Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  “I’ll tell her to throw them out and say nothing,” Galaiah says. “That way she can play a scene.”

  Aiah is relieved. “Do that, please. If I suggest that, she’ll just do the opposite.”

  “True.”

  “And tell people that I... well, someone may be listening on my phone, so they should be careful about the messages they leave me.”

  “Yes. I’ll tell them.”

  “Thank you, Nana.”

  “You be careful. You can’t trust longnoses.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you talk to them, either.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell them, anyway.”

  On the way home Aiah buys a few pieces of fruit from a street vendor — a battered orange and a pair of plums. At home she washes the plums carefully with water and chlorine bleach — that’s what you do with street fruit — and eats one. The pulp is strangely tasteless, full of juice but without savor.

  Constantine’s arboretum, she thinks, has spoiled her for the ordinary stuff.

  HYDROGEN LEAK KILLS 50 IN FIFTEENTH WARD!

  Aiah makes a sauce for vat curd out of freeze-dried vegetables and some spring onions from her pocket garden, then watches the video news. Disaster teams from other areas are pouring into Caraqui. Drumbeth, on behalf of the new triumvirate, speaks about the need for aid and compassion, his voice firm, his tone a bit fierce. A member of the Keremath family, who as ambassador to another metropolis escaped the coup, denounces the new government as murderers and proclaims a government in exile. The few surviving Mondray’s Regulars, having surrendered, are being air-shuttled back to the Timocracy.

  Considerable air time is devoted to speculation about Constantine, even though he hasn’t appeared in public since yesterday. There’s much more interest in Constantine than in Drumbeth or any other member of the actual government.

  Aiah swallows a mouthful of pasta and curd. In Caraqui, she thinks, things are happening.

  GARGELIUS ENCHUK ON TOUR

  TICKETS AVAILABLE ON THE WIRE!

  “09:00 hours, Horn Two reorientation to degrees 040. Ne?”

  “Da. 09:00 hours, Horn Two reorientation to degrees 040. Confirmed.”

  “09:00, Horn Two transmit at 1400 mm. 10 minutes. Ne?”

  “Da. 09:00, Horn Two transmit at 1400 mm. 10 minutes. Confirmed.”

  COUP SURVIVOR DENOUNCES CONSTANTINE

  CALLS FOR WORLD COUNCIL INTERVENTION

  By midbreak the Wire has found out about the burned factory’s connection to the coup in Caraqui and a pack of reporters sits in the Authority lobby demanding information. Another emergency meeting is called.

  “Simple,” Mengene says. “We blame everything on Constantine. The factory fire, the Bursary Street flamer, everything.”

  “There’s no evidence connecting him to either,” Oeneme points out.

  “Who else could it be? And even if it wasn’t, who cares? We’re not judges, we don’t need evidence just to smear him in the media. It gets us completely off the hook.”

  Oeneme smiles. “All I have to say is that our investigation is aimed at making a connection between Constantine and the factory.”

  “Exactly. Let the reporters do our work for us.”

  Aiah glances up from the spilled-coffee circles she’s drawing on the glass tabletop, looks at the broken office chair leaning against the wall’s gold-plated chrysanthemum pattern, and smiles.

  If the official blame is laid on Constantine, she thinks, that means they can’t lay it on her.

  DOLPHIN APPOINTED TO MINISTRY

  PAYOFF FOR SUPPORT IN COUP

  No one has explained this line of reasoning to the creepers, however, who show up after Aiah’s lunch break for another round of questions. They’ve got ahold of her finances and have discovered that a few weeks ago she paid off debts totaling over six hundred dalders.

  “I paid them,” Aiah says, “because my lover phoned to tell me that he was sending a cashgram for eight hundred. And if you’ve got my bank accounts, you’ll see that he did just that.”

  “Where did you get the six hundred? Your bank balance had only forty-some dalders in it.”

  “From the emergency fund under my mattress,” Aiah says. She leans back onto the plush cushions of her stolen chair and forges ahead with the story she’s readied ahead of time.

  “I play the lottery. Every so often I win — not much, never more than twenty — and I put the winnings away.” She reaches into her pocketbook and picks up the ticket she’d bought before work.

  “Why don’t you put the money in a bank?”

  “Twenty isn’t worth a trip to the bank.” She shrugs. “Besides, it’s a Barkazil thing. We don’t trust banks much. My family lost everything when the banks failed in the Barkazi war.”

  The creepers gaze down at her with perfect skepticism. “But when the eight hundred came,” one says, “you left it in the bank. You didn’t put it under your mattress.”

  Aiah shrugs. “It wasn’t my money. It was Gil’s. I still have a hundred-and-some stashed in a bag under the mattress, though.”

  Which is perfectly true. If they’ve got a mage with a warrant, he’ll find it there.

  They try to shake this story for some time, but Aiah digs in her heels and insists on the truth of her story. They can’t prove she never had cash stashed in her apartment.

  After the questions circle back to this point for a third time, she tells them she needs to get to work.

  Again, they leave when she tells them to. Perhaps, she thinks, she’s getting the upper hand.

  LOTTERY SCANDAL WIDENS

  INTENDANT PROMISES FULL INVESTIGATION

  “14:20 hours, Horn One reorientation to degrees 357. Ne?”

  “Da. 14:20 hours, Horn One reorientation to degrees 357. Confirmed.”

  “14:2.0, Horn One transmit at 1850 mm. 20 minutes. Ne?”

  “Da. 14:20, Horn One transmit at 1850 mm. 20 minutes. Confirmed.”

  The office rings with Jayme’s screams and smells of dirty diapers and warm milk. There’s a numbing series of calls for plasm. Her ears and skull ache with the weight of the heavy headset.

  In Caraqui, she thinks, things are happening.

  CONSTANTINE LINKED TO FACTORY DISASTER IN JASPEER

  DETAILS ON THE WIRE!

  As she leaves the Authority building, Aiah looks up to see the gold letters unfolding across the sky, and her heart gives a leap.

  Try and blame it on me now, she thinks.

  CONSTANTINE IN HIDING

  NO WORD FROM COUP MASTERMIND

  The news is all about Constantine, even though no one’s seen him since Sunday. He’s been appointed Minister of Resources in the new government, a job that will put him in charge of plasm. Weekend business for Lords of the New City makes it the largest-opening chromoplay of all time, despite the fact that twenty percent of the planet’s population weren’t allowed to see it by their governments.

  And authorities in Jaspeer have now officially linked him with the factory disaster. Much air time is absorbed by the government’s indignation.

  Aiah’s communication rig chimes as she’s halfway through her leftover vat curd. She turns down the audio, leaving on video the image of Constantine overlaid with a red banner screaming Under Investigation, and then she picks up the headset. “Yes?”

  “Hi. This is Gil. Good news.”

  “I —”

  “I’m coming back. In ten days or so. We’re wrapping everything up in Gerad. And I’m getting a promotion to assistant vice-president, which will bring us another five thousand a year.”

  “I—” The message sinks in, and Aiah finds her heart hammering, her eyes darting wildly from one corner of the apartment to the next, as if an iron cage had just dropped over her. She swallows hard.

  “At last,” she says.

  “Don’t jump up and down with joy or anything.”

  “Oh.” She swallows again. “I’m sorry. But there’s a problem here. I�
��m under investigation because some people think I helped Constantine launch this coup against the government of Caraqui.”

  “Malakas! Did they find out about—”

  Aiah shouts over Gil’s inconvenient question. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do anything!”

  “Well.” Taken aback. “Of course you didn’t.”

  “I’ve told them I don’t know Constantine, I’ve never met him, I’ve never helped him.”

  “Ah.” Aiah can almost hear the wheels click over in his mind. “Okay.”

  “It’ll turn out all right,” she reassures. “Their investigation doesn’t make any sense and they’ll have to drop it. The only problem is,” she tries to soften her voice, “I can’t tell you over the phone how much I want you, and what I’d do to you if you were here, because somebody might be listening.”

  There’s a moment’s pause. Then, “Really? They’re on your phone? It’s that serious?”

  “It’s not serious because nothing will come of it. But the Investigative Division can be very thorough when they want to be, and Constantine made us all look pretty foolish, so they may feel they’ve got to try to pin it on me if they can.”

  There was a long, thoughtful pause, “I’m going to try to come home sooner. They don’t need me for the wrap-up as badly as they think.”

  “You won’t be able to help.”

  Gil’s voice is firm. “I can be with you. That’s what matters. Let me talk to Havell.”

  Aiah knows she should receive comfort at this, but all she can feel is a bleak hollow where the comfort should be. “I’ve got other news — good news,” she says. “I’ve been doing some work for a man named Rohder — kind of a detective job, locating plasm thieves — and it’s gone well, and Rohder thinks he can see a way to my getting a degree.”

  “You already have a degree.”

  “But this will be a degree in plasm engineering. I’ll be qualified for much better jobs once I get back to the Authority.”

  Let any eavesdroppers know of her long-range plans, she thinks. Let them know she plans to be with the Authority for a long time. Let them know her life is just fine.

  TWISTED DEMAND CIVIL RIGHTS IN THEOCRACY OF CHANDRAB

  300 KILLED BY ZEALOUS POLICE

  “12:31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees 114. Ne?”

  “Da. 12:31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees 114. Confirmed.”

  “12:34, Horn Six transmit at 1200 mm. 30 minutes. Ne?”

  “Da. 12:31, Horn Six transmit at 200 mm. 30 minutes. Confirmed.”

  “Incorrect. Incorrect. 1200 mm. Not 200.”

  “1200 mm. Confirmed.”

  WHERE IS CONSTANTINE?

  RUMORS FLY OF IMPENDING COUP IN CHELOKI

  The news is filled with images from Caraqui. The thousands of dead are being loaded onto barges and will then be towed to a deep part of the Sea of Caraqui and sunk.

  Aiah makes herself watch the video, watch the rescue crews in their gauze masks, the stretchers with the blackened bodies curled in the prayer position, wailing relatives hoping for a miracle, icons of Dhoran of the Dead raised high, clergymen in their robes and masks muttering blessings and splashing each body with holy aloe. So many clergymen they could form an assembly line.

  That plasm well, Rohder had said. Someone used it to kill fifty thousand people.

  Rohder, Aiah’s friend and benefactor.

  A tug tows the first barge down the wide Martyrs’ Canal, past a vista of hollow building shells and survivors sobbing their last farewells.

  My fault, she thinks.

  And then Constantine appears and Aiah’s heart leaps. He’s prowling along the waterfront, dressed somberly in black velvet and dark mourning lace, face etched in a scowl. The reporters surge toward their target, scattering mourners. Constantine looks at the cameras, and Aiah recognizes at once the brooding intelligence in his eyes.

  When his mind is working, she thinks, you can see it.

  There is a chime from Aiah’s communications array. Clenching her teeth, she ignores it and fixes her attention on the video.

  “No one intended this tragedy,” Constantine says. “Neither our forces nor those of the previous government. It is the task of the new government to make certain that all these lives . . .” Constantine’s eyes lift slightly and scan towards the canal, towards the barges piled with their dead. Good dramatics, Aiah thinks. In her apartment, the chime continues.

  Constantine’s gaze returns to his audience. “That all these lives,” he continues, “will not be written off as an unfortunate accident. These, no less than those who died to capture the Aerial Palace, are the honored dead of the revolution. Their survivors deserve no less than the soldiers who died in the fight against the Keremaths — they deserve a better Caraqui, prosperous, free and just. They deserve the New City. And I am here to pledge on behalf of the government that they will get it.”

  Nicely done, Aiah thinks. If Constantine had simply made a speech in the normal way, it would have been ignored or cut into snippets by news editors. But by hiding out for a couple days, then showing up on the quay and pretending his appearance was spontaneous, he got his message across to the world without it being filtered.

  There is an art to this, she thinks. Because he enhances his words with art doesn’t mean they aren’t sincere, it just gives them more force.

  Fifty thousand dead, Aiah thinks, and Aiah is at least partly responsible, and Constantine has promised to do what he can to give meaning to all that, and meanwhile Aiah is in Jaspeer preparing for her college career.

  The commo rig stops chiming and begins to speak in Gurrah’s voice. “The police were here,” she says to the recorder, “asking about you.”

  Aiah drags her eyes from the oval eye of the video and jumps to grab the headset and punch the answer button.

  “Mama?” she says. “I just came in the door. What happened?”

  “The police were here. They asked me about you, but I just told ’em to clear off.”

  “Good for you!” Aiah encourages. With Gurrah, it’s usually a good idea to reinforce good behavior as often as possible.

  Aiah steps back from the commo rig so that she can see the video screen. Constantine’s appearance is over, and the program has cut to newly appointed members of the new Caraqui government arriving at the Aerial Palace for a meeting. Aiah recognizes Adaveth, the twisted man, his huge liquid eyes gazing at the reporters while he marches past battle-damaged doors carrying his briefcase.

  “There were two cops,” Gurrah says. “One of them had a white leather jacket, like he got it from some streetwalker. What kind of cops wear white leather jackets?”

  “The kind you shouldn’t talk to,” Aiah says.

  Gurrah’s voice rises in pitch, a tone Aiah knows all too well, and Aiah’s heart sinks. “I knew you were going to get in trouble,” Gurrah says. “I knew ever since Senko’s Day.”

  “Ma—” Aiah warns.

  “After you made that scene and called me all kinds of names—”

  “I didn’t call you names.” The words burst out before Aiah can stop them.

  “In front of your grandmother and everything,” Gurrah says. “Why are my children so disrespectful?”

  Gurrah’s tones are sulky, but Aiah thinks she recognizes a tone of triumph.

  Her mother, Aiah thinks, knows her too well, knows exactly how to get the reaction she wants.

  “Ma,” Aiah says, “we probably shouldn’t talk about family matters over the phone. The creepers might be listening.”

  “You are in trouble if they’re tapping your phone!” Gurrah says. “I knew it!”

  On the video, members of the Keremath administration are being hustled off to jail by Geymard’s mercenaries. Police officials, members of the Specials, high-ranking military men, being shoved into their own dungeons.

  “I’m not in trouble, not really, because I haven’t done anything,” Aiah says. “The administration is trying to cover up its own idiocy.�
�

  “They always blame the Barkazil,” Gurrah says. “You know that.”

  “It makes it convenient for them,” Aiah says, “but it won’t work.”

  “You should talk to your mother more. I can help you.”

  Aiah makes an effort to change the topic. “Hey,” she says brightly, “I have some news! I may be going back to college for a degree!”

  “More longnose education,” Gurrah says darkly. “What good is it?”

  “Education is education,” Aiah says. “What university in Barkazi is going to give me a full scholarship?”

  Aiah tries to disguise her satisfaction at the argument being channeled into such familiar paths. She lets Gurrah score a few points, then says she has to get supper ready and brings the conversation to an end.

  Aiah shifts to another station. More images from Caraqui, more Special Police being dragged off to the subaquatic basements of their own prisons.

  And more dead, presumably.

  Later that shift, while buying bread at the local bakery, she sees a man in a white leather jacket hanging in the doorway drinking a soda. Later she sees the same man, without the trademark jacket, following her home. Interesting, she thinks.

  CORRUPTION ALLEGED IN POLICE

  “MILLIONAIRE COMMISSIONER” DENIES KNOWING OWN WORTH

  “15:31, Horn Six transmit at 430 mm. 6 minutes. Ne?”

  “Da. 15:31, Horn Six transmit at 430 mm. 6 minutes. Confirmed.” Aiah thinks of fifty thousand dead, the barges nosing out to deep water with the cargo of ash. Their survivors, she remembers, deserve no less. She thinks of Constantine, his big hands stroking her skin.

  She looks at the picture of Gil in its wetsilver frame, and sees the face of a stranger.