Patriots

29. Preparing the Trap

A tank with its Klaxon groaning slid past the front of the Safari House. The monster terribly dwarfed the elephants molded into the lobby walls. Behind the tank were three trucks with mounted gas projectors. The soldiers in the sandbagged truck beds carried repellers and rocket launchers.

A platoon of Alliance troops wearing body armor and armed with lethal weapons guarded the front of the hotel against the mob in the square. A brick had shattered one of the broad front windows. Members of the hotel staff were trying to cover the hole with stiff plastic sheeting.

Ms. Macey came in through a side door, looking agitated. She didn't see Mark until one of her aides coughed and pointed to him.

"There's a ban on aircars, Maxwell!" she said. "I had to come through the streets from the trade mission!"

Gas guns thumped in the square. Mark thought he heard the snarl of nerve scramblers as well, a more painful way of paralyzing the motor nerves of a person within a hundred feet or so. The scramblers' field generated conflicting chemical messages that knotted the target's muscles with violent cramps.

The mob howled over the Klaxon's moan.

"I'm very sorry, madame," Mark said, "but my only transportation was the car and driver which Protector Giscard provided. I didn't care to alert him that I was meeting you, since you investors aren't permitted at the negotiations."

"Yes, yes," Macey said. The broken window kept drawing her eyes, though she shuddered every time saw it. Viewing the riot was for her like touching the stump of an amputated limb. "Why is it so important that I see you in person, then?"

Repellers cracked. Each hypersonic pellet bounced shock waves from the building facades. The echoes were individually tiny, but the total of them sounded like sleet on tin.

There were no other guests in the lobby. The clerk cowered behind his counter looking blank-eyed. The party of waiters covering the window focused on their task so that they didn't have to think about what was happening outside now, and what might happen to them in the next instant or the next day.

"I have a hologram master," Mark said, taking the video chip from his breast pocket. He was wearing casual Zenith-style clothing he'd bought at a kiosk in the starport. For most of his stay he wanted garb less conspicuous than the Quelhagen formalwear he'd put on for the conference the next day.

Macey took the chip but looked at it with only vague interest. Her eyes kept drifting back to the scene beyond the windows.

"I want you to have this copied onto thirty-second projection cubes-as many as you can, thousands if possible," Mark said in a louder voice. "Distribute them-give them away-all over New Paris, especially right downtown here. They have to be on the street by the end of the truce meeting tomorrow afternoon. Can you arrange that?"

Macey shuddered and returned her attention to Mark. "Yes, I suppose," she said. "The mission has a duplicating lab for commercial presentations. What is this, anyway?"

"Necessary for your syndicate's purposes," Mark said without answering. "Look, I don't want anybody else to know where it came from. None of the other Greenwoods, do you understand?"

Macey raised an eyebrow.

"No, I'm not selling them out!" Mark said harshly. "Some of them might think I was, though, if they knew what I was doing. I'm doing what I think's right for Greenwood. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not a traitor."

A sickly green flash lit the square momentarily. A tank had fired the huge Cassegrain laser it carried as main armament. The pulse must have been aimed skyward. The only sound was the sharp hissCRACK! of cold air slapping the heated track closed, instead of the roaring collapse of a building.

"I don't suppose my father's on Zenith now, is he?" Mark said softly.

"What?" said the investor. "No, no. This meeting wasn't announced, you know. The only reason I'm here is that my associates and I thought it was best to leave one of us here in case the Zeniths tried something of the sort."

Macey looked at the chip again. "I'll take care of this," she said, but she showed no signs of wanting to leave the doubtful security of the hotel while the riot continued. Her aides-two of the three were clearly bodyguards-paced restively nearby.

"I'd planned to have the material duplicated at a local shop," Mark said. He wasn't sure whether he ought to stay with the investor or go back to his room and hope that she'd return to the Quelhagen trade mission building more quickly. "I wasn't expecting a-"

He nodded toward the windows. The hotel staffers were outside now, considering ways to attach more sheeting to protect the still-undamaged panes.

"A riot like this," Mark continued. "Is this common?"

"There's trouble every day," Macey said, staring toward the square, "but I've never heard of it being this bad. I don't know where it's going to go from here. And there's trouble on Quelhagen too."

"Madame?" Mark said. "I want to be very clear about my position in all this. I'm not on your side, I'm on Greenwood 's. There happens to be a convergence of interests at the moment, that's all."

Macey turned sharply. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "There isn't any Greenwood except dirt and dirty people. And the investment potential. Are you telling me that you want to be paid? Is that it?"

There was no more cutting insult that one Quelhagen aristocrat could fling at another. Mark felt his lips instead spread into a smile. As if he could be worried about money with what was happening outside the hotel right now!

But Macey was. To her, money was always the first principle. Concern about losing money had brought her out tonight, even though that meant risking her life.

"No, ma'am," said Mark. He realized for the first time how much he'd changed in the past months. "Nothing like that. I just felt honor-bound to let you know where my basic loyalties lie. Honor is important, even to a dirty Greenwood settler like me."

"Bah!" Macey said. She held the video chip out to one of her aides. " Langley, don't lose this," she ordered. "We've got to get back to the mission and hope the riot hasn't spread in that direction."

She swept Mark again with her eyes. "I couldn't understand how you and Bannock got along, Maxwell," she said coolly. Her fear of the riot seemed to have passed, or at least been controlled. "Now I do. I've never seen intelligent men as determined to go off in crazy directions as the pair of you. You're human pinballs!"

She turned and strode toward the door by which she'd entered the lobby. Her aides fell into step with her.

At the door Macey looked back over her shoulder. "Also," she added across the empty room, "I suspect you're both too dangerous to live!"