Easton blustered, but there was no bluffing the white-robed men blocking the doorway. One of the orderlies spoke into a radio with a belt-pack power source, while the man next to him keyed a handheld computer. A hologram of the bearded thug bloomed atop the computer in green light.
"Right, Easton," the guard captain said. "Left stairs to the north gallery. You and your folks make any trouble, we'll deal with it. Throw anything into the nave and you'll all decorate lamp posts. Understood?"
"Hey,I'm important!"the gang boss insisted."I speak for the whole Seventeenth Ward, and I belong down with the bosses on the floor!"
"Right now, you belong on the Red side of the gallery," said the orderly. "Or out on your butts. Take your pick."
"You'll regret this!" Easton cried as he shuffled toward the indicated staircase. "I got friends! I'll make it hot fer you!"
"Who're you?"the guard captain asked Charles Desoix. His face was as grizzled as that of the Slammers sergeant major; his eyes were as flat as death.
If Desoix hadn't seen the platoon of orderlies with assault rifles rouse from the antechamber when the gang boss threatened, he would have been tempted to turn back down the steps instead of answering. He couldn't pick his choice of realities, though.
"We're soldiers," he said, leaving the details fuzzy as he had before. "Ah—this isn't official, we aren't, you see. We just thought we'd, ah . . . be ready ourselves to do our part . . . ."
He hoped that meant something positive to the guard captain, without sounding so positive that they'd wind up in the middle of real trouble.
The fellow with the radio was speaking into it as his eyes locked with Desoix's.
The UDB officer smiled brightly. The guard captain was talking to another of his men while both of them also looked at Desoix.
"All right,"the captain said abruptly."There's plenty of room in the south gallery. We're glad to have more converts to the ranks of active righteousness."
"We shoulda bugged out," muttered one of the troopers as they mounted the helical stairs behind Desoix.
"Keep your trap shut and do what the el-tee says," Sergeant Kekkonan snarled back.
For good or ill, Charles Desoix was in command now.
Given the sophistication of the commo unit the orderly at the door held, Desoix didn't dare try to report anything useful to those awaiting him back in the Palace. He hoped Anne would have had sense enough to flee the city before he got back to the Palace.
Almost as much as another part of him prayed that she would be waiting when he returned; because he was very badly going to need the relaxation she brought him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In daytime the dome would have floated on sunlight streaming through the forty arched windows on which it was supported. The hidden floods directed from light troughs to reflect from the inner surface were harsh and metallic by contrast, even though the metal was gold.
Desoix and his unit muscled their way to the railing of colored marble overlooking the nave. It might have been smarter to hang back against the gallery windows, but they were big men and aggressive enough to have found a career in institutionalized murder.
They were standing close to the east end and the hemicycle containing the altar, where the major figures in the present drama now faced the crowd of their supporters and underlings.
Between the two groups was a line of orderlies kneeling shoulder to shoulder. Even by leaning over the rail, Desoix could not see the faces of those on the altar dais.
But there were surprises in the crowd.
"That's Cerulio," Desoix said, nudging Kekkonan to look at a sumptuously dressed man in the front rank. His wife was with him, and the four men in blue around them were surely liveried servants."He was in the Palace an hour ago.Said he was going to check his townhouse, but that he'd be back before morning."
"Don't know him," grunted Kekkonan. "But that one, three places over—" he didn't point, which reminded Desoix that pointing called attention to both ends of the out stretched arm"—he's in the adjutantgeneral's staff,acolonelI'm pretty sure. Saw him when we were trying to requisition bunks."
Desoix felt a chill all the way up his spine. Though it didn't change anything beyond what they had already determined this night.
The man speaking wore white and a mitre, so that even from above there could be no mistaking Bishop Trimer.
"—wither away,"his voice was saying."On lyin the last resort would God have us loose the righteous indignation that this so-called president has aroused in our hearts, in the heart of every Christian on Bamberia."
One shot, thought Charles Desoix.
He couldn't see Trimer's face, but there was a line of bare neck visible between mitre and chasuble. No armor there, no way to staunch the blood when a cyan bolt blasts a crater the size of a clenched fist.
And no way for the small group of soldiers to avoid being pulled into similarly fist-sized gobbets when the mob took its revenge in the aftermath. "Not our fight," Desoix muttered to himself.
He didn't have to explain that to any of his companions. He was pretty sure that Sergeant Kekkonan would kill him in an eye-blink if he thought the UDB officer was about to sacrifice them all.
"We will wait a day, in God's name," the Bishop said. He was standing with his arms outstretched.
Trimer had a good voice and what was probably a commanding manner to those who didn't see him from above—like Charles Desoix and God, assuming God was more than a step in Bishop Trimer's pursuit of temporal power. He could almost have filled the huge church with his unaided voice, and the strain of listening would have quieted the crowd that was restive with excitement and drink.
As it was, Trimer's words were relayed through hundreds of speakers hidden in the pendentives and among the acanthus leaves of the column capitals. Multiple sources echoed and fought one another, creating a busyness that encouraged whispering and argument among the audience.
Desoix had been part of enough interunit staff meetings to both recognize and explain the strain that was building in the Bishop's voice. Trimer was used to being in charge; and here, in his own cathedral, circumstances had conspired to rob him of the absolute control he normally exercised.
The man seated to Trimer's right got up. Like the Bishop, he was recognizable by his clothing—a red cape and a red beret in which a bird plume of some sort bobbed when he moved his head.
The Bishop turned. The gallery opposite Desoix exploded with cheers and catcalls. Red-garbed spectators in the nave below were jumping, making their capes balloon like bubbles boiling through a thick red sauce, despite the efforts of the hospital orderlies keeping the two factions separate.
All the men on the dais were standing with their hands raised. The noise lessened, then paused in a great hiss that the pillared aisles drank.
"Ten minutes each, we agreed," one of the faction leaders said to the Bishop in a voice amplified across the whole cathedral.
"Speak, then!" said the Bishop in a voice that was short of being a snarl by as little as the commotion below had avoided being a full-fledged riot.
Trimer and most of the others on the dais seated themselves again, leaving the man in red to stand alone. There was more cheering and, ominously, boos and threats from Desoix's side of the hall. Around the soldiers, orderlies fought a score of violent struggles with thugs in black.