Vale of Stars (23 page)

“Kolski, go ahead and break it up,” Dunbarston said. Tann looked at the screen, leaning forward in his seat to do so. Something was wrong here—almost all the rioters he could see were facing the building but had not gone inside. Kolski’s viewpoint was blocked past one or two layers of people; Tann could not see closer.

Dunbarston said, “Kolski, float your camera. I need a top-down.” As he spoke, he grabbed a joystick controller on the panel before him. The picture shook a bit, then everything in the shot descended, as the camera flew upwards. The ground tilted crazily, and then the remote camera was floating above the riot, under Dunbarston’s control. Now Tann could see why the rioters had not entered the building. There were perhaps fifty people outside trying to get in, but Tann could see a line of people, argies and shippies, blocking entrance to the apartment building, their arms linked together at the elbows.

Kolski and her officers started to shove their way past the outermost layer of the crowd to the building itself. Tann followed their progress on the bird’s-eye view he was afforded by the floatercam.

“Kolski, get up to the door and disperse this mob. Everyone—including those people guarding the door—is to vacate the area.”

“Yes, sir.” Kolski grunted, working her way through the crowd. No one jostled her—in fact, most of the rioters, once they realized who was pushing them from behind, moved aside with minimal resistance. Kolski and a brace of officers made it to the front and shouted for the crowd to go home.

“There’s a mutant in there!” several people shouted back.

“She’s already killed a child!”

“What are you going to do about her?”

The other officers had by now arrived with Kolski at the front and were slowly but steadily pushing everyone back, using their shields and occasionally jabbing at particularly recalcitrant rioters with their stun rods. Kolski muttered into her mike as she pushed, “Captain, I think we need some help here. They’re not violent, but we can only push them back so far before our wedge breaks down.” She moved her mike away from her face and shouted at her officers to stop where they were. Tann saw the distance between them was already dangerously great—as the officers pushed the rioters back in a semicircle, the bubble of safety between the police and the building grew, but so did the perimeter. There were perhaps ten meters of space where nobody stood, only the twenty defenders, arms still linked. Now that the riot had moved off a bit, Tann could hear the defenders singing quietly.

A young voice came over the radio. “Captain, this is Galmeade. There’s a wirebus on its way here, packed full. About forty more people on it.”

Dunbarston worked his controls and pivoted the floating camera towards the wirebus track. He zoomed in on a moving speck in the distance and saw two of his officers accessing a small box mounted on a pole near the wirebus stop.

“What are they doing?” Tann asked.

“They’re stopping the bus.” As Dunbarston spoke, the wirebus slowed gradually to a stop. It was perhaps two hundred meters away from the apartment building and one hundred away from the stop.

The two officers moved towards the bus. Galmeade’s voice came through again. “They’re getting out. Captain, I don’t think we’ll be able to stop them. You’ve got a few minutes before they arrive.”

“Opechui here, Captain. Rioters coming in on foot from the rest of the residential sector. I make it about two hundred.”

“Captain? Baghdassarian reporting in. I think there are more people coming, sir. Looks like from the University complex. Students, mainly, I’d guess. About fifty of them. Me and Franco can’t hold them back.”

As Dunbarston listened to the reports, his head sank lower and lower. Tann watched him—there could be no doubt: the man was simply not suited for this work. He could police a quiet community very well, Tann supposed, but as soon as he was called upon to act decisively and perhaps violently, he became paralyzed. All the better.

Tann leaned towards him and said, “Perhaps I had better speak to the crowd. Can you get me in there?”

Dunbarston’s head snapped up and there was a moment of relief in his eyes that faded almost as quickly as it came. “No, no. Too dangerous. I can’t risk getting you hurt.”

“I take the risk, Captain. Besides, as a member of the government, I might be able to quiet them down. After all, we are here to deal with the mutant, as they are asking. They will welcome the news.”

Dunbarston did not move for perhaps ten seconds. Then he nodded and lowered his head again. Tann waited. Dunbarston snapped his head back up, as if that would give him the courage he needed to face the mob and his force, and escorted Tann out of the truck.

It was perhaps a minute’s walk to the edge of the mob, which could now be seen from around the residential building behind which the transport trucks were parked. Tann spent that minute in fierce thought.

The mob had indeed gathered as he had planned, but who were these people staked out in front of the building, preventing entrance? Could Halfner have mobilized a counterforce so quickly? Tann dismissed the thought. She had been busy with the Commissar-General, and besides, how could she know Tann had planted information to encourage a riot?

“All right, make way there. Move aside,” Dunbarston started pushing the outermost levels of the crowd out of his way. Tann followed in his wake.

When they reached the perimeter and were permitted to pass, Tann headed for the line of people in front of the building. One of the officers stood nearby, watching the group but taking no action. Dunbarston stepped over to her and conferred quietly. Tann approached one of the argie defenders.

“What are you people doing here?”

The person to whom Tann spoke was a young argie adult, perhaps thirteen years old. She answered, “We’re exercising our right to assembly.” That brought a murmur of support from her twenty or so comrades nearby.

Tann glanced up and down the line. For the first time, he noticed that the members in the line alternated shippie and argie almost to the very end, where three shippie defenders clung to one another to complete the chain. The mob on the other side of the police barricade had been all argie, of course. Tann looked back at the argie woman in front of him.

“You must disperse. The police need to enter this building.”

“To take the child away? No. You’ll have to go through us.”

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be. We’re taking the child for her own safety. You can see—”

The woman snorted. “Don’t lie to us, Tann. We know perfectly well why you’re here. Yallia has done nothing wrong. You can’t have her.”

“Nothing wrong?” Tann shouted, quite aware that his words would be heard by the crowd. He needed this stalemate broken, and quickly, before more supporters to the mutant’s cause arrived. If that meant utilizing the raw power of the mob, he would do so. He half-turned so the crowd could better hear his words. “The mutant inside this building killed a little boy! How many more children must die before you allow your government to act for the safety of its citizens?”

Dunbarston strode quickly to Tan and hissed, “What’re you doing? You want to start a riot?”

“Yes, Captain, he does,” the argie woman said. “I’d call for medical services while it’s still quiet. You might not get the chance if Tann has his way.”

Tann shook off Dunbarston’s hand on his shoulder. “Go back to your officers, Captain. I’ll handle this.”

“Not like this, you won’t. I’m getting reports that more and more people are on their way here. I’ve got to stop this now before it’s more than we can handle.”

Tann could feel his control of the situation slipping away. He turned back to the argie woman. “What do you think you’re accomplishing here? Do you think you can stay here forever? The child will have to be examined and quarantined. We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.”

The woman did not answer, but just looked at Tann with maddening satisfaction.

Tann growled and turned away to look back at the mob. There was only one thing left he could do.

“I can see more people coming from the University,” Dolen said, his face pressed up against the glass of the living room window. The University complex was perhaps three hundred meters away from their building, near the outskirts of the populated section of the Dome. Beyond the University were the botanical sections. As Dolen watched, another floater cam zoomed up to his level, joining the two that already hovered outside the window. Dolen had long since adjusted the glass to one-way transparency, and although the technology existed to penetrate the opacity of the window, extreme reluctance to violate personal privacy kept the newscams outside. The newsweb would wait for its story.

“Come over here, dear. The newsweb has shots from all around the Dome,” Kuarta said. She and her mother were watching the newsweb screen as it displayed pictures of people giving their reactions to the disturbance. Most were unfavorable and seemed to blame the Verdafners themselves for the civil unrest.

“Mommy, are all those people mad at me?” Yallia said, snuggling up to Kuarta on the sofa.

“No, dear. No one’s mad at you.”

“I heard them say my name and they looked mad.”

Kuarta looked at her daughter with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “No one’s mad at you.”

“Then what are they mad at?”

“Nothing, dear,” Kuarta hugged her daughter closer.

“Mommy?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry I killed that boy.” Yallia said it with a sincerity few adults ever reached.  Kuarta looked at her daughter again, wondering why she had to grow up so fast.

“Kuarta,” Dolen said softly. He was gesturing at the screen. Kuarta turned her head to see the outside of their own building on the newsweb. As the shot returned to the front of the building, Kuarta saw Tann talking animatedly with an argie woman she vaguely recognized. She was one of the chain of defenders at the building’s entrance.

“Tann’s here.” Dolen said.

Kuarta was not looking at him—she was trying to place the woman. She knew her from somewhere.

“Shhh,” Jene said, and Dolen fell silent. The three adults listened to Tann’s exchange with the young woman and saw Tann try to incite the crowd with his rhetoric.

“My God,” Dolen said, “he’s actually trying to start something. He’s going to kill someone if he keeps this up.”

Kuarta turned to her mother to ask her if Newfield knew about this, but the expression on Jene’s face took her words away. Her mother was sitting transfixed—her face was looking at the screen, but her eyes were elsewhere. Kuarta could see that her mother was lost in memory.

“Ma?”

Jene did not answer immediately. Kuarta said, more loudly, “Ma?”

Jene shook her head a bit and turned to Kuarta. “What? Oh, sorry. What was it?”

“You were thinking about Ship, weren’t you, Ma?” Kuarta asked quietly.

Jene was silent for a moment. When she did speak, her voice was husky. “It’s happening again. I can’t let it happen again.”

“It’s not your fight this time, Ma.”

“It wasn’t mine then, either. I had no right—”

“You had every right to do what you did.”

Jene shook her head slowly. “No, no. It wasn’t necessary. All we had to do was land and it would have been fine. No one needed to die. Not Rik. Not Bobby. Not your father.”

“You didn’t know that. You couldn’t have known that.” Kuarta spoke soothingly, even as the throng outside threatened to rip their family and their world apart. The two women were together in the past, trying to heal a wound that had festered for twenty years.

“My God!” Dolen shouted suddenly, leaping from the sofa. He was pointing at the screen. Kuarta and Jene watched as Tann pulled a small flechette gun from his pocket and shot the argie woman squarely in the chest. She slumped to the ground, taking the defenders on either side of her down with her. The weapon had made little sound and had not caused any visible signs of trauma to the woman save for her collapse.

It was at that moment that Kuarta recognized the woman—she had been at the museum a few days ago when Yallia had been pushed to the ground. Hers had been the face of compassion for Yallia and hatred for what the others were doing to her. She had not had the strength to act then. Now she was dead.

As Kuarta and her family watched, Tann grabbed the police captain and whispered something to him the floating recorders could not quite pick up. The captain looked at Tann with uncertainty for a moment, then called to the one officer standing nearby to remove the limp body of the woman from the building.

“If you do not disperse immediately,” Tann said calmly to the remaining wide-eyed defenders, “the police will take similar action against all of you. You will be detained and brought to trial for incitement. If you leave now, no such charges will be brought.”

The defenders started at each other and at the spot where the woman had stood. Before any of them could answer, however, a disturbance in the crowd erupted. The shot changed abruptly to a vantage point above the crowd, where perhaps five hundred people milled about. Within the mob, a fight had broken out, and as the hovercam zoomed in for a closer look, Dolen mumbled, “Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Kuarta asked, her eyes fixed to the screen.

“Those are students,” Dolen said, pointing. Dozens of young argie men and women were hand fighting with many more argie adults in the crowd. The hovercam picked up occasional snatches of shouted invective. It seemed the fighting students were themselves defending the Verdafners while a significant majority of colonists were demanding Yallia’s incarceration.

The fight could not find release, having started in the middle of a huge crowd. In a mater of seconds, the melee grew as onlookers chose sides and started throwing punches and elbows.

A moan of despair was wrenched out of Jene as she stood watching the image. She buried her face in her hands.

Another camera shift—quickly back to the front of the building, not lingering long—he or she only allowed a brief shot to establish what was happening at the scene before cutting back to the action, but in those few seconds, Kuarta saw Tann looking not towards the fight, but up towards the Verdafner’s apartment. For a split second, the hovercam lens caught his eyes and he was suddenly staring through the screen right into the Verdafner living room. Kuarta imagined she could hear him taunting her, asking,
how much longer are you going to let this continue?