City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  The Liberal Coalition, the party to which President Faltheg has lately attached himself, takes less than 8 percent of the vote, and a host of smaller parties split the rest.

  Faltheg, presumably concluding from the totals that he had failed to kindle the enthusiasm of the electorate, resigns his post as president of the triumvirate— to his relief, Aiah suspects— though he remains one of the triumvirs, and also continues as Minister for Economic Development, a post for which he has genuine ability.

  Constantine becomes president of the triumvirate, first among the three alleged equals. With his own party, Faltheg’s, Adaveth’s, and as many of the smaller parties as he can tempt to his side with promises of rewards and offices, he reforms the cabinet and government. He promises on taking office that martial law will be relaxed in stages and the normal processes of justice and government resumed.

  On the day following the Caraqui elections, the government of Adabil falls as its parliament discovers a gap in the budget twenty-two billions wide. The new government is much less hostile to Caraqui, and much less friendly to the Provisionals.

  Other neighbors, Aiah trusts, are taking note.

  Negotiations with the Polar League continue, and Lanbola and compensated demobilization is much discussed. The envoy Licinias returns and is cordially received. When he meets Aiah, he bows in his courtly way and expresses his pleasure at meeting the Golden Lady.

  “I am very pleased to see you here,” she says. “I hope you negotiate for us a hundred-year peace.”

  He looks doubtful. “I will do my best,” he says. “Certainly things seem to be falling President Constantine’s way— I am pleased I was wrong in my predictions of a stalemated war. But Constantine’s swift passage to power may have left turbulence in his wake— dangerous whirlpools, I fear— and these may yet prove troubling to his state.”

  Aiah can only hope that Licinias remains a poor prophet.

  HANDMAN FOUND DEAD IN LOUNGE BAR

  FRIENDS ALLEGE “PARTY SICKNESS”

  “Oh, no. I’m not disappointed.”

  Aldemar is a sufficiently good actress that Aiah can’t really figure out whether she is telling the truth or not.

  “It’s a shame,” Aiah says. “I wouldn’t mind having the world thinking I look as good as you on screen.”

  Aldemar, acting as her own producer, has lost the bidding war for a chromoplay based on the story of the Golden Lady. Aiah, delicate golden headset pressed to her ears, is calling from her apartment to express condolences.

  “They would have made it a sequel to the chromo I just finished,” Aldemar says, “and it would have been as dreadful as the first.”

  “It’s not very good?” Aiah is dismayed. Aldemar has sent her tickets to the premiere, which is taking place in Chemra. A visit to Chemra would also give her a chance to visit her agent, a man she’s never met.

  “It had promise, but they wrecked it in the editing.” There is resignation in Aldemar’s voice. “Don’t worry— if you come for a premiere, I won’t make you watch the whole thing. You can slip out early and go to the party.”

  “If you can watch it,” Aiah says bravely, “I can.”

  “You’ll be luckier with your production,” Aldemar assures her. “You’ve got more money behind it, and Olli is a first-rate producer. He always does a high-class production.”

  There is a moment’s pause. “You’ll get quite a bit of money, you know.”

  Aiah will, in fact, receive a sum that, as a girl in Old Shorings, she would have thought beyond her wildest imagination. If she is not quite able to consider herself rich, she can certainly consider herself very, very lucky.

  “With some competent management,” Aldemar says, “the money should keep you comfortable for the rest of your life.”

  “I’ll keep myself in less comfort,” says Aiah, “because I’m going to give half the money to charities for refugees here in Caraqui.”

  “That’s admirable.”

  “They did all the suffering, and I got all the glory. It’s their story, too, and they deserve some of the profits.”

  “In that case,” Aldemar says, “it’s more important that the money you keep be handled well. I can introduce you to some good money managers— they’ve made me a lot over the years.”

  “Thank you, yes,” Aiah says. “It’s not a world I know much about.”

  Her world, she thinks, is beginning to overlap with others in interesting ways. Requests for interviews, people who want her as a speaker at various functions, the continuing demands of her job.... She needs a manager for everything, she thinks, not just her money.

  Perhaps she can talk Constantine into allowing her an assistant.

  THE GOLDEN LADY

  A SPECIAL DOCUMENTARY— THIRD SHIFT ON CHANNEL 51!

  “There is someone to see you.” Aiah’s receptionist Anstine, unusually pale, slides into Aiah’s office and quietly closes the door behind him.

  “Yes?” Aiah says, looking up from a desk overflowing with documents relating to her department’s budgetary health. It’s an unusual visitor who actually prompts Anstine to enter her office, when he can just call her on the intercom from his desk.

  Anstine bites his lip. “He— I think it’s a he— he says he knows you. He gives his name as Doctor Romus.” The talons of the Adrenaline Monster dig into her back and Aiah starts upright, all at the sudden thought of Aground, of sudden death and terror. She looks into Anstine’s eyes and sees a look of concern cross his face at her reaction.

  “Oh. Well,” she says. “Send him in.”

  Anstine looks dubious, but leaves without comment. Aiah looks down at the documents covering her desk— all that postponed wartime paperwork catching up— and takes a long breath to calm her trip-hammer heart.

  The war is over. Why does the Adrenaline Monster still lurk in her tissues, ready to rake her nerves with his chemical claws?

  The door opens and Romus glides in, feathery tentacles fluttering around his little brown face. “Miss Aiah,” he says in his reedy voice, “I am honored to make the acquaintance of the Golden Lady.”

  Aiah rises and tries to look at the unearthly figure without flinching. She represses an urge to shake hands: Romus has no hand to shake. She wonders if she should offer him a chair.

  “I’m relieved you survived,” she says. “Ethemark has been trying to find people from Aground, but there are so many refugees, so many transit centers....”

  Romus coils his lower body before Aiah’s desk and rears his head to her level. “I think most are dead,” he says. “The mercenaries killed everyone they could find, whether they were armed or not. Most of the able-bodied died trying to protect their families, and none had my gift of hiding.”

  Sorrow floats through Aiah’s mind even as her body jitters to the Adrenaline Monster. Your fault, a voice whispers. She resumes her seat, and Romus curls his upper body into a fishhook to keep his face level with hers. “I wish,” she says, “things were different.”

  No trace of sentiment glimmers in Romus’s yellow eyes. “Sergeant Lamarath knew the risk he was taking,” he says. “He agreed willingly.”

  Aiah looks at him. “And what did he agree to, exactly?”

  “He asked for money, medicine, and weapons, and he got them. He— we, for I advised him— felt it was a gamble worth taking.”

  “And the other people who died? Did they think the gamble was worth taking?”

  “For us,” Romus says, “all life is a gamble. The war could have killed us all without anyone ever knowing. The militia could have got us afterward. It could even have been an inhabitant of Aground who betrayed your mission— we tried to keep it a secret, but in a place like that it was impossible.”

  Aiah does not find this reply entirely satisfactory, but finds no reason to dispute it. Romus, too, must live with his memories.

  “I’m glad you are here, in any case,” Aiah says. “I wanted to thank you for helping me when the Provisionals attacked.”

 
; Romus tilts his head. “You are welcome.” He licks his lips. “I would be very pleased should it prove possible for your gratitude to take a more material form.”

  Aiah feels a more calculating, warier self sliding efficiently into place behind her politician’s face. She is not prepared, she thinks, to be taken for a passu by a giant snake.

  “Yes?” she prompts.

  “Quite frankly,” Romus says, “I could use a job. I have no home, no place, and no prospects.”

  “What sort of job did you have in mind?”

  A morbid smile crosses his lips. “I would hope that, in my case at least, genetics does not equal destiny. Mages created my kind for the purpose of inspecting pipes from the inside, or conducting repairs in tight places. The truth is that I find such duty about as fulfilling as you might, if you were forced into such work.”

  “You hope for a job as a mage? Are you actually a doctor of some sort?”

  Romus bobs his upper body in a kind of nervous apology. “Titles in the half-worlds are strictly honorary. The boss is called sergeant, and his assistant is called doctor. Though I took the title as seriously as I could, and did what was possible to look after the health of Aground’s population, I am strictly self-taught.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t really need medicos, self-taught or otherwise,” she says.

  “I have other experience with plasm. I have done quite a bit of surveillance, and”— he licks his lips, and bobs his upper body again— “and a certain degree of bodyguard and enforcement work. The half-worlds are dubious places, and sometimes such things are necessary.”

  Aiah finds herself in no position to criticize. She folds her hands on the desk, frowns, gives the matter her consideration. Romus very possibly saved her life, and she will employ him if she can.

  “It’s a mixture of talents that we can use,” Aiah says. She leans forward and looks into Romus’s eyes. The strength of her position gives her the power to look into the eerie face without flinching. “But I want to explain that our entrance exams are very stringent— we’re going to do a brain scan that will uncover any past criminal activity and any present notions of treachery. If you’re working for someone else, we’ll find it. If you’re planning on selling any information you find here, we’ll find that. So if there’s anything you’re not comfortable revealing to government interrogators, you might consider applying for a job in another department. I will give you a high recommendation.”

  Romus considers for a long moment. His yellow eyes turn uneasily away. “I will admit to you now that I have stolen plasm in the past,” he says. “I will also state that I have no intention of stealing any in the future.”

  “If that is true, the plasm scans will reveal it. And, I should add, all hiring and firing in this department ultimately rests with me. I am not interested in prosecuting any minor criminality that may have taken place in the past, under a different regime. But if there is any danger of future misbehavior, then my hand is forced. The PED is the only clean agency of law enforcement in the government, and it will remain so.”

  Romus’s tentacles flutter uneasily. “I will take the test,” he decides.

  “Very good. I will have Anstine give you the application forms and schedule the scan.”

  Aiah watches Romus leave, then returns to the piles of paper spread before her.

  She decides she needs a bigger desk.

  THE GOLDEN LADY— FREEDOM FIGHTER OR PLASM THIEF?

  TOMORROW ON THE WIRE

  Aiah looks stonily at the jerky video as another arrested suspect explodes. Fortunately the soldier carrying the camera faints almost immediately, and the video is short.

  “Did you see the room?” Kelban says. “Bottles everywhere. Pills. Take-out food. And a girl had just left, a pro— surveillance saw her exit.”

  Nictitating membranes half-lid Ethemark’s eyes. “The Party Sickness,” he says.

  “Two people with Party Sickness symptoms, and they both blow up when arrested,” Kelban says. “This is not a coincidence.”

  “But the first fellow to explode,” Ethemark remarks, “did so in front of his family. No Party Sickness there.”

  Kelban frowns. “Maybe he was in the early stages.”

  Maybe he was starting the party with the wife, Aiah thinks. She ventures a cautious shrug. “What can we do?” she says. “I’ve never heard of an illness that acts this way, and we’re not the Health Ministry in any case.”

  Ethemark tilts his head back, considers. “We are not empowered to act on matters of public health, true. But if this is the result of a Slaver Mage, say, or an ice man, then this is definitely a case of misused plasm, and therefore falls within our purview.”

  “I’d like an opinion from counsel in that regard,” Aiah says.

  “Still,” says Kelban, “if this is a case of some kind of supernatural possession, then its only victims are Handmen. This mage, or whatever it is, is doing us favors.”

  “We don’t know that its only victims are Handmen,” Ethemark points out. He turns to Aiah. “I’d like authorization to open a file on this, perhaps commit some of our investigators.”

  “It looks like a dead end to me,” Aiah says. “We have no evidence, nothing but some bodies.”

  “We don’t have any evidence yet. We haven’t looked— I want to thoroughly investigate the movements of the victims, who they saw, when and if they began to act strangely.”

  That seems harmless enough, Aiah thinks. Certainly digging through the victims’ files and backgrounds is not going to lead anyone to Constantine.

  “All right,” Aiah says. “Submit a proposal, then, and I’ll approve it, providing it doesn’t take too many personnel from their regular duties.”

  Ethemark looks at her. “Very good. I don’t think we’ll need more than one mage, and maybe one good investigator on the ground.”

  “Not full-time, I trust.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Well. Submit your proposal, and we’ll see.”

  Aiah wonders if Ethemark has heard the same rumor that Khorsa had, that Constantine interviews prisoners, orders them released, and that they subsequently die of the Party Sickness. If this is an attempt by Ethemark, or Ethemark and Adaveth together, to discover something they can use against Constantine, or to hold over him.

  Aiah remembers Constantine in the limousine just a few days ago, smiling as he gazed into his wineglass, firmly in command of Caraqui and himself, confident in his ability to manage any crisis. Taikoen was an element of his confidence, his power, but a dangerous element.

  She wonders if it is possible to kill a hanged man, and how.

  JABZI ATTACKS “GOLDEN LADY”

  AIAH “COMMON CRIMINAL,” SAYS INFORMATION MINISTER

  “The hearings in the Timocracy came to nothing,” Colonel Galagas is pleased to report. He touches his mustache, smiles. “No evidence was ever developed, and none of the Escaliers were ever required to testify.”

  “I’m pleased for you.”

  Aiah has little actual interest in the findings, but they allow Galagas and the Escaliers to keep their standing within their profession. Invitations to the other mercenaries’ regimental dinners will continue.

  Aiah leans forward across her desk and asks the question that truly interests her.

  “Have the hearings revealed who betrayed us?”

  Galagas shakes his head. Plasm displays, reflected from the window behind Aiah, glow gold and red in his eyes.

  “I regret to say that they did not. The order to attack the Escaliers came from the headquarters of a Provisional general named Escart, but he was killed in the fighting, and we don’t know where he got his information.”

  “Who could have told him?”

  “Quite a few people, unfortunately. The information could have come from above, which would have meant army group or Provisional headquarters in Lanbola. Or below, possibly his own intelligence section.”

  “Is there a way to find out?”

&nb
sp; He gives a thin smile. “The Escaliers, too, have an intelligence section. They’re working on it— there is little else for them to do, really— and we’ll let you know if we find anything. Provisional headquarters no longer exists, and a number of their employees are now hard up for funds.”

  Aiah returns Galagas’s smile. “The PED has a small budget for informers,” she says.

  “Ah.” Galagas’s look brightens. “That is good to know.” He touches his mustache again. “When I was in the Timocracy,” he says, “I looked at the Wire’s piece on you.”

  Aiah finds herself making a face. “And?” she says.

  “They made no effort to understand Barkazils, but otherwise I thought it was fair enough. And you?”

  Aiah tries to banish the tension she feels in her shoulders. The Wire’s investigation had been extremely thorough, though fortunately it was reasonably objective— it gave her credit for investigating plasm thefts in Jaspeer and for her work against the Silver Hand and the militia, even as it raised suspicions about other activities.

  Her heart had lurched when she’d seen her ex-lover quoted, but to her surprise, Gil had spoken nothing but praise, and defended her against any suggestion of criminality, something that relieved and gratified her. She should send him a wire of thanks, she thinks.

  “I hate to see those old charges raked over,” Aiah says. “But at least they admitted they couldn’t find evidence.”

  “The Cunning People leave no trace,” Galagas says. There is a confiding little gleam in his eye.

  Aiah can only hope that, as far as the Escaliers and her own activities in Jaspeer are concerned, Galagas is speaking the truth.

  MARTIAL LAW TO BE EASED

  TERRORISTS, SILVER HAND STILL SUBJECT TO EMERGENCY POWERS

  Rohder’s computer gives a rumble, shudders slightly, and at length offers up its data, first in a tentative flickering upon the screen, and then with firmer, shining confidence.