Sandhill Street: The Loss of Gentleness

by Rob Summers

Chapter 15 Mayor-Elect Therion

  Lawyer Temptation hurried into Mr. Power’s office and found him in the company of the mayor-elect. Neither looked at all normal this evening. Power’s shirt collar was half torn off, and his suit begrimed. Mayor-elect Therion—a tanned, handsome man in his forties with prematurely gray hair—was seated, holding a handkerchief to his temple, his eyes tightly closed.

  “What is it?” the lawyer said to Power. “I heard you came back from the ceremony by helicopter. The all-news station says there was an explosion in the neighborhood you were in. I came as fast as I could after I got your call.”

  Neither man answered him, which in itself was ominous. Power heaved a shuddering sigh and turned on a wall-mounted viewing screen. He entered a password on the console.

  “You want Central?” he said to Dr. Therion.

  Therion shook his head, still pressing the handkerchief to his temple. “They’ll know about it,” he said with a slight accent that Temptation could not identify. “Bring up your outer surveillance cameras. We need to know where this is coming from. They might have had a mortar hidden somewhere in the neighborhood, but this looked like bigger caliber damage to me.”

  Power cursed the Heavenites vehemently while he brought up live video of the City’s surroundings. He changed the view from one camera to the next, around the circumference of the City, until something caught his attention.

  “There! What’s that? That’s different.”

  Temptation edged around to a better angle to see the screen, which showed the bleak, canyon-rutted country that stretched out on every side of town. Nothing new about that nor about the hints of red light coming up from the bottoms of the canyons. What was drawing Power’s attention was that, at the very top of the screen, white spots glowed in the mountains in the distance. Temptation had heard about this phenomenon before. City scientists had even coined a name for it: the Pearl Effect. They were believed to be some harmless geological anomaly, perhaps made of crystal, and having the appearance of towering cities enclosed in translucent globes. There had even been some talk a few years back of launching an expedition to explore them.

  When Power adjusted the camera angle upward to center these spots, Therion put the handkerchief down and leaned toward the screen with interest. Temptation, who had expected a cut, could see no mark on the man’s head, but he noticed with surprise that the handkerchief, now lying under the light of a table lamp, was stained with a streak of vivid blue. As he watched it, the stain seemed to glow from within. He quickly decided that this was no medicine being applied to the Mayor’s head. What it was he was afraid to guess.

  “They’re bigger,” Therion said, staring at the white spots. “They’ve moved!”

  Power cursed a gigantic curse. “They’ve never done that before. If they’re getting bigger, that means they’re coming our way.” He snatched up a telephone. “Miss Abject, get me Intelligence.”

  While he waited with the phone to his ear, Temptation tried again. “What happened tonight, Mr. Power?”

  Power glared at him. “A damned Heavenite sneak attack, that’s what. No declaration of war! Sandhill Street was shelled tonight, and I’m going to—yes, Intelligence? Chief Sordid? Well, get him on the phone. I’m not talking to any underlings.”

  He waited again, standing, drumming his fingers on the desktop.

  Temptation was hardly able to take in what he had been told, and cast around for something to say. “Everyone in the City will be shocked.”

  “No, they won’t,” Power said to him with the phone to his ear, “because we’re suppressing this. The eleven o’clock news will tell everyone that Leasing House accidentally caught fire during the Seal ceremony, that a spark from it reached an abandoned oil tank in a lot across the street and blew it up, and that some police cars collided with each other while answering the call. The fire in the house was put out without the help of the fire department, and no one was hurt. Have you got all that? Because that’s the version you and everyone else will tell.”

  Temptation nodded agreeably. “I’ve got it.”

  “I want everyone in the City going to bed feeling more secure than ever. Peace and safety, those are the watchwords. The last thing we need is anyone so much as hinting that the Heavenites could pull off an attack like this.”

  Power tensed with the phone to his ear. “Sordid! Get your screen on exterior sector G and tell me what in the devil’s name I’m looking at. Oh, you know about it? Yes, I’d say they’re a lot closer. They’ve never moved before, so what is it?” He listened, then broke in. “I don’t call you up to have you tell me what you don’t know. There’s going to be a full investigation as to how you and your boys got caught flatfooted tonight. No, never mind that. Did the shells come from those white things, the bubbles?” He glanced to Therion. “Says they’re too far off for that. OK, Sordid, so where did they—huh? Which sector?” he thumbed the console. “I don’t see a thing. Uh, OK. Where? On the surface?”

  The camera angle sunk to take in the surrounding country again. Leaning forward and squinting, Temptation could just make out another white object, not round like the others but elongated. Therion jumped up from his chair and firmly pressed a button, and the object was enlarged. Temptation whistled through his teeth, for although it was too far away to see detail, this was clearly a battleship, a battleship sailing on land! It moved. It floated on land, pushing through it as if it were ocean, its prow shoving aside plains and hills. Power looked and then sat down in the chair Therion had just vacated, his hand holding the phone so limply that he almost dropped it.

  “So that’s how they do it,” Therion said. “I’ll bet it’s a big mother, too. Ask him about size.”

  Power lifted the phone and asked.

  Temptation began to wonder about the relationship between these two. Until now he had not observed them together in an informal setting, and what he was seeing was an astonishing subservience on Power’s part. Furthermore, the big man had so far directed no sneers or rudeness toward the mayor-elect, although with Mayor Strawman he had always been merciless. Temptation had heard rumors about Therion: that he was not the usual front man for Power and that he had not been Power’s choice as the administration’s candidate. He had discounted these rumors with a cynical laugh—until now. Where did Therion get his leverage?

  “He says they can’t tell about size yet,” Power reported. “It’s a big one.”

  “Coming our way?”

  “Looks it.”

  While Power kept the phone to his ear, Therion strode around the room heaving deep breaths. From time to time Power broke into whatever Sordid was saying to remind the intelligence man of his disgusting incompetence or to swear at the Heavenites. He at last hung up and, going to a cabinet in the corner, opened it, revealing a bar. He began to mix drinks without asking the other two if they wanted them. Temptation certainly wanted his.

  “Sordid says there were Heavenite marine squads surrounding two houses on Sandhill Street during the action tonight,” Power said as he poured. “They’ve retired in the trucks that brought them, which apparently were parked in the back alleys, and the little gooseberry doesn’t know where they got to.” Having finished mixing one drink, he paused to take a gulp from it. “At the same time as the attack, the air traffic controller at the airport spotted some enemy aircraft on his radar, just hovering near the City over to the west, behind cloud cover. Hanging there like damned flying saucers! Sordid says some of the Heavenite battleships have fighters on them that can take off vertically.” He pointed at the ship on the screen. “They probably came from that.”

  “Of course, they did,” Therion said cuttingly. “Where else?”

  “And we thought we were safer coming back in the copter.” Power said. “Geez, we could have been shot down!”

  “Where’s your own air force?” Therion demanded.

  “We’re so far in
debt to your people that we can’t afford a balloon,” Power said bitterly. “The defense budget wasn’t just cut, it was erased. Now you blame me for that!”

  Temptation kept his face impassive. Even in this office, talk about the City’s monstrous debt to Hell was usually forbidden. Certainly, he had never heard Power speak of it before. Even more interestingly, this was the first hint he had had that Therion had Hellite connections. Power had said to him ‘your people.’ The source of the mayor-elect’s leverage was perhaps becoming apparent. He stole a look at the man’s face. He looked human enough, but just what country did he come from?

  “You give us a break, give us some breathing room,” Power added, “and we’ll buy some popguns.”

  Therion looked at Temptation as if realizing that Power was saying too much. “You, you’re one of the City lawyers?”

  Temptation introduced himself.

  “Good, fine, I have a job for you. We have a prisoner named Gentleness who was condemned to death for attempted arson. You know the case?”

  Temptation said he did.

  “His death sentence is to be carried out immediately. Tonight, do you understand? Yes? Then get on it. Power and I will remain here, and you phone us reports every ten minutes. No delays whatsoever. I want word that he’s dead, and I want it within the hour. Go.”

  Temptation turned to Power, who was looking rather wan as he brought him his drink.

  “I know Therion’s term hasn’t begun yet, but he’s elected,” the big man said to Temptation with weary emphasis. “We’ll have Mayor Strawman sign any necessary documents, but from now on you listen to Therion. Go and do what he says.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Therion motioned to the lawyer to remain a moment and picked up his glass. “Gentlemen, a toast—to revenge.”