‘A strange time of night to hold a parade.’ The speaker rode the step just in front of him - a Lep man, dressed in a rich velvet jacket and matching kilt.
‘I’d say so,’ Kata said.
‘It’s not a parade,’ Elen chimed in. ‘It’s the damned Peronidas, going someplace fancy, I’ll bet.’ All three of them ritually spat.
By the time Kata reached the ground, the Peronida’s long grey limousine was gliding past on its cushion of compressed air. ‘Why the hell didn’t they use an airhopper?’ Elen muttered. ‘Why cause all this trouble for everyone?’
‘It’s safer on the ground,’ Kata said. ‘It’s a lot harder for some bribed mechanic to arrange a fatal accident, and they don’t have to worry about their bodyguards getting separated from them.’
One flat truck of Garang guards glided just ahead of the limo, and another came right behind it. In a special turret on the limo’s roof rode three more, and these carried pulse rifles. The crowd watched, silent and glaring, as the procession reached a ramp some blocks down and slid up to rejoin the elevated roadway.
‘All right, folks, the show’s over.’ One of the Protectors held up a control wand. When he flicked it, all the barriers vanished at once with a small hiss and crackle. ‘Go about your business.’
The crowd pushed across the intersection, then eased out and spread on their different routes. As Kata and Elen crossed the wide avenue, Kata was wondering if Vida were in that car. He had the strange intuitive feeling that she was.
In the cold night Algol Park stretched desolate beside the river. Here and there a tall street lamp stood in the midst of a silver sphere of light that seemed to swirl as the fog drifted through it.
Wrapped in cloaks Kata and Sar Elen tramped over the wet grass of a playing field, marked out with white chalk lines for some human game.
‘They’ll be setting up the refreshment booths here in this area,’ Elen said. ‘And then over there, toward the road, the permit stated that they were going to put the portable toilets.’
Kata looked where he was pointing and saw the dark shape of a thick stand of trees, growing low to the ground and providing a suitable camouflage for this necessity.
‘And the actual rally?’ Kata said. ‘Are they going to put up one of those snap-together stages?’
‘No. They’re renting the Floating Amphitheatre.’
Kata felt his crest lift.
‘Let’s go take a look at it, youngling. If I’m remembering it correctly, we’re in luck.’
Over the lawn by the river hung the Memorial Theatre, two-thirds of a lavender globe, like an enormous fruit with a wedge cut out. Although everyone on Palace referred to it as
‘floating,’ in actuality it rested on what appeared to be a single huge column, shaped like a tree-trunk with branches that wrapped around the base of the globe and clutched it. Around this tree coiled vines, bronze-coloured power cables, while inside ran lift booths, grouped around a solid steel core. The whole structure stood a good fifty yards in diameter, but compared to the globe above, it appeared as graceful as a flower’s stalk. Lit from within, the pale purple bowl gleamed in the foggy night. On the ground below, Kata and Elen walked slowly around the energy fence that kept the curious and potentially vandalism-minded away from the tree-trunk structure when the amphitheatre was closed. Although the massive steel gates stood locked shut, they found, near a ticket stall, a complete plan of the interior posted on a white plastocrete slab, helpfully illuminated by an embedded light strip.
‘See this area here?’ Kata extended a claw and pointed. ‘The stage lies right at the bottom of the bowl, where the bowl comes to rest on the steel pillar. I’m betting that the electric and photonic cables all run down through a conduit from that point.’
‘We can find the plans easily enough. They’re in the open library files on the Civic Map. That’s where they display all the public permits.’
‘How wonderfully trusting the Palace government is.’
‘Well, people have a right to know. It’s our tax money.’ Elen spoke casually, his mind elsewhere as he stared up at the enormous bowl that seemed to hang from the sky.
‘You’re a true citizen of Palace, aren’t you, youngling? Things are very different on the bomeworld, let me tell you.’
Elen swung his head around, puzzled.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kata said. ‘We’d better move on before the damned Protectors come by.’
They walked off, heading back to Finance and the warmth of Sar Elen’s apartment. Kata was considering the amphitheatre. If he remembered correctly, a force-field generator amounting to an approximation of anti-gravitic technology actually kept the globe upright. Steel or no steel, the pillar alone would never have supported its mass and weight. When he used Elen’s Map terminal to open the public files, Kata found that he was right. A relic of Colonial days, the force-field generator had braked the sections of starship coming down from orbit to form the twin towers of Government House. Now it was being wasted - or so Kata thought of it - on this entertainment complex.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the Mapscreen. ‘The generator’s right here, just two floors below ground level. It’s not very large, either, and the fools haven’t even armoured it! Suppose an explosion disabled it?’
‘Well, even if the globe crashed to the ground,’ Elen said. ‘It wouldn’t be destroyed.’
‘It doesn’t need to be destroyed. It’ll be full of people, and none of them are going to be strapped into their seats, are they? All it has to do is fall. Fall hard and tip.’
* * *
In the limousine Vida and Wan had taken the rear seat, with Karlo and Vanna riding ahead of them. Up front, separated from the passengers by a pane of smartglass, Jak sat next to the driver, another Garang. The limousine’s interior was all grey and silver - grey koro hide upholstery, silverwood panelling. Since Wan sat slumped, his arms crossed over his chest, and never said a word, she had plenty of time to play with the car. Built into each armrest was a control bar for fresh air and a reading light. She flipped each on and off, sent the window up and down, talked to the smartglass in the window and had it darken and lighten, until finally Karlo turned in his seat to laugh at her.
‘If you like gadgets so much, lawdaughter,’ he said. ‘We should prentice you for an engineer.’
‘I’d like that,’ Vida said. ‘But I know you’re just teasing me.’
Without answering Karlo turned back to his marriage partner. Vida could just see Vanna’s elaborate hairdo, a shining swirl of red and blue held with a diamond clasp, above the padded back of the seat. The thought of facing her at dinner knotted Vida’s stomach. With a hiss of air the limousine settled to the ground in front of the restaurant’s marble facade. When Vida started to slide toward the door, Wan reached over and caught her arm.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘The Garang have to deploy before we get out.’
‘What?’
‘Well, we’re in Lep Sector. They don’t exactly love the Peronidas, and then there’s that assassin of yours, too.’
Vida felt suddenly sick and a little cold. Wan let his hand lie on her arm, but the gesture held no affection.
‘If they hate us here,’ she said, ‘why did we come?’
‘To show them we can go any damn place on Palace we want to,’ Wan snapped. ‘No-one makes a Peronida feel like a prisoner. We go where we want to.’
Vida stared out the window and watched squads of uniformed Garang trotting into the restaurant while others formed a cordon along the sidewalk. Up in the front seat Jak was talking in the Japat language through a comm unit; he stopped, nodding, and turned to glance at Karlo.
‘First Citizen, the roof squad’s in place.’
‘Fine,’ Karlo said, grinning. ‘Let’s go have dinner. I’m starving.’
Jak slid out, then burried to open the door for Vida and Wan. With a toss of her hair she stepped out onto the sidewalk and had just time to read the restaurant’s name, The Sapphire Moon, before a flood of light switched on and blinded her.
‘Damn it!’ Karlo was shouting. ‘Turn those off! You’ll get your holo ops later. Turn them off now!’
The lights died. Blinking and dazed, Vida clung to Jak’s furred arm and tried to see.
‘Pix, Se Vida,’ he whispered. ‘Like moulds, they occur throughout the city.’
‘I was so scared. I don’t know, I thought it was the assassin.’
‘There will be no assassin.’ He patted her hand. ‘Se Peronida’s advance guard has been here since early afternoon.’
With a last dance of purple the retinal fatigue wore off. Wan stood by the car and gave orders to a Garang officer while the squad members pushed gridjockeys away from the entrance to the restaurant. Up on the roof someone was being arrested; Vida could hear him shouting about his civil rights as guards dragged him off.
‘Let us go in,’ Jak said. ‘The restaurant itself has been swept and secured. Ah, here is your affianced.’
With so many pix watching, Wan took her hand, bowed over it, and kissed it. Vida gave him her best smile and reminded herself that in a way, she was paying for her dinner. Under the restaurant’s striped green and silver awning Vanna and Karlo stood watching her. Vanna was wearing a long blue velvet gown, tight in the waist, low-cut at the bodice to show off the enormous diamond pendant that nestled between her tattooed breasts. She wore diamond earrings, as well, that matched the clasp in her hair. Yet when the party walked into the green depths of the crowded restaurant, Vida realized that no-one was looking at Vanna, that everyone was looking at her, in her simple little frock and evening sandals. Vida’s strategy had paid off. Vida remembered Aleen saying, ‘always learn at least one thing from each enemy.’ Vanna turned to her and smiled, a curve of full and glossy lips while her eyes stayed narrow with hatred. There’s a lot I can learn from you, isn’t there? Vida thought. And I’d better learn it fast.
* * *
Late that evening, sitting on the floor of the tiny room that was going to be his, once some furniture got there, Rico brought the interactive news onscreen and saw a thirty second segment on the Peronidas, dining at some fabulously expensive restaurant in Finance Sect. Watching Wan fawn over Vida for the pix made him realize that in the right circumstances at least, he was capable of committing murder. He consoled himself by sending his transmit in favour of her but against Wan when the pop rating approval targets appeared onscreen. When they showed the final tower graphs, it was obvious that he wasn’t the only one voting that way, but still, Wan’s ratings stood a little higher than they ever had before. Over the next few days, Rico saw Vida on the vidscreens during the ‘Life and Living’
segments of the interactive news. He watched her go shopping for a dress to wear when she would sign Wan’s contract; he saw her entering the Cathedral of the Gaze in the company of the Papal Itinerant, Sister Romero herself; he watched her sitting in court with a lawyer beside her as they looked at documents relating to the L’Var lawsuits appearing on the courtroom vidscreens. When her new suite - the suite she and Wan would share - was furnished, she graciously allowed Tarick Avon of Pansect Media to arrange a ‘Visit with the People of Palace’, as it got itself billed in the listings. For twenty minutes Rico watched her pointing out antique chairs or original wall holos and listened while Avon made much of the distinctive colour scheme, ivory white with accents of dark green and maroon, the traditional colours of the L’Var family.
While Rico knew that Vida had to give these interviews to maintain her position, he was shocked at Avon, whose specialty was trapping government functionaries into damaging admissions. Rico kept waiting, kept hoping that the intake would suddenly force Vida to admit that she didn’t love Wan in the least, but instead Avon grinned and bowed and gushed over everything Vida said or did.
‘Well, she’s made a conquest there,’ Uncle Hi said. ‘I don’t think the way he’s acting is just part of the grid contract.’
‘Yeah? Then he’s got an ion cloud where his brains ought to be.’
When Hi raised a questioning eyebrow, Rico got up, slammed out of the suite’s little gather, and into his bedroom.
Now that he was living in Government House, Rico had trouble sleeping. He’d always had strange dreams, ever since he could remember, but here they’d turned ominous. He’d find himself on a wiretrain in orbit above Palace, and sitting opposite him would be Arno, or rather, his mutilated corpse. Or he’d dream of Vida, a dream that would start out pleasantly erotic but end with her lying dead in front of him on some sort of altar. Every time he would wake with a cry to find himself alone and sweating in his narrow bed.
The evening of her interview he dreamt of following Vida through her suite while she kept pointing out incomprehensible objects on the walls. He was just about to catch up with her when a Lep jumped from the shadows and stabbed her to the heart. Again, his own cry woke him. He sat up in bed, shoving sweaty hair back from his face with both hands.
‘Time.’ His voice echoed oddly in the dark.
A few minutes to the fives. The glowing green numbers, flashed by an implant, faded after a few seconds. He shucked off his clammy sleep gown, balling it up and throwing it as hard as he could into a corner. He got out of bed, pulled his trousers on without bothering with underwear or with fastening them, and walked to the window. When he murmured a command, the curtain lifted.
Outside, pink fingers of dawn reached up from behind the haze of clouds. Puffs of green filled the air, the morning sporefall through a windless sky. Rico looked down on the northern arc of Centre Sect, criss-crossed with the glowing geometry of wiretrain tracks and the starry sparkle of the windows of family compounds and warehouses - there were a lot of sapients up with the dawn, guild-masters trying to win an edge, maybe, or apprentices hoping to impress their masters with their diligence. What did all those people out there really want out of life?
What did he want? Rico suddenly felt like one of those green spores, tossed through the air without will or purpose, doomed to die, unremembered, unfulfilled. Slowly the dawn faded and the sky clamped down, relendessly silver.
On his narrow desk his Mapstation chimed: a commcall. Rico spun round - no-one had his number but Hi. ‘Accept.’