"You'll see all right," said the bailiff who hadn't spoken until that moment. "You'll see when a Zenith marshal and a dozen deputies sends you all running back into those woods!"
The other two Zeniths stiffened; the eyes of the man who'd first spoken unfocused again. Yerby Bannock laughed and patted Mark on the shoulder. "Get on with enrolling our people, lad," he said. "Wouldn't be surprised if we needed to defend ourselves one of these days."
He looked around the courtyard and added, "Woodsrunners. That's got a ring. I think we'll call ourselves the Woodsrunners!"
13. How the Other Half Lives
The spaceport at New Paris could land a dozen starships simultaneously, and there were covered storage facilities for over a hundred. Mark was too proud of Quelhagen to say that New Paris had a better port than Landingplace, but he had to admit it was impressive.
Mark held Amy's hand in a gesture of mutual support. She'd mastered the biofeedback techniques Mark taught her, but interstellar travel was still a disorienting experience. At least the ramp had handrails.
Attendants were helping the three investors to a limousine like the one in the ship's hold. Daniels and his fellows didn't intend to wait for cargo to be unloaded. Three less ornate aircars waited to take away the Greenwood defendants and the investors' servants.
"Wait a minute," Mark muttered. Four recently landed large vessels remained on the magnetic masses. One of them was still in the process of discharging cargo and passengers. The people disembarking were gray-uniformed Atlantic Alliance troops, and a huge ground-effect tank was being lowered from the hold by a mobile derrick and the starship's own crane.
Amy opened her recorder and focused on the troopship. The self-imposed duty seemed to steady her. Mark by contrast felt distinctly queasy. The four ships together must have held well over a thousand men, even with the heavy equipment they brought with them. He wondered if the Protector of Quelhagen was getting reinforcements also.
Yerby, first of the Greenwood defendants besides Mark to drag himself out of his transit capsule, clanged into the right handrail and shook the ramp. He bounced left, bounced right with his next step, and probably would have caromed like a cue ball into Mark and Amy if they hadn't grabbed his arms and gently helped him to the ground.
"Holy Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior," Yerby muttered. "Boy, I think there was something wrong with that last batch of whiskey I got from Blaney."
He noticed the troops disembarking. They felt the effects of transit too. Soldiers shambled without any order. Individuals stumbled, hunched, and squeezed their heads to relieve the pain. Either the Alliance didn't teach effective biofeedback techniques, or they didn't teach the techniques effectively.
"Whoo-ee!" Yerby said. "Now, there's the soldiers I was looking for. Should've come to Zenith instead of Dittersdorf, huh?"
"They wouldn't come to Greenwood if you invited them, Yerby," Amy said in a hard voice. "The worst possible result would be if they did come, though. I'll never forgive you if you go over and talk to them."
Yerby watched the troops with an odd smile; not the broad devil-may-care grin Mark had seen often in the past. "Guess they could go through us Woodsrunners pretty quick with those tanks," he said. "Though it could be there's some tricks they don't know about being out with just himself and a couple million trees."
The frontiersman turned to Mark and Amy. "Think that's what they're here for?" he asked. "To use against us?"
"No," said Mark. "They've almost certainly been brought to strengthen the Protector's hand against the population of Zenith."
He smiled at the irony. "The same ones we're having trouble with, yes. But people who assume that they're automatically friends with the enemy of their enemy generally wind up with barbarians in their living rooms. I think Amy's right. The farther we keep from Alliance soldiers, the better off we'll be."
"Just thought it was worth checking," Yerby said. His grin spread into familiar broad cheerfulness.
"Captain Bannock?" Mr. Holperin called from beside the limousine. "Would you and your aides care to join us for the ride to the hotel? I gather most of your codefendants haven't left their capsules yet."
Every one of the Greenwoods except Yerby had trusted to an electronic device more or less like the one Amy had used on the voyage from Kilbourn. There was something about the term "high tech" that suppressed the common sense of frontiersmen who were otherwise the most pragmatic people Mark had ever met.
"Didn't drink enough before the flight," Yerby said, giving his reading of his fellows' problem. "Well, I appreciate the offer, Holperin, but I need a little therapy myself. Seems to me the saloons around the spaceport might be more comfortable than whatever a fancy hotel's got in its lobby, so I'll wander off and join you later."
He waved the back of his hand to Amy and Mark. "You young folks," he said, "you go on. I wouldn't want you to miss riding in so pretty a rig, you know."
Amy snorted. "You think having civilized people around might cramp your style," she said. "Well, remember, Yerby, you're on Zenith for a purpose. If you spend your stay in a drunk tank, you'll be letting down a lot of people who've put their faith in you."
"Aw, Amy child," the big man said. "I never in my life been too drunk to do my job."
"Mr. Holperin," Mark said, "Ms. Bannock and I would be honored to join you if the invitation extends to us alone."
Holperin bowed. "A Quelhagen gentleman and his escort are always welcome in my presence," he said, stepping aside so that the attendants could hand Mark and Amy into the car's roomy passenger compartment.
Amy was stiffly nervous. She held her camera close to her body, but she didn't want to call attention to it by folding the lenses. The way rich folk lived on a highly developed world was as new to her as Greenwood 's raw frontier had been to Mark.
The roof, sides, and floor of the passenger compartment were transparent from within. Mark was impressed, though he acted nonchalant. Amy's breath drew in when she realized that when she sat, her feet would dangle in what looked like empty air.
"It's all right," Mark whispered. "I'm with you." I'm bragging to impress a girl I like. Well, I'm human.
The car held eight passengers comfortably, four facing four as if over an invisible conference table. Amy tugged Mark down beside her instead of letting him put a seat between them for politeness as he'd intended to do.
The aircar lifted with only a hum as soon as the door closed. Mark pivoted his head as they rose, trying to get a notion of how many cars were in the sky with them. He guessed about a hundred, not many by Earth standards in a city of several hundred thousand. Aircars were a status symbol. He'd have been chagrined if New Paris had a higher density of them than Landingplace did.
Ms. Macey probably understood, because she said with a cool smile, "In material terms Zenith is nearly as developed as we are on Quelhagen. But their taste is execrable."
The port was set off from the community proper by a high berm. The earthen wall would protect the densely populated city in the unlikely event that a starship lost power while landing. The driver held the car steady above the four-lane highway leading out of the port. They flew about a hundred feet high, well below the roofs of many of the buildings ahead.
Two tanks and a dozen truckloads of Alliance soldiers wound slowly along the road. The tanks were so wide that each one blocked both inbound lanes.
Amy's arms were on the rests of her seat. She kept her fingers spread open so that she wouldn't embarrass herself even worse by clenching the seat furiously. Mark thought of touching her hand; he decided that might not be a good idea. For that matter, he wasn't used to watching through a floor as clear as the air itself as the ground flashed by at 120 miles an hour.