City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Yes? This is Aiah.”

  Ethemark’s deep voice rumbles in her ears. “Miss Aiah? We have a situation here. I thought you should be informed.”

  “Yes?” The connection is bad, with an electric snarl fading in and out, and the conversation outside is loud. Aiah cups her hands over the earpieces to smother the sounds of the reception.

  “There has been a coup in Charna,” Ethemark says, “one group of soldiers overthrowing another. The new government has declared its allegiance to the New City, and everyone seems to think it’s our fault. Koroneia and Barchab are making threats, and Nesca’s parliament has gone into executive session. The chairman of the Polar League has called the Emergency Committee into session.”

  “Great Senko.” Aiah closes her eyes while a long throb of sorrow rolls through her. Everything was finally going well— an architecture for peace being hammered into place, the new regime safely established at last, principles for demobilization created. And now the whole fragile structure was in danger of being kicked over.

  Ethemark continues. “I’ve been ordered to present a report on our plasm reserves to the triumvirate in just a few hours— 23:30.”

  Aiah rubs her forehead and looks at her watch. Almost 22:00. “I’ll try to get there,” she says, “though I don’t think I’ll make it by 23:30. Can you have someone on duty charter an aerocar here, and leave a message at my hotel concerning how to meet it?”

  “What’s your hotel? Does it have a landing pad?”

  “The Plum. And I don’t know.”

  “I will find out and leave a message there.”

  Aiah peers through the stained glass, sees the crowd outside through shifting pastel colors. Her bodyguards and driver are outside the banquet room, and she’s going to need to say good-bye to Olli and Aldemar on her way out. Perhaps from the hotel she can call Constantine and find out what really happened, and who was behind the coup.

  But Aiah suspects she already knows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Well, honestly,” Sorya says, “what was I to do?” She shrugs her slim shoulders inside her uniform jacket. “Charna supported the Provisionals against us, and so, logically enough, we contacted people inside Charna who were opposed to the government— idealistic officers, as it happens, disgusted with their leaders’ corruption— and we encouraged them to, ah, do their utmost to alter the policy of their superiors. We provided them with a certain amount of cash and logistical support— they already had guns, being soldiers— but their plans took longer than anticipated to mature. Our war was over by the time they were ready.”

  She takes a breath, folds her manicured hands in her lap. “They’d risked their lives for us, and we encouraged them. Could I tell them, ‘Stop, we don’t need you anymore’? Or even worse, betray the people who trusted us, sell their names to their government?” She shrugs again. “So we limited our contacts and tried to keep informed. Any assistance we gave to them is deniable, and we now have a friendly government on our northern border. I can’t do other than consider this a positive development.”

  Faltheg gives Constantine a cynical look. “The fact that their junta is proclaiming the birth of a New City regime tends to cast something of a shadow on our claims of deniability,” says the late candidate of the Liberal Coalition.

  Aiah, still in her gold gown, kicks off her high-heeled pumps and flexes her toes in the soft carpet of the lounge. Despite crossing half the world in the fastest aerocar she could hire, she arrived too late for the cabinet meeting; but she was in time for an informal meeting afterward, a kind of postmortem on the Charna situation, in one of the private lounges in the Swan Wing.

  A curved bar, all dark exotic wood banded with brushed aluminum, sits in the corner beneath mirror and ranked crystal; plush burnt-orange furniture is grouped around a low glass-topped table. The Swan Wing’s solid-gold ashtrays wait on tables. The air is scented by the coffee that has been set brewing behind the bar, a fragrance that does not quite eliminate the. sour sweat of men who have been awake too long.

  The aged Minister of State adjusts his spectacles and looks at notes he’d made during the earlier meeting. “This has damaged us badly,” Belckon says. “Our neighbors know how to count. The Keremaths overthrown, Lanbola invaded and occupied, the government of Adabil fallen, however constitutionally, and now a violent coup in Charna. They can’t help but wonder who will be next.”

  Sorya sips mineral water from her crystal goblet. “Of the four chief supporters of the Provisionals,” she says, “three have been replaced by regimes hostile to the Provisionals and favorable to us. We have firmly established that other governments interfere with us at their peril. It will not hurt us in the long run to have our neighbors wary of us.” She gives her lilting laugh. “I wonder what Nesca’s premier is thinking right now.”

  Constantine gives Sorya a heavy-lidded glance. “What should Nesca’s premier be thinking?” he asks. “Are we engaged in anything deniable over there?”

  Disdain curls Sorya’s lip. “Nesca’s military, such as it is, remains loyal to its government. But both Nesca and its military are negligible and in matters involving real power may be discounted.”

  Belckon runs his hands through his hair, stifles a sleep-shift yawn. “I am disturbed,” he says, “that this convulsion should occur in a neighboring metropolis— apparently with our help, however deniable— and the triumvirate simply not know of it until it happens.” He glances across the table at Constantine and Adaveth. “Unless I am wrong in this assumption, and I was not informed while others were?”

  Translucent membranes slide over Adaveth’s goggle eyes. “It came as a surprise to me,” he says.

  “And to me,” Constantine echoes.

  A delicate smile touches Sorya’s lips. “I apologize, truly,” she says. “The fact is, contact with the Charni officers had been curtailed after war’s end, a single case officer was assigned, here in Caraqui because there was surveillance on our embassy, and he had other work.... If I’d had detailed information or a date, I would have passed it on. It was a failure, I admit, but insofar as the result was favorable to us, hardly a catastrophic one.”

  There is a moment of silence. Sorya reaches for a cigaret, lights it with her diamond-and-platinum lighter, languorously breathes in smoke.

  “It would seem,” Faltheg says finally, “that however this happened, we must decide how to react. Denial is possible, so we must deny.”

  Sorya tosses her head, exhales smoke over her shoulder, picks a bit of tobacco off her lip. “Others may try to dislodge our friends in Charna, as they tried to dislodge us,” she points out. “We must make it clear that the new government has our support.”

  “I would phrase it more diplomatically,” Belckon says. “To the effect, perhaps, that we support the right of any metropolis to change its government unhindered.”

  “That should make our point well enough,” Sorya says, and gives her lilting laugh. “That,” she adds, “and all the lovely guns in all the hands of all our fine soldiers.”

  Later, Aiah walks barefoot down the silent, carpeted hall of the Swan Wing, her shoes dangling by their straps in one hand, the other hand in Constantine’s.

  “I can tell you what will happen,” Aiah says. “Once Sorya has got us to announce support for the new government in Charna, she will stage-manage a confrontation— or perhaps she’s confident it will occur without her intervention. A countercoup, a threat of invasion from another metropolis, a wave of terror and assassination... some threat to Charna that will force us to respond. And once we respond, the confrontations will escalate, and those fine soldiers and all their lovely guns, as Sorya calls them, will get used again, all for her purposes and not our own.”

  Constantine looks down at her. “You know this?”

  “I know Sorya’s style.” She answers his look with one of her own. “And so should you.”

  His brooding eyes look inward. “Yes. Her pattern is there.”

  They a
pproach one of the bronze-and-glass compartment doors, and it slides open on silent ball bearings. They pass the door and it rolls shut: Aiah finds herself glancing behind, making sure they are secure from any snooping trail of plasm.

  “The last time she had her way,” she says, “she started a war.” She holds his hand more tightly, looks up at him. “You said, once it began, that you needed her to help us win it.”

  “Yes.” He nods. “And her service was invaluable, brilliant.”

  “The war is won,” Aiah reminds. “She is a danger as long as she remains with the Force of the Interior. You know that.”

  His chin lifts a little, and there is a glimmer in his eyes, as if reacting to a challenge. “She is dangerous, yes. But then,” pensively, “I admire Sorya most when she is dangerous. She is at her best then, superb. And....” He tilts his head, as if to consider the problem from another angle. “Removing her from her position would not necessarily make her less dangerous,” he says. “She knows much about me, about the war... a dangerous amount. She might be more dangerous on her own, given what she knows.”

  “Don’t fire her, then,” Aiah says. “Pin a medal on her and promote her. A bigger department, a bigger budget, a bigger salary. Let’s see how dangerous she can be once she’s Minister of Education.”

  Mock alarm enters his eyes. “You aren’t terrified by the idea of letting Sorya educate the next generation?”

  “Post and Communications, then. Or Waterways.”

  A mischievous smile touches Constantine’s lips. “Or let her exercise her humanitarian instincts as chairman of the Refugee Resettlement Commission.”

  “As you like.”

  Constantine gives a contemplative look. “I will give the matter more serious thought. All these proposals are amusing, but they would not make suitable use of Sorya’s talents, and she would see through the scheme at once. No, I must give her a promotion that would flatter her into accepting it.”

  He gives an offhand wave to the invisible security man behind the elaborately framed mirror at the end of the hall, thumbs numbers on the gold twelve-key pad on the door to his suite, and presses the wing-shaped door handle.

  Aiah steps into the silence of Constantine’s suite, listening to the whisper of the circulating air, and then Constantine’s voice comes low to her ear.

  “That’s a very attractive gown. It suits you well.”

  “Thank you. Aldemar recommended the designer. Hairdresser, too.”

  His hand sweeps the hair back from Aiah’s ear, sifts through it as if assaying its worth.

  “I would not have had you cut short your trip to Chemra. This crisis didn’t require your presence.”

  She turns to him. “Well. I’m here now.”

  He looks at her, reflective. “I think we may have an hour or two before the next crisis calls me away. But you must be tired.”

  “I’m used to being tired.” She puts her arms around Constantine, presses herself to him, his lace fluttering against her cheek. “Since I have known you, I have never been anything but tired.”

  His hand speculatively strokes her back. “Officially,” he says, “you are still on leave for a few days. There is nothing in your office that immediately requires your presence. Why don’t you stay away from the PED for that time? I will endeavor”— amusement touches his lips— “to spend as much time as possible with you, except when crises call me away.”

  She lifts her face to his, kisses him. “I accept,” she says, and he smiles.

  But if she’s right about Sorya and her intentions, she muses, the next crisis will be soon.

  COUNCIL OF COLONELS CONTROLS CHARNA

  FORMER GOVERNMENT FLEES TO NESCA

  “I have done as you requested,” Rohder says. Though he sits at the dining table in her apartment, he speaks in a low voice, as if afraid he might be overheard. He opens the green plastic file cover on the table, glances down at the files.

  “I discovered that there is a rather lively scientific literature in regard to hanged men, one that till the present had escaped my notice,” he says. “There is a great deal of arcana and speculation, very little of it reliable, but I have combed through it for articles written by people who might actually be qualified to discuss such matters, and....”

  He looks down at his notes, shakes his head. “There was a hanged man operating in Injido about a century and a half ago, killing people at random, it seems, and I read the report from the head of the team that hunted it down and killed it— or thought they’d killed it; at any rate it did not reappear.” His faded blue eyes drift up from the page. “A number of bystanders were killed in the course of suppressing the creature. Several of the team were hospitalized after telepresent contact with the thing. Shock, mental disorders of a type associated with trauma. One remained institutionalized for the rest of her life.

  “Another case,” looking down at the notes again, “concerned a kind of extortion ring in Qanibar about two centuries ago. A gang of criminals were working in league with a hanged man, somehow aiding the creature to possess the bodies of living people, wealthy victims. It would turn over the victims’ wealth to its human allies in exchange for a few days in a human body, after which the contact with the hanged man somehow caused the body to fail. But so many people died in this way that the authorities became suspicious, and managed to trace the money to the criminals’ bank accounts. One of the extortionists cracked under interrogation, and the police were able to ambush the hanged man when it turned up for a meeting.”

  “How did they... dispose of it?”

  Rohder turns away, fumbles awkwardly for a cigaret, pats his pocket for a lighter. “Each team developed its own method,” Rohder said. “I do not find either of them entirely satisfactory from an operational point of view— both are based on theories that are in essence unproven, and the only way to prove either was to risk life and sanity.”

  “Tell me.”

  Rohder sighs, looks unhappy. “Both teams operated on the assumption that hanged men are a kind of living being that exists in the plasm well, a kind of modulation in plasm itself. They assumed that these creatures will die if deprived of plasm, or forced to live outside of the plasm well without a human host.

  “In Injido the team managed to locate the hanged man within an office building— it had killed someone there— and then shut off the plasm supply to that building. They then attacked the creature with plasm drawn from outside— they tried to nullify the creature, overwhelm it with masses of destructive plasm. The mages were told to configure plasm using the focus of the Great Bull, which is supposed to aid offensive action. They also intended to compel it to use up all available plasm in the building in repelling their attacks, in effect to use up its life force in its own defense. Wear it out.”

  He shrugs. “It was messy. The building was not empty— full of workers— and the hanged man rampaged through it. It killed over a dozen people. You don’t want to see the chromographs of that, and I didn’t bring them. The Great Bull aside, none of the mages really knew how to configure plasm so as to kill a hanged man, and it kept slipping away while they improvised their attacks. Reading the reports, I have the impression that there was a great deal of chaos within the mage team, perhaps some panic. Finally the target creature tried to merge with the plasm that was attacking it... tried to become the plasm, to seize control of it from the minds of the mages who were using it. The mages fought off the thing’s attacks, but several were so traumatized by mind-to-mind contact that they required hospital care, two for extended stays, and one, as I said, for good. Eventually they killed it, or so the team believed. In any case, if it got away, it did not return to Injido.”

  A dozen people killed, several mages hospitalized. Hardly a satisfactory solution.

  “And the Qanibar group?” Aiah asks.

  “They had an advantage— the extortionist who cooperated with the authorities. He informed them of the body the creature was occupying, and agreed to lure the creature to a pl
ace where it was vulnerable. All plasm in the area was used before the creature turned up, and then the host body was attacked and destroyed. The creature was contained and then killed as it tried to escape to the nearest plasm source.”

  “Were there any casualties?” Aiah asks.

  “No. But the Qanibar police had advantages given them by good intelligence— knowing where the hanged man was going to be— and also by the fact that Qanibar was at the time a totalitarian state. They opened the action by killing the hanged man’s host, something the authorities certainly cannot do in any society that values the rights of humans beings and of victims.” He looks troubled. “Nor am I certain that the creature was, properly speaking, a hanged man or ice man. Perhaps it was a Slaver Mage who had convinced the extortionists he was a hanged man, or maybe it was a... vampire....” His face twists uncomfortably at having to deal with yet another creature out of superstition. “Perhaps something that has not been categorized,” he continues, “or a delusion. I will continue searching for information, if you like.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “I also found this... curiosity.” He takes out a sheaf of plastic flimsies, pushes it across the table to Aiah. “It is mostly speculation, but I thought you might want to read it, for reasons of historical and personal interest.”

  The plastic flimsies smell of developing fluid. “Toward a Psychology of the Ice Man,” Aiah reads, by Constantine of Cheloki.

  Aiah’s mouth goes dry. “How old is this?” she asks.

  “It was published thirty-seven years ago, in a journal of philosophy.” An analytical smile touches Rohder’s lips. “There is very little science in it.”

  Constantine must have met Taikoen by then, Aiah thinks.

  She tries for a moment to read the blue eyes, the ruddy skin, the network of fine lines in the old mage’s face, and wonders what it is he knows. She gives up, looks down at the article, then drops her hand over it.