City Wars by Dennis Palumbo Read Free Book Online Page A

them and waited.
    The rasp of their voices, like some great gust, settled.
    Giles spoke. And wondered, as he did so, how much of what he’d said and would say they really understood. How much they actually comprehended of their own destiny.
    “Brothers and sisters,” he began quietly, easily, “it is for a very good reason that we gather today. This is more than merely a celebration of our strength and solidarity. For I have news. I bring you news of a friend.”
    A few lunks stirred. Hushed murmurs.
    “Yes,” Giles went on. “A friend to the lunks. A friend who is himself not one of us, but who shares our anguish and our pain.”
    Their whispers formed a chain.
    A friend to the lunks
.
    “He came to me as a sympathizer to our cause,” Giles said. “He shares our pain. He recognizes the injustice of our lives. And he wishes to help us.”
    Their voices held wonder.
    A friend to the lunks
.
    “He wishes to atone, for himself and others of his kind. He wishes to see us take our rightful places as citizens of Chicago!”
    Giles rocked on the heels of his boots.
    “And we will use the friendship he offers us—and use it soon. Yes, my brothers and sisters … soon we will leave this place of hiding and do what must be done to force Government to heed us, to listen to our demands. Soon!”
    Pale eyes blinked in the cool dimness.
    Soon!
    Giles turned away from them, away from the questions slowly forming on their lips. He strode purposefully to the doorway. As always, they would let him leave first.
    The doorway framed him. He seemed to tower.
    “Lunks,” he said softly, “will no more welcome death.”
    Giles dipped his head beneath the arch and was gone.
    The lunks stood together as before.
    Heads must raise,
Our heads must raise—
Eyes have life,
Our eyes have life—
Voices lift,
Our voices lift—
Lunks will no more welcome death!
Lunks will no more welcome death!
Lunks will no more—
    The knoll was gray and dead, black grass matted in wiry tufts across its face. There were few clouds now, little wind. Dark smoke wafted up and tinged the heavy blueness of sky.
    Bowman brought the ’copter around again and swung it in a low arc over the knoll.
    “This is the last post,” he shouted over the roar. Beside him, his face the color of dried clay, sat Minister Gilcrest. He’d insisted on coming along, on seeing that which he was afraid to let his mind imagine. He clung now to the straps of his seat-pod, hands white and without feeling. The destruction of E Sector had robbed his eyes of their life; he was huddled now against the noise, lost in the folds of his cloak.
    The Guardian behind him was pointing out the side pane.
    “Do you see it?” Cassandra cried. She reached across and tapped Bowman’s shoulder. “Down and to the left. Do you see it?”
    Bowman nodded and eased down, circling the knoll. The ’copter blades hummed as he swept across the tall grass that parted in waves beneath them.
    They passed over hulks of twisted metal, whole sections of buildings shorn and smoldering; and here and there, the almost unrecognizable forms that had once been the bodies of men and women.
    Cassandra pointed again, and Gilcrest saw it too. A hovercraft, its hull scorched and pitted, and distended like a bovine belly. Inside, its two occupants were still seated at the controls, buckled in, manikinlike in death.
    “It’s a miracle they made it to the hovercraft,” the old man said. “For all the good it did them.”
    “Can we go down?” Cassandra poked Bowman again.
    He shook his head. “No. The gamma count is too high. Minister, I wouldn’t send a party in for at least twenty-four hours.”
    Gilcrest said nothing.
    Bowman took another sweep around E Sector, the cameras in the ’copter ports recording the extent and nature of the damage for analysis in Government labs.
    No one spoke for what seemed like a long while. Once, Bowman turned and saw Cassandra gently rubbing the back of Minister Gilcrest’s neck. He