"You'll miss the New Year's Eve celebration," Marrett said.
"In here? Watching the celebration on TV isn't my idea of fun, even if it's a three-dimensional screen," Kinsman replied. "I'd rather be on my way home."
"We'll get to Alpha an hour or so behind the immi- grants," Harriman said. "There'll be plenty of celebrating."
They made a strange foursome: Marrett leading the way, tall, an aging athlete's flat-stomached, hard-eyed figure, chomping on an unlit cigar; Harriman walking alongside Kinsman's powered chair, pudgy and round, a middle-aged cherub; Kinsman himself in his otherworldly skeleton of metal and machinery, his face hidden behind a green oxygen mask; and Landau, tall and taciturn, a dour bearded figure pacing solemnly behind the chair waiting for a tragedy.
There had not been a traffic jam in Manhattan for years. Most of the commuters were carried in and out of the island on government-operated buses and trains; private autos had dis- appeared almost entirely. But on this particular evening people poured into Manhattan. They jammed the buses, choked the trains. They drove petroleum-extravagant cars. They pedaled 546 bikes and rode in taxis and limousines and horse-drawn cabs. They clogged the bridges and tunnels where the toll gates had been left open and the exorbitant fees went uncollected by a strangely munificent government. They were filling the city, which was normally empty and quiet after sundown. Times Square was already packed with people, and for the first time in a decade the Manhattan traffic computer system broke down. The wind died away and clouds drifted across the face of the Moon, It would be cold this night, but few of the New Year's Eve fun-seekers would notice.
The General Assembly meeting chamber was empty, as Marrett had predicted. Almost. A little knot of schoolchil- dren stood clustered by the speaker's rostrum, goggle-eyed at the splendor of real wood and plush upholstery and paintings and sculpture commissioned over the years by the United Nations. The work of the world's best artists decorated the chamber profusely.
To no avail, thought Kinsman as he sat at the far end of the chamber, near the last row of visitors' seats. He tasted oxygen in his mouth, felt the slight chill of the gas and the flat tang of metal, as he looked out across the splendid and futile chamber. So much of the world's hope has been brought here—and laid to rest. Buried under talk. He noticed a broad, sweeping mural of an underwater scene, very abstract, but very recognizable. The big fish eat the little fish.
The schoolkids were trudging up the aisle, on their way out. Their teacher somehow got into a conversation with Marrett. She was a gray-haired dumpy woman with a bright smile and expressive hands.
Marrett walked back a few steps and bent over Kinsman. "Chet, these kids are children of UN employees. Mostly local people. Parents work as clerks, janitors, and such. Some of the kids'd like to talk to you."
From inside his oxygen mask Kinsman could not conduct a conversation. He raised a hand, servos humming, and pointed skyward.
"Upstairs," Marrett translated. "You'll talk to them up in your room?"
Kinsman made a circle of thumb and forefinger. At least I can do that without servos, he told himself.
Landau said. "They can visit only for a few minutes." 547
"Okay," Marrett said. "You take him back up and I'll keep the kids busy with a quick tour through the weather center. Be with you in fifteen, twenty minutes. Right?"
Kinsman nodded and Landau agreed.
The new millennium had already come to Moscow, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Vienna. All the other cities of Europe were preparing for it. News headlines proclaimed WAR THREAT EASES in forty different languages. Happy, expectant crowds streamed through London. In New York the clubs and restaurants that normally closed at sundown were filling. The streets were crushed with people. Pickpockets and prostitutes had more business than they could possibly handle.
In Florida at 5:30 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, the Rangers began boarding the shuttle. The entire Kennedy Space Center had been cleared of prying eyes. The news people were locked in the same plush prison as the refugees.
In Washington, the burly, red-eyed man shifted painfully in his chair as he watched the troop boarding on closed-circuit television.
"They take off at six?" he asked for the hundredth time.
"Barring delays," answered an Air Force colonel. "They should have Alpha secured by shortly after midnight, accord- ing to the schedule. Kinsman and his group will arrive no sooner than one A.M."
The man nodded.
"May I ask, sir," the Colonel added, "why we're allow- ing Kinsman to depart at all? Why not keep him here, under our thumb?"
"A dead martyr is a worse enemy than a live traitor." "Oh. I see. Uh, Colonel Colt should be in New York by now, incidentally."
The man came as close as he could to smiling. "Yes, I know."
Colt was there when Kinsman returned to his room. Harriman held the door open as Kinsman wheeled in, with Landau right behind him. Colt was standing by the windows, looking out at the night and the unaccustomed brilliance of the city's lights.
