—Yes, miss.
—I will arrange to be here, in person, first shift tomorrow.
—Very good, miss.
—I want you to paint a new name on the side of the vehicle that I am to use. It will be called the Golden Lady. Understood?
Ceison’s eyes widen in surprise. The existence of the Golden Lady has not, it appears, entirely escaped his attention.
—I want you to see if you can find an artist, Aiah continues, who can paint a golden lady on the vehicle. Large as you can.
With an act of will she causes her anima to fluoresce, and Ceison shields his eyes against her brightness.
—This is what I want you to paint. Do you understand?
—Yes, miss.
Aiah permits the image to fade. Ceison lowers his hand and blinks his dazzled eyes.
Aiah’s ectomorphic sensorium observes Ceison, standing in the pouring rain with water sluicing off his hood and cape.
—Better get inside, she sends. We can’t afford to have you down with pneumonia at a time like this. Ceison smiles.
—Thank you, miss. I will see you first shift.
Aiah touches the off button and feels Lanbola fade from her vision. Plasm sings a song of triumph in her ears.
The Golden Lady will do her part to end the terror, she thinks. And she will be seen to do her part.
COMMERCE COUNCIL PROTESTS CAMPAIGN OF PURIFICATION
“UNREST BAD FOR BUSINESS,” SPOKESMAN SAYS
RELAYS COMPLAINTS OF EXTORTION
PARQ DENOUNCES “BANKERS AND BLOODSUCKERS”
Her pilot takes Aiah to Lanbola through a lightning storm, the aerocar flying through great flashing sheets of electric fire that turn everyone in the cabin into pale, glittering-eyed ghosts. Green voltaic flame streams from the car’s stubby wings as it descends, and dances like a thing alive along the instrument panel.
The aerocar touches down on the landing pad, and the pilot pulls his headset off. His forehead is beaded with sweat. “I don’t want to do that ever again,” he says.
Aiah looks at him. Her mind was fully occupied during the flight; she had appreciated the spectacle, but her thoughts were elsewhere. “Were we in danger?” she asks.
“I would not have wanted to short out our instruments,” the pilot breathes.
“Glad we didn’t.” Her mind is already on other things.
She steps from the aerocar into pelting rain and blazing video light: the camera crews she’d requested are here to record her arrival. Her guards are prepared for combat, wearing bulky bulletproofs and carrying weapons openly; and Aiah herself is dressed practically, in boots, pants, and waterproof jacket.
Ceison offers her an umbrella and salutes. “Everything’s ready, miss,” he says.
“Thank you. Let’s get out of the rain.”
Armored vehicles jockey for place in the huge nearby garage, filling the air with unburnt hydrocarbons. The carrier Golden Lady is decorated impressively, with a fierce, fiery woman, hair ablaze, pointing ahead to victory with a commanding expression on her face. Aiah asks to meet the artist, and compliments him. “Can you paint me another copy of this?” she asks. “Put it on cardboard or something, so I can have it in my apartment? I’ll pay you for your work.”
The artist is a young man, and blushes easily. “I’d be happy to, miss. And no need for payment.”
“Of course I’ll pay you. It’s not your regular job, is it?”
He colors gratefully and Aiah moves on, greeting as many of the soldiers as she can. When Ceison tells her it’s time to move, Aiah joins the Golden Lady, and the vehicle commander hands her a pair of headphones and shows her how to stand in the hatch. Her guards file into the interior. The camera crews keep Aiah in their sights as the Golden Lady jerks, belches fumes, and lurches for the exit on its six solid-steel wheels. Enjoying this, Aiah breaks into a grin, and forgets to adopt for the cameras the stern expression of the Golden Lady painted onto the side of her vehicle.
Outside the rain has ended, though water still pours from drain spouts and fills the gutters. Shieldlight is breaking through dark cloud, and the stormlights are flickering off. The vehicle lurches into a higher gear and Aiah lowers herself behind the armored hatch combing to cut the chilling wind.
The convoy picks up speed once it gets on the Sealine Highway and rolls across the Caraqui border at 06:10, receiving waves and salutes from puzzled soldiers guarding the customs stations. Columns begin to split from the main body, aiming for different objectives. Well before 06:30, Ceison reports to Aiah that the first objectives have been seized, and that complete surprise has been achieved.
In brilliant Shieldlight, at 06:45, Aiah’s column rolls to a halt in front of the district militia headquarters, and soldiers and camera teams spill out. Aiah’s guards tug at her trouser legs to bring her down out of the hatch and behind the vehicle’s armor, but she insists on remaining in plain view, where the cameras and population can see her.
There is no resistance, no bullets, no plasm blasts, and the soldiers occupy the building without so much as a protest from its puzzled sleep-shift occupants.
And, when the militia members begin turning up for work at 08:00, they are quietly arrested and disarmed. Seized militia records provide names and addresses of those not present, and army combat teams move to their apartments to confiscate any weaponry they may possess.
But by that point Aiah has shifted to a local plasm station, where her PED identification gains entrance and where she can commandeer an antenna, dive into the well, and provide magical support for her soldiers. Since, commanding a station, she has practically unlimited plasm at her disposal, she crafts a blazing golden anima to fly above the steets and soar to her soldiers’ aid.
At 08:00, while the Golden Lady cruises above the city, Constantine appears on radio and video to announce that he and the president-triumvir, Faltheg, have ordered the army to suppress disorder and to disarm and disperse the Dalavan Militia. The sumptuary laws are summarily repealed. The reconstituted police forces, now ready under Randay, the Minister of Public Security, will assume all responsibility for public order.
When she hears the news some hours later, Aiah reflects that she had almost forgotten about Randay and the restructured civilian police. She has her doubts about how much better the new police will prove than the old, but concludes they could hardly do worse than the militia.
Within another hour, the camera teams are delivering their raw video to broadcast stations, where the Golden Lady’s identity is revealed for the first time.
There is remarkably little violence. The Dalavan Militia is used to pushing around helpless civilians, is short of competent magical support, and has received very little training. Its few members who attempt resistance prove hopelessly naive about the amount of firepower that can be generated by a well-trained, well-equipped combat team, and are either immediately blown from existence or so intimidated by the formidable response that they immediately surrender.
By 12:00, the situation is well in hand, and Aiah leaves the plasm station and returns to the Aerial Palace. She will dismiss Togthan, fire every person he appointed, rehire the twisted people he had forced her to send away.
When she arrives, she discovers she is famous. Her image has been playing on the video for hours. Togthan accepts his dismissal stonily, and many of his hires have either left already or not bothered to report to work, saving her the bother of firing them.
Parq, from his refuge in the Grand Temple, issues bulletins denouncing the other two triumvirs, and then—when the other two insist that he leave the Grand Temple for a meeting—sends his resignation instead.
Adaveth is recalled to the government—not to the cabinet, but to take Parq’s place as triumvir. Sweet irony, Aiah thinks, that Parq should be replaced by one of the polluted flesh.
Ethemark returns to the department late in the day. She cannot read the expression in his face, but she hears the anger still in his voice.
“You knew,�
� he says. “You knew this would happen.”
“I didn’t know,” Aiah says, and then adds a comforting falsehood. “I only hoped.”
He nods, reserving his judgment, and passes on.
In the days to come Aiah discovers that video is inter-metropolitan in nature and does not stop at borders. Her image finds its way around the world. Aldemar, calling a few days later, is the fifth person offering to buy the exclusive rights to base a chromoplay on her story. Many more calls come from journalists.
She hires an agent in Chemra to deal with it all.
She has to decide what she wants from fame before she can decide how to handle it.
TWENTY-THREE
“You should have trusted me, Triumvir,” Aiah says.
Constantine’s dreamy eyes contemplate columns of brilliant bubbles rising in golden liquid. He holds the crystal glass to the light that streams in the windows of his limousine, observing the way the crystal casts rainbows on the vehicle’s interior, and when he speaks his voice seems to drift into the car from far away.
“Do you remember, that time we spent together in Achanos, I spoke of my grandfather?”
“Yes, I remember.”
The facets of the crystal dapple Constantine’s face with little rainbows. A thoughtful frown touches his lips, and he touches a button that causes a slab of bulletproof glass to rise between the passenger compartment and the driver and bodyguard in the front seat.
“Do you remember when I spoke of my grandfather’s abdication? How he put his enemies in power, and arranged for them to fail, and then came back with everyone’s blessing to resume his place as Metropolitan—do you remember that?”
The memory floats to the surface of Aiah’s mind. He had told her, she thinks, exactly what he would do, and furthermore he had, when he first warned her of Parq’s rise, bade her to remember Achanos. She had thought, instead, he was trying to manipulate her through the memories of a moment of love.
“Yes,” she says. “I remember.”
Constantine’s eyes drift from the glass to Aiah. “I told you then what I planned, near as I dared.”
“But that was when the war was still in progress,” Aiah says. “You had made plans for Parq even then?”
“Of course. I had always intended, from the first, even before war came upon us, to deal with Parq exactly as I have.”
Knowledge of these deep-laid plans darkens the complexion of Aiah’s thought. What, she wonders, is his plan for her?
The limousine, part of a convoy with guards fore and aft and mages floating overhead on invisible tethers, turns to cross a canal. Shieldlight winks off the spiderweb supports of the suspension bridge; below the canal glitters greenly. The hum of the contra-rotating flywheels set between the driver’s and passengers’ compartments grows louder.
“But why?” Aiah asks. “Why put Parq in power in the first place? He was treacherous even during the revolution, and no credit to the government afterward.”
Constantine sips his wine and lets it hang on his palate for a long moment, savoring it, a reward of success.
“Because,” he says finally, “following the fall of the Keremaths, there were always a number of alternatives that presented themselves, and one of them was the concept of theocracy. The Dalavans are potentially a great power here, two out of every five people, and if they united behind Parq’s alternative, behind a theocratic concept, they could overpower any opposition. Theocracies, when they are not corrupt, are always vicious, always trying to impose their moral absolutes on an imperfect humanity. But they always sound attractive—their language seduces, like ecclesiastical architecture, music… Why not form a government of godly, disinterested people? Why not let them direct society in harmony with divine inspiration? Why not make people good? And so, on this promising moral premise, we find the coercive powers of the state united with the coercive powers of faith—people must be made good, the state must make them so when religion cannot; and if one is not good, one is not merely disobeying a custom or a law made by mortals, one is defying the universal truths behind the operation of the universe, one is opposing all that is true, all that is divine, and so the penalties must be savage for such willful perversity, such obstinacy in the face of revealed truth…”
He sips his wine again. “It is a powerful notion, and it was necessary that such a notion be discredited. And so Parq was given what he wished—power over the state, power to persecute and confiscate—and everyone in Caraqui got a taste of what it is like to live in a theocracy… and now, as a result, the concept of theocracy is discredited beyond saving. As long as there is a living memory of Parq’s abuses, the notion of rule by the godly will not raise its head in Caraqui, not for three generations at least, and by then I hope other institutions will be so firmly in place that theocracy will never be chosen but by a discontented few.”
“All the chaos was necessary?” Aiah asks. “The violence, the terror?”
Constantine gives her an indulgent look. “It got the matter over with in ten days. If theocracy had gained lodgment by another means—coming to power through an election, say, or by coup against a regime deemed insufficiently devout—there would have been years of terror.”
“//, you say, they had come to power. It might never have happened.”
Constantine frowns, sips at his wine. “//,” he repeats. “I thought we could not take the chance, Parq being Parq, and Caraqui being Caraqui.”
“And elections,” Aiah observes, “being within a few weeks.”
Constantine smiles to himself. “Even so.” He chuckles deep in his throat. “I can predict Parq’s next move. He will begin to intrigue with the Provisionals, and that will be the end of him. Because—count on it—I will monitor this conspiracy, and document it well, and then under threat of exposing it will make Parq my instrument forever.”
“Still,” Aiah says, “you should have trusted me, and made my part plain. I was forced to improvise, and I put myself in a dangerous situation.”
Constantine permits a look of irritation to cross his face. “I trusted no one. I told no one at all, not directly, not till the last moment, when I had to give the army its orders. It was not a thing to be spread about—and though I could trust you with a secret, I could not trust your reactions. I wanted you to be outraged about Togthan’s moves in your department, I wanted that emotion to be genuine. I didn’t want you turning smug and implying that you knew something Parq and Togthan didn’t.”
“I would not have done such a thing, Triumvir,” Aiah says.
“It was not a necessary thing for you to know,” Constantine insists. “I only do that which is necessary.”
Aiah is not willing, for her part, to let the matter go.
“You should also have consulted me about the movement of Karlo’s Brigade,” she says.
Grudgingly he looks at her sidelong. “Perhaps,” he allows.
Aiah presses in. “I think, in order to avoid these difficult situations in the future, the informal arrangement we have reached concerning the Barkazil Division should be put on a more formal basis. I suggest I become an employee of the War Ministry. I will not require a salary, but I want a place in the hierarchy. Vice-Minister for Barkazil Affairs. Something like that, but you may choose the exact wording.”
“It is not necessary.”
“Do you recall, a few days ago, when you said you would grant me anything in your power?”
Constantine puffs out a breath. “It is absurd for you to hold positions in two different ministries.”
“Surely it is not beyond the combined powers of the War Minister, the Resources Minister, and a triumvir to grant me an exception.”
Constantine gazes stolidly forward for a moment, then tilts his head back and laughs, the sound booming in the car. Wine dances in his glass.
“Very well,” he says. “If the Ministerial Assistant for Barkazil Liaison will cease to plague me about matters long past and done with, I believe I may satisfy her on this matter
.”
Aiah smiles sweetly. “Thank you, Triumvir.”
Constantine booms another laugh. “You’re welcome, Miss Aiah.” He leans forward, snatches a grape from a waiting basket of fruit, pops it in his mouth, and chews with pleasure.
Beyond the windows a desert looms. The vehicle convoy is approaching the Martyr’s Canal, where a great battle had been fought, not in the war with the Provisionals, but in the original coup that had brought Constantine to Caraqui. The Burning Man had appeared here, in the midst of a quiet residential neighborhood, and set the entire district alight, a whirlwind of fiery horror that had killed at least twenty thousand people. Now the buildings are rubble or roofless shells, some mere steel skeletons, some with traces of fine stonework, graceful plaster accents, noble arches, fluted pillars that now support… nothing. Occasionally a forlorn Dalavan hermit is seen, hanging in a sack from a scorched wall, and election graffiti is splashed over anything left standing. The clouds float undisturbed overhead: no advertising flashes in the sky here, because there is no one to buy.
Many of the destroyed buildings were torn down to make way for new construction, but the Provisionals’ countercoup interrupted the work, and dozens of the dangerous, roofless ruins still stand open to the weather. The promised new con-truction hasn’t materialized, either, funds dried up by the war, and the entire district stands bereft of life except for the campsites of refugees with nowhere else to go.
A perfect workshop, Constantine considers it; a laboratory for experimentation.
Rohder is planning to perform a miracle here within the next hour.
Constantine’s convoy pulls off the road into an area bulldozed free of rubble. The song of the car’s flywheels decreases in volume. Constantine’s guards pour out of their vehicles and set up a watchful perimeter. A tugboat’s whistle shrieks on the nearby canal.
Constantine remains in the vehicle. After what happened at Rohder’s last outdoor demonstration, Constantine has decided to play it safe.
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