"I tell you," Yerby repeated. "If any of you fine folk come to Greenwood, I think you'll learn that the sun there still rises in the usual place."
He spun and marched down the aisle.
"Hey, wait for me, Yerby!" black-bearded Holgar Emmreich cried, scrambling to follow. All the Greenwoods fell in with a haste just this side of panic. What they were probably afraid of was the whole unfamiliar situation, not what the bailiffs or municipal police were going to do because of the outburst. They followed their leader because that was a lot easier than thinking for themselves.
Mark paused where he stood. Thinking wasn't doing him a bit of good. Spectators in dazzling clothes swirled out of the Greenwoods' way, then swirled back, chirping and gabbling. It was like watching a windstorm in a parrot cage.
Amy no longer sat where she had been. Mark thought of searching for her, but the chances were she was coming down to join him. His best choice was to stay put. If they both wandered around in this brilliant chaos, they'd never find each other.
"Mark," said a familiar voice, "your counsel and I have never been formally introduced. Will you do the honors?"
Mark looked at the speaker, a slim, gray-haired man. He wore brown Quelhagen formalwear, so he'd been lost in the clouds of color.
"Hi, Dad," Mark said. He cleared his throat and added, "I didn't expect to see you here."
And boy! was that ever the truth.
15. Fallback Positions
"There aren't so many interplanetary attorneys that news of my son appearing as defendant on Zenith wasn't going to reach me, Mark," Lucius Maxwell said. "Now, will you introduce us? Because I have business to discuss with your counsel."
"Elector Daniels, allow me to present my father, Mr. Lucius Maxwell," Mark said. He bowed to each party as he spoke his name. "Dad is…"
"An attorney of note," Daniels said, voicing the words that Mark had smothered because he hadn't wanted to sound like he was bragging. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir. Though there wasn't a great deal of law to be seen here today."
He glared balefully at the judge's bench, now empty.
"Zenith law," Lucius said with a cool smile. "Which one might compare to Zenith art-flashy, with very little at the core."
His tone changed as he went on. "What do you intend to do now? Appeal?"
Amy appeared through the crowd. She would have stayed apart from the three men if Mark hadn't motioned her closer.
Daniels nodded. "Yes, of course," he said, "though I don't know that we have much chance."
"If you mean to appeal to the Council of State under Zenith procedure," Lucius said, "you have no chance whatever. Vice-Protector Finch sits as president of the council, and half his fellow-councillors have shares in the Greenwood grants at issue."
Lucius spoke crisply, stating facts with no perceived possibility of argument. Mark had heard that cold tone often enough. He swayed closer to Amy.
"If you're empowered by your principals to associate additional counsel-" Lucius continued. He raised an eyebrow in question.
"Yes, of course," Daniels said. "Goodness, I hope you don't think these hicks have anything to do with planning the defense!"
Lucius exchanged glances with Mark. Daniels had the decency to look embarrassed and the sense not to try to unsay the words he'd already blurted.
"I don't know that the hicks, as you put it, could have been less effective in their own defense," Lucius said without heat. "Be that as it may, if you'll authorize me to act in the matter I'll carry it to Protector Giscard instead of to the Zenith council."
"Mr. Maxwell," Daniels said in puzzlement, "the grants by which we're being dispossessed were issued by the Protectors of Zenith. Some of them were issued by Giscard himself."
"Exactly what do you believe we have to lose, Elector Daniels?" Mark said. His tone was sharper than he'd intended, but at this stage in the proceedings he didn't much care.
Daniels stiffened. Lucius nodded to his son.
"Oh, all right," Daniels said. "What is your proposed fee, sir?"
Lucius smiled again. For some reason, the expression made Mark think of Yerby Bannock. "One Quelhagen franc," he said, "to bind the deal. Beyond that, reasonable expenses. The first of which…" He looked at Mark with a slight curling of his lip. "… will be to buy a set of proper clothes for my son, who will act as my aide when I approach the Protector. It'll be tomorrow before I can get a meeting anyway."
Everyone stared at Mark. He folded his hands over his belly to cover the slight tear in the coveralls there.
"We'll dress you as a gentleman of Quelhagen, boy, not as a painted whore from Zenith," Lucius said. "But you will be dressed appropriately."
16 Plotting with the Enemy
Pulsing light and a bugle call awakened Mark in the middle of the night. He shot bolt upright in a bed disguised as a tussock of grass,
It was pitch dark; the only sound was the vague traffic noise to which Mark had fallen asleep. Zeniths might have odd ideas of decoration, but the rooms here in the Safari House were at least soundproofed.
The eyes of the little lion statue on the nightstand strobed red and its belly trilled Charge! again. Mark grabbed the statue and wrenched its head off. That was the right move, because the lion turned out to be a telephone.
"Huh?" Mark said.
"Mark, is your father there?" asked Amy's voice.
"Huh," Mark repeated. He wasn't one of the people who were at their best when awakened from a sound sleep. "No, he's staying at the Quelhagen trade mission. He had a lot of things to do before tomorrow, he said."
He looked at the clock masquerading as a pair of assegais rotating across the face of an imitation-bullhide shield, It was three in the morning of a twenty-six-hour Zenith day. "Before today," Mark corrected himself.
"Well, you'll have to do," Amy said. "Will you come over to our rooms right away? We're on the corner, the Ishandlwana Suite."
Huh? thought Mark.
"Yerby went out with some of the plaintiffs," Amy continued. "He isn't back yet and I'm worried. We have to do something!"
"Ah," said Mark. "Ah. Sure, I'll be right over."
He put on his coveralls rather than his new suit. He had no idea what Amy thought was appropriate garb. On Quelhagen it was never appropriate for a gentleman to visit a lady's room alone.
Except under circumstances that clearly weren't what Amy had in mind.
At least Mark hoped that wasn't what Amy had in mind. He'd played second fiddle to his father in a lot of ways, but that would really hurt.
Amy snatched the door open at the first knock. "I don't know what to do," she said by way of greeting. "If we were on Kilbourn I'd go searching bars, but everything's so big here! I'm afraid they're going to do something terrible to him."
Mark didn't recall a time when he'd thought Yerby was in more danger than everybody else around him was. He said soothingly, "Well, the Zeniths won in court, so they shouldn't be too angry…"
He looked about him. The central room of the Ishandlwana Suite had furniture that looked as if it were made from rocks, rifles, and spears. Slit curtains covered the walls. When the fabric moved in the draft, Mark caught sight of fierce-eyed warriors painted behind the hangings. It was the sort of place that would have given him the creeps even if he'd had a good night's sleep.
"Can we go somewhere else?" he asked, meaning the hotel lobby. Amy wore Kilbourn-style street clothes. They'd stand out a little on Zenith because they were so staid, but Mark didn't suppose that mattered at three in the morning.
"Right, the kitchen," Amy said. "In case they come in while we're-"
Good as the hotel's soundproofing was, it wasn't up to Yerby Bannock singing " Fanny Bay " as the doors of the elevator down the hall opened. Other voices tried to hush him-loudly, because otherwise Yerby couldn't have heard them over his song.