The Dreeson Incident(146)

"I'll send a couple of cars that way."



"Warn the cars that something is starting to happen. Several of the smaller groups that were still out on Highway 250 are coming together now, behind the original demonstrators in the parking lot. They are reaching under their cloaks and bringing out signs that protest the practice of doing autopsies as a part of medical education. The slogans they are beginning to shout include 'sacrilege,' of course, and predictions that as a result of these, at the time of the Last Judgment, people will be rising from the dead maimed and incomplete, denied the glorified bodies promised in the resurrection."



The police dispatcher squawked.



"This isn't something caused by Grantville. It was a controversy that existed between the medical schools and the yahoos down-time, before we ever arrived. That's why so many autopsies were done on condemned criminals. And why medical students were practicing grave robbing two centuries after the 1630s. It's an emotional thing. Emotionally very highly charged."



Gary paused. "Very bad theology, of course, but very highly charged."



"What's the estimated total number of demonstrators at the moment?"



"Let me check." He looked up from the phone. "What's the count, Maria? All sides of the building?" Then he spoke into the headphone. "Forty-three more within the last ten minutes. With others still coming along the highway. They are attempting to block the first patrol car you dispatched from entering the parking lot. The total is over a hundred and fifty now, including the original fifty or so, but they are moving around enough that it's hard for our people to get an accurate count."



"I'll notify Chief Richards right away. We'll get a full unit out to you as soon as possible."



"I think you should indicate that this may become urgent. I now have reports that a few of the newest arrivals are apparently preparing to take signs out from under their cloaks."



* * *



Jacques-Pierre Dumais was seriously worried. This was to have been an orderly, planned demonstration. He had made that very clear to the hired demonstrators.



He had no idea who these other people were or why they had arrived.



Of course, there were always certain hazards when organizing this type of thing, given the sort of people one had to use. Even the two Huguenots Deneau had brought and assigned to assist him weren't the sharpest knives in anyone's drawer.





The miscalculation this time, although Dumais had no way of knowing it, was that two of the men contacted by Bryant Holloway early in his circuit of the towns of Thuringia were genuine anti-autopsy fanatics. When they had heard that there was to be a demonstration against the sacrilegious practices of the up-time hospital on a certain date, they had not only come to Grantville themselves, but had brought their friends.



Jacques-Pierre was cautious by nature. He found it prudent to withdraw from the scene. It was not as if his presence had been conspicuous to begin with. He had merely been standing among the rear of the first group in the parking lot. He crossed to the other side of Route 250 and stood back from the highway, near the corner of a building. Corners were good places to stand. In a pinch, a person could always go around the corner and emerge somewhere else.



From his location at the rear of the original group, he had been providing instructions to Friedrich Klick from Halle, who was playing the role of leader in the anti-vaccination demonstration. When Dumais disappeared without leaving any guidance as to what his puppet should do next, Klick began to panic. He had no knowledge about the additional men who were arriving, no contacts among them, and no way to get them organized. He slipped to the side of his group, walked backwards for several steps, and then ran. Several others of the original fifty or so followed him. Others surged forward to take their places.





By the time the Grantville police were fully in place around Leahy, there were an estimated two hundred fifty participants in the demonstration.



Two or three smaller bands had attempted to force their way into the building.



Inside, the staff was evacuating all patients into center rooms.



Outside, the police had taken ranks at all the entrances. The police dispatchers had contacted the fire department and advised them not to bring ill or injured people to the hospital. Traffic on Route 250 had been blocked in both directions. The trolley to and from Rudolstadt had to turn around several blocks to the east of the hospital and return from there.



Two hours after Gary Lambert's first call, the demonstration at the hospital had nearly the entire on-duty Grantville police force fully occupied. Not all of them. Jürgen Neubert and Marvin Tipton were down by the Y where the bridges came together, since someone had called in a disturbance in front of Cora's. One of those anti-Semitic ranters who'd been showing up in several nearby towns the last couple of weeks had finally made it to Grantville, it seemed.