The "Wildest Dreams" party hesitated just inside the automatic glass doors of the hotel. Two limousines drew up outside. The cops had their clubs out, and were only with difficulty keeping the crowd off the cars. Wanda-Jean stared at the surging crush in horror. For the first time since she had been involved with the game show, she was physically frightened. She looked at the nearest security man in some alarm.
"Why don't they take us out through the back way? Won't it save all this trouble and fuss?"
"I think they like the fuss, sweetheart. They figure it's good for business."
A police sergeant, just outside the glass doors, signaled to the squad inside. The doors opened, and everyone moved out. The first few steps were slow and tentative. Then they hit the air and it started in earnest. The security formed into a flying wedge. They were off and running, hands clutched. She was swamped by the noise of the crowd but, at the same time, couldn't make out a word they were saying. She couldn't even judge their mood. Did they hate her or love her? Were they grabbing at her to show their affection or tear her apart? The fingers were clawed, the faces were distorted. They slammed into the cops with furious, violent determination to get through. They seemed unwilling to give up, even when the cops moved in with clubs swinging.
There was a brief moment when Wanda-Jean thought they were going to get to her. Then the broad back of a network man moved into her line of vision as he put himself in the way of the rush. A middle-aged woman, with two-tone orange and pink hair and inch-thick makeup, howled something before a cop grabbed her and swung her bodily away. Absurdly, Wanda-Jean had a picture of her open mouth imprinted, almost photographically, on her memory. There had been flecks of orange lipstick on her teeth.
They were almost to the cars and out of the worst of it. A teenage girl tried to duck under a cop's arm. He seized her by the hair but, in so doing, left a space for a short chubby figure of undecided sex to force its way through. It had thick, moist, sagging lips set in a bland, doughy, piggy-eyed face.
It held a plastic spiral-bound book in its hands. It opened this as though offering it to Wanda-Jean for inspection and dropped to its knees. Wanda-Jean had to stop dead to keep herself from falling over it. For a fleeting instant, she had a good look at the inside of the book. It was crammed with pictures of her, pictures of Wanda-Jean, presumably taken from a TV set. They showed her in the most contorted, obscene, and humiliating poses.
Wanda-Jean knew there must be people who did bizarre obsessive things because of some celebrity fixation. It just seemed incredible it could be done to her. She was totally spooked for a second. What else were people doing? She jerked away and collided with a bodyguard. She was lifted off her feet and virtually thrown in the back of one of the waiting cars. She fell in a heap on Brigitte and another contestant. The door slammed. She saw the kneeling figure bowled over by a headlong rush. Both he and his book of pictures were trampled underfoot. Hands beat on the windows and roof of the car. The driver gunned it away. Everyone was jerked into the back of the seats. They were wrapped in the smell of old leather. Almost miraculously they broke free of the crowd. Ahead of them a police car with three sets of sirens broke up the downtown traffic.
Wanda-Jean pulled herself up and peered out of the car window. People on the sidewalk were stopping to stare at them as they raced past with their police escort. At least she was going to the show in style.
RALPH WAS HURLED BODILY AGAINST A plate glass window; it didn't shatter. Right in front of him a man was being clubbed to the ground. The woman in the blue coat had vanished. The CRAC squad was out of their van, employing the only answer they had to any kind of disturbance, which was to break heads. On the other side of the glass, rich folk were drinking cocktails and eating an early dinner before taking in a show. They stared in blank amazement at the violence on the sidewalk. Ralph was only two feet from a fat woman who had frozen in shock with a forkful of creamcake halfway to her mouth. There was only the shock of the unexpected in the drinkers' and diners' faces. There was no real concern or outrage. What was going on beyond the glass might as well have been happening to another species on another world.
Ralph slid along the window toward a doorway that would afford a minimal protection. He rolled into it. The violence was streaming past him. People were running, shrieking, doing anything to get away from the clubs of the police. Two CRAC officers grabbed a woman and dragged her off to the van. The only mercy was that, so far, they hadn't used gas. Suddenly there was a helmeted, gas-masked cop in front of his doorway. Seeing Ralph, he raised his club.
Ralph cringed. "Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!"
The cop paused and lowered the club. "Get out of there!"
Ralph ducked past the cop, who shoved him roughly. Ralph started running. He didn't look back. He ran blindly with the rest, sharing their terror. There were cops in front of the RT station-there would be no refuge in there. Then he was in the atrium, along with a number of others. He looked back. There were no cops in sight. He spotted the woman in the blue coat. She was walking around in a daze. There was blood on her face from a cut forehead. Ralph hurried over to her.
"Are you alright?"
The woman looked at him in complete mystification. It was only after a number of seconds that recognition dawned. "It's you."
"Right."
"You helped me through the crowd."
"Are you okay?"
"Why did they have to do that?"
"You're bleeding."
The woman put a hand to her forehead. She looked surprised at the blood on her fingers. "I'm bleeding."
"You want to go to the emergency room?"
She shook her head emphatically. "I don't like those places."
"You ought to get someone to look at that cut."
"It'll be alright. What I'd really like is a drink."
Despite himself, Ralph grinned. "Now you're talking."
"OKAY, SO YOU WIN AGAIN."
Sam put down The House at Pooh Corner and reached for the TV's on/off switch. The cat watched him with absorbed interest. A picture spread out across the screen. The color shimmered for a moment and then held steady. It was much too green, but Sam didn't bother to adjust it. He didn't really like watching TV. To be precise, he didn't like to have to concentrate on it. Most of the time he would turn it on and just let the sound and vision wash over him. With that attitude, it didn't matter whether the color was balanced or not. He frequently told himself he only turned it on for the sake of the cat. In fact, when Max wasn't eating or pestering Sam in order to eat, he was asleep. Sam attributed a great deal to Max. Much of it was his own imagination.
"So remember, with Securicare, you know who's there."
It was an ad for a closed-circuit door scanner. The scene was a spick, orderly B+ home. A trim, attractive housewife responded to a set of door chimes. The picture cut to the exterior of the same house. Standing on the doorstep was a sinister figure. He wore the typical close-cropped hair, earring, the black nylon jacket and heavy boots of a kid from a welfare gang. He wasn't, however, built like any juvenile Sam had ever seen. He had the physique of a block position ball player. His eyes were red-rimmed and a scar ran down his left cheek. Between thick chubby fingers he held a length of boat chain. He was every B + 's nightmare of rape, robbery, and terror.
Sam looked at Max the cat. "They sure do run some crap."
Max yawned. The picture was back to the housewife. The music held its breath as, unaware of the horror on the step, her hand went to the door latch. Then the picture froze.
"With Securicare you don't have to open to look."