City on Fire m-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  “The triumvirate?” Aiah asks. “All three of them? All three of them voted to put Parq’s spies into your departments?”

  “Hilthi was against it. But Parq can be persuasive, and Faltheg voted with him, after some hesitation.”

  “What am I going to do with this man?” Aiah cries. “He’s going to be creeping around and—”

  “You will work with him,” Constantine says. There is a steely edge to his voice. “Our government has concluded that he is necessary, and he will be far less of a danger to you if he is indulged. The best possible thing is for you to become his greatest friend in all the world.”

  Aiah snarls silently into the mouthpiece and wishes she could tell some of her military police to chuck Mr. the Excellent Togthan off the roof into a canal.

  “Right,” she says. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Constantine’s next question is artfully designed to prevent her from thinking of another protest. “Did things go well with Karlo’s Brigade?”

  Aiah is still mentally enjoying Togthan’s arc into the canal, but follows Constantine’s shift well enough to answer.

  “Oh yes. They seemed happy to see us. Their mage-major was complaining, though, that she hadn’t got access to plasm as yet.”

  “I will make certain appropriate action is taken.” “Thank you.”

  Aiah presses the disconnect button, then calls her department heads to tell them that the Excellent Togthan will be joining the department, and that they are all to treat him with the utmost consideration.

  “It’s because your boss sold us out,” Ethemark says. Rage in the little man’s deep voice keeps throwing his voice into squeaky upper registers. “He spoke in favor of Parq’s proposal at today’s cabinet meeting.”

  “Constantine?” Aiah asks. “Is that who you’re talking about?”

  “Yes. Your damned Constantine. It was bad enough when he supported the Dalavan Militia. But now because of Constantine, Parq’s spies will be in every branch of government____________________”

  Aiah struggles with bewilderment, tries to formulate a response. “Are you sure?” she manages. “Who is your informant?”

  “Minister Adaveth,” Ethemark says. “And Minister Myhorn also. They were both astounded by Constantine’s attitude.”

  “There must,” Aiah says, “must be a reason……”

  “Constantine is allying himself with Parq. He and the Dalavans together can dominate Caraqui—neither of the other two triumvirs has a following. Adaveth and Myhorn are both considering whether or not to resign.”

  “No.” Aiah’s response is instant. “There is—” Her mind stammers, and she tries to work out what is happening. “There has to be something else happening here. If Adaveth and Myhorn resigned, it would be giving Parq exactly what he wants.”

  There is a grudging silence.

  “This has to be some kind of stratagem,” Aiah says, and hopes she is right. “Give it time.”

  “I have no choice but to ‘give it time.’ We of the twisted have been compelled to cultivate patience for many centuries now. ‘Giving it time,’ ” he snarls, “is what we know best.”

  “Can we meet outside of the office?” Aiah says. “In my apartment, say? We can attempt to work out some strategies to limit Togthan’s influence.”

  “Hm.” There is a brief silence, then, “Very well. Let’s do that.”

  Aiah does some rearranging and gives Togthan an office with Alfeg. Put her own spy, she thinks, next to Parq’s spy. Then she calls Togthan in to see her.

  “I apologize for the delay,” she says. “The war and our expansion has caused a good deal of disarray.”

  Togthan seats himself in the offered chair with a graceful swirl of his gray robes. His voice is smooth and unhurried. “I understand,” he says, and sips delicately from his cup of coffee.

  “Because of the shortage of office space,” Aiah says, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to share an office with one of our mages.” Togthan frowns—the first hint of disapproval he has allowed himself, so Aiah hastens to add, “But he will often be in the Operations Room or otherwise working through telepresence, and I hope he won’t be too much of a bother.”

  “Well…,” Togthan says, “I suppose that if it will assist with the war effort, I daresay I can manage the inconvenience.”

  If I can put up with you, Aiah thinks, you can put up with Alfeg.

  “I observe,” Togthan says, “simply in walking through the corridors on my way here, that there are many of the polluted flesh working in this department.”

  “I’m sorry?” Aiah says.

  Togthan flashes an apologetic smile. “Beg pardon,” he says, “I introduced a Dalavan term. I refer of course to those who have been genetically altered.”

  “Oh. I see.” Aiah hesitates, chooses words carefully. “When our department began we were underfunded, and had to hire those who we could. The, ah, altered were often the most available, because they were denied opportunity elsewhere.”

  Togthan smiles and sips his coffee. “That is no longer the case, surely? Your pay is more attractive now, I have heard, and there are many more looking for work on account of the disruptions caused by the war.”

  “Our policy has always been to hire the most qualified.”

  “Miss Aiah, I’m sure no one desires that you hire the incompetent or deficient.” Togthan’s smile is all reason. “But there is much popular prejudice against the polluted flesh in Caraqui. I know that they are not to blame for their condition—our Dalavan faith is just in that regard—but nevertheless if there were too many of the twisted seen in this department, it might bias the people against you. Whereas if the population of your department more accurately reflected the composition of the population of the metropolis, I think you would find in the people a greater reservoir of goodwill toward your efforts.”

  Aiah recalls Constantine’s wish that she become Togthan’s best friend, and compels herself to grace her clenched teeth with a smile. “I’ll give your wishes my best consideration,” she says.

  Togthan sips his coffee again, his confiding smile an answer to hers. “I’m gratified that we understand one another,” he says.

  Oh yes, Aiah thinks, / understand, all right.

  TRIUMVIR HILTHI DECLINES TO ORGANIZE POLITICAL PARTY

  WISHES TO REMAIN ABOVE POLITICS

  “WILL ENDORSE IDEAS, NOT CANDIDATES”

  The Kestrel Room faces the guns of Lorkhin Island and is closed on that account; and so Aiah’s luncheon with Aldemar takes place at Dragonfly, a restaurant on the other side of the Palace, with a view of the distant blue volcanoes of Barchab. Dragonfly is smaller than the Kestrel Room, without its intimate alcoves and private rooms, and without its luxurious wood paneling; but it is a brighter place, its white plaster walls featuring strips of dark glossy polymer. It looks out over Caraqui with multifaceted, insectlike eyes, each reflecting a slightly different Caraqui, a slightly different plane. Along the walls and between the tables are fish tanks filled with scaled, rainbow-colored exotica, few of which Aiah imagines are actually to be found swimming in Caraqui’s sea below.

  The actress wears a russet-colored rollneck, gray pleated slacks with nubbles and a subdued russet stripe, tasteful gold jewelry, suede boots with high heels. Her skin is flawless—the result more of genetics and lavish care, Aiah suspects, than plasm rejuvenation treatments, though beneath carefully applied cosmetic Aiah can see evidence for the latter, a kind of eerie, ambiguous glow notable more for its absence of character than anything else. Aiah finds herself envying Aldemar her epidermis far more than her celebrity.

  Aiah orders fried noodles with prawns, vegetables, and chiles. Aldemar asks for half a grapefruit.

  “You eat worse than I do,” Aiah says in surprise.

  Aldemar’s answer is matter-of-fact. “It’s my job.”

  “I guess you’re paid well enough for it.”

  A smile tweaks its way onto Aldemar’s features. “Yes. Otherwise I�
�d never eat another damn grapefruit as long as I live.”

  “What has become of the chromoplay you were working on? The one you abandoned to come here?”

  Aldemar blinks. “Ah.” A dissatisfied look crosses her face. “Shut down for six weeks, a deadline soon to be extended. They have very cleverly shot every scene that can be managed without me. There are wrangles over money—I expect I shall have to part with some—but it’s not a very good chromo anyway, and letting it age in the bottle will not do it harm, and may do some good. And since in the chromo we get as far as staging a revolution, I suppose I can claim that I’m here researching a sequel.”

  “Why are you making this chromoplay,” Aiah asks, “if it isn’t very good?”

  Aiah is relieved that Aldemar doesn’t seem offended by the question. “To begin with,” she says quite seriously, “good scripts are rare, and for the most part they go to other people. Those few that I have been involved with have all gone wrong somewhere—bad direction, bad editing, actors who didn’t understand their roles, or who demanded inane rewrites to make their parts larger or more sympathetic… well—” A dismissive shrug. “I have not been lucky that way.

  “And while I am waiting for something good to turn up, I must remain bankable—I must remain popular enough for investors to wish to invest in my ’plays. And it may surprise you to learn that the most popular chromoplay, worldwide, is the sort in which people like me fly and fight and war against evil. The genre transcends problems of ethnicity, dialect, metropolitan allegiance—everyone understands them, and everyone buys a ticket.”

  “Is it what you intended when you chose to be an actress?”

  Aldemar blows out her cheeks, looks abstract, a bit melancholy. “Perhaps that is why I’ve become interested in politics.”

  “Are you a believer in the New City?”

  “I used to be, but I’ve grown more modest over the years.” The actress tilts her head, props her jaw on one hand. “I support those who are straight against those who are corrupt, those with dreams against those who have none. The details—the precise content of those dreams—no longer interest me, provided they are not absolutely vicious. I’ve heard it claimed that political visionaries have caused more destruction and havoc and death than those leaders with less ambition—true, perhaps; I have seen no statistics—but I wonder about those lesser figures, those managers who say, / have no ideals, no dreams, all I want to do is make things run a little more efficiently.” She shrugs. “What reason is that for us to give them anything? / am mediocre, I have never had an idea to which you could object, give me your trust. They appeal only to exhaustion. It is an emptiness of soul into which rot is guaranteed to enter. Phah.”

  Amusement tugs at Aiah’s lips. “But what you do is something more than support, ne?” she says. “You’re tele-porting guns and spies and whatnot behind enemy lines. That doesn’t seem very much like disinterested idealism to me.”

  Aldemar shrugs again. “Understand that I look at the world through a kind of aesthete’s eyeglass. Certain classes of people are offensive in a purely artistic sense—and that includes the Keremaths. Drooling, savage idiots, barely able to button their trousers unassisted, and running a metropolis! And this Provisional Government—gangsters, military renegadoes, thieves, and the Keremaths again, all propped up by the Foreign Ministry of Lanbola for no other reason than it gives them something to do, something to meddle in. Great Senko—I would teleport them all to the Moon if I could.”

  The mention of the Moon sends a memory on a spiral course through Aiah’s thoughts, a slate-gray woman a-dance in the sky.

  Aldemar continues, unaware of Aiah’s distraction. “Constantine deserves a chance to fix this place. If anyone can do it, he can.”

  “So your loyalty is to Constantine? Not to the government?”

  Beneath her black bangs, Aldemar’s eyes glimmer as they look into Aiah’s. “Miss Aiah, I do not know the government.” She shifts her gaze, looks moodily out one of the Dragonfly’s faceted windows. “Bad policy, perhaps, to support individuals this way—to expect a single person to change the course of a metropolis, a world—but ultimately who else is there? You either trust the person to do it or you don’t.”

  Their luncheon arrives. Aldemar looks at her grapefruit, with its scalloped edges and the sprig of mint laid on top, sitting on fine china rimmed with gold and painted with delicate figures of plum blossoms, and says, “At least it’s presented well.” She picks up a silver-topped shaker and sprinkles left-handed sugar on the fruit.

  “How long have you known Constantine?” Aiah prompts. The last thing Aiah wants is to talk about herself. Aldemar obliges her.

  “Thirty years,” she says. “I was in school in Kukash, studying to be a mage with the intention of going into advertising. Constantine was there to get an advanced degree. We were lovers for, oh, two years or so.”

  Blood surges into Aiah’s cheeks, catching her by surprise. Aldemar perceives it and narrows her brows.

  “Are you jealous?” she says.

  “It depends.”

  “I see.” An amused smile dances across her face, and Aiah notes an echo of Constantine’s own amusement there, his own delight in irony. “One may judge the relationship by its outcome,” she says. “I became an actress, and Constantine a monk. He abandoned his degree and went to the School of Radritha. I finished my degree but never made use of it, went to Chemra, and began working in video.” Her smile turns contemplative. “Constantine is very good at finding the chrysalis within his friends. I had no more notion of being an actress than becoming a mechanic. But he turned me inside out and found an ambition that wouldn’t go away.” She looks at Aiah once again. “I imagine he has done much the same to you.”

  “He’s certainly doing his best,” Aiah says, uncertain whether it is her ambition or Constantine’s that she serves. She glances down at her meal and discovers that she has forgotten to taste it; she picks up a fork and wraps a noodle about its prongs, then looks up.

  “I have a hard time picturing what Constantine was like when he was young. He was… what, thirty when you met?”

  “Just under thirty, I think. And I was just under twenty.” She smiles at the memory. “He was in headlong flight from his destiny—trying for a degree in the philosophy of plasm, forsooth, before bolting for the monastery and impractical religion.” Her bright eyes turn to Aiah again. “Are you still jealous?”

  “Probably not,” Aiah decides.

  “He and I enjoy each other’s company now, but we are both very different people than we were. Not that I wouldn’t bed him if he asked nicely”—a wry look crosses her face—“but I don’t think he’s interested in old ladies like me.”

  “You look younger than I do.”

  “Kind”—a brisk nod—“but untrue. I am practiced at seeming, but by now, inwardly at least, I’m afraid I am become a very constant and unalterable sort of person. In the future I will change slightly, if at all. But Constantine has always been intrigued by transformation—in politics, in plasm, in bed—and your transformation from what you were to what you are to what you shall be… well, that is what delights him in you.”

  This analysis sends tiny cold blades scraping along Aiah’s nerves, and she wonders how often Constantine discusses her with Aldemar—or with others.

  Amusement dances in the actress’s eyes, and breaks Aiah’s alarm. “Besides,” Aldemar says, “you’re an attractive couple. I can’t help but want the best for you.”

  Aiah wants to ask Aldemar about more practical matters, about why Constantine is allying himself with Parq; but at that moment the maitre d’ sits a pair of Dalavan priests at the next table, and Aiah applies herself to her noodles.

  Damn it.

  After luncheon, Aiah steps to the insect-eye windows and gazes out at the city, at the teeming composition, repeated endlessly in faceted glass, of gray and green that has become her life and burden. Above it roils a flat gray cloud, scudding toward the Palace with
surprising speed; and with a start Aiah realizes that the cloud is not a cloud at all, but a plasm projection, a fantasy of images, teeth and heads and eyes and vehicles, all vanishing and disappearing too fast for Aiah to follow, though a few of the icons seem to stick in Aiah’s retina: Crassus the actor, an old airship of the Parbund class, a spotted dog with its forefeet propped on a child’s tricycle…

  Aiah stares as shock rolls through her. For there, repeated sixfold by the panes of Dragonfly glass, she recognizes an image, a long-eyed profile of a gray-skinned woman, her hair done in ringlets and an equivocal smile on her lips.

  The Woman who is the Moon.

  The image vanishes, folding into something else; and in a moment, the entire plasm display is gone.

  She must visit the Dreaming Sisters, Aiah thinks, and soon.

  SEVENTEEN

  Aiah wants to cringe as she watches herself on video. “On behalf of the government and the Barkazil community of Caraqui,” the woman on-screen bellows, “I’d like to welcome you all to our metropolis!”

  Senko. Is her voice really that harsh?

  Tumultuous cheers follow, far more impressive than the cheers at the actual event. The sound has been dubbed in after the fact.

  The chromo is called The Mystery of Aiah. In it, a journalist named Stacie—a woman whom Aiah has never met—attempts to solve the mystery of Aiah’s character and personality.

  “There’s no mystery about me!” Aiah protests when she sees the direction the chromoplay is taking.

  “There is now,” Constantine says, a purposeful light in his eyes.

  Aiah sits on a sofa between Constantine and Aldemar, her hands clutching theirs. The two veteran performers are amused as she shrinks away from the journalist’s attempts to “solve” her.

  The reporter interviews various figures from Aiah’s life in Jaspeer, including Charduq the Hermit, still on his pillar, who cheerfully proclaims her the redeemer of the Barkazi, a claim that Khorsa’s sister Dhival, in full sorceress getup, is all too happy to confirm—she has talked, she says, to spirits on the matter, and they confirm Charduq’s assessment. Old chromographs from Aiah’s school career are displayed, and some of her teachers from the prep school to which she’d won a scholarship are interviewed, teachers willing to testify as to her brilliance. Aiah remembers the praise during her girlhood as being far less fulsome.