28.5

 

Roisin’s heart lurches. The young man pulls something long from his inside pocket. Not a gun, for he grips it around the shaft and there is no stock, nor a knife, for there is no blade that she can see. It’s more like a baton.

No. A flare. Not even a flare gun, but a roadside flare of the type many emergency vehicles carry. Illegal and dangerous, yes, but not high in the changing-the-whole-world stakes. What’s he going to do? Poke someone’s eye out with it?

He raises it. She realises he’s not intending to use it as a weapon at all, but as a signal. To whom? She would bet it was to ignite whatever the next danger might be. Best case scenario, the dense smoke at street level would panic the assembled crowds and bring the police officers charging in. At the very least it would cause chaos.

“No,” Roisin whispers, as the mantle previews the next few minutes before it happens. It becomes an entire chain reaction of effects: Once he ignites the flare the people around him panic and move away from him, crushing the people in front of them who then also panic. The whole crowd will be forced forward by the surge from the rear and the police, seeing the surge, will brace for an assault. Someone will scream, someone will fall, someone will get trampled. More panic will ensue as the emergency services try to cut through the crowd, the armed police unts will deploy and the sight of armed police will cause a mass panic.

Running, pushing, shoving, rushing. There will be a cascade effect from the supporters behind the police line. Someone will reciprocate with violence, societal norms will collapse and chaos will spread outwards as people run. There will be violence on a large scale, which will become a

Roisin grits her teeth and steps forward. The flare is not yet lit, the crowds around her are calm, if a little heated. On the edges of the square some enterprising vendors have set up coffee vans and food stalls and are treating the crowds as if they were attendees at a carnival. She steps past people, between people, through people. None of them react to her movement, but a glance toward the stage shows her the speaker’s head is moving to track her. He knows she’s her to stop whatever he’s trying to initiate.

Close now, she enters the young man’s emotional field and feels his grief and fury at the loss of his loved one. His partner. He has a need to be seen; wants his fifteen minutes of fame either before a camera or before a jury of his peers. This is the only moment that matters to his. A chance to put the truth of the whole sorry affair in the public eye. He doesn’t intend for anyone to be hurt, that’s why he hasn’t brought a weapon with him – no one but the absurd political manoeuvres of the man on the stage deserve his wrath. It wasn’t even deliberate on his part. Just a case of policy changes to balance a budget deficit and a needful claimant who suddenly no longer qualifies for benefits.

She doesn’t take his fury away. She doesn’t soothe it. She doesn’t change him. She simply reveals the truth of the moment to him, gives him the clarity of Justice to temper the rage that has built up over the last few weeks. His fury loosens enough to allow him a breath to realise what he’s about to do and consider the consequences. His hand trembles as he drops the flare without striking it to set it burning. It clatters to the pavement, where it is kicked by boots and feet that have no knowledge of it whatsoever.

The sound is small but the effect is enormous. Before she can even move away the knot of fury dissolves. And the crowd is still and calm again, as if the last few minutes never happened, because they didn’t. Only Roisin experienced them, Roisin and the mantle.

Roisin exhales, shaking, as she backs away, weaving through the crowd more self-consciously now, trying to avoid the speaker in the middle of the podium being able to pinpoint her location from the Brownian motion of the people she’s moving through, past and around.

The mantle tightens again; Harder. Sharper. Urgent and she half-staggers, half-drops to one knee like she was carrying her own, personal cross. She can feel the mantle’s agitation. “There's another?”