The broken buildings were gray and jagged. Three bodies lay in the gutter. A machine gun spat over them from a cellar window.
The stone transom puffed and sparkled with bullet impacts, but the rebel machine gun continued to fire. A grenade wobbled toward the gun and burst into waves of violet smoke.
The viewpoint shifted as Chick Colville stood up. A rod of brilliantly-white flame, napalm enriched with powdered aluminum, stabbed toward the concealed gun position. Smoke sucked and swirled, but it continued to screen the cellar window even after secondary explosions shook the rubble.
Three rebels ran into the street. Their clothes were burning. Bullets killed them and covered the bodies with dust knocked from the stone of the ruined building. The oldest of the rebels might have been fourteen . . . .
There wouldn’t be street fighting here in Nevasa City . . . but a nuclear weapon might get through despite the rings of defenses, and certainly many dinner tables would have empty places that the dead would never return to fill. Sure, cheer now.
Either Ran shivered or something showed on his face. When he glanced around at his companion, she was staring at Mm. “No problem,” he said with a smile that admitted maybe there had been one.
Instead of responding, Susan said, “We’ll go to the Parisienne.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the murmur of the crowd. “It’s the hotel the embassy uses for delegations, and the grill room is famous.”
Inconsequently, she added, “It’s only a block from my apartment.”
Ran looked toward her. She didn’t meet his eyes.
The boulevard was divided by a central spine of trees with bushes planted to either side of it Buildings in this district were set back from the street, behind walled courtyards like that of the Terran embassy. Awnings of plush and silk jutted over sidewalk at the courtyard gates. Sometimes the fabric bore a crest or a legend: MINISTRY OF CULTURE, for example, or TYDIDES CORPORATION, and some in scripts unfamiliar to Ran.
A taxi with square lines and a great deal of chrome brightwork was stopped against the central plantings. A large crowd was gathered around the vehicle. A man wearing Nevasan formal kit, embroidered robes suggesting those of Earth’s Ming Dynasty, stood on the taxi’s roof.
“We must not be backward in defending our civilization against arrogance and barbarism!” the man cried. Drink slurred and hoarsened his voice. “The tree of liberty grows in the soil of martyrs’ bones!”
Listeners at the back of the circle looked over their shoulders at Ran and the woman. Nevasans tended to be short and slightly-built by general human standards. The two foreigners stood out, even without Ran’s white uniform and the glitter of Susan’s dress.
Ran stepped to the outside and put his arm around the woman. He didn’t look aside at the crowd, nor did he quicken his pace.
An emergency vehicle drove slowly down the boulevard. A blue strobe light pulsed above the cab, though its siren was silent. The driver was a policeman, but two soldiers in battledress sat in the open back of the vehicle, dangling their feet over the bumper.
“There’s the Parisienne,” Susan said quietly. She had a make-up mirror in her hand. She used it to glance at the street behind them. She didn’t pull away from Ran, though they were past the group gathered around the taxi.
She closed the mirror. “They aren’t following,” she added. “I—didn’t think it would feel like this. It frightens me.” Her voice was calm.
“It’s a bad time to be an outsider,” said Ran, who’d been an outsider all his life. He quickened his pace slightly. A broad marquee labeled PARISIENNE jutted out in the middle of the next block, guarded by a uniformed concessionaire.
They crossed an alley between two extensive courtyards. A stone bollard at the mouth blocked the passage for any but pedestrian traffic. Signs dangled from either side of the alley, but the expensive boutiques were locked and shuttered.
Ran slowed. “Is there a back entrance to the hotel?” he asked.” ! . . . don’t like the look of the folks across the street.”