The other side was even more formidably prepared. Every entrance to the Mall was penned in now. The police had stopped letting additional protesters onto the Mall at eight this morning. Where there had been open streets there were lines of cops in riot armor. In front of the Smithsonian Museum of National History, the closest building to him, Rangan saw yet another line of police in riot gear. To his left, the Washington Monument formed the west barrier of the protest, and it too was held by a line of police in riot armor. On the other side of the Washington Monument, the long stretch of Mall leading up to the Lincoln Memorial was given over the pro-Stockton rally, itself thousands strong, but puny and sparse in comparison to the anti-Stockton protest on this side.

Closer, at every entrance to the eastern half of the mall, the half with the anti-Stockton protesters, the police had placed heavily armed and armored SWAT and urban counter-terror vehicles, scores and scores of them. Behind those were giant windowless police buses for hauling prisoners away. Interspersed were vehicles that looked even more lethal, squat armored things with tracks instead of wheels, with turrets on top mounted with weapons that looked like they were meant for battlefields, not protests.

Rangan didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it.

A huge cheer went up from the crowd, snapping Rangan out of his reverie.

Ten o’clock, Cheyenne sent across the tight link of their antennae. Decision’s starting.

Kade waited until the office was emptying around 8pm. Then he tuned in to US news, brought it up on the screens in front of him.

He listened and watched for a while, as talking heads speculated on how the Supreme Court would rule, what it would mean.

Then he realized this wasn’t what he wanted at all.

He wanted to be with his people.

Kade closed his eyes, went Inside, pulled up a mindstream site, where Nexus users around the world made real-time feeds of some or all of their senses, thoughts, and emotions available, and started searching for some at the National Mall.

Ten o’clock, Cheyenne sent. Decision’s starting. Up on the screens.

Rangan turned his head. All around the Mall, protesters had unfurled giant flexible screens, sheets of polymer and smart organic circuits held taut with long poles and powered by portable fuel cells. The closest to him was less than a hundred yards away, near the corner of the Smithsonian Museum of National History. It came to life now, the pale wrinkled face of Aaron Klein, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, hovering over his somber black robes. He was speaking. Loudspeakers were broadcasting his words to the crowd, subtitles appearing below his lips.

And suddenly the crowd of tens of thousands fell silent.