City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  Aiah reports that Rohder’s teams are making good progress with their untested theories, that she expects they will pay for themselves and much else, and that if the teams were enlarged, the plasm supply would be as well.

  Aiah is told to increase Rohder’s division as fast as she can, after which Constantine makes his report on the failure at the Corridor. He describes how his soldiers had the Provisionals on the verge of cracking until Lanbola had permitted a force of mercenaries to cross the border and attack his flank, and sent his troops reeling back.

  “And then the Provisionals halted,” Constantine says. “Our units were in disorder— there was some panic— but the enemy didn’t press their attack home.”

  “Could that be because of the disorganization of enemy command?” Hilthi asks. This being the current euphemism for the mysterious way that Radeen, Gentri, and their entire staff were killed in their headquarters.

  “It is clear by now that the Provisionals are taking direction from Lanbola,” Constantine says. “Their forces halted when they didn’t have to, and that shows us Lanbola’s strategy. Lanbola doesn’t want the Provisional Government to win; Lanbola wants— by squeezing first one side, then the other— to dictate the peace. They can attack our flank at any point, and that makes us vulnerable. And the Provisionals are dependent on them for supplies and political support.”

  Faltheg, the new president and triumvir, is a spare, balding man with the eyes of a man drowning. He looks hopelessly down the table and murmurs in a voice almost too low to hear, "What is the status of the army now?”

  Reports from the military commanders are bleak, Constantine informs him. Since the failure at the Corridor, enemy mages have been unleashed on Caraqui, plasm raging through the disputed no-man’s-land between the two forces, setting unquenchable fires, tearing the bottoms out of barges and pontoons, creating a watery, ruined desolation between the contending armies. It is a brand-new atrocity, unknown within living memory. Tens of thousands of refugees, dispossessed of everything they own, flee from twin threats of fire and water, and the world’s compassionate statesmen bleat in sympathy but do nothing.

  If Constantine is to attack again, his forces will have to make their way across open water or masses of rubble, all within the scope of pre-sited artillery.

  Belckon the diplomat reports that he filed a vigorous protest to the Lanbolan government, which simply denied everything— denied the mercenaries, denied the invasion, denied the atrocities, denied its support for the Provisionals— after which Belckon also lodged a protest with the Polar League, which will place the matter on the agenda for its scheduled meeting next month. The World Council has expressed its concern, and is considering sending humanitarian aid, but has otherwise deferred to the Polar League.

  Sorya tilts her head back, her eyes narrowing as a satisfied smile plays across her features. Languidly she places one polished boot on the crystal table. Among all the people here, she alone seems satisfied with the situation outside this steel shell.

  “They strive for stalemate,” she says. “We fight to win. Despite appearances, the advantage still lies with us.”

  She reports on the enemy army, the makeup of its new leadership and command staff. She also produces some neat figures showing who is paying for the enemy’s efforts, Lanbola principally, money siphoned through its Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Trade, with more money coming from Nesca and Charna and Adabil, all people who got along well with the Keremaths in their heydey.

  Hilthi’s gold pen hovers over his pad. “Great-Uncle Rathmen?” he asks.

  “He produces a little money now and again, to demonstrate his sincerity,” Sorya says. “Why should he pay for his war, when others are so willing?”

  “Willing to feed with Rathmen off our corpse,” Hilthi mutters.

  “All these people— the Lanbolans, the Nescans, and so on— are also pouring money here, into free Caraqui. They have each started their own political party and are recruiting as many adherents as they can buy.”

  “Good,” Constantine says.

  The others look at him. Constantine smiles back. “It’s so much easier to keep track of foreign agents when they print newspapers and attend conventions,” he says. “And at any point we can bring them down, just by revealing they work for a foreign power.”

  The others nod sagely. The new president and triumvir Faltheg gazes grayly down the long crystal table. Aiah has never seen him actually meet anyone’s eyes. “What can we do?” he mutters. “I need recommendations. I need . . .” Dull light gleams off his bald scalp. “I need something.”

  Sorya gives a superior smile. “Lanbola has signed its own death warrant,” she says. “Their own army is insignificant, a couple divisions of ill-trained militia, badly emplaced. Their border with us is largely unguarded except for police— they are confident that their neutrality, which they themselves violate daily, will protect them. They may invade us, but to them, the opposite is unthinkable. Two corps swung round our right flank, with sufficient air and mage support, can take Lanbola in a matter of hours. Not only will it rid us of a vexatious neighbor, but it will cut the Provisionals off from their source of supply and their biggest provider of cash. And it will give our other neighbors a lesson they would do well to heed.”

  “No,” says Hilthi. His voice is loud, echoes harshly from surrounding steel. “Invading another metropolis can only make matters worse. Our other neighbors will learn a lesson indeed, but the wrong one. The only thing the Polar League ever accomplished was demilitarizing the region a couple centuries ago— if we invade and conquer a neighbor, that’s the end of stability for the whole region.”

  Sorya’s ambiguous smile does not fade: destabilizing the region is not a problem for her, but rather a solution. “Wars, once begun, generate their own logic,” she says. “The opportunity exists now. At some point— soon, I imagine— Lanbola will awaken to the fact they are in danger, and act to correct the situation.”

  “But neutrality...” Faltheg murmurs.

  “All neutralities are imaginary,” Sorya says. “When a third party to a war chooses neutrality as a policy, in reality the neutrality always favors one side or another. Our neighbors’ neutrality in the present conflict favors our enemies— it demonstrates that neighboring states have already taken sides against us. We should show our neighbors that such a neutrality is more dangerous for them than they believe.”

  Sorya’s genius, Aiah realizes, consists in doing just what she always says she will do. She wants to enlarge her scope, increase her power. All neutralities are imaginary... All truces are temporary. It is all of a piece, a perfectly consistent view of the world.

  It’s other people, she thinks, who see something else in Sorya, who think she is something other than what she has always said she is.

  “I agree with Miss Sorya’s premises,” Hilthi says, “but not her conclusions. Wars do have their own logic, and the logic of war is to grow ever larger and more destructive, and for war’s energies to engulf entire nations, entire economies. Occupation of Lanbola would create a cascade of events that would soon run outside our control— the entire region could be endangered.”

  “I support the idea," Parq says. His normally silky voice is forceful, angry. “The Lanbolans have caused enormous harm to our people, and our people demand justice and punishment for the criminals. If our neighbors object, we can point out that they initially invaded us, albeit by proxy.”

  “The Polar League can put the Lanbolans’ protest on their agenda for next month,” Sorya mocks. Parq laughs, and there is a rumble of amusement from Constantine.

  Belckon gazes uneasily at the room from beneath his shock of white hair. “I must say that, diplomatically, this action would create insuperable difficulties for us. Our perpetual difficulty is in convincing our neighbors that our regime has any legitimacy, and if we prove ourselves not only illegitimate but hegemonist, we can expect only hostility from people who were formerly our friends.”


  “Have we any friends?” Sorya wonders aloud.

  Belckon looks at her. “Sympathizers, yes.”

  Faltheg looks in Belckon’s direction— not at Belckon directly— and ventures to ask a question. “Our neighbors considered the Keremaths legitimate, but not us?”

  Belckon considers his words before answering. “They were used to the Keremaths. It is not a characteristic of diplomacy to enjoy change for its own sake.”

  A deep laugh rolls out of Constantine. “Seize power, and it makes you a bandit,” he says. “Hang on for twenty years, and you become a statesman.”

  A perplexed look crosses Faltheg’s face. “What would we do with Lanbola?” he mutters.

  “Civilize them, of course,” says Parq, head of the Dalavan Militia.

  “Make them pay.” For once Sorya is not smiling. “They supported the countercoup— one understands their motives, I suppose, but once their little adventure was defeated, they didn’t quit the field like gentlemen, they started a war. And I think the Lanbolans should not cease to pay until every damaged building is rebuilt better than before, every orphan is guaranteed an education, and our treasury has overcome any embarrassment, present or future.”

  “That’s brigandage!” Hilthi says, outraged. Faltheg gives the ceiling an abstracted look— Aiah suspects he may be adding up sums in his head.

  “Miss Aiah?” he says, and Aiah starts. His eyes wander in Aiah’s general direction. “Our plasm reserves,” he says, “are sufficient for this action?”

  “We can support a campaign of a few days,” Aiah admits with reluctance.

  “It is not possible from a military point of view,” Constantine says.

  Aiah’s heart rejoices. The others look at Constantine.

  “All our forces are in the line,” Constantine says. “We hold exterior lines, and therefore we use more troops to hold the same line than our enemies do. We would have to pull out large numbers of soldiers, and our opponents would of course observe this. Prepositioning two corps for an invasion of Lanbola would not go unnoticed. We will have to build our forces to a greater strength before we can even consider this option.”

  “Well,” Faltheg says flatly, “that’s that.” He seems relieved.

  No disappointment shows on Sorya’s face. She removes her boot from the table and reaches a languid hand to one of the crystal vases. She takes a carnation, sniffs it briefly, unbuttons one of the fire-gilt buttons of her uniform tunic, and puts the flower in the buttonhole.

  “In that case,” she says, “we can hope only for a military stalemate, which is what our enemies most desire. We will have to consider what we will offer to Lanbola, and to the other powers who support the Provisionals. Because we will have to outbid our rivals, and that will be difficult— Kerehorn and his friends may promise that which they do not possess, whereas we must give away that which we have worked so hard to win.”

  Belckon and Hilthi look down at the table. No one, it seems, has an answer to her argument.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  While the armies settle into stalemate, terror is unleashed anew in Caraqui. Once again bombs begin detonating in crowded streets, and unknown mages fill entire districts with fear. Huge tenements are burned down, unshielded pumping stations or utility mains are destroyed, bridges are smashed or burnt. Much of the sabotage seems to come from within the city itself, and a new phrase enters the vocabulary, floating through the populace on the winds of war. Silver Terror. Enemy forces throw artillery rounds into the city at random. Hospitals and public buildings fill with refugees, and it is clear that the enemy is trying to make the city ungovernable. And therefore it is all the more important that Aiah go on with her job, taking down every plasm house she can find, along with the Handmen who have unleashed terror against the people.

  CONSTANTINE DENOUNCES ATROCITIES IN BRILLIANT SPEECH

  SAVAGES LANBOLA REGIME

  “THEIR ARMS ARE BLOODY TO THE ELBOW”

  LANBOLI GOVERNMENT PROTESTS “UNDIPLOMATIC USAGE”

  It is early second shift, and Aiah plays plasm angel for her military cops. The plasm house she watches has been on her list for some time, but hasn’t been surveilled since before the war began. Military police are on their way to bust into the place, but Aiah wants to make certain the Handmen inside aren’t going to be delivering any nasty surprises.

  The plasm house is in an aging apartment building, once handsome but now failing the test of time, with stained hallway carpet and flaking walls. Although it seems to be producing a large amount of illegal product, Aiah can’t be sure from where the plasm house is drawing its plasm— perhaps, she thinks, it’s being hijacked from a food factory on a huge pontoon moored alongside. The Handmen have learned a few things about shielding since the PED began its work, and Aiah can’t slip her anima into the room, not even on the thinnest pipette of plasm. But there are no lookouts, no signs of anyone prepared to offer resistance, and the door looks as if it will go down easily enough before the assault of her troops.

  “Building’s in sight.” A message from her approaching military cops, whispered into her ear by one of her assistants.

  Aiah nods her understanding and concentrates on keeping her anima and sensorium intact.

  Sensations from the apartment building wash over her, and her nose wrinkles to the mildewed smell of the stained carpet. She alters her sensorium to lower the intensity of her olfactory sense.

  In the apartment building a door bangs open, and back in the Palace Aiah’s body gives a start.

  A group of people have entered the scene, maybe a dozen. They are all young men, dressed casually but with purpose— they all wear thick-soled black boots laced up to the calf and a red strip of cloth tied around their brows, and many wear plastic jackets made in imitation of leather or vests that rattle with chains and silver studs. They openly carry an assortment of weapons: pistols, shotguns, a rifle. Two carry a crude battering ram, a length of steel with handles welded to it.

  Back in the ops room, Aiah shouts, “Armed men in the corridor!” Her body shudders to a surge of adrenaline as if to a rumble of kettledrums.

  In the apartment building the leader, a young sturdy man in plastic leathers and a mustache, cocks his pistol and places himself carefully to one side of the door. He booms on it with fist and forearm both, and the door rattles on its hinges.

  “Ragdath! Open up!”

  The others stand to either side of the door, grinning and readying their weapons.

  “Wait! Stop!” Aiah tries to broadcast the words to the group, but in her alarm she fails to focus her mind properly and no one hears her.

  “Go,” the leader says, a bright white grin on his face, and stands back.

  “No!” Aiah tries to tell them.

  The sound of all the guns going off together staggers Aiah’s senses. The shooters are enjoying themselves, laughing and yipping as they empty their guns through the door and into the apartment. Shotguns blow chunks out of the wall, revealing tattered bronze mesh behind.

  Aiah’s anima dashes among the group, knocking up gun barrels, slapping down the men with invisible plasm hands. But the realization that there is a mage among them galvanizes the shooters, and Aiah realizes that the only way to stop them will be to kill them all. The door crashes down before the ram, and the shooters swarm into the apartment.

  Three Handmen are huddled inside, and two are splashed with blood. Laughing in triumph, the gunmen drag the Handmen out into the corridor, kicking them along with their shiny black boots. Gunpowder stench hangs heavy in the corridor.

  The leader looks through a sheaf of papers. “Which one’s Ragdath?” he asks.

  “The police are hurrying,” Aiah is told, an ops-room voice whispering in her ear.

  Aiah tries to calm her beating heart. She concentrates, builds her anima into the sleek, featureless golden form she’s used before. Power pulses through her, and her anima shimmers into existence in the corridor. The others fall back before the apparition, and
she sees sudden fear in their eyes. Guns are hesitantly raised.

  Aiah concentrates, lets her anima speak the words.

  “I am Aiah, Director of the Plasm Enforcement Division,” she says. “I have had this place under surveillance. What are you doing here?”

  The leader hands the papers to one of his fellows, shuffles forward, and digs into his jacket pocket for a thin plastic card. “Dalavan Militia,” he says. “My name is Raymo. We’re here to find Ragdath.”

  “Here he is!” one of his friends says, and prods a wounded man with the barrel of his shotgun. The man moans in pain.

  “I have police on the way here,” Aiah says. “We’ll need those prisoners.”

  “You can have the other two,” Raymo says. “But Ragdath’s on the proscription lists, and he’s worth five thousand dinars to us.”

  “He’s on the what?”

  Raymo turns to his friend, pulls out a sheet of paper. “Here,” he says. “Five thousand. Dead or alive.”

  Aiah looks at the sheet in stunned surprise. The face of Ragdath gazes back at her from the plastic flimsy, a face perfectly familiar from chromographs in her own files.

  She realizes that this is one of the chromographs from her files.

  “Who issued this?” she says.

  “The triumvir Parq.”

  The tromp of Aiah’s police is heard in the stairwalls. The Dalavan Militia glance nervously over their shoulders.

  “Tell the police the situation is over,” Aiah says to her assistant, back in the Palace. “It’s the Dalavan Militia.”