City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  But there is a curious constraint to her physical sensation. It is as if she is in a box of which her suite is only a component. Focusing her concentration, Aiah expands her senses, gently probes outward ... no result. She frowns, draws more energy from the plasm tap, pushes her sensorium outward. The only result is the alarming sensation of power flowing away, bleeding out of her, as if her plasm is spiraling down a drain.

  Her heart thrashes in her chest. Frightened, she draws her senses inward and tries to understand what has just happened to her.

  And then she remembers the diamond-shaped crosshatching in all the window glass, the shining bronze wire.

  Aiah realizes she has run up against the Palace’s collection web, the network of bronze designed to intercept any plasm attack, deprive it of will, break it into bits, and feed it into the Palace’s own plasm system. As long as she was willing to be a passive receiver of outward sensation, the plasm merely amplifying her senses, she was able to enjoy her enhanced sensation; but once she tried to expand her awareness outside the bronze barriers, it absorbed all the plasm she was directing outward.

  She hopes she hasn’t wasted too much of her precious plasm allowance. If she wants to use telepresence techniques to carry her outside the Palace, she realizes, she’ll have to schedule time on one of the Palace’s transmission horns.

  Aiah allows her passive senses to expand again, swelling to the limit of the artificial constraints imposed by the building’s design. The Palace, she remembers, is compartmentalized, like a deep-sea vessel divided by watertight bulkheads. A breach in one component of the building’s defense will not necessarily endanger the rest. Her own particular compartment seems to encompass her suite, the two suites adjacent, corresponding suites across the hall, and the same units one floor down— twelve suites in all.

  Her sensorium— the plasm-generated extension of her senses— is already in place. Aiah concentrates and builds an anima, a telepresent plasm body, a focus for the sensorium that she can move from place to place, and then she floats the anima out into the hallway outside.

  A door opens in the suite to the anima-Aiah’s right, just past the bronze barrier, and a man steps out. He is a military officer, middle-aged, uniformed, with a briefcase in one hand. He frowns intently, as if his face had been trained to that expression by long years of practice. Straight-backed, he marches down the corridor, passing right through Aiah’s invisible anima. Aiah feels an illusory tingle in her insubstantial nerves.

  The man marches on. Aiah drifts slowly down the corridor, tries to listen to what her sensorium is telling her. Only three of the twelve suites within her compartment of the Palace seem to have anyone in them at present, flares of warmth and life floating in Aiah’s perceptions. She takes a deep breath, exhales, lets the Palace speak to her, whisper in her ectomorphic ear . . . and then her breath is taken away by a surge of sexual desire that sets her nerves alight.

  It originates on the floor below hers. Two people are tangled together in a moment of passion so intense that, once Aiah has opened herself to it, it floods her senses. Her mouth goes dry. For a moment she hesitates, indecisive, uncertain whether she should permit herself to pursue this path, and then she floats downward, passing through floor and wall, and finds the two lovers on their bed.

  They are both soldiers, both young men. Uniforms and weapons are stacked neatly on chairs, ready to be donned at the end of their interlude. A bundle of keys sits on a table. Aiah doubts that either one of them is authorized to be here.

  The ferocity and certainty of their passion sends a pang through Aiah’s nerves. Her heart is racing. She finds herself wanting to join them, to fling herself onto the bed in a sweaty knot of limbs and furious delight.

  Voyeurism, she knows, is one of the privileges of the mage. No one, unless they’re hiding in a room sheathed with bronze, is immune to this kind of observation. She has no way of knowing if her own private moments have been observed in this way. The odds are against it— she can’t conceive of anyone with access to that much plasm ever being that interested in her— but there’s no way of knowing for certain.

  Watching the soldiers, she realizes, is only making her conscious of her own

  loneliness....

  Aiah draws herself away from the scene, dissolves her anima, allows her sensorium to fade into her own natural perceptions. She thumbs the switch on the t-grip and the plasm ebbs from her awareness, leaving her alone in her silent room, aware of the rapid throb of her heart, the warmth and arousal that flush her tissues, the fiery pangs of lust that burn in her groin.

  She closes her eyes. An image of the two soldiers seems seared onto her retinas. Loneliness clamps cold fingers on her throat.

  She dips a hand between her legs and, in a few urgent moments, relieves herself of her burden of desire.

  Aiah draws her legs up into the chair, hugs her knees, lets her breath and heartbeat return to normal. The scent of brewing coffee floats past her nostrils. She has a whole day ahead of her, a long list of things to do.

  She wishes she had someone to talk to.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Aiah is well into her list of requisitions, and the rest— access to certain files, the precise methods by which she will recruit her talent— is not entirely up to her. She is trying to reach Constantine to schedule a meeting, but he’s persistently unavailable.

  There is a knock on her receptionist’s door, and there is no receptionist to answer. She rises from her desk, anticipating workers come to fix her window, and instead her skin crawls at the sight of a pair of the twisted, small figures with black goggle eyes and moist salamander flesh.

  “I am Adaveth,” one says. “Do you remember me?”

  “Yes, Minister, of course,” she says. She steels herself and shakes Adaveth’s smooth gray hand. Her nostrils twitch for expected odor, but she can detect nothing.

  “This is Ethemark,” Adaveth continues. “He has been appointed your deputy.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Aiah lies, and clasps the offered hand.

  “Honored, miss,” Ethemark says. The voice is surprisingly deep for such a small figure. He is dressed in subdued white lace and black velvet— velvet is worn a great deal here, Aiah has noticed, much more than in Jaspeer.

  “Ethemark has a degree in plasm engineering,” Adaveth says. “He is also a mage with specialties in telepresence and tele-engineering.”

  And therefore, Aiah reads behind his bland, expressionless face, is much more qualified for your job than you are.

  “I’m sure he will be very useful, Minister,” Aiah says.

  “During the revolution,” Adaveth adds, “Ethemark coordinated several sabotage teams.”

  “I ran the plasm house in Jaspeer,” Aiah says, the defense rising to her lips without her quite intending it. Her claim is not precisely true, but she feels she ought to add a qualification or two to her side of the ledger.

  “Ah,” Adaveth says. Transparent nictitating membranes partially deploy over his big eyes, giving him a sly look. “In that case, I am sure you will have much to say to one another concerning your service during the coup. I will leave you to your work.”

  “Thank you for taking the time from your schedule, Minister,” Aiah says.

  “You are very welcome. We have great hopes for your department, Miss Aiah.”

  Adaveth leaves in the ensuing silence. Aiah turns to her deputy and looks at him. He gazes up at her with his huge eyes— all iris and pupil, no whites— and gives a little meaningless nod. Aiah wonders if he will ever have anything to say.

  At least he doesn’t smell bad.

  “Truth to tell,” Aiah says, “the two of us constitute the entire department right now. I’m keeping the whole of the department files in my briefcase. I have requisitioned rooms and equipment, but I can’t be sure I’ll get them.”

  “I expected as much,” Ethemark says, the deep voice rolling out of the tiny frame. “The cabinet was pleased to create this department, but each mini
ster will want his own constituency served.”

  Aiah considers this. “May I expect other deputies to arrive in the next few days?”

  “Not if Constantine and Adaveth can keep them out, no.” Ethemark’s head cocks to one side. “I don’t suppose we might sit down? I’ve been on my feet a lot in the last few weeks— they are webbed, and these shoes are new.”

  “My office,” Aiah says reluctantly. “I would offer to show you yours, but I don’t know where it is, or shall be. Perhaps you should just find one on this floor and take it.”

  “Perhaps I shall.” Agreeably.

  “Would you like some coffee? I brought a flask.”

  “Thank you, no.”

  They sit. The broken window’s plastic sheeting rustles in the wind.

  “From my own point of view,” Ethemark says, “I am concerned with any potential threat of interference from Triumvir Parq.”

  Parq, Aiah knows, is a priest who had betrayed both sides in the rebellion, playing his own duplicitous game, but managed to end up in the ruling triumvirate anyway.

  “Do you think he is likely to interfere?” Aiah asks.

  “When the Keremaths took power from the Avians,” Ethemark says, “it was in alliance with those of the Dalavan faith, who the Avians had subjected to continuous persecution.”

  “Dalavans?” Aiah says. “They are not Dalavites? Or are they two different branches of the same—?”

  A smile tugs at the corners of Ethemark’s lips. “The followers of the prophet Dalavos consider the term Dalavite pejorative. The reason involves their rather complex history, and I will spare you the details unless you are truly interested.”

  “Thank you,” Aiah says. “I’m glad you told me this before I met Parq. But I’ve made you digress— do go on.”

  “The prophet Dalavos preached continually against those with twisted genes, claiming that they— we— are a spiritual evil polluted by our altered genetics.” He clasps his hands together, the knuckles turning white. His voice maintains its objective tone, but the gesture informs Aiah of his feelings with perfect eloquence. “His target was the Avian aristocracy, of course, but the rest of the twisted fall almost by accident within the scope of this condemnation.”

  Aiah watches Ethemark’s hands, the furious, trembling pressure they exert on one another.

  “I would not find it congenial,” Ethemark says, “if Parq were able to control personnel in this department, or indeed in any other. The Dalavan prejudice against the twisted would be exerted to the full.”

  “If Parq ever controls hiring to that extent,” Aiah says, “I would leave. I am not willing to offer my services to a theocracy.”

  Ethemark’s huge deep eyes gaze at Aiah. Regret touches his voice. “You are lucky in having someplace to go, Miss Aiah.”

  For a moment there is silence. Aiah’s nerves tingle with the force of this rebuke.

  “You are very frank, Mr. Ethemark.”

  Nictitating membranes half-shutter Ethemark’s eyes, and Aiah feels another eerie shiver up her nerves at this inhuman gesture.

  “I answer frankness with frankness,” he says. “You were open in regard to our department’s deficiencies, and I in regard to what the future might bring us." He sighs, his short child’s legs swinging below the chair, and uncouples his hands.

  “To tell the truth,” he says, “we both owe our jobs to our loyalties. You are loyal to Constantine and I to Adaveth— or perhaps to the purpose each of our patrons represents—and therefore we have no present cause for conflict, as our two patrons are in alliance.”

  Aiah raises an eyebrow. “No present cause?”

  Ethemark presses his gray palms together and cocks his large head at a strangely birdlike angle. “I understand that you spent yesterday studying the plasm system within the Palace.”

  “You are changing the subject, Mr. Ethemark.” And Adaveth has some good spies, she thinks.

  “I hope to return to the subject by way of illustration, but in order to make my point I would like to take you outside the Palace. May I?”

  “Now?” Dubiously.

  “If you are not otherwise engaged. I gather you are not.”

  Aiah hides her amusement. Ethemark is trying to rig a chonah for her. It will take more than this little gray-skinned homunculus to catch one of the Cunning People.

  At this point there is a knock on the outer office door, and Aiah rises to discover the workers come to replace her window.

  At least she can successfully give orders to the maintenance staff. This was more than she ever achieved in her old job at the Plasm Authority in Jaspeer.

  She turns to Ethemark and resigns herself to spending more time with him.

  “Very well,” she says. “I hope we will not have to go too far.”

  THE BLUE TITAN THREATENS . . .

  BUT THE LYNXOID BROTHERS ARE READY!

  NEW CHROMOPLAY AT THEATERS NOW!

  It isn’t far— forty minutes by aerial tram from the station nearest the Palace— but in terms of a difference in character, for sheer existential antithesis, a hundred hours would not be far enough.

  Aiah leaves the department files, still in their briefcase, at one of the palace guard stations. A change of clothing is necessary: Ethemark advises waterproof boots, overalls, a waterproof hat. Aiah buys them en route. Dressed like a sewer worker, she enjoys her first ride on an aerial tram. It flies much faster than she’d expected, and when the high winds catch its slab sides the tram bobs alarmingly on its cable. Below, boats leave silver tracks in gray, watery canyons. The white granite towers of Lorkhin Island loom close, then are left behind.

  Once they leave the tram station, they find a water taxi, but the taxi will take them only so far, and drops them off on a steel-mesh quay scarred with rust and graffiti. Aiah looks uneasily around her at a decaying, abandoned factory structure and ramshackle brick tenements.

  “You are safe,” Ethemark says. “These people know me.”

  Weathered Keremath faces gaze at Aiah from the pontoon opposite. Our family is your family.

  The white towers of Lorkhin Island are still visible on the near horizon. Ethemark hails and hires a boatman who happens to pass the quay. The boatman is twisted— a huge creature, broad and powerful, a walking slab designed for a hard life of manual labor. His family lives on the boat with him, beneath a tarpaulin roof: an old grandmother— a white-haired, wrinkled slab, still powerful as a truck— and a number of children. Their deformities, the boundless terrain of bone and muscle, become more pronounced as they grow older— the youngest is almost human in appearance, the oldest a near-copy of her father. The hull is some kind of foam which, when scarred or torn, can be repaired simply by adding more foam. The boat’s engine is a noisy old two-cycle outboard that runs off the same hydrogen tank as the single-burner stove, and also powers a dim light stuck up on a short mast forward.

  Ethemark nods toward their hosts. “These people are among the more common of the altered,” he remarks conversationally. “They’re commonly called ‘stonefaces.’” Nictitating membranes shade his eyes. “My kind,” he adds, “are ‘embryos.’”

  “Are these terms, ah, insulting?” Aiah asks. “Would I use them in polite company?”

  “It depends on how you use them,” Ethemark says.

  Aiah nods. There are Jaspeeri names for the Barkazil that can vary in much the same way.

  Aiah feels a chill of apprehension as the boat slips away from the warmth of Shieldlight, into the darkness beneath a pair of lumbering concrete pontoons: the buildings above the pontoons are crumbling brick tenements, bad enough in themselves, and who knows what lives underneath?

  The boat moves slowly onward. Aiah’s eyes adjust to the darkness. Ethemark stands by the little mast forward and signals to Aiah. “Will you join me?”

  Reluctantly Aiah makes her way forward in the last of the light, stands, and holds the mast for balance. A webwork of lights glows ahead, dim yellow dots that resolve, as Aiah nears, i
nto bulbs strung on long strands. Somewhere there is the unmuffled cough of a generator, heard even over the racket of the boat’s two-cycle engine.

  Slowly the dimensions of a floating city emerge, a city built in the shadow of the larger, Shieldlit floating city above. On the fringes are boats packed together, seemingly at random, and farther in are rafts, barges, a listing old tug . . . everything strung together by planks, rope or cable bridges, scaffolding, ladders, a structure of arcane complexity... Cooking smells float in the thick air, along with the odor of fecal matter, of ooze and rich salt ocean. And, dimly seen in the light of the strung bulbs, the twisted: hulking shapes like the boatman, moving massively in the darkness like moving walls; lithe small forms like Ethemark that scamper over the scaffolding; and other, rarer figures, fantastic things in nightmare shapes, things with horns and claws, with extra limbs or no limbs, with serpent scales or green-glowing lamp eyes that turn to follow Aiah as the boat moves deeper into the darkness.

  “There are hundreds of these places,” Ethemark says, his voice a deep counterpoint to the high-pitched bang of the engine. “Perhaps thousands. No one has ever counted them. No one knows how many people live in them, but there must be many millions. They are called half-worlds, and those who live in them are accounted half-human.”

  There is a splash ahead in the water, and Aiah’s heart leaps. Whatever it was has disappeared, leaving a ring of oily ripples. She puts a hand to her throat, looks at Ethemark.

  “Plasm is generated here, isn’t it?”

  The strung bulbs glow yellow in Ethemark’s saucerlike pupils. “Of course. The plasm-generating matter in the boats and rafts is insignificant, but some plasm is generated in resonance with the larger structures of the city around us, and additional plasm is ... acquired from one place or another.”

  “And what is done with it?”