He understood better now. The mass called the shots. If the mass could not understand, then nothing he did, or Augustine did, or the Taskforce, would much matter. And the mass quite clearly understood nothing. The voices drifting his direction spoke of outrage at a government that would slaughter children, voices angrily denouncing “morning-after genocide.”

He had thought about calling Kaye Lang earlier, to regain his composure, his sense of balance, but he hadn’t. That was done with, finished in a very real way.

Dicken descended the steps, passing news crews, cameras, clumps of office workers, men in blue and brown suits and dark glasses and wearing microphones in their ears. The police and National Guard troops were determined to keep people away from the Capitol, but did not prevent individuals from joining the crowd.

He had already seen a few senators descend in a tight-packed group and join the mass. They must have sensed they could not be separate, superior, not now. They belonged with their people. He had thought them both opportunistic and courageous.

Dicken climbed over the barricades and pushed into the crowd. It was time to catch this fever and understand the symptoms. He had looked deep inside himself and did not like what he saw. Better to be one of the troops on the front line, part of the mass, ingest its words and smells, and come back infected so that he could in turn be analyzed, understood, made useful again.

That would be a kind of conversion. An end to the pain of separation. And if the mass should kill him, maybe that was what he deserved for his previous aloofness and his failures.

Younger women in the crowd wore colored masks. All the men wore white or black masks. Many wore gloves. More than just a few men wore tight-fitting black jumpers with industrial fume masks, so-called “filter” suits, guaranteed by various enterprising merchants to prevent the shedding of “devil virus.”

People in the crowd at this end of the mall were laughing, half listening to a speaker under the nearest pavilion — a civil rights leader from Philadelphia sounding out in deep, rich tones, like caramel. The speaker talked of leadership and responsibility, what the government should do to control this plague, and possibly, just possibly, where the plague had arisen, inside the secret bowels of the government itself.

“Some cry out it has its birth in Africa, but we are sick, not Africa. Others cry out it is the devil’s disease that strikes us, that it is foretold, to punish—”

Dicken moved on until he came under the more frantic voice of a television evangelist. The evangelist was brightly illuminated, a large and sweating man with a square head wearing a straining black business suit. He pointed and danced around his stage, exhorting the crowd to pray for guidance, to look deep inside.

Dicken thought of his grandmother, who had liked this sort of thing. He moved on again.

It was getting dark, and he could sense a growing tension in the crowd. Somewhere, out of earshot, something had happened, something had been said. The dark triggered a change of mood. Lights turned on around the mall, casting the crowd in etched and lurid orange. He looked up and saw helicopters at a respectful altitude, buzzing like insects. For a moment, he wondered if they were all going to be tear-gassed, shot, but the disruption was not from the soldiers, the police, the helicopters.

The impulse came in a wave.

He experienced an expectant hunger, felt its advancing tide, hoped whatever was disturbing the crowd would reveal something to him. But it was not really news at all. It was simply a propulsion, first this way, then that, and he walked with the tight-packed crowd ten feet north, ten feet south, as if caught in a bizarre dance step.

Dicken’s survival instincts now told him it was time to cut the personal angst, cut the psychological crap and get out of the flow. From a speaker nearby, he heard a voice of caution. From the man next to him, dressed in a filter suit, he heard, muffled through the filters, “It’s not just one disease now. It’s on the news. There’s a new plague.”

A middle-aged woman in a flower print dress carried a small Walkman TV She held it out for those around her, showing a tiny framed head speaking in tinny tones. Dicken could not hear these words.

He worked toward the edge, slowly and politely, as if wading through nitroglycerin. His shirt and light jacket were soaked with sweat. A few scattered others, born observers, like him, sensed the change, and their eyes flashed. The crowd smothered in its own confusion. The night was deep and humid, and stars could not be seen, and the orange lights along the mall and around the tents and platforms made everything look bitter.

Dicken stood near the Capitol steps again, within twenty or thirty people of the barricades, where he had stood an hour before. Mounted police, men and women on beautiful brown horses now rich amber in the unreal light, moved back and forth along the perimeter, dozens of them, more than he had ever seen before. The National Guard troops had pulled back, forming a line, but not a dense line. They were not ready. They did not expect trouble; they had no helmets or shields.

Voices immediately around him, whispering, subdued -

“Can’t”

“Children have the”

“My grandchildren will”

“The last generation”

“Book”

“Stop”

Then, an eerie quiet. Dicken was five people from the edge. They would not let him move any farther. Faces dull and resentful, like sheep, eyes blank, hands shoving. Ignorant. Frightened.

He hated them, wanted to smash their noses. He was a fool; he did not want to be among the sheep. “Excuse me.” No response. The mob’s mind had been made up; he could feel it deliberately pulsing. The mob waited, intent, vacant.

Light flared in the east and Dicken saw the Washington Monument turn white, brighter than the floodlights. From the dark muggy sky came a loose rumble. Drops of rain touched the crowd. Faces looked up.

He could smell the mob’s eagerness. Something had to change. They were being pressed by a single concern: something had to change.

The rain came pouring. People raised their hands over their heads. Smiles broke out. Faces accepted the rain and people spun as best they could. Others shoved the spinners and they stopped, dismayed.

The crowd spasmed and suddenly expelled him and he made it to the barricades and confronted a policeman. “Jesus,” the policeman said, dancing back three steps, and the mob shoved over the barricades. The horsemen tried to push them back, weaving through. A woman screamed. The mob surged and swallowed the policemen mounted and on foot, before they could raise their batons or unholster their guns. A horse was pushed up onto the steps and stumbled, falling over into the mob, its rider rolling off, a boot flung high.

Dicken shouted “Staff!” and ran up the Capitol steps, between the guardsmen, who ignored him. He was shaking his head and laughing, glad to be free, waiting for the melee to really begin. But the mob was right behind him, and there was barely time to start running again, ahead of the people, the scattered gunshots, the wet and spreading and stinking mass.