Starliner(42)

"Be careful out there, Ms. Hatton," warned the attendant. He was slim and dark, a Nevasan native. "Mostly they're acting happy—but people are scared, and you can't tell what's going to happen."

"Thank you, Lee," Susan said. "I'm leaving my car here. From what I see out the window, it wouldn't be possible to drive out anyway."

"As you wish, Ms. Hatton," Lee said. He looked Ran over. "And good luck to you too, sir," he added.

"Thank you," Ran said formally. "I and my employers are very appreciative of the embassy's help in this crisis."

Of course Lee's comment had a double meaning. Of course Ran Colville knew better than to embarrass a lady in front of her staff.

Lee stepped into his kiosk at the head of the exit ramp and threw a lever. Motors winched up the armored door.

"Come!" Susan directed, tapping the back of Ran's hand, and they darted through together. The door crashed shut, leaving them with the glowing Nevasan night.

A crowd filled the street—not solidly but by small groups and individuals, the way jellyfish swarm to the surface of a calm sea. No one spoke loudly, but the air hissed with conversation and the miniature radios that more than half of the people carried. Occasionally a cheer would rumble from far away, like angry surf.

"All the government ministries are within a few blocks of here," Susan explained. "People want to know what's going on."

"They could learn more by staying home and watching the news," Ran said. He was keyed up, though the day had wrung him out too thoroughly for his jitters to be obvious. "They're like kids before they run a race, too nervous to sit still."

Susan nodded them to the right at the intersection with the boulevard fronting the embassy. The park across the way was full of people. Buildings facing the park were brilliantly floodlit, and someone was speaking through an amplifier. Ran couldn't make out the words, but the crowd responded with waves of sullen enthusiasm.

"Parliament and the presidential palace," Susan said. Then she added, "If they understood what was going to happen, they wouldn't be cheering."

Ran shrugged. "It's going to happen anyway," he said. "Whatever ordinary people think, whatever they do. They might as well be happy while they can."

On one of the helmet recordings Ran found after his father died:

The broken buildings were gray and jagged. Three bodies lay in the gutter. A machine gun spat over them from a cellar window.

The stone transom puffed and sparkled with bullet impacts, but the rebel machine gun continued to fire. A grenade wobbled toward the gun and burst into waves of violet smoke.

The viewpoint shifted as Chick Colville stood up. A rod of brilliantly-white flame, napalm enriched with powdered aluminum, stabbed toward the concealed gun position. Smoke sucked and swirled, but it continued to screen the cellar window even after secondary explosions shook the rubble.

Three rebels ran into the street. Their clothes were burning. Bullets killed them and covered the bodies with dust knocked from the stone of the ruined building. The oldest of the rebels might have been fourteen . . . .

There wouldn't be street fighting here in Nevasa City . . . but a nuclear weapon might get through despite the rings of defenses, and certainly many dinner tables would have empty places that the dead would never return to fill. Sure, cheer now.

Either Ran shivered or something showed on his face. When he glanced around at his companion, she was staring at him. "No problem," he said with a smile that admitted maybe there had been one.

Instead of responding, Susan said, "We'll go to the Parisienne." She had to raise her voice to be heard over the murmur of the crowd. "It's the hotel the embassy uses for delegations, and the grill room is famous."

Inconsequently, she added, "It's only a block from my apartment."

Ran looked toward her. She didn't meet his eyes.

The boulevard was divided by a central spine of trees with bushes planted to either side of it. Buildings in this district were set back from the street, behind walled courtyards like that of the Terran embassy. Awnings of plush and silk jutted over sidewalk at the courtyard gates. Sometimes the fabric bore a crest or a legend: MINISTRY OF CULTURE, for example, or TYDIDES CORPORATION, and some in scripts unfamiliar to Ran.

A taxi with square lines and a great deal of chrome brightwork was stopped against the central plantings. A large crowd was gathered around the vehicle. A man wearing Nevasan formal kit, embroidered robes suggesting those of Earth's Ming Dynasty, stood on the taxi's roof.

"We must not be backward in defending our civilization against arrogance and barbarism!" the man cried. Drink slurred and hoarsened his voice. "The tree of liberty grows in the soil of martyrs' bones!"