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landed myself and my staff.
The thick acrid stench of burning buildings drifted down the broad street and seeped in through my suit
filters. The angry roar of the crowds was dulled by the wailing of police sirens. I could tell they were
coming this way.
"Majumbdahr!" I called. He came trotting over. "What happened to that sleeper gas?"
"Ordnance couldn't locate any more," he puffed. "They used the last of it an hour ago. It didn't stop
them."
I ground my teeth. No time to have a batch made up; I wasn't even sure there was a chemist in Kalic
who knew the process.
"Form up the men you have. They still carry anamorphine?"
"Yes, most of them." He nodded slowly, dazed with fatigue.
"Gharma said the Lancers were 'slowing down."
"I think they are," Majumbdahr said. He blinked rapidly to clear his vision. Smoke drifted across and
paled Lekki's great eye. "They've been going for six hours. The troops are pretty beat themselves."
"This should be the last of it, then, for a while," I said and saluted. Another copter decked with a whine
behind me. Gharma jumped out and walked over.
"It's dying down elsewhere, sir," he reported.
"About time." I'd followed the riot from Fleet Control since morning until I couldn't stand to be inside any
longer. It was good to be out in the field and get the taste of what was happening.
Troops formed up in a line across the street. The muted bass of the crowd deepened.
"It's hard to understand," I said, looking at the thin column moving up. "Only a month since the first
Plague victim."
"How does it go in most cases?" Gharma asked.
"All I know is what I saw on Earth," I said, trying to shrug in my suit. The constant-volume joints
impaired me. "It wasn't anything like this. People simply waited until they contracted the Plague and then
they died. They didn't turn out into the streets, bum and loot."
"They had more phase, on Earth?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't have guessed it. There's something peculiar about the Veden personality. They
seem to be coming out from under some inhibition at last and the pressure is blowing the top off."
"The old ways are not enough," Gharma said flatly.
"Why? Why should they fail now?"
"It is a crisis point," he said. "The order we had is lost."
I looked at him closely. Behind his plastiform face shield his skin was polished walnut. "You say that?
You, believer in formalized religion?"
"Formalized, yes. Perhaps dead as well. When something is finished you cast it aside. We need a new
social ordering here, a new dedication."
Two blocks down, the edge of the mob swept around a corner and flowed into the street. Tinkling of
glass. Rough-edged cry of frustration.
I glanced at Gharma. What did he mean? How could he watch his world dissolve so calmly? He looked
content. Almost smug.
The mob streamed toward us. I licked away a salty tang of sweat. My contact filters stung my eyelids
when I blinked; I'd been wearing them too much, indoors and out.
I could feel the hollow drumming of a thousand running feet. Fifty meters in front of me the mob bore
down on the line of troops. Most of the Lancers seemed young. They grinned.
When they were within a few meters of the line my troops fired a volley of darts and some went down,
drugged with anamorphine. A canister of homemade gas blossomed in the line and blew away.
Most of the crowd's rush halted but here and there they broke through. The line wavered. Men fell.
The mob caught the smell of victory.
I suddenly realized I was exposed. A knot of Lancers dashed by me. Gharma was cut off to the left with
a squad.
I unhooked my gun. Majumbdahr shouted orders over the suit radio that echoed in my helmet.
Three Lancers converged on me. I took ready position. One carried a chain wrapped around his wrist;
no worry there. The other two had cobblestones from the old district and one flashed a knife. All
relatively useless against body armor.
They came at me together in a rush.
I brought the tube of my gun down viciously, chopping the first Lancer's arm. The man dropped his knife
with a gasp of pain.
I stepped to the left and took a blow on my back armor that rattled my teeth. The chain whipped around
my helmet with a crash and partially obscured my field of vision.
I crouched and fired two darts. They made an angry splatting sound. Thumb over to extra-strong
anamorphine. Lancer moving in; focus on him. Fire. Miss. Fire again. He caught it in the groin. Staggered
away, collapsed.
One left. Turn where is he? A bottle bounced off my arm and shattered on the sidewalk.
I heard the whistle of the chain again. Duck.
This time I caught the Lancer before he could back away. I cracked the gun tube across his kneecap. He
almost fell on the bottle shards but managed to roll to one side.
I blinked sweat out of my eyes. Hot. People all around me. Expand attention out, watch for an attack.
A man appeared from nowhere and threw a cobblestone. It hit my solar plexus and the armor carried a
ringing up to my ears.
I thrust out with the gun tube. The Lancer brought a stick around and parried neatly. He backed away,
glancing to the sides for support.
I raised the muzzle of the gun. He danced to the side at just the right instant and the dart whizzed past
him.
The Lancer threw his pipe and ran. I ducked, fired, missed again. He dodged behind Majumbdahr, who
was coming to help me.
The crowd was falling back. My troops let out a thin cheer and started to reform.
"You all right?" Majumbdahr said.
"Sure." I grinned at him. "Those fellows can certainly be offensive, though, can't they?"
We met in a restaurant in Old Town. Majumbdahr and Gharma had shown a touch of surprise when I
told them they'd find me there, but I was bored with the stiffness of my official offices, and after the riots I
needed a quietness.
Men in. severe robes milled around the entrance as I went in, chattering, comparing notes, pointing at the
black columns that twined through the sky from fires that still smoldered. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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