Order of Eternity stares at her, eyes wide, a touch of fear crossing her young, freckled face. She sighs, turns away, takes Aiah’s arm, leads her to the alcove.
“Come sit in my place,” she says. “And explain these things to us. We do not know you, not really, and we don’t know these other people whose images lie in our dreams, and—for the first time, perhaps, in ages—we would hear of the world outside.”
“First,” Aiah says, “tell me about The Mage.”
“The Mage is a powerful imago,” says Order of Eternity. “The Mage is he who reorders nature in accordance with his will, who demands obedience from reality itself. But he is heedless as to consequence—his actions proceed from his own will alone, without regard for what follows. His actions can lead to tragedy as well as glory. His force of will makes him nearly invincible, but he is a dangerous figure to know, and often fatal to those around him.”
Rohder? she thinks. Dangerous? The world-bending will sounds much more like Constantine than the mild-mannered Rohder.
Well, she thinks, the imagoes can’t be right all the time.
Aiah sits in the alcove and gazes out at her audience, two dozen or so women in gray shifts, all looking at her with solemn, youthful faces, the one exception the twisted Avian with the fierce eyes and the brown, barred wings tented over her shoulders. “Please sit down,” she tells them, and as they do Aiah smiles at this reflection of the classroom, with herself the teacher and these ageless, youthful-seeming women in their gray uniforms the students. She remembers herself, seated before a speaker on Career Day, drowsing through a lecture on the joys of being a marketing executive for Colorsafe Soap.
The Dreaming Sisters know nothing of the world outside, and Aiah has to explain who the players are. A few of the younger sisters have heard of Constantine; none have heard of Sorya or Rohder or the PED. She finds it easier, in the end, to speak of the Architect, the Shadow, and the Mage.
She is aware, as she speaks, that the interpretation she is feeding them may not be true—it may not be Rohder’s techniques that are making the plasm sing in the sisters’ minds; it may not be Taikoen that is threatening the peace of their dreaming—every word she speaks might be a lie, a piece of pure manipulation.
But so might the sisters be manipulating her: stealing plasm to create the huge displays that lured her here, diverting her from an investigation by putting her face on the imagoes, all for some subterranean purpose of their own.
Users and the used: who is the passu, who the pascol? It doesn’t matter.
She needs their cooperation, and she must do what she can to get it.
In the end, the Dreaming Sisters agree to do as she asks. Death will die.
TWENTY-FIVE
Aiah returns from her visit to the Dreaming Sisters and finds Alfeg waiting in the corridor near her apartment, standing uneasily beneath a carving of apricots and carnations. He holds a file in his hand, and his eyes are grave.
Aiah signs him not to speak until she opens her door and leaves the surveillance zone outside her apartment. The scent of massed flowers strikes her as she presses the light switch and she sees the surprising floral blaze, flowers everywhere, on every table, chair, or horizontal surface, their combined aromas heavy in the room.
Alfeg gives a tight smile. “It would seem that someone loves you,” he says.
Aiah wanders to a towering spray of gladiolas, yellow and azure with splashes of red, and touches the attached note, inscribed in Constantine’s bold hand.
“Possibly,” she concedes. She does not want to cope with Constantine right now, and turns to Alfeg. “Something happened last shift, didn’t it?”
He nods. “It’s Refiq.” He hesitates, then adds, “What was that thing? What happened to him? It was terrifying.”
Aiah looks at him. “Tell me what you saw.” She had never seen Taikoen in the act of capturing a human.
Alfeg hesitates. “I was telepresent, had my sensorium across the canal from Refiq’s apartment, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. I had configured my sensorium with farvision, to bring his apartment up close. I couldn’t have got into his apartment anyway, because he’d screened it very thoroughly, but I could peek through the windows. At 14:42 precisely I saw a plasm tether descend from the sky and pause outside the apartment as if it contained a sensorium that was doing some surveilling of its own. Whoever it was, he wasn’t trying to be subtle—I had the impression of haste, if anything.”
That would be Constantine, Aiah thinks, trying to locate Taikoen’s next victim while his government waited outside his office.
“And then something moved behind the kitchen window, something…” Alfeg swallows. “Something very disturbing. I only caught a glimpse of it, but it was menacing, as if someone had constructed an anima for a fright party. And then the window just blew out into the street, like an explosion, and the plasm tether shot in.” He licks his lips. “I wondered what to do. If I should try to break the plasm tether, or follow it to its point of origin, but in the end I decided just to keep watching.”
Taikoen, who could pass through plasm screens, had entered the apartment and opened the screen for Constantine to enter. Then, presumably, Constantine had subdued Refiq and performed whatever unholy midwifery was necessary.
“The plasm tether remained in the apartment for twenty minutes or so, and then it dissolved, as if the mage on the other end had simply broken the connection. A few minutes after that, I saw the subject, Refiq, examining the broken window from the inside. He was disheveled, like he had fallen, or maybe was drunk. He didn’t seem to be walking or moving very well. He brushed some broken glass off the win-dowsill, then went back into his apartment.”
“Where is he now?” Aiah asked.
“He put on some clothes—lace, studs; you know the way the cousins dress—and then he went to his bank. Withdrew some dinars, I guess, because next he went to a bar and ordered drinks for everybody. I turned over surveillance to Khorsa, and so far as I know, he’s still at the bar—he’s got himself quite an entourage by now, so I don’t think he’ll leave anytime soon.” “Good.”
A haunted look comes into Alfeg’s face. “Aiah,” he whispers. “What was that?”
Aiah hesitates. “I’ll go into more detail later,” she says. “But what you should know is that Refiq is dead now—he no longer exists. The creature has him. And the creature will take others until we put a stop to it.”
Aiah can see a little muscle jumping in Alfeg’s cheek.
“Tell no one,” Aiah reminds. “I’ll talk to you and Khorsa later.”
After Alfeg leaves, Aiah calls Aratha, the mage-major of Karlo’s Brigade, and sets an appointment for 06:00 next day. Then she heads for the offices of the PED, looks into Dr. Romus’s office, and sees only the man who shares his office.
“Is Doctor Romus in?” she asks. “Do you know if he’s in the Palace?”
“I’m here,” says Romus. His upper body snakes out from behind his desk, gliding with a lithe purposefulness toward Aiah’s ankles, and Aiah takes an involuntary step backward.
“I was sleeping,” Romus says. His body flows into the center of the room, and his face lifts level with hers. “I’m not on duty till second shift tomorrow.”
Aiah tries to calm her startled heart. “Will you join me in my office, please?” she asks.
“Certainly.”
Aiah leads him to her office, trying not to hear the slithering sounds of his body sawing to and fro on the carpet as he follows. She enters the office, holds the door until Romus joins her, and then closes it behind him. She takes her seat, then a breath.
“It is time,” she says, “to move against the creature you saw that first shift in the secure room.”
Romus’s eyes go wide in what looks like fear. His little tongue licks his lips. “I see,” he says.
“We know where it is,” Aiah says, “and we know it’s vulnerable now, for the next few days. I intend to establish a task force—a very secret one
—to destroy the creature. My question is, Will you join it?”
Romus hesitates, his head swinging left and right on his long neck. “I have no experience in this,” he says.
“None of us do.”
“Is the triumvir a part of this scheme?”
Aiah hesitates. “He has given me to understand,” she says, “that this action will meet with his approval.”
Romus’s cilia give an uneasy, boneless shiver. “That is, forgive me, an evasive answer.”
It’s also a lie, of course. Aiah reminds herself that she should be more sparing with them.
“The triumvir does not know of this action,” Aiah says finally. “No one does. You do not, and I do not, and the creature does not exist.”
Romus is patient. “That is not quite an answer, either.”
Aiah runs her hands through her ringlets, throws her hair over her shoulders. “If you join this group,” she says finally, “it will be as a favor to me, and at some risk to yourself, and you will be doing immeasurable good to the community. If you choose not to join…” She sighs, shrugs. “Nothing more will be said. I only implore you to keep this a complete secret, both for your sake and mine.”
Romus sways back and forth while the silence builds. Aiah turns away, her nerves crawling with the unnatural motion. Finally, in Romus’s reedy tones, the answer comes.
“I have lived a long while,” he says, “and I am now, long after my first century is past, inclined to wonder for what. I spent years in the half-worlds, hardly ever seeing the Shield, scheming to advance my security, aiding people who have now all been murdered. Even my title of doctor is less than honorary, more a nickname than a real title. Now I have a job, and half an office, and a meal ticket… more than I’ve ever had, I suppose, but it hardly seems worth a century of effort.” Something uncertain flickers in his dark eyes. “If that thing, that demon, kills me now, what will I have lost? Half an office… so why does this half an office seem so precious?”
Having nothing to offer him, no more words of persuasion or consolation, Aiah waits. Eventually Romus pauses in his swaying, looks down at her.
“Very well,” he says. “I will join.” “Thank you, Doctor,” Aiah says.
NEGOTIATIONS COLLAPSE
FUND WITHDRAWAL IMMINENT
“COMPENSATED DEMOBILIZATION” CALLED “DEAD ISSUE”
Rohder blinks at Aiah with his pale blue eyes. “No,” he says.
She looks at him in surprise. Of all those she’d hoped to talk into destroying Taikoen, Rohder was the one she’d felt most sure of.
He lays his cigaret on the edge of the ashtray carefully, as if he were laying an artillery tube on an enemy objective, and gives a meditative frown.
“I have a number of objections,” he says. “What you propose is illegal, even under our current martial law. It is well outside our department’s authorization, and it violates the procedural and security standards which you yourself have established. And this action is highly dangerous for a group of untrained, inexperienced mages… What are you going to do if there are casualties? That creature—if it exists—could burn away the minds of half your people, and you still might not catch it.”
“If we work together,” Aiah says. “If we all know what we are doing…”
“You will not know what you are doing.” Rohder brushes cigaret ash from his shirtfront. “And I am far too old for this sort of thing,” he adds. “The last time I coped with a plasm emergency—the Bursary Street flamer, you remember, back in Jaspeer—I ended up in the hospital. I cannot expose my neurons to plasm of that strength, not any longer.”
“Well. I understand. If it’s a matter of your health…”
“No, it’s not,” says Rohder sharply. “Haven’t you been listening? It is not simply unhealthy—it is dangerous, it’s illegal, and…” He leans forward, a kind of cold anger in his blue eyes. “And this creature has a measure of political protection, does he not?”
Aiah finds herself paralyzed for a moment beneath the certainty of those watery eyes, beneath the intelligence that had just unraveled the secret she had been trying so desperately to preserve with lies she had thought so cunning.
“Yes,” she finally says. “But it’s unwilling protection. The person doesn’t want—”
Rohder nods thoughtfully to himself. “I knew when I read Constantine’s article: It was too outside his usual sphere… far too assured.” He nods as if confirming something to himself. “He found a use for the thing, then. I’d wondered how so many of the Keremaths had died, in the first minutes of the coup, in such a well-shielded building.”
“It’s haunting him,” Aiah says. “It can destroy everything he’s built. We’ve got to get rid of it.”
Rohder takes a meditative draw on his cigaret. “Then why is Constantine not leading the charge?” he says. “Why isn’t he putting a group of mages together—he can find more suitable ones than you can, I’m sure. Why isn’t Constantine solving his own problem?”
“He can’t. He’s too caught up in it. And—” There is an ache in her throat, because she doesn’t want to admit this of him, not this kind of weakness. It’s not, after all, a flaw of greatness; not a crime of excess, like those she’s got used to, a desire for women, or an uncontrollable appetite for conspiracy. A baffling subtlety of policy.
“Constantine is afraid of the thing,” she admits. “He’s known it for years, and—”
“If he’s afraid of it,” reasonably, “then perhaps it is with good reason. Perhaps you should be as afraid as he.”
“The secret is very near to being revealed,” Aiah insists. “There is no one who can follow Constantine, no one capable of continuing his work. If he is linked with this creature, he falls, and all our work, yours and mine, goes for nothing. I haven’t given my life to Caraqui to have it wrecked by something like this.”
Rohder leans back and considers. A spasm, amusement perhaps, crosses his features. “You want to keep your job,” he says. “That is a reason I can respect.”
“That is not what I mean!” Frustration and anger fire her words into the air like bullets. “It’s not just me, it’s the tens of thousands who died, all the people who lost their homes… All they’ve got left is hope, and I can’t let them lose that, too, not when I could have helped…” Her nails bite the metal of the chair arm, leave silver scars in the gray paint.
Rohder regards the matter, nods. “I will offer what advice I can, though I will not confront this thing directly, nor will I play a part in your actual operation.”
Aiah feels her frustration abate somewhat. “Thank you,” she says.
“And in regard to our jobs, our official jobs,” reaching for a file, “I have another report from the Havilak’s Transformation team. They have found another altered office building, the Communications and Telephony Center down on Orange Canal.”
“Altered.” The shift in subject matter bewilders her for a moment. “Oh—you mean—”
“Another building, which we’d scheduled for internal reshaping along the lines of fractionate interval theory, was found to have been altered before we could get there. A complete job this time, not half-finished like the first.”
The Dreaming Sisters, Aiah thinks, a burst of revelation. It’s the sisters who are altering these buildings, giving themselves the plasm for those huge displays. They must have discovered FIT long ago, kept it to themselves, along with their theories of life extension and plasm use…
“As before,” Rohder continues, “the meters have shown the increase, which occurred gradually about a month ago, and there is no evidence that any plasm was stolen.”
They only used the plasm for a brief display, Aiah thinks. Afterward they let it flow into the public supply.
Perhaps she will confront them with this knowledge at some time, or through this matter of Taikoen earn their trust so that they will share their secrets with her.
“If there was no plasm stolen,” Aiah says, “then it’s not the busin
ess of our department.”
“I find it difficult to believe,” Rohder says, “in these omnibenevolent mages who creep about in secret to improve the structure of our public buildings. I would like to know what they’re after.”
“Maybe you’ll meet them someday.”
He narrows his eyes, suspicious of her sudden gaiety.
“Maybe,” he says.
CONSTANTINE PROMISES “HOUSING OUT OF THIN AIR”
PLANS NEAR COMPLETION
Alfeg’s office is filled with Barkazil memorabilia: old Holy League recruiting posters, a frame chromo of the Coffee Factory before the war, pictures of long-dead politicians, and, in a wetsilver frame, the same cheap portrait of Karlo that hangs in Aiah’s flat.
The metal door is locked from the inside. Aiah sits on the desk, Khorsa and Alfeg are in chairs, and Dr. Romus is coiled on the floor. Refiq is back in his apartment, with booze, pills, and a girl he picked up, and will probably be there for a while.
“Destroying the hanged man,” Aiah tells them, “will mean destroying Refiq’s body along with it. Refiq is already dead, but we can’t prove it, and it won’t look that way to an observer. It will look like a violation of the victim’s rights. Even under martial law we’ve had to obtain warrants for our arrests, we’ve presented evidence to military judges, and the sentences passed have been legal under martial-law decree. If we destroy the hanged man, we will be acting in violation of law.”
She looks at the solemn faces of Khorsa, Alfeg, and Dr. Romus. “That’s why I’ve spoken only to you three. Whatever we do here, I want absolute secrecy in this matter, and I want you to understand that this mission will not take place officially, that there will be no files, no casework, no commendations. It’s a job that needs to be done in complete secrecy, so complete that no one else can ever be told.”
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