“You don’t think much of humanity.”
“I don’t? You are from the United States, once a refuge for those who abandoned their cousins and fellow citizens in some land that had gone to devils incarnate. Look just a hundred years ago in your own history, at the Laotians after Vietnam, the Persians after the Shah, the Poles who fled their beloved land. They built better lives in peace. You might do the same.”
She began to respond, but he held up a hand. “I am being told we are in no small amount of danger. If you’ll excuse me, we must remove ourselves.”
She ran to the windows of the second-floor concourse and looked out at the endless sunset of a Kokkola summer.
A sea of gray backs filled the street in front of the conference center. The bigger ones shoved the smaller out of the way to climb onto prominences like benches and the decorative border around the plaza fountain. They hooted and honked, making it sound like a traffic jam caused by a huge flock of Canada geese.
By instinct she joined Ahn-Kha, Pistols, and Sime.
“Are they dangerous on land?” Pistols asked.
“Very,” Duvalier said. She’d seen a little of what Big Mouths could do when she was in the Delta country south of New Orleans. “They can shoot across short distances in a blur. They don’t look like they can move any more quickly on land than a sea lion, right up to the point when they launch themselves like a missile.”
“There must be thousands of them,” Sime said in wonder.
Rolf, the Norwegian Bear, appeared with an old revolver in his hand. “The best I could get, at this point,” he said.
“The garrison won’t be able to do shit to them,” Pistols said, handing Rolf the Judge. He looked big enough to handle it.
They seemed to be just milling about, waiting, nudging one another, and squabbling over comfortable spots on the roads and verges and parkland about the conference center, rather than moving in for an assault.
“I hate those fucking things,” Rolf said in slow, unsteady English. “Trondheim was full of them in the summers. They bred them, fed them bodies for the giving of the taste of human flesh a fondness. In the end, they turned them loose in Trondheim, too.”
“How did you beat them?” Duvalier asked.
“Kill enough and they start eating each other. They are cannibals of the bad wounded and the fresh dead. Easier meal than chasing down men.”
“They will not harm anyone,” one of the security people was shouting. Others took turns yelling in different languages. “They are here as bodyguards for an emissary from Kur, a member of the Great Circle itself.”
Sime was standing in a knot of shorter delegates from the Butter faction, trying to calm them down.
“What is the Great Circle?” Ahn-Kha asked.
“Like I’d know,” Duvalier said.
“A Kurian is about to speak to the conference.”
“So much for our trip to warn security,” Ahn-Kha said. “I wish my David were here. Or perhaps not. He might go mad.”
“I can go plenty mad for both of us,” Duvalier said. “If one more person tries to tell me what great news this all is, I might turn into a one-woman mental asylum for manic-obsessive cockpunchers.”
Most of the delegates returned to the main auditorium. The curiosity of what a Kurian might say to them impelled them, and it was as good a place to make a last stand as any. The security staff waited at the now bolted and barricaded doors. No one was getting out, and hopefully not in, until the matter was resolved.
Duvalier watched from one of the upper-level concourse doors with Ahn-Kha and Rolf. Sime returned to his usual spot, and Pistols sat next to him in the half-empty auditorium.
The Kurian drifted out onto the stage. Unlike the others, he did not make an effort to appear to walk naturally; his legs hung down as though he were a body hanging from a dry-cleaner’s rack. While his form was human, his face was masked. Kurians, when they bothered to appear human, often hid behind some sort of helmet or mask. Perhaps trying to imitate human emotions was too taxing when what they really wanted to do was assess their surroundings.
He had four Reapers with him. Unlike the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they appeared identical.
Still, it must be some kind of special Kurian, to go into a building full of potentially violent enemies. They were such a cowardly bunch that the only way even their trusted allies were usually able to speak to them was through a Reaper.
“I would like to thank the deputation for arranging our presence. I assure you, I mean no one here harm.
“We are not your enemies. The intelligent and resourceful have never had anything to fear from us. We appreciate the virtues of mankind just as much as your erstwhile allies do. I will not attempt to tell our side of the story, or take advantage of the fact that your so-called Lifeweavers are using you as pawns in their own game against us and disposing of you at need and to their advantage.
“The fact is, Earth is an important crossroads. I imagine many of you played a game called Risk at one time or another. As you recall, it is a game of dominating continents. There are only a few routes to move between continents, and if you remember, the old United Kingdom territories provided numerous ways to strike into continental Europe, as well as being a path to North America. Earth is like that piece of territory—it is a route to our home world and many others. We cannot be secure on Kur with your planet in the hands of our enemies. Therefore we have given up less important planets in exchange for this one.