City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  Whatever decisions she makes, correct or not, corrupt or not, she knows she will pay for them sooner or later. She only hopes the payment is something that she can bear.

  A STATUTE AGAINST THE WILL OF GOD IS NO LAW.

  A THOUGHT-MESSAGE FROM HIS PERFECTION, THE PROPHET OF AJAS

  Item #5: Gil?

  Item #6: Family?

  There’s yesterday’s list, its final two items still a weight on her conscience. Aiah still can’t bring herself to contact Gil, but she decides she can talk to someone else back in Jaspeer and at least let them know she’s well.

  She looks at a wall clock: 20:04, halfway through third shift. People at home are probably still awake. Aiah goes to the communications array set into the wall near her bed, dons the headset— a nice lightweight model, with gold accents on the earpieces and the mouthpiece, a far cry from the heavy black plastic rig she’s accustomed to— and then presses the bright silver keys to connect her to her grandmother Galaiah back in Jaspeer.

  “Hello?”

  “Nana?” Aiah says. “This is Aiah.”

  “It’s Aiah!” the woman bellows to someone else in the room. Aiah winces at her grandmother’s volume. There’s a sudden expectant babble of voices in the background, but then Galaiah hushes them.

  “Where are you?” she demands. “Are you all right?”

  Aiah turns down the headset volume. Her grandmother is a bit deaf and has a tendency to shout.

  “I’m fine, Nana. I’m in Caraqui, and I have a new job.”

  “You’ve got a good job?” Galaiah shouts. A refugee from the Barkazi Wars, she has a fine grasp of the essentials.

  “A very important job. I’m going to be running a government department.”

  “She’s running a government department in Caraqui!” Galaiah relays the information to her listeners.

  “Who’s there?” Aiah asks.

  “Landro and his family.”

  Landro is Aiah’s cousin. He had been a plasm diver once, searching through forgotten tunnels and sealed-off basements in search of plasm he could sell. Caught, he’d done his term in Chonmas Prison, and now works in a hardware store.

  “Have you talked to your mother?” Galaiah asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “You should call her.”

  “I will.” Reluctantly. Aiah’s mother is an indefatigable dramatist, and Aiah dreads the inevitable reaction: breast-beating, weeping, how could you do this to me? She can predict every word of the call.

  “Those Authority creepers are still looking for you,” Galaiah says.

  “Let them look.” She smiles: she’d got clean away, money in the bank and a new future.

  “Esmon’s witch Khorsa told everybody how she helped you get away.”

  “Did she tell the creepers?”

  “Of course not,” scornfully. “She said she didn’t know anything!”

  It occurs to Aiah that perhaps they have already told the creepers more than they ought to have.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t talk about this on the phone. .. .”

  “Hm?” Galaiah thinks about it for a moment. “Fine, then,” she says, and changes the subject. “There’s a lot of news about Caraqui on the video. They say Constantine’s in charge and that he’s going to change everything.”

  “That’s. . . not really true, Nana. Constantine is only a minister in the government. But yes, we hope things are going to change.”

  “That Constantine, he’s another of your passus, isn’t he?” she asks, using the Barkazil word for dupe or victim. She chortles. “That’s a lovely chonah you’ve rigged.”

  “Constantine isn’t my passu.”

  “Either he is your passu, or you are his.”

  Aiah can’t find the strength to dispute this simple logic. Besides, her grandmother might well be right.

  “Your longnose lover is back in Jaspeer,” Galaiah adds. “He’s been calling the family and trying to find you.”

  Sadness catches at Aiah’s throat. “Gil?”

  “You haven’t called him, either, hanh?” Galaiah is gleeful— she’d never approved of Aiah taking up with a Jaspeeri. She holds the traditional Barkazil opinion that the rest of humanity is only useful as prey for the artful, devious, and highly superior Cunning People.

  It’s precisely that attitude— that the Barkazil are a magical species above the laws that govern lesser beings— that led to the self-destruction of the Metropolis of Barkazi, and therefore to Galaiah’s journey as a refugee to Jaspeer. Aiah has always refrained from pointing this out to her grandmother.

  “I didn’t know Gil was back from Gerad,” Aiah says, perfectly aware of the inadequacy of her excuse.

  There’s a buzz on the commo array and a flashing green light, the signal that someone else is trying to call. “Excuse me, Nana,” Aiah says. “I’m getting another call. Hold on a moment.”

  She pushes the hold button, then turns the dial that switches the solenoids in the commo array. There’s a click and electric buzz, and then Aiah answers.

  “You left messages for me.” It’s Constantine’s baritone, and Aiah’s warm blood sings in her ears at the sound of it.

  “I couldn’t get back to you earlier,” he says. “What did you require?”

  Aiah tries to organize her thoughts. “I needed to talk to you . . . ,” she begins, and then begins to look frantically for her list.

  “You’re in your suite? May I come see you?” The voice takes on a lazy, self-satisfied tone. “I would like to relate my latest triumphs. I am pleased to report that it has been a very good day.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “I’m just a few corridors away. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.” He presses the disconnect button, and Aiah jumps for the switch to connect herself to Galaiah.

  No time to bathe and change. Damn it.

  “Nana? That was business. I’ve got to go.”

  “Give me your phone number!”

  “Yes.” She gives it.

  “I got a question!” the old lady says.

  “Yes. Quickly.”

  “Can you get jobs for some of your family?”

  The question stops her dead. “I don’t know,” she says.

  “Most of us have never had a good job.”

  “Let me think. I’ll call you again. Okay?”

  “Call your mother!”

  The imperious command rings out just as Aiah presses the disconnect button. She brushes her hair, checks herself in the mirror, wishes again there was time for at least a shower. She puts on the priceless ivory necklace that Constantine bestowed upon her, then anoints herself with the Cedralla perfume Constantine gave to her their last time together, before he flew off to Caraqui and the coup.

  Memories, scent and sensation, worn about her body like little charms. She can only hope the tiny magics will do the job.

  When she opens the door to his knock, Constantine rolls into the room like the irresistible tide. He’s no longer wearing the proper velvet suit of the minister, but clothing meant for ease and comfort: a blousy black shirt, a jacket of soft black suede imprinted with a design of geomantic foci, suede boots, no lace. The clothing suits him better than the confining garb of the politician, provides him a physical scope to match the ranging of his mind.

  “The cabinet meets daily,” he says, “and all the news is good.”

  “Would you like to tell me the details over a bottle of wine?”

  “And food, if you’ve got it.” He prowls to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, gazes inside.

  Aiah scurries after. “I can throw something together, if you like.”

  He turns, his massive hands close on her shoulders, and he propels her firmly to a chair next to the dining room table. His scent eddies along her nerves.

  “Sit,” he says. “I’ll cook.”

  “You don’t know where—”

  “Yes I do. All these suites are built alike.”

  Aiah surrenders— the fact of his touch, this
near-embrace, make surrender all too easy— and allows herself to sit. She has been in the kitchen so little she has no real notion it’s hers. She cocks her head and regards him from this new angle. “I didn’t know you could cook, Minister.”

  An amused glow warms his brown eyes. “I didn’t say I could cook well. But I have absorbed at least a few principles of cooking which I hope, in this case, will prove universal.”

  He takes off his jacket, opens the pantry door, gazes in thoughtfully. Plucks things from the shelf and finds a saucepan. He cocks an eye at her.

  “I take it all this dates from the previous administration?”

  Aiah shrugs. “Who has time to shop?”

  “I wish you would remember to eat from time to time.” His big body prowls the confined kitchen with perfect assurance. He surveys his finds, then reaches for a knife.

  “Our main course will have to come out of cans. And the vegetables are far from fresh, but I will try to make do.”

  “There are few sights as attractive,” Aiah observes, “as that of a man cooking.”

  “Wait till you see how dinner turns out before you judge how attractive I am.”

  He sets water boiling, opens cans, and finds a bottle of wine on the built-in rack. “Do you know,” he says, looking in drawers for a tool to remove the bottle cap, “that thirty percent of the population of Caraqui are on the government payroll?”

  “The drawer on your left, Minister. We have that many civil servants?”

  “Civil servants plus the dole, yes. Besides a civil service so bloated that it defies comprehension— the Keremaths wanted everyone on their payroll— the government owns a surprising number of commercial firms. All the communications companies save for the broadcast station controlled by the Dalavans, the Worldwide News Service, the video networks, construction and shipping firms. Factories. Fisheries. Office buildings. Even restaurants! And if you add the firms that the Keremaths owned personally, the total is even higher.” He gives a knowing smile as he opens the wine bottle and pours. “They arranged things with a certain criminal inevitability,” he says. “I find the pattern familiar— my own family in Cheloki were no better. There was a law that all streets had to be paved with a certain grade of concrete, but the only company offering such a grade was owned by the Keremaths. And another special type of nonporous concrete was required for the pontoons that underlie all the buildings, and again the Keremaths’ company was the only company that offered it. To prevent dependence on foreign energy sources, only domestically produced hydrogen is permitted in the metropolis, but the New Theory Hydrogen Company, the only one in Caraqui, was owned by the Keremaths ...” A laugh rumbles deep in his barrel chest. “The only New Theory, so far as I can tell, was that the Keremaths got everything.” He touches glasses. “To your health.”

  “To yours.” The amber wine tastes of smoke and walnuts.

  “Have you seen the news? How one scandal after another is being revealed?”

  “I have been a little busy, and haven’t watched the news.”

  “It is the function of a new government to discredit the old, and fortunately in our case we have but to tell the truth.” He tilts his head back, savoring the wine. “Within a few months the scandals will multiply, and the Keremaths will be so discredited that no one will want them back.”

  Constantine returns to the kitchen, and gives a cynical smile. “Last shift the cabinet reacted to these continuing scandalous revelations, and have annexed the Keremaths’ companies, personal property, and bank accounts.”

  “And thus the state acquires that many more civil servants. Was that one of the triumphs you mentioned?”

  Constantine smiles coldly. His bright steel knife slices onions as if they were Keremath livers. “No. Acquiring the companies was not a difficult decision— we could hardly leave them under the Keremaths’ ownership, after all. It was in deciding the companies’ ultimate fate wherein my brilliant political talents were fully deployed.”

  “You wanted to sell the companies,” Aiah says. “And others wished to keep them.”

  Constantine gives an impatient smile. “It is a source of astonishment to me that such things are even matters for debate,” he says. “The state should be an instrument of evolution, not a bank, a stock exchange, or a nursery for inefficient enterprises. But—” He shrugs. “Not all the cabinet members are soldiers or idealists. Some have political instincts that are quite sound, in their fashion. And the possibility of employing the New Theory Hydrogen Company and the other concerns as a source for patronage was, I suspect, a temptation to more than one.”

  “And the triumvirate?”

  “Parq was anxious to stuff the companies with his retainers. Colonel Drumbeth was of a mind with me. And Hilthi— an interesting man, Hilthi— seemed to have no interest whatever in the economic issues, but rather a care for the companies’ moral health.” He laughs. Chopped onions fly from his fingers and fall hissing into the pan. “An unusual attitude for a journalist, don’t you think?”

  “I know nothing of Hilthi.”

  “A noble man, truly. The greatest enemy the Keremaths had—” His eyes turn to Aiah, glittering. “Until myself,” he adds. Steam rises as he throws noodles into the boiling water and stirs things in the pan. His voice turns reflective. “In a tyranny, a single dissenter can sometimes engage in a dialogue with the entire government. Hilthi was raised in Caraqui and found the Keremaths repulsive and denounced them. Was sent to prison, came out, and denounced them again, after having sensibly put a border or two between himself and the Specials. He made it his life’s work to expose the Keremaths for what they were. He meticulously gathered facts, published them, made brilliant propaganda. It is a monument to his skill that the Keremaths referred to dissidents as ‘Hilthists.’”

  He laughs, a low rumble. “He was invited into the triumvirate to offer a certain moral tone to what otherwise might have been seen only as a tawdry adventure in military government.” He gives Aiah another sly, sideways glance. “Certainly he provides a tone that I lack.” He sighs. “But the fellow knows nothing about government. He desires only that we practice virtue. He doesn’t care whether the companies are sold or not, only that any Keremath loyalists in their hierarchy be punished.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “The crime of which most stand accused is making the money for the Keremaths. There are far worse crimes in Caraqui for us to concern ourselves with. I was able to edge him along to the position that any serious crimes on the part of any of the managers would be dealt with, but that running a company was not necessarily a crime.”

  “Very good.”

  “So Hilthi was brought around. Parq was outnumbered. The army was bought off— it will be doubled in size to two divisions, an unnecessary expense, but it gives the officer class new commands and new promotions and may serve to keep them quiet. And, after a little political magic”— he sprinkles things into the saucepan “—decisions were made. The companies will be sold. We anticipate no difficulty with that— they were all remarkably profitable, after all. The profits will help to finance reorganization in various other state enterprises, which will also be sold as soon as they can be made efficient. I convinced them, you see, that it had to be done now, while martial law was still in force, because a popular government would not be able to shrink in size with the proper ruthlessness. So the enlarged army will hold the metropolis together while structural changes take place, and then— we hope— they will march back to the barracks before they are all possessed of the delusion that they can actually run a modern state.”

  The smoky wine murmurs in Aiah’s veins. “But they run Caraqui now, don’t they?

  “They have some notion they might be in charge, yes. But running a metropolis requires the ability to count above a hundred, which generally speaking the officer class of Caraqui does not possess. Here.” He passes her a plate.

  Noodles, and on them onions, smoked pigeon, and shredded black olives in a light sauce.
Tossed salad. The amber wine.

  Surprisingly delicious. The onions, pigeon, and olives are three stark flavors that should not blend, but somehow they do, and the wine goes beautifully with it all.

  “I’m very impressed, Metro— Minister,” Aiah says.

  Constantine gives his rumbling laugh. “Metro-minister is a title in which I could rejoice.” He brings his own plate to the table. “You may consider this dish a metaphor for politics.” He points to his plate with the tip of a knife. “Onions, olives, smoked fowl. Drumbeth, Parq, Hilthi. Diverse people, diverse interests, diverse tastes. Brought into union with a little skill on the part of your deponent.”

  She raises her glass, offers him a salute. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” He tastes his creation, raises his eyebrows in pleasant surprise.

  “Better than I thought, in truth.”

  “Let’s hope it’s an omen.”

  “Let’s.” He sips the wine, takes a few more bites. Looks up from his plate. “And how are you getting on with Ethemark?”

  “It was—” She takes a breath. “An interesting day.”

  “Tell me.”

  She tells him. They finish their meal and take the wine bottle to the couch.

  “So what have I done?” she asks. “Have I sold the department to some little gangster in return for a handful of names?”

  He considers this. “You judge yourself overharshly,” he says. “You have made no promises to this man, none at all. What you have done is make a policy decision— the first of a great many— to the effect that you will concentrate your efforts on one area of your mandate and not another.” His frown changes to a catlike smile. “It is a decision I support fully, by the way. The half-worlds are potentially a great resource. We should not waste them, or their people.”

  Relief eases the tension that clings between Aiah’s shoulder blades. “But what about Ethemark? His loyalties are clearly with the half-worlds, and not with us.”