"Sir," said the driver on an intercom from the separate front compartment. Mark felt the car slow in the air. "There's some trouble on the ground ahead of us. Should I overfly it or go around?"
The investors looked at one another. "Overfly it if you can," Daniels ordered. "It'll give us an idea of conditions on Zenith."
"But take us higher, driver," Holperin added. In a muted voice he said to the other passengers, "We don't know what they might be throwing. Or shooting."
Mark put his hand over Amy's, for his sake as much as for hers.
Another column of Alliance troops was stalled just short of the city center. A forty-passenger bus was turned on its side, crosswise at an intersection. A mob lined both sides of the road. The local people threw things at the soldiers and shouted, though Mark couldn't hear words inside the car.
An entire desk pitched from a twentieth-floor window. It fell, spinning and flinging out the contents of drawers. When the desk hit between two of the trucks, it exploded like a wooden bomb. The mob nearby lurched back, trampling some of its number.
"My God," Amy said. "What's happening? What are they doing?"
"It's the same on Quelhagen, nowadays," Elector Daniels said. His tone held a hint of grim satisfaction that things on Zenith were no better than they were at home.
But that also meant that in the three months since Mark left Quelhagen, things had gotten very, very much worse.
"Protector Giscard here's been implementing the Paris regulations against manufacturing on the Protected Worlds," Macey said. She nodded toward the mob below, her expression carefully emotionless. "No factories with more than six employees are permitted. Apparently the rest of the workforce is supposed to go into farming. Not all of the people who've lost their jobs feel that's a practical solution."
"Surely they can't enforce that?" Mark said. "No factories larger than six employees? That's absurd!"
"It's hit or miss," Macey said. "The Protector tries to close the factories he finds. Sometimes officials are paid off, sometimes the action is tied up in court… But recently the troops sent to deliver closing orders have taken to exercising their initiative. They wreck machinery instead of padlocking the plant."
Mark listened with only part of his mind. Most of his attention was on the riot. The aircar cruised slowly above the head of the Alliance column. Below, the leading tank slid forward, struck the overturned bus, and crumpled it. The tank drove the makeshift barricade slantwise across the street. Sparks showered from metal scraping the pavement. As the bus struck the far curb, it burst into smoky flames.
Mr. Holperin said, "It's rather like being struck by lightning-not a high risk, but devastating when it happens. That's why we invested in land on Greenwood."
"Sir?" said Amy in puzzlement.
"Manufacturing on civilized worlds is too risky a proposition in the current climate," Elector Daniels explained. "If I wanted to gamble, I'd find a roulette game. Paris hasn't tried to restrict land speculations."
Alliance troops threw gas grenades at the mob. The bombs burst in gulps of opaque white that faded to dirty gray as the contents spread. Rioters collapsed vomiting or ran blindly away from the irritant gas. Despite gaps in the mob there were still thousands of people tossing rocks and cans at the soldiers.
"But-what if Zenith wins the lawsuit?" Amy said. "Isn't that a gamble too?"
The lead tank plowed into traffic that had been stalled by the mob. The tank driver was no longer making any attempt to avoid civilian vehicles. Cars flattened like foil toys as a hundred tons of armor plate ground into and over them. A few caught fire, but the flames were sluggish and low. All that burned in the electrically powered vehicles was upholstery, tires, and goods abandoned when the occupants bailed out in terror of the oncoming juggernaut.
The military trucks picked up speed behind the tanks. Citizens still ran alongside, screaming hatred if they had nothing to throw. Soldiers fired into the air. They were using live ammunition. Mark saw a flash and puff of dust from a building's roof coping.
"A lawsuit is a normal business risk, madame," Holperin explained. "Quite a different matter. We can't fight the Alliance, after all."
"There's the hotel," Daniels said with satisfaction. "The Safari House. I was afraid it was going to be involved in the trouble, but the troops seem to be turning the other way, toward the Protectorate offices."
The aircar dropped onto the parking area on the roof of a building with a textured plastic facade. It looked like a twenty-story grass hut.
"Typical Zenith taste," Mark said. He was frightened by what he'd just seen. It's the same on Quelhagen…
"We'll have our first court appearance tomorrow," Elector Daniels said. "That's all we have to worry about for now."
"If things like that riot are happening," said Amy, "then we've got other things to worry about too. Everybody does."
Mark squeezed her hand in full agreement.
14. Zenith Law
Mark and Amy arrived at the courtroom after a morning of sightseeing in New Paris. The city was ten times the size of any place Amy had ever visited before. She wasn't involved in the case, and Mark didn't feel a need to arrive before the scheduled start of the proceedings at noon.
Court was held in half of the third story of the Civil Affairs Building. The remainder of the floor was the Council Chamber, and the walls between the rooms and the central foyer could be removed for exceptionally large assemblies.
Since they were on Zenith, Mark wasn't a bit surprised to see that the whole third floor was decorated in Ancient Egyptian style. The fat pilasters had papyrus-bud capitals; the shafts were red or green, with stylized yellow leaves springing from the bases. The walls were white but decorated with stiffly posed figures in garish contrasting colors.
"Oh, it's gorgeous!" Amy said, gazing around the big room.
Mark blinked. It struck him for the first time that Quelhagen's muted notions of what was attractive weren't universal. In fact, they might well be the minority view.
That was hard to imagine. Everybody on Quelhagen knows what good taste is, so how can so many other human beings be too stupid to feel the way we do?
And Amy isn't stupid.
"This way!" hissed an usher whom the investors had hired to guide the defendants during the court proceedings. The man wore a pink-and-gray-striped costume. The color combination was attractive, but the fellow had ruffs at his throat, waist, wrists, and ankles. He looked like an oddly patterned poodle.
The usher stared at Amy, checked her face against his array of air-projected holographic portraits, and said, "Not you! Find a seat in the gallery or get out."
Mark thought of hitting him. Amy nodded and patted Mark's hand before vanishing up the staircase to the visitors' gallery.
"Come on!" the usher said. He tugged Mark's arm.
Mark gently tweaked the usher's nose. The man gasped and staggered backward. Mark followed him to the defendants' section, on the left front of the courtroom.
The plaintiffs' enclosure, on the right, was as gorgeous as a flock of tropical birds. Hostile birds, too. Though there were more than twenty folk within the low railings-plaintiffs, aides, and attorneys-only two of them stood out. They, a plump fiftyish man in blue and gold uniform and a taller, slightly younger fellow in blue and red, glared at one another.
Mark had watched his father in court many times. The only times he'd seen equal anger and loathing between the parties was during contested divorces; this time he was viewing people on the same side.
Mark halted in the aisle. The usher glared and raised a hand to protect his nose.
"Who are they?" Mark demanded, nodding toward the Zeniths. "In uniforms."
The usher risked a look. He seemed still to be worried that Mark was going to sneak a hand under his guard. "Ah," the usher said. "Mayor Heinrich Biber wears the dress uniform of the New Paris Civic Watch. And Vice-Protector Berkeley Finch is commander of the Zenith Protective Association, a voluntary assembly of public-spirited citizens."