Even so they weren’t all going to be able to see, Hansen thought; and then he noticed that the crowd of gaily-clad citizens was moving in a clockwise rotation, bringing forward those from the other side of the huge room and taking away those who’d already gotten a close look at their visitor. There was no apparent pushing or concern.
“Ah—” he said.
The room stilled save for the whisper of sandals on the tile flooring.
He certainly wasn’t going to sit. He felt like an idiot. Lea started down the steps. Hansen grimaced, wishing he’d grabbed her earlier so that he at least wouldn’t be alone here in his—`ignorance’ was an insufficient word for how he felt.
“Ah,” he repeated, “ah, I don’t know how I came to be here, but I hope that—”
The sunlight through the open sides of the common area dimmed as though shutters had been drawn all around the building. People screamed.
Hansen glanced around him. The threat was everything but palpable, and he was exposed on top of the dais.
He was in his element.
Short-boled palms and bromeliads fringed the exterior of the common area. While the sky beyond darkened in pulses like the throbbing surf, the broadleafed plants were sucked into shadowy, fanged silhouettes. The sun brightened again, and the normal foliage returned.
Shadow humans appeared in the common area when the plants grew serpent doubles also.
Amid the crowd’s weeping and wordless cries, Hansen heard from hundreds of throats a Passage/another Passage . . . and over and over again, May it be swift/May it end/end/end. . . .
For a moment, the great covered park was what it had been when Hansen first saw it: bright, clean, and filled with thousands of healthy people, though their faces were now streaked with tears and terror. Then it changed again, and Hansen saw an armored vehicle that must have weighed hundreds of tonnes.
The tank glided toward Hansen in a false silence while the shadow figures and vegetation shuddered with the noise that such a monster must have made in any medium denser than vacuum. It sprouted missile batteries, guns, and swatches of wire mesh which could have been either antennas or a form of defense.
The tank proceeded at a walking pace which nothing in the park or its own shadow world slowed or affected.
The folk of Diamond keened and clutched one another, keeping their faces down and their eyes closed.
There was no place to run. Hansen picked up the chair—extruded plastic, light if not quite flimsy . . . and probably just as effective as any other man-portable weapon against a monster like the tank which bore down on him now.
Lenses and vision blocks winked with gray highlights that didn’t come from the sun of Diamond. None of the tank’s guns were aimed at Hansen, but attachment lugs on the bowslope would gore him back until he and they sailed off the edge of the building. Even on the dais, he had to look up to see the top of the turret and the multiple weapons’ cupolas.
Hansen swung his piece of furniture at a vision block on the upper left of the bowslope.
The plastic chair whistled at and through the knobbly armor without touching anything material save the air. Hansen overbalanced and almost fell of the front of the dais. Daylight had returned, and with it the rich, soft colors of Diamond.
“Oh, Mr. Hansen . . . ,” someone murmured behind him. Hansen turned. Lea had started up the steps to the dais again and paused, staring at the chair in the visitor’s hands.
Anything’s a weapon if you want it to be one.
Hansen put the chair down carefully, feeling embarrassed . . . though there wasn’t any need to, god knew. What he’d done made as much sense as anything could in a crazy situation like that.
“Oh, Mr. Hansen,” Leas repeated. “I’m so sorry.”
She stepped closer to him and reached out her hand. Hansen glanced over his shoulder; the whole crowd was watching him, but there was an evident sadness in everyone’s eyes.
What he’d done made sense where Hansen came from; but this was Diamond.