Nicholas got Carol seated, got her attention turned to the screen.
"With each passing day," Yancy said, and he spoke with pride, a good and reasonable pride, "we grow stronger. Not weaker. _You_ are stronger." And by god he looked, then, directly at Nicholas and Carol and Dale Nunes and Stu and Rita and all the rest of them at the Tom Mix, at every one of them except Souza, who was dead; and when you are dead, Nicholas realized, no one, not even the Protector, can tell you that you are growing stronger. And when you died just now, we also died. Unless that pancreas, at whatever cost, from whatever ugly blackmarket source which robs a military hospital, can be obtained.
Sooner or later, Nicholas realized, despite the law against it, I will have to go up to the surface.
3
When the I-am-larger-than-you image of Talbot Yancy's leather and iron face had left the screen and the lackluster gray had returned, Commissioner Dale Nunes hopped to his feet and said to the assembly, "And now, folks. Questions."
The audience remained inert. As inert as it could manage--and get away with it.
Required to by his elected status, Nicholas rose and stood by Dale. "It must be a colloquy between us and the Estes Park Government," he said.
From the back of Wheeling Hall a sharp voice--it could have been male or female--said, "President St. James, did Maury Souza die? I see Dr. Tigh here."
Nicholas said, "Yes. But he's in quick-freeze so there's still hope. Now, people, you've listened to the Protector. Before that you saw the infiltration and demolition of Detroit. You know we're already behind in our quota; we must supply twenty-five leadies this month, and next--"