Andrews rounds the corner where the commissary stands and streaks full throttle down the straightaway toward the Base’s main gate. They are no longer alone. Sirens wailing, so close on their bumper that the lead truck almost backedends them, a pair of MP troop carriers swing in behind them from the opposite intersection, and a small ripple of uncoiling muscles runs down Koda’s back. The situation is still not good, but it is no longer as bad as it was a second or two ago.
At the distance of three or four hundred meters and closing, it becomes clear that a full-scale riot is in the offing. One panel of the Base’s double steel gates blocks the right lane of the road, rolled shut across a clot of a dozen cars and trucks angled in as many different directions. A second logjam of vehicles clogs the left lane. A pair of heavy-duty pickups, the long-bedded, double-cab sort that can carry a dozen armed adults apiece, stand aimed at them just beyond the guardhouse, their front tires punctured on the teeth of steel bars that have risen up out of the asphalt like a pair of shark’s dentures. Over and around and among and on top of the cars and trucks, perhaps forty people stand shouting at the two MP’s on watch. The guards hold their weapons at waist level, ready to fire though not aimed at the crowd.
Add nitroglycerin and stir lightly until moistened: the situation is a breath away from disaster. Maybe less.
Maggie is out of the Jeep before it comes completely to a halt, fishtailing to a stop just behind the guardhouse. Koda and Kirsten pile out on her heels, Asimov and Andrews pace for pace behind them. The carrier trucks swing into nearly right-angle turns, one to barricade each traffic lane; MP’s come spilling out their rear flaps, armed with riot helmets, shields and clubs, to stand shoulder to shoulder across the tarmac. At the sight of them, the crowd surges forward, its roar clawing its way up the scale until it becomes a sustained howl. Without warning, the searchlights mounted on the cabs of the MP trucks flare to life, sweeping the crowd with beams bright enough to dazzle the eyes of anyone who looks directly into them. A ripple passes through the crowd as arms and hands attempt to block the glare; here and there, a figure turns away entirely and begins to move toward the back of the mob. More ominously, the light picks out the metal fittings of half a dozen deer rifles, here and there the skeletal form of an M-16 or an AK-47.
Maggie snatches a bullhorn from the hand of the MP Captain and vaults up onto the bed, then the cab roof, of one of the impaled pickups. Koda and Kirsten clamber up to take station in the back of the truck, facing the crowd, guns held low but visible in front of them. Asimov stands on the lowered tailgate, ruff brisling and tail held straight and prickly as lodgepole pine. His lips curl up to bare his teeth. For an instant his form seems to blur, his head lose its angularity to become shorter in the muzzle, his ears less sharply pointed, his whole face broader beneath the eyes.
A chill slips down Koda’s spine, and the sense of something indefinably other—otherkind, otherwhere, otherwhen—follows after. Something of the same feeling, no more than a frisson, had slid through her mind, half-memory, half-not, while she had watched the ravens making their way into the forest as the sun brushed the horizon in its steepening fall toward night. Time has gone awry, the earth tilted off its accustomed axis, past and future irrupting into the present like steam rising in a geyser.
“I can’t hear you!” Maggie’s voice brings her back from her split-second drift into the time stream. Again, metallic and magnified almost beyond recognition, all its Southern softness gone: “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Gun tucked back into the waistband of her trousers, Maggie points at a red-faced man in a plaid hunting jacket at the front of the crowd. “You! Talk to me! What the hell’s going on here!”
The man shouts something back, inaudible. “Say again!” Maggie shouts.
Gradually the crowd quiets, and the unexpected spokesperson steps a little away from the others, moving cautiously with his eyes on the line of MP’s just behind the truck that has suddenly become a podium. His hand moves to the brim of his Stetson in reflexive good manners, hesitates, and tilts the hat back on his head at a jauntier angle instead. His step takes on the suggestion of a strut. Unimpressed, Koda suppresses a snort: a banty rooster, this one, all crow and no balls. She catches the roll of Kirsten’s eyes and almost winks in response; it’s as bad a case of testosterone poisoning as she’s ever seen. Unobtrusively, Koda thumbs the safety off her gun. Covering one hand with the other almost demurely, Kirsten does the same, staring at the man and the crowd behind him with eyes bright and cold and hard as green diamonds.
“Who the hell are you?” the Stetson roars.
“Margaret Allen, United States Air Force. Who the fuck are you?”
A murmur runs through the crowd, and the truculent expression drops off several faces in the front. Word of the battle of the Cheyenne has apparently gotten out to at least some of the remaining civilian population. Further back, a couple of rifle barrels slip from view. Sensing the change behind him, the man’s voice loses a fraction of its edge. “I’m Bill Dietrich, and I’m a law-abiding citizen. You want to explain to me why U. S. citizens can’t come onto a Base their taxes paid for?”
Far back in the crowd, someone yells, “You tell ‘er, Bill,” and another, sharply female, snaps, “Shut up, you idiot!”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dietrich,” Maggie responds evenly. “Suppose you tell me why you and the good folks behind you are attempting to trespass on a restricted government installation.”
“What guvmint? There ain’t no guvmint! We got a right to what we paid for.”
At that Kirsten steps forward, moving to where Asi stands at the alert at the edge of the tailgate. The glare of the searchlights leaches color from her, turning her hair silver, her face ghost-pale. Her voice, when she speaks, is as chill as her face. “Allow me to introduce myself, Mr. Dietrich. I’m Kirsten King, and I’m the only surviving member of the Cabinet we know of.” She pauses, letting the effect filter through the crowd for a moment. “And much as I would hate to do it, I’m prepared to ask these law enforcement officers to enforce the law by firing on you if necessary. Whether it’s necessary or not is up to you.” She steps back toward the cab of the truck, her gun now in plain sight.
A second man detaches himself from the crowd, unceremoniously elbowing Dietrich aside. He is tall and lanky and grey, with creases carved deep around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. “Ma’am, I’m Jim Henderson. I’ve got a ranch up the road a bit, or did have. Had a family, too. Now I’ve just got one daughter, and her only because she was out riding fence with me when the droids took or killed the rest. All I want is a safe place for her. That’s what we all want, Ms. Secretary, Colonel Allen—just a place to be safe.”
“I understand,” Maggie answers. “But you have to understand that the Base is not safe. It’s already been a target twice; we’re likely to be attacked again.”
“You beat the droids!” That from somewhere about halfway back. “They’re gone!”
“We beat one contingent of the droids,” she corrects the speaker. “There are more where they came from, believe me.”
“Then you gotta protect us! Let us in!” Dietrich swaggers to the fore again.
Koda hears Maggie’s sharply indrawn breath, magnified by the bullhorn. Her voice, though, remains patient. “Mr Dietrich, tell me something. How do I know you’re not a droid? How can we tell you’re not a spy trying to force your way in here?”
“Why that’s the damnedest stupidest thing I ever heard of! Listen to me, you---” He breaks off abruptly. “Look, lady, that uniform don’t make you god!”