City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  Aiah jerks her chin high, takes a breath. “This is not what I fought for,” Aiah says. “This is not why I came here. This is not what any of us wanted from the struggle. But the struggle isn’t over.” She finds her voice rising. “And when it is over....” She looks at the roomful of people, tries to make eye contact with as many as possible. “When it is over,” she continues in a softer voice, “I will see that every single one of you has your job back. Because you have done this department credit, I have never had a complaint with a one of you, and you deserve to be here.”

  Ethemark’s bitter tobacco stings Aiah’s sinus. Sadness floods through her, and she finds herself sagging. She leans forward and props her weight on her outstretched arms. “I advise none of you to travel alone when you leave the building,” Aiah says. “And when you go out on the streets, be careful. The Dalavan Militia is going to be out there, and....” Sheer futility drags at her words; she has been unable to protect these people, their kindred in Aground, anybody. She straightens, raises a hand, and sketches the Sign of Karlo in the air. “Bless you,” she says. “Take good care, and go.”

  She lowers herself into her chair, trying not to collapse.

  The twisted people, murmuring, begin to leave. Ethemark, still in his chair, gazes at her without sympathy.

  “Now that you see what it is like,” he asks, “are you going to resign over this?”

  Aiah looks at him. “I don’t know. Would you really prefer that Togthan be in charge of this unit?”

  There is a contemptuous curl to Ethemark’s lip. He stubs out his cigaret, drops it to the floor, and makes his way out without a word.

  Ethemark aside, Aiah finds a surprising degree of sympathy in the twisted as they file past her. Some touch her arm or squeeze her shoulder. “We know it isn’t your fault,” one says, and the sentiment is echoed by others as they leave.

  Aiah finds herself wishing she could agree.

  THE PARTY SICKNESS

  IS IT REAL? CAN YOU CATCH IT?

  FIND OUT THE FACTS AT 18:30 TODAY ON CHANNEL 14

  Aiah doesn’t want to be alone after work shift, so she invites Khorsa over for dinner. This involves shopping, something she hasn’t done in months, but there’s a luxuriously stocked food store in the Palace, and at the moment she finds it comforting to walk the aisles with a cart and examine vegetables.

  She makes a Barkazil salad with cucumber and cilantro, cellophane noodles, bits of grilled pork and a mild chile sauce, then prepares crisp beans in butter and garlic and a rice dish with vegetables, chicken, and pieces of smoked ham. She chills some beer and wine and brews coffee.

  When Khorsa arrives she brings bowls of her own: “roof-chicken”— squab— simmered in spices, coriander, and chiles, and a vinegary salad of sweet onion and assorted legumes.

  Aiah calls herself an idiot as she views all the food. She has been living among the longnoses too long: she should know that a Barkazil never visits empty-handed.

  “Maybe we should invite some more people,” she says.

  Khorsa shrugs. “What’s wrong with eating leftovers for a week?”

  The meal is splendid, but afterward Aiah makes the mistake of turning on the video, and it is full of Parq’s triumph, now called the Campaign of Purification. Adaveth and Myhorn have been dismissed from their cabinet posts. There are pictures of twisted people being turned out of their jobs and the Dalavan Militia driving the twisted off the sidewalks and tearing expensive jewelry off people who violate the never-before-enforced sumptuary laws. There is no indication the jewelry is ever returned. Automobiles deemed too expensive or flashy are scarred or heaved into canals unless their owners are on hand to pay “fines.” Organized bands of militia have attacked several half-worlds, driving out their inhabitants, sinking or towing off their dwellings.

  They can’t live in the half-worlds, Aiah thinks, and they’re not allowed on the streets. Where are they to live?

  Nowhere, of course. They are not to exist.

  Aiah thanks Senko that Constantine had disbanded the censorship board, the News Council. The news organizations are at liberty to present alternate points of view, and they do so.

  Adaveth and Myhorn speak with anger and regret. Hilthi is prominently featured, eyes burning with a conviction he never seemed to display in meetings of the cabinet. He denounces the purification campaign as inhumane, a betrayal of the revolution, a vile piece of political jobbery and gangsterism. He calls on the people to resist, and his denunciation of the triumvirate is particularly eloquent.

  Constantine, Aiah notes, does not comment. He is visiting the army in Lanbola, and has nothing to say about anything happening in Caraqui.

  Anger wars with sickness in Aiah’s heart. She presses the solid gold button on her media console that turns off the video, and looks dumbly at Khorsa.

  “What can we do?” Khorsa says.

  “Nothing. We don’t have enough power, not really. The Barkazil Division is only a small fraction of the army, and I don’t think they’ll go against the government even if I ask them to.”

  “What of Constantine? He can’t approve of this. Can’t you talk to him?”

  Aiah shakes her head. “He’s partly responsible, I think. He’s made some kind of deal with Parq. He gets to keep the army and Resources, and Parq gets his purification campaign.”

  “And you and he—?” Khorsa asks. “Between you all is well?”

  “I don’t know.” Aiah rubs her forehead. “He uses me for... for his projects. And he gives me things— the department, power, even an army. But he is... elusive. And he won’t return my calls, won’t tell me what he has planned with Parq or... or anyone else.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Concern lights Khorsa’s eyes. “I have heard a story about him.” She hesitates. “I don’t know whether it’s true.”

  “Yes?”

  Khorsa licks her lips, looks away. “There is a story that once each week he goes to the prison and interviews prisoners. And he orders some of the prisoners released. And then the prisoners die of the Party Disease.”

  Despair gnaws at Aiah’s heart. She wants to deny the story, but it is so close to the truth that she doubts she’d be able to lie, at least convincingly. All she can say is, “Constantine isn’t in charge of the prisons. He doesn’t interview prisoners; he can’t order releases.”

  She remembers Drumbeth giving the order. Unless, she thinks, Faltheg and Parq subsequently reversed Drumbeth’s policy.

  “He’s triumvir,” Khorsa says. “Can’t a triumvir do that?”

  “He’s only been triumvir for a matter of days. For that story to be true it would have to happen over months.” Has he, Aiah wonders, been visiting the prisons?

  “He’s just been triumvir long enough,” Aiah says, as sorrow closes a soft hand about her throat, “to set Parq on Caraqui.”

  She rises from the sofa, crosses to the terrace door. She looks out at the city, the sky alive with plasm fire, the distant volcanoes of Barchab. Silver cumulus clouds float beneath the opalescent Shield. Aiah crosses her arms and shivers.

  “They cut us off, the Ascended,” she says. “They put the Shield between us, and denied us the sky. And now Parq wants to build a Shield below us, cutting off the twisted people. And it’s a tragedy both ways.”

  “Everything recurs,” Khorsa says, her soft voice sounding from over Aiah’s shoulder. “That’s why the Shield is such a dreadful thing. Because it’s cut us off here, and all we can do is dance the same dance over and over.”

  “I believed in him,” Aiah says. Tears burn hot in her eyes. “I thought he could change it all— change the dance forever. But now—” She gasps for breath. “I don’t even know why I’m here anymore. I don’t know—” The words die in her throat.

  Khorsa approaches silently from behind, puts her arms around Aiah, rests her head on Aiah’s shoulder. “If you are staying only to protect me and the other Barkazils,” she says, “you should know that... well, w
e’ll get along without the PED. But I think you need to talk to Constantine before you do anything.”

  “Yes,” Aiah mumbles. “I’ll do what I can.”

  She can protest, she thinks, she can explain, but she fears the answer she may receive.

  Her eyes drift to the plasm socket near the window, the copper t-grip sitting on the ornate table next to it.

  “I’ll do what I can,” she repeats, and her thoughts whirl in a sudden wind. She has been granted a generous personal plasm allowance for the length of her time here; but the arrangement had been suspended for the length of the war, and her private meter disconnected. Now she is connected to the well again, and the state owes her a large amount of plasm.

  Perhaps, she thinks, she ought to make use of it.

  Gingerly she probes the idea, like a tongue probing the gap where a tooth once lay, trying to find the hidden source of pain.

  Then she looks up at Khorsa. “I know what I can do,” she says. “It won’t be much, but— if you and I can trust each other absolutely, we can help people directly.”

  Khorsa’s eyes gaze thoughtfully into hers. “I think we have a world of trust between us,” she says.

  UNREST BRINGS ELECTIONS INTO QUESTION

  “BALLOTING WILL COMMENCE AS SCHEDULED,” INSISTS FALTHEG

  Aiah coasts over the city on a pulse of plasm. She doesn’t know where the militia are, or what they intend— there has not been time enough to make plans— but when her anima ghosts over an older, ramshackle neighborhood, one scarred with graffiti and despair, she discovers it isn’t hard to find them.

  The Campaign for Purification is rolling over an apartment building: armed militia are driving families from their homes. The building circles a brick-floored courtyard with a pair of willows, and beneath the dangling willow branches a pair of goggle-eyed embryos lie in the court covered with bruises from butt strokes. Their children wail around them while their belongings are flung from windows. The trees and the court below are draped with fluttering clothes, and there is a growing pile of broken furniture. Others deemed impure— not all are twisted, so there is some other form of vengeance going on— are huddled in a corner, guarded with rifles by young men wearing the militia’s red arm- and headbands. Some of the guards are sorting through the belongings, picking out items of choice.

  Aiah’s police experience stands her in good stead. There are no more than ten of the militia here, and no sign of a mage backing them.

  A moment of concentration is needed for Aiah to form ectomorphic hands, and then she advances on a militiaman and slaps him down. He falls spinning, unconscious before he hits the pavement, rifle clattering on the bricks, but before he is even down Aiah is on the other guards, dealing out nicely judged slaps, each bringing a militiaman to the ground. Sometimes the first blow only stuns, and a second strike is needed, but never more than that.

  The impure— the victims of the campaign— stand with wide-eyed surprise. Somehow it never occurs to them to run.

  Aiah rises on an arc of invisible plasm to the militia plundering an apartment and slaps them reeling into the walls. She bunches their collars in invisible fists and hauls them out the window, then wafts them— not gently— to a landing.

  She lifts rifles, pistols, and knives from holsters, sheaths, and nerveless hands, then piles them near the exit. Cartridge belts are added to the collection.

  And then she wills herself to fluoresce, forming the same featureless female image she has used in the past, a blazing gold statue come to life. The huddled group in the courtyard shield their eyes against her brilliance. Aiah gives herself voice.

  “Take what possessions you can,” she tells the victims, “and run. If you wish a firearm, take one. Otherwise just leave, and seek shelter where you can.”

  Half of them simply take off, and others pause to snatch a few belongings from the wreckage before leaving. The half-conscious militia groan, rolling on the bricks, hands clutching broken jaws, blood-streaming broken noses. The flaming anima-image keeps them from protesting, even when one of the twisted, a grim-looking stoneface, methodically goes through their pockets and relieves them of all their money, then helps himself to a pair of pistols, an assault rifle, and several bandoliers of ammunition.

  He is the only one of the victims who arms himself.

  Aiah stands guard over the militia for a few minutes, then allows her anima-image to fade. When one of the militia staggers to his feet, she reaches an invisible hand to his ankle, yanks it, and dumps him to the pavement.

  “I’m still here,” she booms. “Sit quietly and you won’t get hurt.”

  She picks up the remaining firearms and throws them in the nearest canal. When she returns, the militia are still sitting quietly on the bricks.

  She mentally counts out ten minutes— time enough for the refugees to make an escape— and then throws the switch on her t-grip. Her awareness returns to her bedroom.

  Exhilaration choruses through her. She bounds from her bed and almost dances into the front room, where Khorsa is using another t-grip on a similar mission. From Khorsa’s exultant expression, she seems to be meeting with similar success.

  “Militia roadblock on a bridge,” she says when she’s finished. “They were extorting money from everyone trying to cross. I threw them in the canal.”

  Aiah bounds toward her, and they embrace in a moment of joy and triumph.

  Then each returns to her t-grip, and for the rest of the shift, and the balance of first shift the next day, they soar on to thwart the militia.

  Nothing proves quite as spectacular as her first rescue at the apartment building, but by the time she’s finished Aiah is pleased with her record of accomplishment. She breaks up roadblocks, disarms militia bands, shoves militia vehicles into canals. Her golden image shimmers into existence at many of these occasions: she wants the militia to know a powerful mage is opposing them.

  She tells Khorsa about her golden anima, and Khorsa begins to use the golden form as well.

  She is only opposed once, when she finds a purposeful band in four powerboats, heavily armed and obviously up to no good. Aiah’s anima dives under the surface of the canal and punches a hole in the bottom of each of the first three boats before she finds her consciousness swiftly dumped into her apartment again. Another mage has cut her sourceline. Quickly she shuts off the plasm before the enemy mage manages to track her to the Palace.

  She checks her meter to discover how much plasm she and Khorsa have consumed.

  At this rate, she thinks, the fun can’t last long.

  MILITIA ON RAMPAGE

  POPULACE COMPLAINS OF VIOLENCE

  HOSPITALS FILLING WITH VICTIMS

  The next day is more sobering. The Dalavan Militia numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and Aiah’s attacks were but a pinprick. There are hundreds of militia actions going on at once around Caraqui, and none of Aiah’s attacks seem to have attracted the attention of the video news writers, whose works feature nothing but discouraging images of militia depredations.

  Once in her office, she tries to call Constantine, but is informed that he’s in a meeting. He doesn’t return her call, or any of her calls on subsequent days. Nor does she see him, or receive so much as a memo. Unlike President Faltheg, who appears on broadcasts every so often to make a hesitant, unconvincing defense of the government’s position, Constantine is rarely mentioned in the news, and seems to be hovering somewhere below the surface of public attention.

  And while Constantine leaves Aiah in a vacuum, the situation both in the Palace and the streets grows worse. Togthan informs Aiah that he will be taking Ethemark’s place as her second-in-command; and he also presents her with a list of people to be hired in place of those she had been forced to dismiss.

  Aiah manages to delay the implementation of this last procedure by insisting on a personal interview with every new hire, so that she knows how to best assign them. It is a depressing task, because they are generally less qualified than the people sh
e’d been forced to dismiss. Many of them seem to have been included on the list solely because they have a close relative in the Dalavan Militia.

  Outside the Palace, heavily armed groups of militia prowl the streets and canals. Shops owned by genetically altered people are vandalized or looted, as are pawnbrokers and moneylenders, who, in the terminology of the Campaign of Purification, are now declared “usurers” and “bloodsuckers.” Regional offices of the Altered People’s Party, the political organization of the twisted, are sacked; and offices belonging to several other parties are vandalized or attacked.

  But the twisted swiftly recover from the surprise of the first day’s onslaught. Many acquired arms and military skills during the war, and their mages are not entirely without ability, or without plasm. Bloody battles are now waged in the darkness below the city as the inhabitants of the half-worlds try to defend their homes.

  Aiah does what she can. She rearranges Khorsa’s schedule so that she works third shift and can fly against the militia during work shift, while Aiah is in her office.

  Three days into the purification campaign Aiah observes the first graffito sprayed onto the side of a building: Long Live the Golden Lady! In the next few days she sees more signs that her anima has inspired hope: The Golden Lady Rules! All Glory to the Golden Lady! Five days into the Campaign of Purification, Aiah first hears of the Golden Lady on the news. Two days later, Parq announces a reward for information leading to the Golden Lady’s capture.

  If only the Golden Lady’s plasm weren’t running out.

  The stockpiled plasm allowance is being consumed fast, and by the end of the first week the Golden Lady is put on a strict ration.

  After a few days, the news programs report an increase in sightings of the Golden Lady, and Aiah and Khorsa realize that they are not responsible for some of these appearances. Other people are finding the Golden Lady inspiring, and are using her image in resisting Parq.