City on Fire m-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Clever Karlo!” Aiah shouts, the signal agreed upon.

  And Aratha, from her hiding place across the canal, fires a silver arrow of plasm-energy straight through Refiq’s heart. It’s the kind of work she is used to. Aiah wanted to do it herself, wanted to take the responsibility of killing Refiq’s empty shell, but she was afraid that she’d hesitate, or do it wrong, and finally gave in to Aratha’s calm insistence.

  Refiq gives a cry and flings out his arms, shot in the back by a blast of pure reality. Other shots are already on their way, propelled by the readier reflexes of the military mages. Aiah forms and flings her own bolt, blasting a body already dead, the force of her angry fire lifting the corpse from the stone pathway where it had crumpled. But something is already rising from Refiq’s shattered shell, a kind of buzzing silver madness, insubstantial but infused with dire purpose, like a swarm of scintillating bees, and the next bolt, fired by one of Aratha’s military mages, hits it dead on, spraying bits of silver chaff, Taikoen’s strange essence, through the air… Another bolt strikes, fired from another quarter. Some bits of the hanged man spark off into nowhere, and others, still under his command, loop back to rejoin his form.

  But Constantine is reacting, moving with his usual uncommon swiftness and readiness. His anima grows, forms a great amorphous shield that flies across the canal toward the attackers, trying to scoop up the plasm bolts… Aiah ducks around the shield, preparing another attack, but the shield suddenly extends itself in her direction and she contacts it, striking it with a kind of mental concussion that, back in the Palace, sends her bolt upright in her padded ops-room chair. In a brief instant of mental contact she can feel Constantine’s recognition of her, his profound surprise…

  And then he’s gone, vanished completely—Khorsa has cut his sourceline.

  Aiah looks to the hanged man, finds him unmoved, launches her bolt of fire. Taikoen is either stunned or is having difficulty disentangling his essence from Refiq’s remains.

  Hit him! Hit him! Hit him! Aiah can’t tell whether she’s shouting the words out loud or not.

  It is safer to attack this way, Aratha’s manual suggests. Blast Taikoen from a distance, fire discrete bolts and not a steady stream of plasm that he could turn against its user.

  A half-dozen bolts blaze into Taikoen. His scintillating body scatters, loops, reforms. Once free of Refiq he will not be able to survive for long without plasm. He floats away from Refiq, lets the blasts drive him toward the sisters’ building, and then, with a sinuous, purposeful little twist of his form, Taikoen slides through the image on the huge door, Enters the Gateway, enters the maze that waits for him…

  Aiah pursues, spreading phantom arms wide as she flies across Cold Canal at the speed of thought, fast as one of her plasm bullets. There is a strange high-pitched drone humming somewhere in her senses, and she realizes it’s Dr. Romus, a kind of buzzing battle-cry he’s uttering unconsciously as he flies to the attack. Aiah dives through the doorway—the sisters’ building is transparent to plasm, completely unshielded—and there is one of the Dreaming Sisters on her couch, not Whore but someone Aiah doesn’t know, lying with eyes closed and plasm contact in her mouth, and the sister has lifted a hand to point down the rightmost of the two corridors… Aiah flies in that direction, catches bits of Taikoen’s form speeding along the floor, as if he is in the process of diving into a plasm main just below the surface of the flags. Aiah gives a yelp of triumph and fires a bolt, sees bits of Taikoen flare up and scatter like sparks. Another of Aiah’s team fires a bolt—and Taikoen submerges completely, like a dolphin diving beneath the surface of the sea.

  There are Dreaming Sisters in all the alcoves, and with a shiver at their strange knowing Aiah sees that each has raised a languid arm, fingers pointing down the corridor, directing Aiah and the others to their prey. The corridor loops right and down and then branches, but Aiah follows the sisters’ drowsing fingers, all lazily pointing at one spot in the wall, a carved trompe l’oeil of Rohder.

  Aiah gathers herself and punches through the image, briefly feeling the chill of the stone around her—and then there is Taikoen, a figure hunched over one of the Dreaming Sisters, the violence already over, a spray of blood dripping down the alcove wall and the sister’s eyes a staring witness to her final terror. In her last instant, torn from her unearthly dreaming and her inhuman serenity, she had become human again, pain and raw emotion plain on her face.

  But more eerie than this are the sisters in the other alcoves, all lying in repose, eyes closed in dream, minds far removed from the grisly scene save for the uplifted arms, the fingers pointing in silent, certain accusation, toward the guilty thief who has stolen their sister’s life.

  Taikoen has taken the copper contact from the sister’s slack mouth; he is trying to take plasm. Aiah gathers energy, as if filling her lungs with air, and then flings the power at the hanged man, a ball of destruction. The hanged man shudders—the fury of the bolt splatters stone along the corridor, sets afire the dead sister’s mattress. Other animas fly into the corridor, surround Taikoen with a storm of fire. But he’s using the dead sister’s plasm now, creating a bubble shield that surrounds him. The bolts ricochet off the shield, strike sparks and splinter shards from the stone walls.

  “Khorsa!” Aiah barks. “Alfeg! Protect the sisters! The rest of you—keep hitting him!”

  The more plasm they fire at the hanged man, Aiah assumes, the faster he’ll use up his available supply. She wonders why he’s making a stand here, why he doesn’t simply dive into the nearest plasm main and run.

  Maybe, she thinks, the sisters are making the plasm mains uncomfortable for him.

  She fires bolt after bolt. The bubble shield spins, lurches, blazes with strange color. And then frost shivers up her veins at the sound of Taikoen’s insinuating voice.

  “You, is it, girl-mage? Do you desire death so absolutely? I will oblige, young one…”

  He recognizes me, she thinks in sudden terror; // this doesn’t work I’m dead. But the burning plasm in her veins provides an answer, draws Aiah’s lips back in a snarl. “Your death is overdue, creature. And it is the Golden Lady who brings it.”

  She doesn’t know whether he hears her or not, whether she is projecting the words to him or just speaking them aloud in the Operations Room, but he acts as if he hears. Taikoen and the plasm-shield make a lunge, straight for Aiah’s anima, and she feels a sudden shock of contact, the touch of the thing’s cold, immortal mind, its dread intention, and knows its goal is to conquer her, nullify her, drive her mind into mad byways and seize her plasm for his own.

  And as his mind presses upon hers she catches a glimpse of the way he sees things, the world bent and distorted, plasm the focus of the whole world, all other reality twisted toward it, leaning inward, strangely curved and warped, the colors shimmering in odd spectra, some strangely alive, imbued with a strange purpose… and what purpose could a color have…?

  It is fear that saves her, a pure reflex that sends the plasm blasting from her into Taikoen, driving the ice from her in a spray of burning plasm fire. Molten metal sings in her veins. There is a roar of thwarted anger, a kind of snarl, and then the hanged man’s body twists again, a strange little Mobius shiver, and vanishes into the wall, into the building’s plasm conduits.

  Aiah pauses—in the Operations Room she is aware of sweat pouring down her neck, of her heart hammering her ribs—and she turns her focus to the Dreaming Sisters, to the outstretched, pointing arms that seem to bridge the world of dreaming and not-dreaming…

  The arms sway like compass needles, pointing up and right, and Aiah flies, penetrating the arched ceiling to the story above; and here the sisters’ arms are level, all pointing deeper into the building, and Aiah follows them, flying through walls and ceilings, through alcoves and images, penetrating as if entering a mirror her own image in The Apprentice, Sorya’s scornful gaze in The Shadow, Rohder’s thoughtful Mage. Contact with Taikoen’s mind seems to have deranged her pe
rception in some way: the corridors and images seem warped, twisted, looming toward her as if threatening. She tries to ignore the effect, the distorted and ominous images, and concentrate only on her blazing pursuit.

  She realizes as she flies that she is wearing the Golden Lady anima, the featureless icon of blazing gold… She can’t remember willing this, and wonders how long she has borne this form, whether she automatically slipped into it when she began to fly or perhaps took it on when she invoked the Golden Lady’s name, when she shouted at Taikoen in her plasm-pride.

  She passes through a wall and finds herself in the dome room, sees Shieldlight passing through the slits in the dome to illuminate the gleaming plasm accumulator, copper and black ceramic behind its carved screen. A dreaming sister lies dead atop a control panel, blood spattering the dials and switches, the sight all the more horrible in Aiah’s distorted perceptions. Taikoen shimmers toward the accumulator, disappears into it before Aiah can launch a plasm blast. Other animas fly into the room, hover about the accumulator like a swarm of angry insects.

  It is Taikoen’s last refuge. Plasm was flowing in the mains, and flowing only in one direction, from the accumulator to the sisters’ contacts. Taikoen fled upstream, as it were, to the source of the plasm. Perhaps he’d expected to find a plasm main that would carry him away, allow him to merge with Caraqui’s vast plasm well and vanish; but instead he’d found only a dead end, trapped himself here. He can still run, but if he does he will have to flee into a plasm conduit with less plasm than he has access to now, and he will find himself weaker and still lost, still caught in the sisters’ maze.

  The dreaming sister Order of Eternity lies on a couch on the other side of the circular room. She sits upright, opens her eyes.

  “Hit him from all sides,” Aiah says. “Destroy the accumulator and he has nowhere to run. Ready… on my command.”

  “No.” Order of Eternity raises a hand. Her words are slurred by the plasm contact still in her mouth. “It is our turn. We will end it.”

  Aiah hesitates. And then the dome room, the Sisters’ stony refuge, the world itself, seems to undergo a shift, a transformation. Aiah sees everything as through a pulsing wave, and she feels herself uplifted, as if buoyed up by a surge of the sea. There is a moment in which all seems to hang suspended… Aiah thinks wildly of the “slip” in the Barkazil dance, a hesitation between beats.

  The world falls into place again, somehow more intense than before, more real. Aiah gazes at the dead sister, and recognizes the woman she knows as Inaction. The dead woman stares at her, a horrified expression that says, / was not expecting this.

  The world shivers again to another pulse of… of what? Reality is changing, Aiah thinks, the pace of her thoughts fervid, they are changing the world.

  “What is going on?” Khorsa wonders aloud in the breathless moment that follows, like a pause before the clapper strikes the bell.

  Another pulse, another endless moment in which the world changes. Aiah feels herself buoyed up by a wave of gentle power. A cry of wonder parts her lips. The figures on the screen seem to move, shift, engage with one another in a solemn dance, the world-dance that Aiah has seen beyond the Shield, the dance of eternity, the dance of the Woman who is the Moon.

  The timeless moment ends, and reality falls into place again, stone by slow stone.

  “Wahhh,” Alfeg breathes in awe.

  Order of Eternity stands, removes the contact from her mouth, and walks around the screen to where Aiah, the Golden Lady, waits. She seems to move with unnatural lithe movements, and her face is distorted, all eyes and forehead, the mouth and chin tiny. Taikoen’s perceptions have left their imprint on Aiah’s mind.

  “The creature is dead,” says the sister. “We have abolished it.”

  “How?” The question spills from Aiah’s mind.

  “It existed as a modulation in plasm. Once the creature ceased its movement and was contained in one place, and we had the leisure to do so, we modulated the same plasm in a way as to reduce the creature’s modulation to zero—we canceled the creature out, like one wave precisely canceling another and leaving the sea smooth.”

  “Ask her if she’s sure.” Aratha’s skeptical voice sounds in Aiah’s ear. “I don’t want to have to go through this again.”

  “I didn’t know such a thing could be done,” Aiah tells the sister.

  Order of Eternity walks on bare feet to the control panel, reaches out to touch, in a familiar gesture of tenderness, Inaction’s short black hair. “To understand plasm is to control reality,” she says. “Through our understanding, we made the thing unreal.”

  And then Aiah feels fingers on her throat and she is torn from the dome room, from the calm gaze of the dreaming sister, and finds herself in the Operations Room, with one of Constantine’s huge hands about her neck. He pulls her from her chair, the t-grip flying from her hand as it reaches the end of its cable. His face is distorted, all anger and teeth. Behind him Aiah sees his guards, Martinus included, yanking t-grip cables from their sockets, disarming Aiah’s team.

  “What are you doing?” Constantine cries. “What is this treason?” He bends her backward over the desk, claw on her windpipe. Aiah seizes his thick wrist in both hands, tries to tear him off her, finds him immovable as iron. Tears come to her eyes as she tries to drag air into her lungs. “Have you gone mad?” Constantine roars.

  Then plasm sizzles the air and Constantine flies backward with a grunt, as if he’s been hit in the stomach. He tangles with Aiah’s chair and goes down. The world seems to lean in, as if about to crush them all. Aiah clutches her throat. Heat flashes on Aiah’s skin. The bodyguards, with their portable plasm packs, are dueling with the mages they haven’t yet disarmed.

  “Stop this!” Aiah shouts. Constantine rises from the floor, murder in his eyes, and lunges for Aiah again. She gets her feet between them, drives at him with her legs, keeps him off. Out of the corner of her eye Aiah sees a guard with a gun, and her cry of warning occurs simultaneously with the gun’s exploding at the touch of plasm, all its ammunition detonating. The guard, face blackened, hand mangled, gives a cry and falls. Constantine lunges again, throws aside Aiah’s legs, and dives atop her. He seizes her hair, beats her head against the desk. “What is the matter with you?” he demands. “What is this spirit of treachery?” Red explosions fill Aiah’s head as he pounds her against the desk.

  And then Constantine is torn off her again, and she hears him give a cry of rage, a cry abruptly choked off. Aiah sits up, clutching her throat, blinking furiously as she tries to bring her vision back. The room is filled with an ominous silence.

  The red splashes fade, from Aiah’s sight but waves of distortion flood her vision. Dr. Romus has wrapped his thick body about Constantine, has pinned his arms and brought him down, a loop around his throat. Martinus has been thrown against the wall, his arms held there, obviously by plasm. Another guard is unconscious, and the guard whose gun exploded rolls on the floor, clutching his maimed hand. The military mages—Aratha, Kari, and Melko—stand erect in their uniforms, transference grips in their hands, shields buzzing before them. In command. The room seems to bend toward them as if in homage.

  Alfeg touches a split lip, a black eye. Khorsa, businesslike, plugs in her t-grip and arms herself.

  Alarmed faces—PED employees—blink at the scene from the doorway.

  Constantine gives Aiah a stricken look. “What are you doing?” he whispers, using the little air Romus has left him. “What is this madness?”

  Aiah massages her throat. “It’s finished,” she says. “The thing is dead.”

  A convulsion crosses Constantine’s face. “You had no right!” he says. “He had more than a measure of greatness! My oldest”—he blinks—“oldest friend. Greatest advisor. The one to whom I owe…” His voice fails.

  Friend, Constantine had called the monster. Advisor. New words for such a thing.

  Aiah carefully puts her feet on the floor, lets her weight rest on them, loo
ks down at Constantine.

  “I had every right,” she says. “I finished the job you couldn’t, thirty-odd years ago. The job you ran from.”

  An ardent look comes to Constantine’s face. “He was useful. He was necessary. My plans—”

  His voice chokes off again as Dr. Romus shifts his coils, shuts his wind. Romus’s reedy voice buzzes in the sudden silence.

  “So this is the creature’s protector,” he says. His irony sizzles in the air. “This… great man… permitted so many to die. And he would have handed one of the Dreaming Sisters to such a thing.”

  “Gangsters,” Constantine whispers. “I thought they were gangsters.”

  Romus’s coils shift again, tightening on chest and throat, and Aiah can see fear enter Constantine’s eyes. Aiah sees death settle onto his face, a smiling skull behind the purpling flesh. Romus turns his little face to Aiah.

  “Shall I kill him, miss?” Romus asks. “It would be easy… His usefulness to the world is over.”

  A great weariness falls on Aiah. She shakes her head.

  “He may try to kill us all,” Romus reminds.

  “He can’t,” Aiah says. She looks at her people standing in the doorway, the people she has hired personally, made loyal to her, her PED, intended as an instrument of Constantine’s will, now her own. And through the small crowd hurry members of Aiah’s own guard—she normally does not use guards unless she leaves the building, but here they are now, summoned by calls from people in her division.

  She looks down at Constantine. “It’s gone too far,” she says. “Too many people know now, or could put it together if they wished. Enough to destroy you if you press this. PED, Barkazils, the army.” She passes a hand across her forehead, looks at her own guards taking up position in the room. “Your only hope,” Aiah tells Con-stantine, “is if those who know remain silent—no, wrong,” shaking her head. “You are safe only if we deny certain things ever happened at all. And for that, we will need to feel safe.”