Glasshouse - Charles Stross [80]
Behind me Fiore shouts something about natural justice, but he’s barely audible over the crowd. The doors are open, and people are spilling out into the car park. I gasp with pain as someone stomps on my left foot, but I stay upright and sense rather than see Sam following me. I make it through the crush in the doorway and keep going, dodging small clumps of people and a struggling figure, then Sam catches up with me. “Let’s go,” I tell him, grabbing his hand.
There are people in front of us, clustered around—it’s Jen. “Reeve!” she calls.
I can’t ignore her without being obvious. “What do you want?” I ask.
“Help us.” She grins widely, her eyes sparkling with excitement as she spreads her arms. She’s wearing a little black-silk number that displays her secondary sexual characteristics by providing just a wisp of contrast: her chest is heaving as if she’s about to have an orgasm. “Come on!” She gestures at the dark knot near the Church entrance. “We’re going to have a party!”
“What do you mean?” I demand, looking past her. Her husband, Chris, is conspicuously absent. Instead, she’s acquired a cohort of her own, followers or admirers or something, Grace from twelve and Mina from nine and Tina from seven—all of them are from newer cohorts than our own—and they’re watching her, looking to her as if she’s a leader . . .
“Purify the polity!” she says, almost playfully. “Come on! Together we can keep everyone in line and hold everything together—and earn loads more points—if we make a strong enough statement right now. Send the deviants and perverts a message.” She looks at me enthusiastically. “Right?”
“Uh, right,” I mumble, backing away until I bump into Sam, who’s come up behind me. “You’re going to teach them a lesson, huh?”
I feel Sam’s hand tightening on my shoulder, warning me not to go too far, but Jen’s in no mood to pick up minor details like sarcasm: “That’s right!” She’s almost rapturous. “It’s going to be real fun. I got Chris and Mick ready—”
There’s a high-pitched scream from somewhere behind us. “Excuse us,” I mumble, “I don’t feel so good.” Sam shoves me forward, and I stumble past Jen, still stammering out excuses, but the situation isn’t critical. Jen doesn’t have time to waste on broken reeds and moral imbeciles, and she’s already drifting toward the group in the Church door, shouting something about community values.
We make it to the edge of the car park before I stumble again and grab hold of Sam’s arm. “We’ve got to stop them,” I hear myself saying. I wonder what that toad Fiore thought he was unleashing when he transferred so many points from one cohort to another. Doing that to the score whores is only going to have one result. At the very least, cohort three is going to rip the shit out of Phil and Esther—but now we’ve got Jen, trying to spin the whole thing as social cleansing in order to position herself at the head of a mob. I can see a hideous new reality taking shape here, and I want nothing to do with it.
“Not sensible.” He shakes his head but slows down.
“I mean it!” I insist. I swallow, my throat dry. “They’re going to beat Phil and Esther—”
“No, it’s already gone past that point.” There’s an ugly quaver in his voice.
I dig my heels in and stop. Sam stops, too, of necessity—it’s that, or shove me over. He’s breathing heavily. “We’ve got to do something.”
“Like. What?” He’s breathing deeply. “There’re at least twenty of them. Cohort three and the idiots who’ve gotten some idea that they can parade their virtue by joining in. We don’t stand a chance.” He glances over his shoulder, seems to shudder, then suddenly pulls me closer and speeds up. “Don’t stop, don’t