Five older women dressed in light yellow robes walked into the circle with hands clasped, smiling with dignity, and surrounded the ring in the center of the compass. The group said not a word.
Kaye and Mitch descended to the south side of the hill, overlooking Lake Union. Mitch felt a breeze coming from the south and saw a few low banks of cloud moving over downtown Seattle. The air was like wine, clean and sweet, temperature in the low seventies. Cloud shadows swung dramatically over the hill.
“Too many people,” Mitch told Kaye.
“Let’s stay and see what they’re up to,” Kaye said.
The crowd compacted, forming concentric circles, all holding hands. They politely asked Kaye and Mitch and others to move farther down the hill while they completed their ceremony.
“You’re welcome to watch, from down there,” a plump young woman in a green shift told Kaye. She explicitly ignored Mitch. Her eyes seemed to track right past him, through him.
The only sound the gathering people made was the rustling of their robes and the motion of their sandaled feet in the grass and over the bas-relief figures of the sundial.
Mitch shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders.
The governors were seated at the table, leaning right or left to speak in murmurs with their aides or adjacent colleagues. Shawbeck remained standing, hands clasped in front of him. Augustine had walked around one quarter of the table to speak with the governor of California. Dicken tried to puzzle out the seating arrangements and then realized that someone was following a clever protocol. The governors had been arranged not by seniority, or by influence, but by the geographic distribution of their states. California was on the western side of the table, and the governor of Alabama sat close to the back of the room in the southeastern quadrant. Augustine, Shawbeck, and the secretary sat near where the president would sit.
That meant something, Dicken surmised. Maybe they were actually going to bite the bullet and recommend that Augustine’s policies be carried out.
Dicken was not at all sure how he felt about that. He had listened to presentations on the medical cost of taking care of second-stage babies, should any survive for very long; he had also listened to figures showing what it would cost for the United States to lose an entire generation of children.
The liaison for Health stood by the door. “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”
All rose. The governor of Alabama got to his feet more slowly than the others. Dicken saw that his face was damp, presumably from the heat outside. But Augustine had told him that the governor had been in conference with the president for the past two hours.
A Secret Service agent dressed in a blazer and golf shirt walked past Dicken, glanced at him with that stony precision Dicken had long since become used to. The president entered the room first, tall, with his famous shock of white hair. He seemed fit but a little tired; still, the power of the office swept over Dicken. He was pleased that the president looked in his direction, recognized him, nodded solemnly in passing.
The governor of Alabama pushed back his chair. The wooden legs groaned on the tile floor. “Mr. President,” the governor said, too loudly. The president stopped to speak with him, and the governor took two steps forward.
Two agents glanced at each other and swung about to politely intervene.
“I love the office and I love our great country, sir,” the governor said, and wrapped the president in his arms, as if delivering a protective bear hug.
The governor of Florida, standing next to them, grimaced and shook his head in some embarrassment.
The agents were mere feet away.
Oh, Dicken thought, nothing more; just a blank and prescient awareness of being suspended in time, a train whistle not yet heard, brakes not yet pressed, arm willed to move but as yet limp by his side.
He thought perhaps he should get out of the way.
The blond young man in a black robe wore a green surgical mask and kept his eyes lowered as he advanced up the hill to the compass rose. He was escorted by three women in brown and green, and he carried a small brown cloth bag tied with golden rope. His wispy, almost white hair blew back and forth in the breeze that was quickening on the hill.
The circles of women and men parted to let them through.
Mitch watched with a puzzled expression. Kaye stood with arms folded beside him. “What are they up to?” he asked.
“Some sort of ceremony,” Kaye said.
“Fertility?”
“Why not?”
Mitch mulled this over. “Atonement,” he said. “There are more women than men.”
“About three to one,” Kaye said.
“Most of the men are older.”
“Q-Tips,” Kaye said.
“What?”
“That’s what young women call men who are old enough to be their fathers,” Kaye said. “Like the president.”
“That’s insulting,” Mitch said.
“It’s true,” Kaye said. “Don’t blame me.”
The young man was hidden from their view as the crowd closed again.
A large burning hand picked up Christopher Dicken and carried him to the back of the wall. It shattered his eardrums and collapsed his chest. Then the hand pulled back and he slumped to the floor. His eyes flickered open. He saw flames rush along the crushed ceiling in concentric waves, tiles falling through the flames. He was covered with blood and bits of flesh. White smoke and heat stung his eyes, and he shut them. He could not breathe, could not hear, could not move.
The chanting began low and droning. “Let’s go,” Mitch told Kaye.
She looked back at the crowd. Now something seemed wrong to her, as well. The hair on her neck rose. “All right,” she said.
They circled on a walkway and turned to walk down the north side of the hill. They passed a man and his son, five or six years old, the son carrying a kite in his small hands. The boy smiled at Kaye and Mitch. Kaye looked at the boy’s elegant almond eyes, his long close-shaven head so Egyptian, like a beautiful and ancient ebony statue brought to life, and she thought, What a beautiful and normal child. What a beautiful little boy.
She was reminded of the young girl standing by the side of the street in Gordi, as the UN caravan left the town; so different in appearance, yet provoking such similar thoughts.
She took Mitch’s hand in hers just as the sirens began. They looked north toward the parking lot and saw five police cars skidding to a halt, doors flung open, officers emerging, running through the parked cars and across the grass, up the hill.
“Look,” Mitch said, and pointed at a lone middle-aged man dressed in shorts and a sweatshirt, talking on a cellular phone. The man looked scared.
“What in hell?” Kaye asked.
The droning prayer had strengthened. Three officers rushed past Kaye and Mitch, guns still bolstered, but one had pulled out his baton. They pushed through the outer circles of the crowd on the top of the hill.
Women shrieked abuse at them. They fought with the officers, shoving, kicking, scratching, trying to push them back.
Kaye could not believe what she was seeing or hearing. Two women jumped on one of the men, shouting obscenities.
The officer with the baton began to use it to protect his fellows. Kaye heard the stomach-twisting chunk of weighted plastic on flesh and bone.
Kaye started back up the hill, but Mitch grabbed her arm.
More officers plowed into the crowd, batons swinging. The chanting stopped. The crowd seemed to lose all cohesion. Women in robes broke away, hands clutched to their faces in anger and fear, screaming, crying, their voices high and frantic. Some of the robed women collapsed and pounded the scruffy yellow grass with their fists. Spittle dribbled from their mouths.