City on Fire m-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Aiah’s family declined to be interviewed,” the narrator reports, managing to imply they fear Aiah’s disapproval and vengeance. Aiah is relieved beyond words… the very thought of her mother babbling away on video is terrifying, and Senko only knows what she would say. But if the family actually had been approached—which Aiah is inclined to doubt, as she has heard nothing from them—they had closed ranks against the outsider.

  Aiah had broken Jaspeeri laws, and her family knew it. No indictments had ever been filed, but there was no sense in giving the prosecutors information.

  The section on her life in Caraqui is a hash of suggestion and demented fantasy. Aiah can’t even take it seriously enough to shrink from the image presented. There are hints of her great influence in the councils of power. “Aiah has single-handedly broken the gangsters’ control of the Caraqui economy and their hold on the people,” the chromo intones, and follows with jittery camera shots of police actions and of disheveled Handmen being led off to justice. Images of Karlo’s Brigade are mixed with suggestions that they are soldiers loyal not to the regime but, personally, to Aiah. There are pictures of Barkazil neighborhoods, which Aiah recognizes from Jaspeer, but they are ingeniously mixed with images from Caraqui to suggest that a large Barkazil community is in place here, and that Aiah is their unquestioned leader. Supposed Barkazil immigrants, allegedly drawn to Caraqui by Aiah’s personal magnetism, are shown being welcomed by Caraqui officials.

  “She is our commander,” Alfeg says. He looks quite natural and comfortable on camera. “She fights for her people, her nation. We are here to serve her.” Two of the departmerit’s total of four Barkazils, looking far less comfortable than Alfeg, sit in the background and nod stiff agreement.

  “Aiah has transformed this metropolis,” Khorsa confirms. She has forgone her witch dress and appears in the conservative gray suit of the professional mage and member of the PED, albeit with one of her glittering jeweled foci pinned neatly to her lapel.

  “I can’t think of another person,” she says, “who could have so totally destroyed such a huge, malevolent, and emplaced organization as the Silver Hand.”

  “I haven’t destroyed it,” Aiah points out, but Aldemar hushes her.

  There is a short diversion from the chromo’s relentless pursuit of its subject while the narrator embarks on a brief biography of Great-Uncle Rathmen and points out that his money is financing the current insurrection.

  And then Khorsa is back, smiling brightly. “Of course Aiah is Constantine’s lover,” she says.

  “No!” Aiah cries in horror.

  Constantine glances at her sidelong, and a smile touches his lips. “If I can put up with this,” he says, “you can.”

  Aiah watches with increasing dread as the chromo plunges into her relationship with Constantine. That few of the details are correct doesn’t make it any less horrifying.

  “He was besotted by her the first time he saw her,” reports a talking head, alleged to belong to one of Constantine’s friends. “She’s his secret general—his good luck.”

  “What is the point of this?” Aiah demands.

  “It will make you interesting,” Constantine says. “Few will care about some shadowy figure in the Caraqui government, but revealed as my lover you will become the focus of millions.”

  Aiah sinks hopelessly into her seat. “I don’t suppose there is any point in protesting,” she says.

  “Well,” Aldemar offers, “it’s true. The gist, anyway. You are lovers, after all. And you do chase criminals, and you are a Barkazil.” She gives a tight-lipped little smile. “It’s much more true than most of my publicity.”

  Aiah looks at Constantine. “What does Sorya say about this?”

  Constantine’s answer is matter-of-fact. “Sorya is the head of the secret service. She doesn’t want publicity. Whereas publicity, the more sensational the better, is exactly what is required for you.”

  The chromoplay drags on to its conclusion, and Aldemar gives a satisfied smile.

  “Satisfied with the edit?” she says. “Other than the few rough spots?”

  “Very well satisfied, thank you,” Constantine says.

  “I told you Umarath would get the job done.”

  Aldemar releases the second spool on the big commercial etching belt, picks up the red plastic belt, then puts it in its battered metal case.

  “Who is this reporter?” Aiah asks.

  “She’s not a reporter, she’s an actress,” Aldemar says. “Stacie used to be on Metro Squad—ever watch that? She phoned in her performance from Chemra.”

  “So she didn’t actually interview any of these people?”

  “Oh no. There wasn’t time. We had three units shooting picture, and Umarath put the whole thing together in the editing room.”

  “It’s so… intrusive,” Aiah says. “And horrid. And all the facts are wrong, too.”

  Constantine cocks an eyebrow at her. “Would you rather it told the truth? You must have broken a hundred laws working for me in Jaspeer.”

  “That’s not what I meant. It’s showing me as a celebrity’s favorite fuck.”

  “Oh no.” Aldemar shakes her head at this, and her reply is perfectly serious. “We would have been taking that tack if we’d mentioned you were Constantine’s lover first. But the image we chose for you is that of the secret mastermind operating behind events. The sex is a validation of your status. It’s not that you’re important because you’re Constantine’s lover, it’s that being Constantine’s lover confirms the fact that you’re important.”

  “This is too sophisticated for me.” Aiah shakes her head. “Politics is so…” She gropes for the right word. “So solipsistic.” She looks at Aldemar. “And so is show business. It can create a reality that has nothing to do with anything real.”

  A touch of sympathy enters Aldemar’s tone. “If you do not like the resulting image, you may alter it in time—give an interview, release a statement, commission another documentary, whatever you like.” The sympathy fades. “But let the video do its work first. For the moment, communicate with the public only through the press assistant we will provide for you.” She smiles. “In time you may find that you like what this does for you. It will open a lot of doors.”

  “But will I want to walk through them?” Aiah asks. Aldemar only shrugs.

  “I think the video will do quite well for us,” Constantine says. “It plays right to the mind-set created by the other side’s propaganda—which, much to the annoyance of our government, has always maintained that I am the real power in Caraqui, and the triumvirate my puppets. This chromo is aimed straight at a target which I think it is almost certain to hit.”

  Aiah looks at him darkly. “Landro’s Escaliers,” she says. Constantine’s expression is satisfied. “Indeed.”

  SPIRITUAL RENEWAL PARTY

  FOR VICTORY, FOR MORALITY, AND FOR THE HOLY, PARQ

  Aiah’s computer terminal hums, and grinds, and wafts a scent of ozone; and then its oval screen displays the message:

  SCAN NEGATIVE. INITIATE NEW SCAN?

  The Dreaming Sisters are not to be found anywhere in the ministry’s plasm records, or anyway not as such—it’s not that there’s no record of them, but that they probably have some other, more official name used in the files. The Arch-Revered Order of Transcendental Plasm Suckers, or something…

  Aiah shuts off her terminal, hearing that little disappointed whine of the gears cycling down, and then sets her receptionist, Anstine, to work on it. That, after all, is what he is for.

  Half a shift later the file appears on Aiah’s desk. Society of the Simple, 100 Cold Canal. A modest name; a forbidding address.

  Aiah opens the file, sees the totals, and frowns.

  The huge aerial displays that Aiah has seen since her arrival in Caraqui used enough plasm to cost tens of thousands of dinars. Yet the Society’s bills are modest, a few hundred dinars each month.

  Which leaves open two possibilities: either their buil
ding is so big that it generates all the plasm they need… or they’re stealing the stuff.

  She presses the intercom button on her commo array and speaks a moment with Anstine, asking him if he’s sure… Oh yes, Aiah is assured, the Society of the Simple is every so often the subject of news and video reports—those big aerial displays attract public attention; all Anstine had to do was call up the information on the Interfact.

  Aiah puts the headset over her ears and makes some more calls. A boat, a pilot, some bodyguards, and an inspection team.

  “Tell the camera crew they may not come.”

  If they’re plasm thieves, she’ll arrest the lot of them, whether they spend their days talking to the gods or not.

  Parq’s spy, floating about her department, has not made her charitable toward the idea of religion.

  If they’re not thieves, then maybe they’re something much more interesting.

  LORDS OF THE NEW CITY MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER!

  Travel has become less pleasurable in the days since Aiah became famous. Since Constantine wants to keep her constantly in the news, camera crews follow her everywhere, and—as most of her travel consists of walking from her apartment to her job at the start of the day, and then taking the reverse path ten or twelve or sixteen hours later—the ministry, through her press spokesman, exerts itself to find newsworthy things for her to do.

  When she accepted Brigadier Ceison’s polite invitation to dine with him and his staff, the video cameras followed along, and the next day stories appeared in all the media concerning Aiah’s important meeting with Barkazil military leaders. When Alfeg’s embryonic relief organization turned up a few indigent Barkazils in neighboring districts and persuaded them to move to Caraqui in search of employment, Aiah appeared on video handing them their dole cards. When Khorsa’s sister Dhival, imported for the occasion from the Wisdom Fortune Temple in Jaspeer, conducted for any interested members of Karlo’s Brigade “a traditional Barkazil religious service”—there of course existing in reality no such thing, religion in Barkazi being as chaotic as it was in most places on the globe—Aiah was on hand to clap her hands to the beat of the drums and nod approvingly as spirits of the air and the afterlife communicated their wishes through Dhival.

  The routine business of her life is suddenly invested with the kind of portentous and highly artificial significance that only comes with heavy media exposure. Her appearances at cabinet meetings become “vital reports on the critical war situation.” Her briefings of PED personnel and military cops prior to raids on plasm houses are now considered “transmitting vital instructions to highly trained strike teams.” And any of her meetings with Constantine—often on thoroughly routine subjects—are now “a discreet rendezvous conducted in the citadel of supreme power.”

  At least she can kiss him in public now, a fact of which she takes intermittent advantage.

  Grooming takes up an ever-larger slice of her life. Every day begins with the ritual visit of the hairdresser, manicurist, and cosmetician. She finds herself fretting over the work she’s missing.

  “It’s your job to look interesting,” Aldemar tells her. “This is work.”

  With the increased media exposure comes increased exposure to danger. She is given security briefings, cameras are set up outside her apartment, and she is forbidden to travel outside the Palace without bodyguards. The guards come from a pool available to all government employees above a certain grade—she has no regular guards, as Constantine does—but now she has to become accustomed to looking at the world through a screen of broad, besuited male backs.

  Aiah checks out a boat from the vehicle pool, and after the guards declare it safe from bomb or hidden assassin, she ducks down into the cabin and lets the helmsman take the boat out of the immediate vicinity of the Palace, at which point her guards allow her to come out into the air.

  It is best, Aiah has been told, to assume that all traffic entering or leaving the Palace is being monitored by someone hostile to the government. Aside from the likelihood that there are observation posts in the tall buildings surrounding the Palace, Aiah knows from personal experience that mages working surveillance can be very unobtrusive indeed.

  But any enemy surveillance is limited. Anyone watching will grow tired and bored and soon be overwhelmed by the task. Hundreds of wheeled vehicles and watercraft enter or leave the Palace every day. If nothing intriguing is seen in the boat in the first few moments of its journey, it is unlikely that any observer will maintain interest, and will instead go look at something else.

  After the boat has traveled a radius from the Palace, Aiah is allowed out of the shielded cabin. As hydrogen turbines whine, the boat speeds over bright green water through a residential district of elegant flats. The buildings, about three hundred years old, have sinuous fronts, silver-bright metal alternating with long rows of window glass, and each building is topped with a crystal-roofed arboretum; and Aiah’s heart gives a leap as she realizes she’s out of the Palace again, in a speeding boat, on a bright Shieldlit day, on an errand all her own and none that belongs to the war.

  Elections slogans are everywhere. Vote New City… Dalavan Party for Peace, Virtue, and Victory… Mariath for the Assembly… New City NOW.

  Then she notices other graffiti unconnected with the elections, painted on the slab sides of the pontoons that support the apartment buildings—could gangs be marking their turf even here?; but as she looks closely she sees that the graffiti consists of repetitions of geomantic foci, particularly the White Horse and the Quadromark, one believed to be a warding sign and the other a sign to attract good luck.

  The people here are trying to keep the war away. Drop the shells somewhere else, the marks are saying. We’ve got too much luck to be in danger.

  It’s all nonsense, of course, popular magic without foundation in the real world of plasm science. The marks are a sign of how superstition can swarm into the world in times of uncertainty.

  But it’s happening even in well-off neighborhoods like this one, a sign of how far the war has penetrated.

  Suddenly the day seems less bright.

  The boat slows and turns into a side canal. The long shining buildings fall behind, and here brown-brick apartments and warehouses crowd up close to the water, overhanging the canal and bridging it in places. The old, rusting bridges are encumbered with structures—shops and even small houses—that hang off them like barnacles. In these narrow watery corridors the turbines rumble loudly. Laundry floats overhead like faded artificial clouds, and swarms of noisy gulls circle. The White Horse and the Quadromark are displayed here as well, on pontoons crowded with other graffiti of a purely local interest.

  Aiah sees two groups of Dalavan Militia, neither of them doing anything in particular, just drinking beer and strolling in packs along the quays. Each Militia member, Aiah sees, carries a staggering amount of firepower. An assault rifle over one shoulder, often with a sawtooth bayonet glinting in Shieldlight; a submachine gun under one arm; two or three pistols stuck into waistbands or holsters; knives big as short swords stuck into boots or jammed into cartridge belts.

  Aiah can see her guards exchange looks of contempt. No serious soldier, she thinks, needs so many weapons, and no real policeman does either. All the weaponry is just to impress the neighbors, and each other.

  Put these people up against the Provisional army and they’d fade into the mist.

  The boat passes a stockyard and its adjacent slaughterhouse, pens packed with miniature beeves and sheep with wool the color of industrial grime. The smell is ghastly, but the swarms of gulls are thriving. Animal smells drench the air—wet wool, dung, blood, steam, offal, and a pungent chemical stench that probably has to do with how hides and wool are processed.

  Aiah feels her gorge rise and turns away from the sight.

  The Society of the Simple is nearby, still within smelling distance. It sits amid the grim old buildings on an ancient rust-streaked pontoon. The squat building is gray granite, with a
leaded roof and a central bell-shaped dome of gleaming copper. The granite is overlaid with thousands of carvings woven together into an endless, complex knot that covers the whole building: vine leaves that turn into serpents, faces of pop-eyed demons and monsters leering out of the centers of flower blossoms… thorny brambles, ferns, trees with interwoven branches and bearing a dozen different kinds of fruit. Comic, grotesque figures hang out of carved buildings, waving papers or bottles or pigeon legs. Other buildings are ablaze, and little humans leap from the flames to their deaths. Half-hidden by the complex tracings, guns and armored vehicles can be seen. Dead women and babies hang on the bayonets of grinning soldiers, while tall, robed humans with faces of angelic serenity watch unmoved.

  Everyone and everything woven together, unable to escape the vines, the brambles, the knots. It’s like one of their plasm displays carved into stone.

  Aiah examines the exterior carefully as the boat approaches, but sees no figures that resemble those she has seen beyond the Shield.

  A pier floats in the water on empty metal drums, and above it a rusting metal stair rises to the Dreaming Sisters’ home. A pair of Aiah’s guards bound up the stairs to check for sign of ambush, and find none. Aiah follows at a more sedate pace, still studying an intricate pattern of carved quincunxes…

  The door, twice Aiah’s height, is of thick timbers with a trompe l’oeil relief of polished cast bronze stapled onto it, a relief in the shape of a door, and a young woman, seen from the rear, stepping through it. Superficially, tall and thin and with long hair in ringlets, the woman could be Aiah, or any of ten million other women. Above the relief are graven words, Entering the Gateway, in an old-fashioned, round-bellied script that Aiah has only seen in venerable inscriptions like this one.