Armageddon Crazy

"How big are those things?"

"I heard that they were over a hundred feet high."

"Why can't we go out and see them?"

"You want to be down in among those people?"

"They don't look too bad."

Indeed, at that moment the crowd was orderly and quiet, simply staring up at the huge images.

"Crowds can change very quickly. A mob like that may look okay, but there's always a proportion of criminals and sickoes in among them."

"What about the roof? Why can't we go up to the roof and watch things from there?"

Longstreet was quick to squash that idea. "The images are being projected from the roof. There's too much equipment up there for it to be safe."

"The real question, Deacon Longstreet, is how long do you intend to keep us cooped up in here?"

The vocal leader of the complainers was the president of Good Shepherd Inc., whose fat wife was now feeding canapes to the Yorkshire terrier. Cynthia figured that he had probably been pla

"All I know is that people much more important than me have decided that we'd be better off staying where we are. I think the best thing we could all do is to go along with them."

"You deacons have to remember that you don't run everything."

An irresistible nastiness was starting to twist Longstreet's bland, public smile. "Oh, we do, sir, we do. Except, in this instance, we're doing our best to protect your lives and health."

"But there's nothing going on out there."

"Actually, there is."

Everyone turned. The voice belonged to the rather strange figure in the voluminous cowled overcoat who had come in with Matthew Dreisler. When Dreisler had left, a few minutes after the rest of the deacon brass, he had taken his aide and bodyguards with him, but for some inexplicable reason he had left the tall, thin individual there. This was the first time that he had spoken. The other guests looked from him to the monitor screens.

"He's right."

People were ru

"What the hell is going on down there? Why doesn't somebody tell us? Why's there no voice-over?"

Longstreet was happier when he had something to explain. "What we're seeing here is the direct feed to the network. The voice-over isn't put on until the raw input is processed."

He did not add that this footage would be processed straight into the garbage. The censors would never let anything so inflammatory reach the domestic screens.

The guests fell silent as they watched the deteriorating situation on the monitor screens. Cynthia was near the back of the crowd, helping herself to more champagne than was strictly good for her. The man in the cowled coat came up beside her.

"Am I right in thinking that you're Cynthia Kline?"

Cynthia looked up in surprise and not a little alarm. "That's right. That's me."

For the first time she had the chance to get a good look at the face beneath the cowl. There was something almost biblical about the deep-set eyes and hollow cheeks. He had the look of a genuine ascetic, a rare animal in that day and age.

He smiled slightly. "I've been asked to give you something."

"You have?"

Cynthia felt extremely uncomfortable. The man in the cowled coat glanced pointedly at where Longstreet was once again on the phone, trying to get additional information about the disturbance that was boiling up on the streets outside. She could only assume that the strange man was making a deliberate show of checking that they were not being observed. When he seemed satisfied, he took a small plastic pouch from his sleeve. She assumed that it contained some kind of software diskette.

"Please take this quickly."

Cynthia looked at it as if it were a venomous insect, but took it anyway. Refusing to touch the thing would not save her from whatever was going to happen next.

The cowled coat made a slight bow. "You will treat this as wholly confidential."

He quickly moved away, mixing in with the knot of people gathered around Longstreet. His timing was impeccable. Long-street was just hanging up the phone.

"They're going to send the STG in to clear the streets."

The president of Good Shepherd Inc. grunted. "It's the only way to deal with this rabble."

Carlisle

The woman's arms were windmilling, clawing at anything that came within reach as she stumbled along blindly. Tears were streaming down her face, and she was sobbing a revolving litany about how the Seventh Seal was broken and everyone was going to die. All around, there were hundreds like her taking simultaneous leave of their senses. The Four Horsemen towered above them all as if they really were presiding over the fall of civilization. Carlisle himself was not too far from believing that the end of the world had come. He tried to push backward, but the crush would not let him. The woman lurched straight into him and grabbed him round the neck. Her eyes did not even focus. Carlisle ducked out of her clutching embrace but, in so doing, momentarily lost his footing. He was starting to get frightened. He was in the middle of an escalating, milling panic, and if he was knocked to the ground, his badge or gun or all of his training would not do him the slightest bit of good. He could be trampled just like anyone else. He took advantage of a brief eddy in the crowd to get his breath and bearings. His tracy was flashing. He touched the receive button.

Parnell appeared on the tiny screen. "Where are you?"

"I'm on Eighth, in the middle of a hundred thousand maniacs."

"Get out of there. Right now. The deacons have ordered in the STG. Unrestricted pacification. They're going to clear the streets the hard way."

The Special Tactical Group was the last resort when it came to urban disorder. Based on the British and French models, it was an independent, paramilitary force under the direct control of the deacons. They used it like a blunt instrument. Once they were let loose in a situation, there was no stopping them. They went at their target with a single-minded, mad-dog brutality.

"The STG? Has everybody gone nuts?"

"Quite possibly."

"The deacons had a crack at Proverb, but they missed him."

"We know. They had a couple of tries, but he beat them. They picked up the car in the forties, but he'd already switched vehicles. But listen, Harry, you don't have time to talk. Get the hell away from there. The STG is coming. It's going to turn into a massacre and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it."

"Okay, I'm going. Which direction will they be coming from?"

"Straight down Eighth from the north. They're grouping at the U-Tran terminal. The Herods will come through first laying gas."

"They're using gunships? You were serious about a massacre."

"Just get out of there."

He signed off. Carlisle tried to push his way down the avenue, but right at that moment a surge of people decided to go in the opposite direction, and he was carried backward.

Mansard

Charlie Mansard was on the roof when the STG arrived. He was not aware of them at first. He was standing in the very center of the complex of laser projectors, staring up at the sky and admiring his creation. It was impossible to see the image from that angle, but he was quite content to just gaze up at the pillars of light seemingly going straight to infinity. It was like being inside some radiant cathedral, a cathedral that he had designed and created himself, the biggest skywalker ever staged. He laughed out loud in pure delight.