Simon wouldn’t be swooping in to rescue anybody, tonight.
I have to get out of this crowd, she kept telling herself. I have to get to the parking garage, at least. She wouldn’t be able to drive through this mess for hours, yet, but she wanted the security her car represented, modest as it was. She wanted metal walls around her. Bullet-proof glass. The gun in the console.
You’re being stupid, she told herself sternly. Just calm down and breathe deeply. There’s the garage, right there, just another hundred meters or so… She reached the garage. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get anywhere close to the entrance. There were too many people between her and the doorway. She was swept inexorably forward, a slow-motion tide that carried her — greatly against her will — toward the heart of Lendan Park. She was close enough, now, she could see a massive platform towering nearly four meters above the ground, a stage big enough to hold an orchestra. The stage boasted public-address microphones and speakers nearly three meters high, all draped with banners and bunting in POPPA’s favorite colors: sunset gold and deep, forest green.
POPPA’s “peace banners” — a three-armed triskelion of olive leaves, silhouetted against the golden backdrop — fluttered in the early evening breeze from every corner of the stage, from huge, twenty-meter-high streamers behind the stage, from lamp posts, even tree branches where zealots had hung them. A good half the crowd wore gold and green, in fervent declaration of their social and political preferences. Kafari’s cream-colored maternity suit — tailored for a meeting with off-world suppliers’ representatives, ships’ captains, and engineers to work out the kinks as they brought the new station’s systems on-line and ordered additional components — stood out conspicuously against the brighter-hued Party colors or the duller shades of jobless factory workers wearing their sturdy shop-floor uniforms.
Her portion of the crowd came to a halt sixty or so meters from the stage, out near the edge of the park. Kafari’s back ached already from standing, the muscles protesting the strain of carrying her burden unsupported. At least she was wearing sensible shoes. Kafari hadn’t worn anything truly impractical since the war.
The people closest to her were an interesting mixture. From the look of it, there wasn’t a Granger anywhere in the bunch, but she was able to peg several distinct “types” near her. Factory workers were obvious. So were the students, ranging from high-school up through college-age kids. Others appeared to be middle-class clerical types, shopkeepers, office workers hit by the slump in retail sales of everything from clothing to groundcars.
Still others had that distinct air about them that said “academia,” particularly the social sciences and arts professorial types. She didn’t spot anyone that looked — or spoke — remotely like an engineer or physicist, but there were plenty to choose from, based on snatches of conversation, if one were interested in delving deeply into the intricacies of post-Terran deconstructionist philosophies — and philologies — in the arts, literature, and what Kafari had always thought of as the pseudo-sciences: astromancy, luminology, sociography.
Any further speculation she might have entertained about the occupations of those near her vanished under a sudden blare of music from those three-meter-high speakers. The base rhythm of drums struck her bones like a shockwave. If she’d had elbow room, she’d have clapped both hands across her ears. The drums were savage, primal, striking a chord in the waiting crowd, which erupted into howls and a massive tsunamic roar that pounded again and again at her eardrums: “Vit-tor-i! Vit-tor-i!”
It wasn’t difficult to imagine the missing hard-c sound that would have transformed the war-chant into “victory,” rather than a summons for the reigning lord of the Populist Order for the Promotion of Public Accord. A wild melody began to play, counterpoint to the drum cadence, stirring the blood and numbing the brain. People were shouting and screaming, waving triskelion banners, jumping up and down in a frenzy that left Kafari bruised from too many sharp shoulders and elbows jabbing soft spots, fortunately most of them striking above her abdomen.
The music rose to a wailing crescendo…
Then the banners behind the stage parted and he was there. Vittori. The man with Madison in the palm of his hand. He was striding forward, clad entirely in a golden yellow so light, it appeared luminescent in the gathering gloom of twilight. Where the light of sunset streamed across the stage and its twenty-meter triskelion banners, a golden halo of light shone like something from a painting of the virgin Madonna and her child. Vittori Santorini, standing in the center of that halo, glowed like a saint newly descended from heaven. My God, Kafari found herself thinking, does anybody else realize how dangerous this man is?
When he lifted both hands, a prophet parting the seas, the music died instantly and the crowd fell silent in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He stood that way for long seconds, hands uplifted in benediction, in ecstatic triumph, in some twisted emotion Kafari couldn’t quite define, but left her skin crawling, to see it wash across his face and down the glowing length of his body.
“Welcome,” he whispered into the microphone, “to the future of Jefferson.”
The crowd went insane. The mind-numbing roar of human voices shook the air like thunder. Vittori, master of crowds, waited for the ovation to die away of its own accord. He stood looking at his acolytes for long moments, smiling softly down at them, then caressed them with that dangerous, velvet voice.
“What do you want?”
“POPPA! POPPA! POPPA!”
Again he smiled. Leaned forward. Waited…
“Then show no mercy!” The whiplash of his shout cracked the air like judgment day. “It’s time to take what’s ours! Our rights! Our money! Our very lives! No more soldiers drafted to die off-world!”
“No more!”
“No more kickbacks to farmers!”
“No more!”
“No more pillaging in public lands!”
“No more!”
“And no more politicians getting fat and rich while the rest of us starve!”
“NO MORE!”
His voice dropped to a velvet caress again. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Vote! Vote! Vote!”
“That’s right! Get out and vote! Make your voice heard. Demand justice. Real justice. Not John Andrews’ mockery, kowtowing to the big off-world military machine. It’s time Jefferson said ‘No!’ to war!”
“No war!”
“It’s time to say ‘No!’ to higher taxes.”
“No taxes!”
“It’s time we said ‘No!’ to reckless terraforming schemes and new farms.”
“No farms!”
“And it’s sure as hell time to say ‘No more Andrews!’ — now or ever!”
“No Andrews! No Andrews!”
“Are you with me, Jefferson?”
The crowd exploded again, thousands of throats screaming themselves raw in the chilly air as night settled inexorably across the heart of Madison. The sound echoed off the walls of Assembly Hall, which stood behind them like a basilisk in the gathering darkness, turning not bodies but minds to stone, rendering them incapable of reason. Susceptible to anything this man said. Anything he suggested. Kafari stood caught in the midst of the unholy uproar and shuddered. She was violently cold with the fear rising up from her soul.