WALKING BACK TO THE PALADIN, ASTRID COULD not help but marvel at the sheer number, variety, and sirening intensity of emergency vehicles that had begun to arrive, so precipitously, since her Opticall with Omotoso.
The idea of a crisis seemed to have been communicated to the highest authorities, and probably, Astrid reckoned, without Omotoso’s direct knowledge. Those powers had responded with unusual vigor and alacrity, a fact that corroborated, for her, that neither she nor the constabulary were any longer in charge.
Meanwhile, as a sort of case in point, Atwell and Dawkins seemed to have conceded their respective professional roles. Together, they had left the Paladin to have “a gander at the faff,” as Dawkins then put it, like common rubberneckers. Astrid thought of saying something, but it seemed futile.
Two new Met solarcopters now thumped very low in the sky above everyone, their huge spotlight beams chopping anxiously across the zoo. The small autonews drone Astrid had seen earlier in the cabcab backed away, immediately, and the Red Watch frightcopter ascended to a high, observational altitude.
Half a dozen yellow-and-green checkered paramedigliders, one after another, shot up the Broad Walk, all slamming their brakes when they neared the growing vehicle logjam. A flabbergasting range of white and fluorange “jam butty” fast-response microgliders, ARV vans, estate gliders, and Met police saloons muscled into the area where Atwell had parked the lonely Royal Parks panda.
All the fluorescent stripes and squares on the vehicles left blinding scintillations of digital orange, green, and yellow on the night air. Soon, various shiny, cherry-colored appliances from the London Fire Brigade also appeared, including the renowned, seventy-person staffed Rescueglider NHS Prime hospital. Half a dozen gliderpumps began edging slowly up the Broad Walk, their huge 100-boson engines knocking and shuddering, their fat glider-pads flattening the park grass, all the hulks crawling along with the colossal hospital gilder like blind red elephants trying to squeeze down a garden foot-pavement with their fat mama.
Throughout, an out-and-out swarm of news fotolivers and videographers poured forth from every direction like some massive, imploding galaxy sucking itself into the darkened hole of the zoo. Two of the news crews came in white transit-gliders with their round satellite discs starting to flip upright even as they came to a stop; the words SPOTLIGHT—LIVE AUTONEWS BY SATELLITE was emblazoned on the van from the BBC.
ASTRID DECIDED TO MARCH to the tightest cluster of reporters, where she expected to find Beauchamp jabbering at its sticky center to anyone who cared. The new command structure meant she would have to withdraw her casual offer to be at Beauchamp’s service—the old principle of police primacy would obtain from here on out, no more casual “arrangements” with the old, compliant, incompetent parks police pals.
She suspected that the whole Royal Parks Constabulary that could be rousted at this hour, a corps numbering close to 150 officers, would be assigned to the traditional supporting role of creating a filtered cordon around the “incident area,” which would be no easy task at this point.
Meanwhile all looked pure chaos. Astrid knew about how the Gold-Silver-Bronze system worked, but only in the abstract. Like nearly all her colleagues on the parks force, she was right out of her depth when it came to the intricacies of the king’s new Royal Emergency Services Liaison Panel, or RESLP, plan for major incidents. Gold was strategic, Silver tactical, and Bronze ground operational level. But until a commanding officer appeared and made himself or herself known, there was little to do but, as Omotoso put it, “hold the position” and get people to safety.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Astrid, gently trying to nudge reporters aside and feeling mortified in doing so.
When she finally got to Beauchamp, she found him holding court within a scalding panopticon of direct-to-WikiNous camera lights. She felt oddly comforted to see him; Beauchamp at least was acting true to form, if nothing else in the world was tonight.
“Heya,” Astrid said, jostling beside him. She inadvertently pushed him off-center. He slipped down to his knees; he rested there for a moment like a churchgoer, blinking in surprise until she helped him up. The accident earned Astrid a prize frown.
“So, so sorry,” she whispered. Then, turning to the throng, she said: “Listen, people. Everything’s changed. A major incident has been declared.”
Not a soul seemed to have heard her. Beauchamp started smirking, and said, “What? A major what?” He was nodding his head. He leaned in close to Astrid and said in her ear. “I see your ‘support’ is here, although I should think you had nothing to do with that, did you? And now I can’t even find my squad. God bloody knows how they’ll find me in this mess.”