Here were some of the largest and most visible proofs of the grandeur of Helder civilization. The City Hall was a massive edifice of white marble with a resplendent flight of formal stairs and a heroic facade of pillars, each capped with a bronze of a notable figure out of Helder history, the whole surmounted by a great dome of weathered green bronze. Each of the eight tiers of the Municipal Theater had its own facing of stone pillars supporting pediments rich with bas-reliefs of appropriate
" subjects, giving the whole massive building the airmess of a baker's confection. The Museum of Fine Arts was a low building of only three stories, but was designed as an endless series of wings that rambled off in all directions like a natural growth. This inviting treasure-house of art had been Grafted of diverse materials, the style of architecture varying slightly from wing to wing, and each wing was set off with sculptures of a different artistic period, so that, the whole of the exterior mirrored the manifold wonders within.
The various lesser public buildings were constructed on only a slightly smaller scale, and no effort had been spared in embellishing the least of them with heroic statuary, bronzes, and ornately worked stone, marble, or metallic facades. Each building faced an open square across the Emerald Promenade, so that the whole gave an effect of vast spaciousness as well as heroic scale.
Feric longed for the day when Party parades would fill this great boulevard from walkway to walkway and for miles in length, bearing scarlet forests of Party flags, marching to the beat of martial music and chanting patriotic songs. Soon enough that day would come, but, for now, the massed howl of motorcycle engines and the flash of flags and steel at speed were song and spectacle enough to set this stately boulevard vibrating with energy as workers and officials poured out of the buildings to observe its passage.
The column swept up the full length of the Emerald Promenade, drawing an ever-growing comet's tail of vehicles and bicycles along and then headed away from the center of the city in a northwesterly direction. The sun was waning, and Feric's plan was to tour through the western section of the city before returning at dusk to the site near the center of Walder which had been chosen for 87
the first mass rally, for surely sunset would be the most dramatic hour for what was planned.
This course carried the convoy through another bustling commercial district, then an area of tasteful apartment dwellings; slowly and subtly these well-maintained and spotless environs gave way to a neighborhood where the architecture of the dwellings was similar, but the facades rife with unrepaired damage, the walls begrimed, the plantings gone to seed and ill-tended, and the streets mired in rubbish and filth. Here the people in the streets wore soiled and worn garments and bad sullen, vacant expressions; they lined the streets silently, an unhealthy-looking and altogether sorry spectacle all too reminiscent of the dull rabble of Borgravia. To Feric's trained nostrils, the reek of Dominators hung fetid and heavy in this air.
Feric leaned forward and questioned Bogel: "What is this place?"
Bogel turned to face him with a distasteful grimace on his thin features. "This foul warren is known as Graytown. It's a notorious den of Universalists; the rabble here have been thoroughly infected with the pestilence of Zind. Periodically, they erupt from this cesspool in riots, demanding such obscenities as open borders, and the breeding of subhuman slave creatures with the aid of advisers from Zind. When our colors are known to all, we dare not show ourselves in these precincts."
"On the contrary," Feric informed him, "in the near future our storm troops must sweep through this area and slay the hidden Doms responsible for this blight on true humanity."
"No one has ever succeeded in rooting all the Doms out of this maze," Bogel said. "They are everywhere and nowhere."
'"Then we must simply crack heads here until improve-ment in the situation proves that we have eradicated them all. The only way to destroy well-entrenched dominance patterns is with ruthless force enthusiastically and somewhat indiscriminately applied."
As the column sped through the filthy streets past the unkempt gardens and grimy dwellings, Feric vowed to save as many of these poor wretches as he could from their Dom masters and Yetum them to their true Helder inheritance. As for those too deeply enmeshed to be extracted 88
from the dominance patterns short of death, to slay them would be a mercy, when one considered their present state.
