Aiah nods at him. “Go.”
A loud rattle hammers at Aiah’s ears as the rotator shifts to the neutral position. The plasm station is now cut off.—Mission accomplished, Aiah sends to Ethemark.—Good. Get out of there fast.—Fast. Right.
The truth is, they must stay around a while.
Davath strikes a light on an oxy-acetylene torch as Prestley uses both hands to draw by its handles the heavy black plastic-encased fuse from the junction box—“I’ll throw this in the canal later,” he says—and then takes a hammer to the manual controls. Bits of plastic and wire fly around the room as he batters the box into ruin. Aiah’s heart hammers—in Fresh Water Bay Station they’ve got to know what’s happened—but Davath calmly bends to apply his torch to the plasm junction, welding it into the neutral position.
If there are combat mages in the plasm station, Aiah thinks, we could be dead any second.
Sweat drips from her brow. The room, with its steel-and-concrete walls surrounding the welding torch, suddenly seems close and hot.
—Our mages have launched their attack, Ethemark says. The soldiers are accelerating and should be at the station soon.
Plasm stations are notoriously designed with insurrection or war in mind. They are heavily armored, and covered with a bronze collection web designed to absorb plasm attacks, disperse them over the web, and then draw the plasm into the station’s own stores. The chief way to attack such a station is to throw heavy things at it—usually armor-piercing shells, but in a pinch big rocks will do—until the defenses are breached and telepresent mages can enter on a raging wave of plasm to sweep away opposition.
Aiah counts the drops of sweat that fall from her chin onto the scarred steel floor. Thirty-one, thirty-two … At last Davath finishes his work. He stands, pulls his goggles down around his thick neck. “Done. Let’s go.”
They leave the tiny compartment on a run. “One last thing,” Prestley says. “Turn on your torches.” He goes to the generator room next door and throws a switch—the cage-enclosed lights die with a whimper.
Aiah leads the other two upward at a run, taking the grid-ded metal steps two at a time. Slamming and locking a steel door behind them, they emerge into a corridor filled with anxious civilians. Poor people live here, in lightless compartments below the waterline, with wealthier residents in the airy flats above.
“What’s going on?” people ask. “What’s happening?”
“Listen to Hilthi on the radio,” Aiah gasps, breath almost gone. “Do what he says.”
They jog up another stair, then turn onto a gangway that leads to an outside door. Plastic flooring booms under their feet. Shieldlight gleams through the door.
They burst out onto another gangway, this one webbed by chain-link. Their boat awaits, moored to a pier at the bottom, engines idling. As the crewmen see the party running, the engines roar into life.
There is a concussion, a flat slap that strikes painfully at the ears. An explosion at the plasm station.
Aiah leaps into the boat, throws herself gasping into a padded chair. “Go,” she says.
Another explosion shocks the air, and the boat throttles up, standing on its wake as it races away.
TRIUMVIR HILTHI CALLS FOR POPULAR UPRISING!
“DESTROY THE REBELS WHO WOULD ENSLAVE YOU!”
Aiah’s four teams rendezvous at a Dalavan temple—Constantine’s people had given them the address. The place is a strange blocky building, the facade a structure made up entirely of pillars, pillars built around and next to and on top of each other, like a double handful of pencils. They are bright red or yellow, and each is topped with a little bell-shaped dome. Gateways are cut through the pillars, their curving arches carved with a wild variety of threatening monsters, all painted in lifelike colors. Ascetics hang from the building in sacks, and some, it appears, have been dead for some time—dead in a holy cause, they are allowed to hang there until they rot, inspiration for the faithful.
The temple priests provide them with a hot meal and an office in which Aiah can spread out maps and plan the assault on Xurcal Station. On the wall, an oval screen shows Triumvir Parq speaking on the Dalavans’ video link. Parq has donned the ebony-and-gold Mask of Awe worn when speaking as the official head of the Dalavan faith, and his magnificent voice booms from the mask in a tireless call to strife and battle. Where formerly Aiah had heard only the silky tones of the politician and born seducer, now she hears the ringing voice of a commander calling on his troops. She is struck with admiration for his verbal skill at the same time as she is chilled by its effect.
“I declare the rebels to be the enemies of the Supreme One Dalavos and his people!” he cries. “Their secret purpose, a conspiracy plotted in the very pits of Hell, is to destroy both our state and our faith. The wickedness of the Avians was as nothing compared with the evil of these rebels, for the Avians were deformed in body and spirit while these appear as normal men, even if their souls are twisted.”
He takes a breath. Eyes glitter, red and silver, from the depths of the mask. “All those faithful to Dalavos and his teachings must resist them to the utmost of their power,” he proclaims. “Ambush their patrols! Shoot them down from hiding! Steal their plasm!” His fists clench, pounding the air like hammers as they beat time to his thoughts. “I declare, as the supreme leader of the faithful, that those who, having heard my word, continue the obstinate fight for the rebel cause are condemned as traitors to Heaven. Never shall they be accepted in our temples! Never shall they be seen among us! Never shall they share our food or taste our drink! Never shall they take the least shelter from us! I curse them!”
Aiah shivers, tries to focus on her map. Parq’s voice drops and he speaks rhythmically as he begins an incantation. The camera closes in on his face, on the eyes like embers lying in the mask, the lips of flesh writhing behind the frozen lips of ebony.
“Curst be their hearts, for their hearts are filled with evil. Curst be their minds, for their minds are the dwelling place of rebellion. Curst be their feet, for their feet bear them on the road to Hell. Curst be their throats, for the words in their throats are the wicked lies of demons and the undead…”
Aiah is having a hard time concentrating on her maps.
“I don’t suppose,” she ventures, “it might be possible to lower the volume?”
Surely before he gets to the spleen, she thinks, but she doesn’t know how devout any in her party might be, and she dares not say it aloud.
Davath approaches the video and snaps it off. The picture vanishes, shrinks down to a little white eye in the center of the oval screen, and then this disappears as well.
Parq’s resonant voice can still be heard from speakers elsewhere in the building, but his words are indistinct. Aiah looks down at her map, points with a pencil.
“We’ll take Gernan Canal to Bannaltir,” she says. “That’s where we’ll split up. Hoyl and Parasqof will turn east.”
The telephone gives a loud electric buzz. Aiah picks up the headset, presses one earpiece to her ear.
“This is Aiah.”
“Congratulations, my lady. Fresh Water Bay Station has fallen, and the battle was brief.”
Constantine’s resonant voice and apparent cheerful mood bring a ghostly smile to her lips. She settles the headset into place and adjusts the mouthpiece on its flexible mount.
“Thank you, Minister,” she says, and she sees the others exchange glances, knowing now who is on the other end of the line.
“My people have done an exceptional job,” she adds. “Xurcal will not be as easy. The rebels have learned from their mistakes, it appears. Our mages tell us that police are guarding the cables near the station, and that there are roving patrols elsewhere.”
“Can you give me locations?”
“I will give you such information as I have,” Constantine says, and does so. Aiah jots it down with her pencil. “The situation is fluid, of course,” he adds. “I should be very careful.”
“Can you give
me more crews?” Aiah asks. “It would be safer for us all in the long run.”
“I will see what I can do.”
“What else is happening?”
“The admirable Captain Arviro and his Marines will be pitching into the aerodrome very shortly. We are husbanding our plasm in aid of that fight. We have cleared the area around the Palace of police roadblocks, which is allowing our mages to come in from the city and join us. Radeen and his brigade at Government Harbor are not moving. I received a number of reports that a great many of the roadblocks dissolved once the police found out what they were in aid of, and that many of the cops simply went home. I have other reports of police gangs marauding and looting shops, however, so apparently some are not beyond using the situation to their advantage.”
“If there’s a fight about to start, we’d better drop the shoe on Xurcal soon.”
“Whenever you can.” Constantine lowers his voice, and at the intimate sound, like the touch of bedroom silk in the darkness, Aiah feels a yearning eddy along her nerves. “But be careful, Miss Aiah. I would not lose you for Xurcal or all the plasm stations in the world.”
Aiah’s heart fills her throat for a moment; when she can find words she says, “I don’t plan to do anything foolish.”
“I wish you had been less scrupulous, and not gone out with your people. I would have talked you out of it had I known what you intended.”
“What else could I do? I couldn’t stand it sitting in the Palace giving orders and wondering if my people would…” The word die withers on her tongue as she looks up at her crew and sees their patient eyes. “Run into trouble,” she finishes, lamely.
“Yes,” he says, “waiting in the Palace is my lot, and I know its frustrations. I would rather be with you, on your little boat, than here in perfect safety.”
Aiah licks dry lips. “I wish you were here, too.”
Her fellows exchange glances again. It is not often they hear a comrade exchange intimacies with one of the Powers.
Constantine’s voice turns weary. “Each in our spheres, we move according to our degree. At least certain political choices are now made easier.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I will try to get you more crews. Would Ethemark know how to raise more people?” “Yes.”
“I will have him call you.” “Good.”
There is a moment’s hesitation. “We are going to have a battle any moment, so I cannot speak for long.” “I understand.”
“Please understand that when I said I wanted you here, that was for my peace of mind only. But it is the Aiah who puts herself in danger for her people that has my devotion, and even for peace of mind I would not have you other than who you are…”
Aiah’s nerves sing at these words, flame and sorrow together. “Thank you,” she says.
“I am getting a signal. The war begins anew. Farewell.”
“Senko’s blessing,” she says, but he has already pressed the disconnect button.
She puts the headset on its hook and looks down at the map again. Now that she knows where some of the police are, she realizes that her plan will not work.
And so she makes another.
FIRST STRIKE FAILS
COUP PLOTTERS COUNT ON REINFORCEMENTS
GOVERNMENT CONTINUES APPEALS TO PEOPLE
Dark water surges at Aiah’s left hand as she walks along a rust-eaten catwalk of mesh. More water drizzles down from above, flashes of falling silver in the beams of helmet lamps.
They are between two of the giant concrete pontoons. At some point in the distant past iron beams were laid down to connect the pontoons, and a roof built to seal out the light; and on top of this roof a series of office buildings now stands.
In the half-forgotten darkness below, Aiah’s people scramble in the Shieldless gloom. Seawater sloshes around their feet as the catwalk sags under their weight. The operation is woefully behind schedule, and this time it is Aiah’s party that is late.
At Fresh Water Bay, Aiah’s group was able to get adjacent to the station and turn off the plasm mains at the easiest and most convenient place. With police patrolling the plasma mains near Xurcal Station, the sabotage has to be much more dispersed, and more prolonged. Instead of four faucets, thirty have to be turned off, all at a greater distance from the target. Since the plasm reroutes itself, Aiah hopes that the operators at the station may not even notice that their supply is in jeopardy—she supposes they may be receiving less than previously, but with both sides in the fighting making more demands on the city plasm grid, this should not be surprising.
Aiah and her teams have descended, over and over, into the dark wells of the pontoons, into the subbasements of office buildings, into dank sweating steel-walled rooms ankle-deep in seawater. They worked into the sleep shift, and then into the work shift—it has been over a day since Aiah slept. Butsleep was surrendered without protest: a battle is raging, and Xurcal may be critical. Either enemy mages are operating there, or it is beaming its power to mages operating elsewhere.
But now Aiah’s job is almost over. All but four of the thirty taps have been turned, four taps on the main plasm cables leading to Xurcal. All the branching cables have been shut off. And from this point it should be as simple as it was to turn off Fresh Water Bay.
Four simple operations.
If only Aiah weren’t lost.
Her maps are out of date. Where the map showed a cable junction complete with a rotating control, Aiah found only an empty steel room, rusting door swinging on its hinges. The cable was there, but it was covered by armored plates and surrounded by the heavy steel footings of the scavenged rotator box. And so there was nothing to do but to follow the cable onward, toward Xurcal, and hope to find a place where the tap could be turned.
One gloved hand trailing along the pontoon’s crumbling concrete wall, Aiah follows the cable and hopes that, if a junction appears, it will be within arm’s reach. The cable is above her, fixed to the pontoon wall above her head with iron staples as thick as Davath’s arm.
—Ethemark? she sends.
No answer. He has been with the party only intermittently—with the head of the Plasm Enforcement Division wandering around in Caraqui’s sweat-walled basements, Ethemark has a lot more distractions in the office than usual.
He might, Aiah thinks charitably, be scouting up ahead.
“Careful,” says Davath. “Slippery here.”
The catwalk is covered with guano, probably from a bat or bird colony somewhere overhead. The stuff has mixed with seawater to form a slick white clay that slides treacherously beneath Aiah’s boots. Aiah steps cautiously in the mess.
Beyond, one of the cables supporting the catwalk has broken or rusted away, and the catwalk sags into the water at a dangerous angle. Aiah is breathless by the time she gets to the other side, and her boots are full of water. She wishes that when she realized the junction had gone astray, she had thought to go back for her boat.
“Here it is, miss!” Davath increases his pace along a sturdier section of catwalk, and Aiah breathlessly follows. Davath’s hand torch and helmet lamp play on a junction box and rotator, both of them bolted to the side of the pontoon where another cable joins from the pontoon above.
“Looks like a temporary installation,” Davath says, but his torch shows big deposits of rust scarring the ostensibly stainless surface of the rotator box, and it is obvious that the junction has been here for years. Decades, probably.
—Ethemark? Aiah sends again.
Nothing. She scans the wall for a communications box for her portable handset, and doesn’t find one.
Wonderful. Now they’ve found their objective, but they have no way to tell anyone they’ve reached it.
And they can’t just cut the plasm here, because the taps have to be turned all at once, otherwise the mages at Xurcal will know what’s happening and take steps to prevent it.
Davath, no sign of frustration crossing his cinder-block face, unshoulders the cutting torch
and its heavy gas cylinders, which he’s been carrying this long distance. His body is built for carrying burdens, and he shows little sign of weariness.
He places the cylinders gently onto the catwalk. “Whenever you’re ready, miss,” he says.
“I’m waiting for Ethemark. He’s… off somewhere.”
“Very good, miss.”
Prestley reaches into his jumpsuit for a cigaret. He lights it and the three wait in silence, the darkness warm and close around them. Drips of water fall steadily from above, plash into the water nearby.
Aiah’s nerves jump at the sound of bolts being thrown, and then yellow light pours out into the darkness as a hatch is thrown open only a few paces away, farther along the plasm line.
“Senko only knows where we are,” a voice says, and then a helmeted man steps from the hatch onto the catwalk. He stares at them for a startled instant before raising his boxy black pistol and pointing it straight at Davath.
“Hold it right there!” he says, a thread of panic in his voice.
Aiah can only stare at him, heart hammering in her throat, as another two police follow him out onto the catwalk, weapons drawn. One of them has a submachine gun, a little gleaming wicked thing, held in his two fists.
“Who are you?” the first officer says. “What are you doing here?”
Aiah stares and tries to talk, but finds that something has stolen her breath.
Prestley shrugs and tosses his cigaret butt into the water. “We’re Plasm Bureau,” he says. “We’ve got a repair order.”
“Down here? Now?”
Prestley frowns. “Plasm gotta move, man.”
Another police voice chimes in. “Don’t you people know what’s going on?”
“Hell with that!” says the first. “I don’t believe ’em anyway!” His pistol barrel gives a little jerk toward the wall. “Up against it, all of you. Hands up on the concrete.”
Aiah mutely obeys, places her palms on the sweaty wall. She can’t seem to find her voice at all, or her mind.
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