pupils
to microdots. Despite the day's brightness, a bitterly cold wind scoured Front
Street and the Metro Convention Centre.

From a distance, Hershie watched demonstration muster out front of the Eaton
Centre, a few kilometers north, and march down to Front Street, along their
permit-proscribed route. The turnout was good, especially given the weather:
about 5,000 showed up with wooly scarves and placards that the wind kept
threatening to tear loose from their grasp.

The veterans marched out front, under a banner, in full uniform. Next came the
Quakers, who were of the same vintage as the veterans, but dressed like elderly
English professors. Next came three different Communist factions, who circulated
back and forth, trying to sell each other magazines. Finally, there came the
rabble: Thomas's group of harlequin-dressed anarchists; high-school students
with packsacks who industriously commed their browbeaten classmates who'd
elected to stay at their desks; "civilians" who'd seen a notice and come out,
and tried gamely to keep up with the chanting.

The chanting got louder as they neared the security cordon around the Convention
Centre. The different groups all mingled as they massed on the opposite side of
the barricades. The Quakers and the vets sang "Give Peace a Chance," while
Thomas and his cohort prowled around, distributing materiel to various trusted
individuals.

The students hollered abuse at the attendees who were trickling into the
Convention Centre in expensive overcoats, florid with expense-account breakfasts
and immaculately groomed.

Hershie's appearance silenced the crowd. He screamed in over the lake, banked
vertically up the side of the CN Tower, and plummeted downward. The
demonstrators set up a loud cheer as he skimmed the crowd, then fell silent and
aghast as he touched down on the _opposite_ side of the barricade, with the
convention-goers. A cop in riot-gear held the door for him and he stepped
inside. A groan went up from the protestors, and swelled into a wordless,
furious howl.

#

Hershie avoided the show's floor and headed for the green room. En route, he was
stopped by a Somali general who'd been acquitted by a War Crimes tribunal, but
only barely. The man greeted him like an old comrade and got his aide to snap a
photo of the two of them shaking hands.

The green room was crowded with coffee-slurping presenters who pecked furiously
at their comms, revising their slides. Hershie