City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  He might, Aiah thinks charitably, be scouting up ahead.

  “Careful,” says Davath. “Slippery here.”

  The catwalk is covered with guano, probably from a bat or bird colony somewhere overhead. The stuff has mixed with seawater to form a slick white clay that slides treacherously beneath Aiah’s boots. Aiah steps cautiously in the mess.

  Beyond, one of the cables supporting the catwalk has broken or rusted away, and the catwalk sags into the water at a dangerous angle. Aiah is breathless by the time she gets to the other side, and her boots are full of water. She wishes that when she realized the junction had gone astray, she had thought to go back for her boat.

  “Here it is, miss!” Davath increases his pace along a sturdier section of catwalk, and Aiah breathlessly follows. Davath’s hand torch and helmet lamp play on a junction box and rotator, both of them bolted to the side of the pontoon where another cable joins from the pontoon above.

  “Looks like a temporary installation,” Davath says, but his torch shows big deposits of rust scarring the ostensibly stainless surface of the rotator box, and it is obvious that the junction has been here for years. Decades, probably.

  —Ethemark? Aiah sends again.

  Nothing. She scans the wall for a communications box for her portable handset, and doesn’t find one.

  Wonderful. Now they’ve found their objective, but they have no way to tell anyone they’ve reached it.

  And they can’t just cut the plasm here, because the taps have to be turned all at once, otherwise the mages at Xurcal will know what’s happening and take steps to prevent it.

  Davath, no sign of frustration crossing his cinderblock face, unshoulders the cutting torch and its heavy gas cylinders, which he’s been carrying this long distance. His body is built for carrying burdens, and he shows little sign of weariness.

  He places the cylinders gently onto the catwalk. “Whenever you’re ready, miss,” he says.

  “I’m waiting for Ethemark. He’s ... off somewhere.”

  “Very good, miss.”

  Prestley reaches into his jumpsuit for a cigaret. He lights it and the three wait in silence, the darkness warm and close around them. Drips of water fall steadily from above, plash into the water nearby.

  Aiah’s nerves jump at the sound of bolts being thrown, and then yellow light pours out into the darkness as a hatch is thrown open only a few paces away, farther along the plasm line.

  “Senko only knows where we are,” a voice says, and then a helmeted man steps from the hatch onto the catwalk. He stares at them for a startled instant before raising his boxy black pistol and pointing it straight at Davath.

  “Hold it right there!” he says, a thread of panic in his voice.

  Aiah can only stare at him, heart hammering in her throat, as another two police follow him out onto the catwalk, weapons drawn. One of them has a submachine gun, a little gleaming wicked thing, held in his two fists.

  “Who are you?” the first officer says. “What are you doing here?”

  Aiah stares and tries to talk, but finds that something has stolen her breath.

  Prestley shrugs and tosses his cigaret butt into the water. “We’re Plasm Bureau,” he says. “We’ve got a repair order.”

  “Down here? Now?”

  Prestley frowns. “Plasm gotta move, man.”

  Another police voice chimes in. “Don’t you people know what’s going on?”

  “Hell with that!” says the first. “I don’t believe ’em anyway!” His pistol barrel gives a little jerk toward the wall. “Up against it, all of you. Hands up on the concrete.”

  Aiah mutely obeys, places her palms on the sweaty wall. She can’t seem to find her voice at all, or her mind.

  She doesn’t know what to do. What she can do.

  “Look at the torch!” the first cop says. “Sabotage!” He kicks the oxy-cylinder with a steel-capped toe. “ID, all of you!”

  His mates cover Aiah’s party with their weapons while the first cop edges out onto the catwalk behind them and begins patting down Davath. He finds the man’s ID card, looks at it in the light of his torch. “Plasm Bureau, all right. But I haven’t heard the Bureau’s on our side.” He produces a pair of handcuffs. “Put your right hand behind your back,” he says.

  And then Davath moves. The huge gray body spins out of the line of fire and both hands reach out, seizing the first policeman high and low. The man gives a yelp as Davath’s big hand crushes his groin. Holding the first policeman’s body by crotch and collar, Davath charges the other two police, using their comrade as a shield.

  There is a half-second’s hesitation and then guns bark out. Flashes light the huge artificial cavern. Sound hammers Aiah’s ears and she throws herself down, falling across Prestley’s legs, seawater splashing her as she sprawls on the catwalk. Over the sound of her thudding heart she hears shots, screams, and splashes; and then desperate shrieks for help.

  “No! Don’t— ” And then a horrid, crunching thud. And another. Screams. More thuds. A strange rushing sound, like an underground river. Hollow-sounding screeches that can come from no human throat.

  Aiah dares to raise her eyes, sees Davath’s huge form looming against the light of police torches, an upraised gas cylinder in his hands. A desperate scream rings out. Davath brings the cylinder down, and there is a squelching thud, and the scream is cut off. Davath tries to raise the cylinder again, but instead sags against the concrete wall.

  Prestley scrambles to his feet, boot-soles kicking Aiah in the face, and rushes past Davath to kneel atop the sprawled policemen. Aiah can hear him panting for breath as he makes a frantic search. One of the police whimpers. The strange rushing sound continues. The air is full of grating chirps.

  Prestley finds what he’s looking for and rises. Aiah can see the outline of a gun against the light of the open hatch. The cop whimpers again.

  Don’t! But the word never gets past Aiah’s lips, because her breath is just gone, gone. She may never breathe again.

  The pistol booms once, twice, thrice. And then Prestley turns to Davath just as the big gray man finally falls, and supports Davath’s great weight until he can be lowered to the catwalk.

  Aiah blinks eyes dazzled by gunshots. She forces herself to take a breath— the most welcome she’s ever tasted— and rises unsteadily to her feet. She has to hold on to the concrete wall for a moment or two because her knees have gone to rubber, and then she edges toward the sprawled bodies.

  Davath lies bleeding, half-supported by Prestley. The police fired right through their comrade in order to hit him, but he still had enough strength to knock them down and beat them to a pulp with the acetylene cylinder.

  “Senko, Senko, oh hell,” Prestley swears. Aiah pats herself, wondering if she’s got a handkerchief or something to stop Davath’s bleeding. Something black darts through the beam of her helmet light and she looks up to see a river of bats overhead, startled by the gunshots, thousands of gray bodies flashing in the light as they flood past. Their strange chirping grates on Aiah’s ears.

  She kneels by Davath, presses her hands to the chest wounds. A gunshot has taken off most of his left ear, splashing his face with blood, and another has drilled him through the right hand, but most of the wounds seem to be at the center of body mass. Davath’s yellow eyes regard her with a strange tranquillity as she searches the front of his jumpsuit.

  Three shots, she thinks, maybe four; it’s hard to tell in the dark. One of them whistles ominously with Davath’s every breath, and Aiah presses her palm over it to stop the noise. His gray skin is turning milky. “See if the cops have first-aid gear,” she says.

  The cops do. Just disinfectant and gauze and some patches, but it’s better than nothing, and it stops the oozing from Davath’s wounds, not to mention the whistling noise.

  Davath, stricken beyond speech, takes Aiah’s hand and kisses it with chill lips. Tears sting her eyes at the gesture.

  She looks at the plasm main running over their
heads. If only she had some way to tap the vast store of power, she could make some attempt to repair Davath— but she doesn’t have the hardware, or the medical skill.

  “What do we do now?” Prestley asks.

  “We can’t carry him all the way back,” Aiah says. “So I’ll stay here and you’ll have to run back and bring up the boat.”

  “I don’t know how to get here by water.”

  She looks at him, heat flashing through her. “Find a way, damn it!”

  His eyes widen. “Sorry,” he says. “But it may take a while.”

  Regret chases the anger through her mind. “Sorry I shouted,” she says. “Ethemark will return soon. I’ll have him fetch you here.”

  “Good.”

  “Give me the gun. I may need it.”

  He looks at the gun he’s stuck in his waistband, then turns to bring a fresh weapon from one of the dead cops. He puts it in her hand and it’s surprisingly heavy, surprisingly awkward, surprisingly gunlike. She licks her lips. “How do I work it?”

  Prestley’s expression is unreadable in the dark. “Hold it like this. Press your thumb here to take the safety off, then press the trigger. You’ll have seven shots or so.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  “Shooting it, yes. Do you want me to show you how to reload?”

  Aiah shakes her head. “No time. Get the boat here now.”

  She doesn’t see herself as a gunfighter anyway.

  “Stay with us, man.” Prestley gives Davath’s shoulder a squeeze, and then scrambles away along the catwalk.

  Aiah waits in the dark, her heartbeat marking time.

  Davath’s massive trunk leans against hers, his head on her shoulder.

  Wounded, his massive stoneface frame useless, he seems to become more human with every drop of blood that oozes from his body. His hoarse breathing moistens the corner of her neck and shoulder. Her arms are around him, hands clasping the gun. She points the gun at the open hatch, wondering if anyone will miss the three cops, if police reinforcements will arrive.

  And then her heart leaps at the sound of a massive crash. The concrete wall next to her seems to leap as well. Rust particles flake down in the beam of her headlamp like falling snow. Another crash follows, then another.

  A battle is being fought nearby, perhaps right overhead. She tries to decide whether she should cut Xurcal Station’s power or not, and eventually decides that if a battle is being fought, she should cut off as much of the enemy’s power as she can.

  As gently as she can, she moves Davath so that he leans against the concrete wall, then rises to inspect the plasm junction. She reaches for the control box, moves the rotator to the neutral position, takes the fuse box from the controller, and throws it in the sea. She takes a hammer from Davath’s belt and beats the control box into fragments, then waits, the hammer in her hand, as she catches her breath.

  She doesn’t know how to use the welding torch, so she can’t do any more damage. She puts the hammer down, picks up the gun, and sits by Davath again. She puts her arms around him, then waits.

  A few minutes later, Davath’s death rattle begins. She rests her head on his shoulder. Blood stains her cheek, then tears. A few bats circle hopelessly overhead, looking for safety. Explosions send rust and dust drifting down onto the sprawled humans, living and dead. She brushes it from Davath’s face. His skin is clammy and cold.

  —Aiah! Vida’s mercy! What’s happened here!

  Primal rage coils around Aiah’s heart.

  —Ethemark! Where were you?

  —There’s a mage battle going on upstairs. Someone kept cutting my sourceline. I’ve been trying to get back here and—

  —Davath’s been shot. Prestley’s gone back for the boat.

  —The police? Are they dead?

  —Yes.

  —Vida the Compassionate. Her mercy on us.

  —Can you get a plasm surgeon here? Aiah asks. We might be able to—

  —We don’t have enough of them, Aiah. They’re all busy and—

  —Try, will you? Davath saved our lives!

  —I’ll see what I can do. But you’ve got to cut plasm to Xurcal.

  —I already have. But I couldn’t weld the rotator closed; I don’t know how.

  —It’s only important that you cut it. The rebels won’t have a chance for repairs anytime soon.

  —See if you can find us a plasm doctor. And check if you can find the boat.

  —Which first?

  —The doctor, I think.

  —I’ll try. I’ll have to go for a while.

  —Then go!

  Ethemark vanishes from Aiah’s mind as abruptly as if someone had thrown a switch. The rattle in Davath’s throat seems to fill the darkness, crowding out the sound of battle overhead.

  The boat finds Aiah before Ethemark returns, but by then Davath has stopped breathing and lies cold in Aiah’s arms. She, Prestley, and the boat’s crew pick up the huge corpse and wrestle it into the boat. Only then does Aiah notice the boat is damaged, windscreen starred with bullets and gouges scarring the gunwale.

  “We can’t go back the way we came,” the helmsman says. “Police there, and they shot at us.”

  “Pull out into midchannel,” Aiah says. “We’ll wait for Ethemark.”

  But Ethemark does not return. Artillery continues to hammer overhead. Eventually the crew grows too nervous remaining around the plasm junction and try to find a way around the roadblock, moving into mazes of dark watery corridors, barnacle-encrusted steel and concrete, tangles of forgotten barges and half-sunken boats. Every way out seems guarded by police. Eventually they give up and just drift in the darkness, alone with the boat, the body, and their own weariness. Heavy guns continue to pound overhead.

  Aiah is drowsing, leaning in despair against the gunwale, when there is a sudden splashing astern. She snaps upright, fumbling for the gun in her lap.

  “Is this the magnificent watercraft containing the illuminous Aiah, princess of plasm and all humanity?” A bright, burbling voice.

  “Aranax?” Aiah gasps. She lunges out of her seat and looks over the stern, sees the dolphin grinning at her from below.

  The dolphin splashes in the water with spatulate fingers. “I do not have the honor of being the magnificent Prince Aranax, sublime and wise, who even now is engaged in combat against the forces of darkness and ignorance. This insignificant being is Arroy Pasha, and the glorious, all-knowing Constantine has sent me to find you and bring your exalted self to safe harbor.”

  Aiah wants to throw off her hard hat and dance, but she composes herself to reply to the dolphin in his own strain.

  “Arroy Pasha,” she says, “your wisdom and compassion exceeds that of the immortals. If your sublimity is ready, I humbly beg you to lead our trivial selves away from this battlefield.”

  “It is my exceptional joy and delight to take some insignificant part in the preservation of your illuminous self," the dolphin says, and then tosses his head and submerges, out-curved feet kicking high as he dives.

  The helmsman presses the ignition and the boat’s engines growl into life. He turns on the spotlights, and ahead Aiah sees the dolphin’s humped back as it breaks the surface in the channel ahead.

  “Follow,” she says, and they keep the dolphin in the spotlights, through turns and twists and brief spurts across open water, until he has brought them safely to a berth in the Aerial Palace.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The command center is alive with tension, as if there were an invisible thread of burning plasm connecting everyone in the room. Constantine stands before the map wearing one of the golden-and-ceramic headsets, but when he sees Aiah enter he speaks a few words into the mouthpiece, then strips off the headset and moves— swiftly, with that incredible certitude of movement— to fold her in his arms. Weariness falls on Aiah at that instant, and for a moment her knees threaten to give way.

  Constantine absorbs the extra weight, and then she feels him stiffen with tension. The b
ristle on his chin scratches her cheek— he hasn’t shaved. “There’s blood on you,” he says. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. We ran into police. One of my people was killed.” She swallows. “He was a hero. Davath.”

  “Are you hurt at all?”

  “Not really, no. Some scrapes.” And, of course, the knowledge that one of her people was gunned down while she did nothing but watch.

  “Thank you for sending Arroy to get me out,” Aiah says. “I don’t know what became of Ethemark.”

  Constantine flakes dried blood from her chin. “It wasn’t Ethemark’s fault,” he says. “We had to cut off plasm to all mages who weren’t actually fighting, and in our haste we didn’t realize that it would leave you vulnerable. The battle over Xurcal started before we were ready, there was already a fight going on over the aerodrome, and we were exhausting our plasm supplies. All nonessential plasm use had to be cut.” Constantine’s fingers idly stroke her hair, and Aiah wants to melt into him, fuse with his comforting warmth...

  “Sir.” An aide. “Hilthi on the line for you.”

  “The war will not wait,” Constantine says. He kisses her forehead. “Get a shower, some rest— there are showers in the room adjacent, and cots in the shelters.”

  Aiah is sufficiently exhausted that she finds herself in her own apartment, in her own shower, before she realizes that she has put herself in danger in the event the building is shelled or rocketed again. The realization drifts through her mind like a cloud, light and without effect. She is too tired to care, and, wrapped in a towel, collapses onto her bed and is asleep the instant she closes her eyes.

  Some hours later she comes screaming awake, every nerve jangling, certain there has been shooting or an explosion. Her eyes gaze into the darkened room in search of an enemy while her heart hammers in her throat. And then the communications array chirps again, and she realizes that it’s only the phone.

  She picks up the headset with shaking hands, and it takes a long time to settle the earpieces over her ears.

  “Aiah?” It’s her grandmother’s voice.

  “Nana?” The voice from her past is disorienting: for a moment she thinks she’s back in Jaspeer.