nobody was asking anymore. Besides, they could only hold the place for a few days against tens of thousands of besiegers—only long enough for the brigade to arrive from Two, if it came.
And Tyl was a lot less confident of that point than the President's wife seemed to be.
A middle-aged civilian tripped the City Prefect. One of Dowell's aides leaped on Berne and wrestled him to the polished floor as he tried to rise, while the other aide shouted into his communicator for support without bothering to lock his privacy screen in place.
Tyl looked away in disgust. He caught Lieutenant Desoix's eye. The UDB officer wore a bland expression.
But he wasn't watching the scuffle and the weeping prefect either.
"All right," said the President, bobbing his head in decision. "I'll tell them."
He took one stride,reached for the sliding door,and paused."You,"he said to Tyl. "Come with me."
Tyl nodded without expression. Another stone or possibly a light bullet whacked against the vitril. He set his face shield and stepped onto the porch ahead of the Regiment's employer.
He didn't feel much just now, though he wanted to take a piss real bad. Even so, he figured he'd be more comfortable facing the mob than he was over what had just happened in the Consistory Room.
The crowd roared. Behind his shield, Tyl grinned—if that was the right word for the way instinct drew up the corners of his mouth to bare his teeth. There was motion among the upturned faces gleaming like the sputum the sea leaves when it draws back from the strand.
Something pinged on the railing. Tyl's gun quivered, pointed—
"Wait!" thundered the bull-horn.
"My people!" boomed the President's voice from the roofline. He rested his palms wide apart on the railing.
He'd followed after all, a step behind the Slammers officer just in case a sniper was waiting for the first motion. Delcorio wasn't a brave man, not as a professional soldier came to appraise courage, but his spirit had a tumbling intensity that made him capable of almost anything.
At a given moment.
The mob was making a great deal of disconnected noise. Delcorio trusted his amplified voice to carry him through as he continued, "I have dismissed the miscreant Berne as you demanded. I will turn him over to the custody of the Church for safekeeping until the entire State can determine the punishment for his many crimes."
"Give us Berne!" snarled the bull-horn with echoing violence. It spoke in the voice of a priest but not a Christian; and the mob that took up the chant was not even human.
Delcorio turned and tried to shout something into the building with his unaided voice. Tyl couldn't hear him.
The President raised a hand for silence from the crowd. The chant continued unabated,but Delcorio and the Slammers officer were able to back inside without a rain of missiles to mark their retreat.
There was a squad of the Executive Guard in the Consistory Room. Four of the ten men were gripping the City Prefect. Several had dropped their rifles in the scuffle and no one had thought to pick the weapons up again.
Delcorio made a dismissing gesture. "Send him out to them," he said. "I've done all I can. Quickly, so I don't have to go out there—"
His face turned in the direction of his thoughts, toward the porch and the mob beneath. The flush faded and he began to shiver uncontrollably. Reaction and memory had caught up with the President.