Halloran had gone first; Charles was behind him, with the four other guards hemming him in. As Halloran reached the door to the lobby at the top of the aisle, he turned to face Charles and performed an inexplicable pantomime. It was quite one second before Charles realized that Halloran was tugging at his gun, stuck in the holster.
The guard to the left of Charles softly said: "Jesus!" and threw himself at Halloran as the chief guard's gun came loose. There was a .45 caliber roar, muffled. There was another that crashed, unmuffled, a yard from Charles' right ear. The two figures at the head of the aisle collapsed limply and the audience began to shriek. Somebody with a very loud voice roared: "Keep calm! It's all part of the play! Don't get panicky! It's part of the play!"
The man who was roaring moved up to the aisle door, fell silent, saw and smelled the blood and fainted.
A woman began to pound the guard on Charles' right with her fists, yelling: "What did you do to my husband? You shot my husband!" She meant the man who had fainted; Charles peeled her off the bodyguard.
Somehow they got into the lobby, followed by most of the audience. The three bodyguards held them at bay. Charles found he was deaf in his right ear and supposed it was temporary. Least of his worries. Halloran had taken a shot at him. The guard named Weltfisch had intercepted it. The guard named Donnel had shot Halloran down.
He said to Donnel: "You know Halloran long?"
Donnel, not taking his eyes from the crowd, said: "Couple of years, sir. He was just a guy in the bodyguard pool."
"Get me out of here," Orsino said. "To the Syndic Building."
In the big black car, he could almost forget the horror; he could hope that time would erase it completely. It wasn't like polo. That shot had been aimed.
The limousine purred to a halt before the titanic bulk of the Syndic Building, was checked and rolled on into the Unrestricted Entrance. An elevator silently lifted the car and passengers past floors devoted to Alcohol Clerical, Alcohol Research, and Testing, Transport, Collections Audit and Control, Cleaning and Dying, Female Recruitment and Retirement, up, up, up, past sections and sub-sections Charles had never entered, Syndic member though he was, to an automatic stop at a floor whose indicator said: enforcement and public relations.