Murgatroyd said:
"Chee!"
The city's towers loomed higher and taller above the horizon. Then, abruptly, the fast-moving cavalcade came to the edge of the city and plunged into it.
It was not a normal city. The buildings were not eccentric. All planets, but very new ones, show local architectural peculiarities, so it was not odd to see all windows topped by triple arches, or quite useless pilasters in the brick walls of apartment buildings. These would have made the city seem only individual. But it was not normal. The streets were not clean. Two windows in three had been smashed. In placed Calhoun saw doors that had been broken in and splintered, and never repaired. That implied violence unrestrained. The streets were almost empty. Occasional figures might be seen on the sidewalks before the speeding ground cars, but the vehicles never passed them. Pedestrians turned corners or dodged into doorways before the cavalcade could overtake them.
The buildings grew taller. The street level remained empty of humans, but now and again, many stories up, heads peered out of windows. Then high-pitched yellings came from aloft. It was not possible to tell whether they were yells of defiance or derision or despair, but they were directed at the racing cars.
Calhoun looked quickly at the faces of the men around him. The Minister for Health looked at once heartbroken and embittered. The head of the planetary police stared grimly ahead. Screechings and howlings echoed and re-echoed between the building walls. Objects began to fall from the windows: bottles, pots and pans. Chairs and stools twirled and spun, hurtling downward. Everything that was loose and could be thrown from a window came down, flung by the occupants of those high dwellings. With them came outcries which were assuredly cursings.
It occurred to Calhoun that there had been a period in history when mob-action invariably meant flames. Men burned what they hated and what they feared. They also burned religious offerings to divers bloodthirsty deities. It was fortunate, he reflected wryly, that fires were no longer a matter of common experience, or burning oil and flaming missiles would have been flung down on the ground cars.
"Is this unpopularity yours?" he asked. "Or do I have a share in it? Am I unwelcome to some parts of the population?"
"You're unwelcome to paras," said the police head coldly. "Paras don't want you here. Whatever drives them is afraid the Med Service might make them no longer paras. And they want to stay the way they are." His lips twisted. "They aren't making this uproar, though. We gathered everybody we were sure wasn't ... infected into Government Center. These people were left out. We weren't sure about them. So they consider we've left them to become paras and they don't like it!"
Calhoun frowned again. This confused everything. There was talk of infection, and talk of unseen creatures come out of the jungle, making men paras and then controlling them as if by demoniac possession. There were few human vagaries, though, that were not recorded in the Med Service files. Calhoun remembered something, and wanted to be sick. It was like an infection, and like possession by devils, too. There would be creatures not much removed from fields involved, anyhow.