Then, without warning, two men rushed out of the surrounding crowd. They moved in separate directions, knocking guests out of their way and screaming unintelligibly.
Pandemonium erupted. Men and women cried out in alarm, bewildered.
There was a flash of light, a reflection off something polished. A plasticene dagger. The weapon was swinging up in an arc, ready for a murderous blow, and Brenna noticed that the second man had a knife, too.
She saw everything in slow motion, her long-honed test pilot's physical training going into top gear. This invasion was too astonishing for rational thought to cope with. She fell back on instincts, reflexes taking over, moving her arms and legs for her.
Brenna lunged in front of Quol-Bez and her father, dropping into a defensive crouch, hands poised to chop or parry. She was at a free-fall gym session, or felt as if she were. Chin Jui-Sao also had acted at once to protect the Ambassador with her own body. Together the young women formed a wall.
But neither woman was alone. There were uniformed Space Fleet personnel and diplomatic corps guards everywhere, forming a second defense line to shield Quol-Bez. Brenna hadn't seen where they had come from. They could have materialized out of nowhere.
The would-be assassins weren't attacking Quol-Bez, though, as everyone had automatically assumed. They were running past Quol-Bez and his protectors, still yelling. Brenna could just about make out what they were saying: "Traitor!"
She thrust out her foot in the path of one. The man hit her boot while he was running full-tilt, gasped, and stumbled, losing his balance. Derek and half a dozen Space Fleet and enforcement guards piled on him instantly, knocking him to the floor and wrestling with him.
Morgan and other guards stopped the second attacker, spread-eagling the thrashing, wild-eyed screamer. Brenna stepped out from the cordon of protection around Quol-Bez, staring dazedly, absorbing what she saw. Both men wore civilian clothes marked with P.O.E. diplomats' patches. She couldn't recall seeing or meeting either of them during any of the earlier conversations. Who were they? And how had they smuggled weapons past the enforcement police shielding the President's entertainment island? And who were they accusing of treachery?
Derek chopped at one assassin's wrist, using vicious Space Fleet survival tactics. The helpless captive's hand opened and the transparent knife clattered to the floor. The police disarmed the other man, taking the knives.
The frenzied men kept on fighting, like contestants in Earth's controlled-violence arenas, not aware their struggle was useless. The one Morgan was sitting on turned a look of glittering hatred on his would-have-been victim: Terran Worlds Councilman Ames. "You traitor! You sold us out! You son of a bitch. You ... Spacer! Long live Protectors of Earth ... !"
"They are Earth First fanatics!" Chin Jui-Sao exclaimed in horror. "Wei shenme?"
Guards seized the men by the hair, dragging their heads back roughly and examining their eyes. "No hyperendors, General, but they might be on illicit accelerators." This was Mars Colony, and President Fred Grieske was the ranking authority. Yet the Space Fleet troops deferred to the would-be assassins' target, Terran Worlds Councilman Ames. Ames waved his hand negligently, giving control back to his host. Grieske seized that power, jerking his thumb. The soldiers and police fastened the captives' arms behind their backs and hauled them to their feet. "Come on, you ... get them to Security. Keep the media out!"
Dian had rushed back into the circle the moment the danger began. She stood beside Todd, deeply concerned, not accepting his claims that he hadn't been hurt or even at risk. Quol-Bez, too, was surrounded by people anxious for his welfare; he kept assuring them he was all right. Everyone watched in morbid fascination as the soldiers hustled the prisoners past the light curtain and across the rotunda and out of sight.
Morgan, Derek, and Brenna stood close together. Brenna's heart had been thumping loudly, but was settling down fast. She thanked years of rigorous physical training that she had been ready for this unexpected crisis. Think-quick-or-die was the motto out in space. She and Morgan and Derek were reacting, and getting their nerves steady once more, just as well as the professional soldiers were, energy-charged, but not at all panicky, as a few of the civilians were. Some of the police and troops paused to thank them for their help in apprehending the fanatics.
Protectors of Earth's Chairman Hong Ling-Kuang had hurried over to where Councilman Ames stood, and he was now talking earnestly to the black man. Ames was stony-faced, listening to his political rival. The Chairman swore he had never seen the potential threat. Pieces of the puzzle fell into place for Brenna. The assassins had been part of Chairman Hong's entourage. That was how they had gotten invitations to this gala. It might explain, too, in part, how they had successfully brought weapons into the rotunda. Metal arms would have been detected at once. But many stylish ornaments and personal communications jewels were made of plasticene. A plasticene knife could be deadly, though. Councilman Ames had been very lucky.
Little wonder the P.O.E. Chairman was repeating again and again that he had had no idea those men were Earth First adherents, that they had passed rigid personnel checks but had never revealed their secret political fanaticism. It might even be true. On the surface, though, the situation looked very suspicious. Chairman Hong had lost face, unintentionally insulted President Grieske and the Vahnaj Ambassador, and, worst of all, been put in a painful position because of his organization's well-known rivalry with Terran Worlds Council. Sao wrinkled her nose at him, scornful, for the Chairman was almost blubbering apologies. The implications of offworld conspiracies disgusted the other onlookers, too.
"Did you hear what they called the Councilman? Spacer! My God, are they still spouting that sort of hatred down there on Earth?"
"They ought to put all of them in cryogenic cages..."
"Outrageous! The Vahnaj will think we're barbarians..."
"It's those crazies from Earth, not us. They're not Colonists..."
For several minutes, there was chaos. Grieske's aides circulated through the crowd, assuring the guests everything was okay. It took a lot of talking to convince them. Such crimes were virtually unknown on Mars. There would be a thorough investigation, and punishment would be meted out. Chairman Hong Ling-Kuang left the rotunda arm in arm with Ames, still jabbering, aides following like dust on a badlands wind. People watched them go, muttering, the gossip spreading.
"Politics," Brenna said in revulsion. "Damned politics. Even at the gala."
Derek rubbed the back of her neck. "Forget it. They're out of the way now, and they didn't hurt anyone."
"Thanks to you two. You'll probably get some medals..."
Derek and Morgan grinned and punched each other lightly on the biceps. "That and fifty credit units might get us a good meal somewhere," Morgan said.
President Grieske was giving orders, hurrying the schedule forward to cover up the unexpected crisis. "Start the fireworks. Now. Take people's minds off this dreadful interruption..."
It was evening, not full night, but on Mars that meant the sky was already black outside the bubble dome. Interior lighting had compensated so well that not many participants had noticed the passing time. When the fireworks display was announced they looked upward, excitement rising. As patriotic melodies filled the rotunda, the first spectacular color bursts exploded against the transparent dome.
"Ah! Look...!"
"Another! There!"
"Three at once!"
"Four! One for each of the Tharsis volcanoes. Wonderful colors!"
The show was a good one, one of the best Brenna had ever seen. The President's strategy paid off. Not everyone forgot what had happened earlier, but all were content to enjoy the anniversary fireworks.
Brenna was a girl again, remembering a smaller display under a much smaller life-support dome. Pavonis City had been new then. Their parents had brought her and Morgan to watch the tenth-anniversary Colony Days show—twenty years ago this night. The pleasure, the dazzling lights, the childlike won
der, came back to her. Jutta and Brenna vied to see who could spot the best fire bursts. Derek and Morgan did the same. No ancient pyrotechnics could match this. These were holo-mode images, pure, flawless, without any heat or danger. No one risked explosion by touching off tricky fuses. No spent cinders from real skyrockets fell on the audience. The deafening roars that used to accompany such shows had been replaced by music, by popular request. The only other sounds were cries of delight.
As the final, breathtaking fireworks exploded, the Colony Anthem played. Under the spangled canopy, with a sky full of real stars beyond the dome, the people sang. Some voices were off-key. Others were blurred by stimulants or soothants or emotions. Stronger ones carried them. Rank was forgotten. Assembly members and secretaries and Space Fleet soldiers stood side by side. Permanent residents and transients who spent but part of the year on Mars saluted the planet together. The lyrics were trite, written by a sentimental amateur poet to commemorate the first anniversary of Mars Colony's founding. But emotion canceled out critical judgment. At the last chorus, their voices shook the dome:
"Across the darkest sea of all to claim this barren world; Her rocks and rifts now ours to tame—Earth's banners are unfurled!
Olympus! On to Chryse's plains! Our Colony is she!
We'll make of Mars a better Earth, a Mars forever free!"
Tumultuous applause followed, and those who had headgear flung it in the air. Quol-Bez stood at courteous attention throughout, respecting his hosts' ritual. Chin Jui-Sao, like many others, was cheering herself hoarse, abandoning her normal decorum. The ceremony acted as a catharsis, washing away remnants of confusion and bad feelings the assassination attempt had caused. After all, no one had been hurt! And Councilman Ames and Chairman Hong would no doubt settle their differences—politicians always did, somehow. What did those crazy Earth First fanatics have to do with anything? This was the high point of Colony Days!
The fireworks display and the anthem weren't the closing events, but they put the cap on the evening, a bit sooner than President Grieske had planned. As the lights came back up, there was a lot of milling around. Dance music started once more. Vid dramas and five performances were scheduled for the little theaters on each entertainment island. Some went to get good seats. Others resumed their dancing. Most stood around chatting.
For some guests, it was time to leave. There were other, less public parties planned elsewhere. One of those would be at Saunder Estates, adjacent to President Grieske's summer residence, near Valles Marineris. Quol-Bez had other duty calls to make, and he and Sao and the diplomatic contingent escorting them bade good-bye, for the moment, to Brenna's parents and the President and numerous other dignitaries. They would all meet later, at one of the estates. Quol-Bez's embassy on Mars was in the same general area, east of Pavonis City, as Saunder Estates, making a later rendezvous at the private party quite easy for him.
"Time for us to go, too," Todd Saunder said when Quol-Bez had left. "It's been a great show, Fred. Event of the year. We'll see you at the Estates—about eleven or so?"
There were the obligatory pleas to stay a bit longer, courteously declined. President Grieske included Brenna and her young friends in the invitation. Brenna shrank from the idea, as did Derek and the others. A quiet party full of a lot of old Colonists! They would sit around complaining that this wasn't like the good old days and talk about people and places which meant nothing to Brenna's generation. Brenna and her friends turned down the President's urgings as politely as they could.
Todd Saunder lingered, asking his daughter, "You're not stopping by the Estates at all tonight, kitten, you and Derek?"
"Probably not, Dad. We've both got flights tomorrow. I've already booked the SE suite at Amazonis Spaceport. I imagine Morgan will be staying over, though I don't know how much time he'll spend at the party." Brenna nodded to Jutta Lefferts, who was talking with some acquaintances a few meters away.
"Well ... then ... we'll see you," her father said awkwardly. Brenna kissed him and Dian, but Todd was still reluctant to leave. Only when Dian insisted did he turn toward the light curtain with an irritable "Nag, nag! All right!" When they stepped away from the entertainment island, half a dozen Saunder Enterprises private police, in mufti, closed in around the older couple. After what had happened, security would be tight. There were many visitors from Earth here on Mars for Colony Days. The SE guards were taking no chances. Brenna knew that from now on, her longing for privacy would be futile. She and Derek would only be left alone once they were safely locked in the suite at the spaceport. She hadn't known about Derek's new plans when she had reserved that suite. And there had been a while, last night, when she had considered canceling their final night together before their ships launched. When she looked at Derek, though, she realized she would never have forgiven herself if she had. Each moment was going to be infinitely precious—and achingly rare in the future.
Morgan was staring after the departing older couple. "What's bothering Uncle Todd? I didn't think those crazies had upset him that much."
"No, it wasn't that," Brenna said. "It was the Mars landing holo-mode." She was mildly surprised that Morgan hadn't noticed the program's effect on her father. "You're looking more and more like Uncle Kevin. It broke Dad up. Didn't you see?"
"No, I guess I didn't. Maybe I should grow a mustache. That might lessen the resemblance..."
"At least it would act as a barricade to keep you from putting your foot in your mouth," Derek joshed.
"That's what I need," Brenna said, grimacing. "That got totally out of hand. I feel like an ass. Damn! Morgan and I have quizzed Quol-Bez plenty of times when he visited Saunder Estates here or Saunderhome back on Earth. But this time, with Stuart needling me ... where the hell is he, now that he caused so much trouble?"
Derek jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "He left as soon as the excitement with the assassins started. No hero, he."
"Not unless he can find a sucker like me to do his dirty work," Brenna said. "It's probably just as well. This way the gossipers will get to talk about him and Aunt Carissa." She nodded to a group of well-known rumor mongers nearby. "Sometimes they're as bad as newshunters. One of them was hinting to me earlier, trying to find out if Stuart and Carissa are 'officially' feuding again or not."
Morgan guffawed. "Hardly likely! Not after the price he paid the last time. Messy, messy! A mistress with a kid she could .prove was Stuart's. Stuart almost went along with her, too, before Carissa decided she didn't want a daughter-in-law yet. Little signature here, grease a judge's palm there, and no more mistress. Stuart kisses Auntie Carissa's hand, and she admits him back into his promised inheritance." His amusement faded. "The biggest price got paid by those poor little clones Carissa brewed up when she was trying to bring Stuart back into the fold."
"Shh!" Brenna warned.
"It worked," Morgan said, shaking his head. "Threaten him with cloned copies of her late, martyred husband. 'Tell me, Stuart, dear—who would have the better legal claim to being the true inheritor of Patrick Saunder, you or these children with Patrick's genetic structure?'"
"That was an atrocity," Derek said, discreetly lowering his voice. "What's she going to do with those babies? The whole thing was pretty damned shady, in legal terms. Cloning people is forbidden..."
"But it's done," Brenna said with a shrug. "If you can pay for it, and 'Rissa can."
"Clones! The concept's repellent. Not even a surrogate birth!"
Brenna rolled her eyes, fearing one of Derek's hobbyhorses would come riding into the conversation. She and Morgan, like a lot of other kids of wealthy parents, were surrogate-born. The practice was fairly common among the upper classes, and, unlike Carissa Saunder's clandestine cloning adventure, surrogate births were quite legal. The fertilized ovum, lab-nurtured from the real parents' genetic material, was planted in a hired gestator. The woman was paid well for her nine months' efforts of carrying the tiny parasite. The child wasn't hers at all, simply renting space in her womb, so tha
t older or low-fertility-problem women, or women with important careers, such as Dr. Dian Foix and Mariette Saunder, wouldn't be slowed down in the process of creating their families.
Common practice, for the elite; but Derek, and many other people, disliked it. His own mother had borne him, and he had always been touchy on the subject when he, Brenna, and Morgan were playmates years ago. Since he had signed off with Hiber-Ship Corporation and undergone its intense colonization training, he had become even more prejudiced. Brenna acknowledged Hiber-Ship Corporation had a point with its "roughing-it" indoctrination. There would be few modern conveniences on a frontier, never-been-explored alien planet. No special privileges like surrogate births. The pioneers would have to revert to the "basic" method of enlarging their colony. It wasn't Brenna's cup of stimulant, but she appreciated Derek's attitude.
"Cloning is repellent," he said again. "Not the kids. The people who cloned them."
"Agreed, but the tactic worked for Carissa. Held those babies over Stuart's head, and he sure shaped up fast. 'Rissa's got him jumping through hoops again, like one of her damned pet dogs."
"She's fine. Stuart's back in her good graces and planning how he'll spend his inheritance," Morgan said, his face flushing with anger. "And nobody gives a damn about those five babies copied out of Patrick Saunder's genes."
"Four," Brenna corrected him. The men looked at her, and Brenna nodded. "Dian told me that one of them died last month, never had been viable. Probably a couple of the others will die before they're pubescent, too. They're retardates, simply riddled with defective DNA. Cloning isn't quite the perfected art Aunt 'Rissa's scientists claimed it was. Listen, this is totally depressing. Let's talk about something else. Morgan, I told Dad you'd be dropping in at Saunder Estates tonight, even if I wasn't going to. Did I foul up your plans?"
Morgan's grin was wolfish. "Nope! Jutta and I will stay and chat with the old folks for a while, just to be polite. Then we intend to duck out and cross over the gorge to my estate. Picture it. That magnificent view from my balcony window. The lonely wind whistling down Valles Marineris. Some imported wine. A late-night snack. Some erotic holo-modes. A little appropriate mood music..."
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