Feck was up ahead, in a kind of gazebo looming over the park from the crown of its highest hill. There were two other boys with him, and two other girls—one leaning against him in a rather familiar way. Xmary waved, and Feck must have been watching the path, because he saw her and waved back almost immediately. He said something to the girl beside him, and she pulled away and stood up straighter. Xmary’s heart quickened, all the excitement and uncertainty of recent weeks coming finally to a head. What she felt when she saw his face, his figure against the skyline, was hard to describe and equally hard to ignore. Enthrallment? Good fortune? An abeyance of her bitter frustration?
She lost sight of him as the path curved behind the hill, but she followed it around and up, and soon enough she was throwing herself into his arms.
“Hi!” She laughed.
“Hi back,” he said, smiling but disengaging himself. “You’re a bit late.”
“I know. Sorry.”
He nodded, looking agitated. “Yeah, our timing is important. You brought the garlands?”
“Right here.” She parted the rucksack’s buckles with a murmured command, then slid the strap off one shoulder and wriggled free.
“Good. Xmary Li Weng, meet riot cell one: Bob Smith, Cherry Florence, Weng Twang, and Patience Electric.”
“Hi, Cherry,” Xmary said, surprised to see one of her close friends here. Cherry was, in fact, the girl who’d been leaning on Feck sixty seconds ago. The others Xmary didn’t know, although they looked familiar.
“Wasn’t sure you were going to make it,” Cherry said, looking her over with a funny kind of disapproval. “After the café incident, I heard from you, what? One time?”
“I’m really sorry. I was grounded. I would’ve sent a message, but—”
“I hate to cut this short,” Feck said, “but it’s less than two hours till showtime, and we’ve got six major intersections to ... decorate.”
Grinning, Xmary stuck her hand up. “What’s our plan, cutie?”
Feck glared for a moment, then put a hand on her elbow and led her a few meters away from the others. “This is not a picnic. All right? Let’s keep things formal.”
Her voice stiffened. “I’m just asking, Feck. What are we doing?”
He showed her a length of shiny-white wellstone twine, then stepped back and turned so the others could see it as well. “You know what a knot bomb is? These garlands, these decorative spike traps of yours, will be tied to the light poles with these little strings. Securely, right? But at nine P.M., they all come undone and fall in the street, halting the flow of wheeled traffic.”
“And then what?” one of the boys—the one Feck had introduced as Bob—wanted to know.
“Then we go straight to the police station,” Feck said.
Bob was aghast. “We turn ourselves in?”
“We create a distraction. We get inside and block the fax machines, or disable them, or better yet commandeer them to print our own army. Failing that, we obstruct the exits with park benches and trash tubes, or with our bodies. There are only five fax machines inside which are big enough to instantiate a police officer, and only three fixed doorways out of the building.”
Xmary, feeling surly and snubbed, said, “What is it, a medieval castle? They can open a doorway anywhere they want. All it takes is a whisper, and a thousand cops are bursting out into the street.”
“Of course they can,” Feck agreed. “We can’t stop the police or Constabulary. We can’t even really delay them.”
“Then what’s the point?” Bob demanded angrily.
Feck could only shrug. “Who can say? What’s the point of anything? This is a performance, Bob. We’re inspiring emotion. There are twenty other riot cells in place, scattered around the downtown district. We go for the fax depots, the news stations, all the centers of control. We make a show of it. Why? Because that’s what Prince Bascal wants. That’s all you and I need to know.”
“But we get caught right away,” Bob complained. “We don’t stand a chance.”
Feck made a face, and matched it with a sarcastic flutter of his hands. “We all get caught, Bob. I don’t see any way around it. Best case, this’ll be, like, a five-minute riot. I thought that was self-evident. Do you want out?” He scanned the five faces around him. “If anyone wants out, just walk away now. No questions.”
The other boy, Weng Twang, wordlessly turned his back and started down the path. Then he paused, and almost cast a glance over his shoulder. But he aborted it just as quickly, and resumed walking.
Feck sighed. “Damn. All right, anyone else? Bob?”
“Uh, no,” Bob said, his eyes on Twang’s retreating form. “My calendar’s clear, pretty much forever.”
“You didn’t get caught at 1551 last month,” Xmary said to Feck.
“That was a fluke.”
“Was it? I wonder. How many of these riot cells have you for a leader?”
“Just the one,” Feck said impatiently. “I can’t use the fax, see? I’m caught if I do. So I’m effectively singled.”
“Well, how many individuals do we have stationed in more than one cell? All their freedom requires is for one copy to escape, right?”
“A few individuals,” Feck allowed. “Not many. We don’t want people going too far beyond their normal patterns too early, attracting attention and all that. Look, none of this matters right now. We need to get moving.” He glanced at the little washroom enclosure just off the gazebo’s east side. “Does anyone need the ’soir? To, uh, relieve themselves? No? Well let’s proceed, then.”
He led them through the park and across the street where, to everyone’s surprise, Weng Twang was waiting for them.
“My apologies,” he said. “Is a numb-ass waffler still welcome among you?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Feck answered, handing him one of Xmary’s holiday garlands. “I’m happy you changed your mind. Again.”
Then he dug something out of his pocket, a little ball of superabsorber black, and tossed it lightly over the wall, into the hulking power transformers Xmary had passed on the way in.
“What was that?” she asked.
And for the first time that evening, Feck chuckled. “That was nothing, dear. That was nothing at all. Shall we go do this thing?”
“And meet whatever fate awaits us,” Xmary agreed, then kissed him hard on the mouth while Cherry Florence glared on.
Chapter fifteen.
Pride and the prince
As the time for magnetic braking approached, the remaining preparations were remarkably straightforward: a bit of research, a bit of simulation, and a bit of fauxdemocratic discussion with the remaining crew. When everyone understood the magnetic braking plan, and had slept on it and then given their explicit agreement, Bascal announced that the differences of opinion that had separated Viridity’s crew were officially reconciled. He proclaimed a group hug. Conrad wasn’t too crazy about hugging Steve, and especially Ho, but for the good of the revolution, such as it was, he endured it.
And then, really, there was nothing left to do. Having agreed to consign themselves to the fax anyway, there was no reason to suffer the additional boredom of eleven more sailing days. So they dug the space suits out of their trunk and started putting them on: paper-doll jumpsuits of translucent, beetle-black wellstone film.
“Better unfax our sleeping beauties,” Xmary observed, jiggling her way through the dressing process. “They need to suit up as well.”
Nobody really knew what would happen on the approach or final impact—whether the cabin would break apart, whether its wellstone wrapping would spring any leaks, or what. Either way, once they were magnetically docked to the barge’s hull they’d be opening the wrapper anyway, so they could get free and find an airlock that would lead them inside. That was the plan, anyway.